WHEN he was sober the man always insisted that his name was Evans, but in his cups he was accustomed to declare, in a boastful fashion, that his name was not Evans at all. However, he never went further than this, and since none of us were particularly interested, we were satisfied to call him Evans, or, more often, Bum, for short. He was the second assistant janitor; and whereas, in some establishments, a janitor is a man of power and place, it is not so in a newspaper office. In such institutions, where great men are spoken of irreverently and by their first names, a janitor is a man of no importance. How much less, then, his second assistant. It was never a part of Evans’s work, for example, to sweep the floors. There is something lordly in the gesture of the broom. But the janitor’s first assistant attended to that; and Evans’s regular duties were more humble, not unconnected with such things as cuspidors. There was no man so poor to do him honor; yet he had always a certain loftiness of bearing. He was tall, rather above the average height, with a long, thin, bony face like a horse, and an aristocratic stoop about his neck and shoulders. His hands were slender; he walked in a fashion that you might have called a shuffle, but which might also have been characterized as a walk of indolent assurance. His eyes were wash-blue, and his straggling mustache drooped at the corners.
Sober, he was a silent man, but when he had drunk he was apt to become mysteriously loquacious. And he drank whenever the state of his credit permitted. At such times he spoke of his antecedents in a lordly and condescending fashion which we found amusing. “You call me Evans,” he would say. “That does well enough, to be sure. Quite so, and all that. Evans! Hah!”
And then he would laugh, in a barking fashion that with his long, bony countenance always suggested to me a coughing horse. But when he was pressed for details, the man—though he might be weaving and blinking with liquor—put a seal upon his lips. He said there were certain families in one of the Midland Counties of England who would welcome him home if he chose to go; but he never named them, and he never chose to go, and we put him down for a liar by the book. All of us except Sheener.
II
Sheener was a Jewish newsboy; that is to say, a representative of the only thoroughbred people in the world. I have known Sheener for a good many years, and he is worth knowing; also, the true tale of his life might have inspired Scheherazade. A book must be made of Sheener some day. For the present, it is enough to say that he had the enterprise which adversity has taught his people; he had the humility which they have learned by enduring insults they were powerless to resent, and he had the courage and the heart which were his ancient heritage. And—the man Evans had captured and enslaved his imagination.
He believed in Evans from the beginning. This may have been through a native credulity which failed to manifest itself in his other dealings with the world. I think it more probable that Evans and his pretensions appealed to the love of romance native to Sheener. I think he enjoyed believing, as we enjoy lending ourselves to the illusion of the theatre. Whatever the explanation, a certain alliance developed between the two; a something like friendship. I was one of those who laughed at Sheener’s credulity, but he told me, in his energetic fashion, that I was making a mistake.
“You got that guy wrong,” he would say. “He ain’t always been a bum. A guy with half an eye can see that. The way he talks, and the way he walks, and all. There’s class to him, I’m telling you. Class, bo.”
“He walks like a splay-footed walrus, and he talks like a drunken old hound,” I told Sheener. “He’s got you buffaloed, that’s all.”
“Pull in your horns; you’re coming to a bridge,” Sheener warned me. “Don’t be a goat all your life. He’s a gent; that’s what this guy is.”
“Then I’m glad I’m a roughneck,” I retorted; and Sheener shook his head.