So I wandered on, hardly noticing at first the way I took, and then consciously looking for a hotel. As to that, I had definitely made up my mind not to go to any of those better known, though the names of several remained in my memory, till I had properly clothed myself. Though in a measure I had grown used to my appearance, I caught the occasional turning of a head to look at me, and once the eyebrows of a passer-by went up in amused surprise.
I discovered quickly enough that I knew New York and that I knew it tolerably well; and almost as quickly I learned that I knew it not as a resident, but from the point of view of the visitor. Now that I was there, I could see myself always coming and always going. From what direction I had come and in what direction I turned on leaving still were mysteries. But the conviction of having no abiding tie with this city was as strong as that of the spectator in a theater of having no permanent connection with the play.
Coming on a modest hotel at last, I made bold to go in, finding myself in a lobby of imitation onyx and an atmosphere heavy with tobacco. I crossed to the desk, under the eyes of some three or four colored boys who didn't offer to assist me with my bags, and applied for a room. A courteous young man of Slavic nationality regretted that they were "full up." I marched out again.
Repeating this experience at another and another, I was saved from doing it at a fourth by a uniformed darky porter, who, as I was about to go up the steps, shook his head, at the same time sketching in the air an oval which I took to be a zero. I didn't go in, but I was oddly disconcerted. It had never occurred to me till then that hotels had a choice in guests, just as guests had a choice in hotels. I had always supposed that a man who could pay could command a welcome anywhere; but here I was, with nearly four hundred dollars in my pockets, unable to find a lodging because something strange in my clothes, or my eyes, or in my general demeanor, or in all together, stamped me as unusual. "Who's that freak?" I heard one bell-boy ask another, and the term seemed to brand me.
The day was muggy. After the keen sea air it was breathless. When I could walk no longer I staggered into a humble eating-house that seemed to be half underground. There was no one there but two waitresses, one of whom, wearing her hair à la madone, came forward as I closed the door. She did not, however, come forward so quickly but that I heard her say to her companion, "Well, of all the nuts—!" The observation, though breathlessly suspended there, made me shy about ordering my repast.
And when it came I couldn't eat it. It was good enough, doubtless, but coarse and ill served. I think the young lady who found me a nut was sorry for me when it came to close quarters, for she did her best to coax my appetite with other kind suggestions. All I could do in response was to flourish the roll of notes into which I had changed my French money on board and give her an amazing tip.
But a new decision had come to me while I strove to eat, and on making my way up to daylight again I set out to put it into operation. Reaching Broadway, I drifted southward till I came on one of the large establishments for ready-to-wear clothing which I knew were to be found in the neighborhood. On entering the vast emporium I adopted a new manner. No longer shrinking as I had shrunk since waking to the fact of my misfortune, I walked briskly up to the first man whom I saw at a distance eying me haughtily.
"See here," I said, in a good-mixer voice, "I've just got back from France, and look at the way they've rigged me out. Was in hospital there, after I'd got all kinds of shock, and this is the best I could do without coming back to God's country in a French uniform. Now I want to see the best you can do and how pretty you can make me look."
On emerging I was, therefore, passable to glance at, and after a hair-cut and a shave I was no longer afraid to see my reflection in a glass. I had, too, another inspiration. It occurred to me that I might startle myself into finding the way home. Calling a taxi, I drove boldly with my bags to the Grand Central Terminal, trusting to the inner voice to tell me the place for which to buy my ticket. With half the instinct of a horse my feet might take the road to the stable of their own accord.
I recognized the station and all its ways—the red-capped colored men, the white-capped white ones, the subterranean shops, the gaunt marble spaces. I recognized the windows at which I must have taken tickets hundreds of times, and played my comedy by walking up first to one and then to another, waiting for the inner voice to give me a tip. I found nothing but blank silence. The world was all before me where to choose—only Providence was not my guide. Or if Providence was my guide, His thread of flame was not visible.