I did this not of choice, but of necessity. In the matter of choice I should have preferred staying where I was. Though it was a modest, uncleanly place, I had grown used to it; and I dreaded another expedition into the unknown. But I had come down to my last ten dollars, with no relief in sight. A humbler abode was imperative even to tide me over a few days.
On the Odyssey of that afternoon I could write a good-sized volume. Steps that would have been simple to a working-man were difficult to me, because I had never had to take them. Moreover, because the business was new to me I went at it in the least practical way. Instead of securing a bed in one place before giving it up in another, I followed the opposite method. Paying my bill at the Barcelona, I went out in the street with no definite direction before me.
Rather, I had one definite direction, but that was only a first stage. I had spotted on my walks a dealer in old clothes to whom I carried the ridiculous suits I had brought with me from France. He was a little old Polish Jew, dressed in queer, antiquated broadcloth, whose beard and tousled gray hair proclaimed him a sort of Nazarite.
When I mentioned my errand he shook his head with an air of despair, lifting his hands to heaven somewhat in the manner of Mr. Chessland.
"No, no! Open not," he exclaimed, as I laid the suit-case on the counter in order to display my wares. "Will the high-born gentleman but look at all the good moneys spent on these beautiful garments, and no one buys my merchandise? Of what use more to purchase?"
When I had opened the suit-case he cast one look at the contents, turning away dramatically to the other side of the reeking little shop. A backward gesture of the hand cast my offerings behind him.
"Pah! Those can I not sell. Take 'em away." He came back, however, fingering first one suit and then the other, appraising them rapidly. "One dollar!" he cried, lifting a bony forefinger and defying me to ask more. "One! One! One! No more but one!"
I raised him to two, to three, and finally to five for each suit. In spite of his tragic appeals to Ruin not to overtake him, he seized my hand and kissed it.
Thus I was out on the pavement, with twenty dollars in my pocket, and so much liberty of action that I didn't know what to do. It was about three in the afternoon of a sullen December day, and big flakes of snow had begun to fall softly. It was cold only in the sense that my suit had been bought for hot weather, and the light French box-coat, which was all I had besides, added little in the way of warmth. Unable to stand with my two bags in the doorway of a shop for second-hand clothes, I moved on more or less at random.
But one thought was clearly in my mind. I must find a house where the sign "Rooms" was displayed in a window, and there I must go in.