He tried to work. Horace offered to keep him on in his office, but it didn’t do. They quarrelled; Lionel, instigated by Minnie, said he wasn’t being paid enough, and didn’t have a position of sufficient importance. Horace was very much a business man; he was willing to give, even to be bled, but business was sacred; he couldn’t put Lionel in a responsible place.
He got him another job, but Lionel couldn’t keep it. He was very slow to learn, and very poor at figures. He wasn’t exactly stupid, but when he tried to hurry, he grew dazed and helpless. He was untrained and idiotically educated. He couldn’t compete with the men—even the girls—about him, with their wits sharpened by struggle and poverty, their shallow minds trained to run smoothly and rapidly in one groove.
Next he tried to sell automobiles. He saw a splendid future in this, and so did Minnie. But after he had called on one or two “prospects,” his enthusiasm vanished. The average American was exasperated by his slowness, his quite unconscious air of superiority, by his English accent. He was treated very rudely and he couldn’t stand that.
Then, on the strength of his distinguished appearance, and the English accent, he got a place as clerk in a very select book shop of Fifth Avenue. He liked that, and the customers liked him. They were “society people”; they appreciated his air, and he was well-disposed toward them. He was a cheerful, sweet-tempered fellow, willing to take any amount of trouble. But he knew nothing at all of books, and he could not learn the stock, couldn’t remember which books to push, or the names of former books by popular authors. And when he was asked, as he very frequently was, if he couldn’t recommend something “really good,” he had always to hurry and ask one of the clerks who could remember. After several months he was discharged.
If it hadn’t been for Horace, he would have been entirely discouraged. But so long as there was Horace to find him jobs and to support him during the intervals, he kept up his courage. There was the possibility of something delightful just round the corner. He rather enjoyed working, and trying new things. And it didn’t matter so very much if he did fail. There was always another chance to be had.
II
It was a very hot day in August, and Lionel found the trip from the city to his home suburb far from agreeable. He was in one of his moods for despising everything in his adopted country, a mood familiar to every alien in every country under the sun. He hated the way the people made themselves comfortable on the train, men with handkerchiefs in their collars and women in what he savagely called “ball dresses.” Personally he accepted hot weather in the proper British spirit, as one of the afflictions of the country, and he scorned to notice it by any extreme change of costume or of habit. He sat by an open window, but he kept his hat on, and his coat, and maintained at least a cool expression.
Three years of trouble had changed his appearance very little. He was as slim, as elegant, as supercilious as ever, in spite of increasing shabbiness. He had come from an interview with a corset manufacturer who had advertised for salesmen, and who had instantaneously and violently rejected Lionel. He really couldn’t find anything to do. He wanted to work, and to succeed, but it was a bit too hard. What advantages he had were unmarketable. He was bored with sitting about at home, and he wanted very much to be independent of Horace and free from debt and worry, and he wanted new clothes. Poverty was beginning to disagree with him acutely.
“No use!” he said gloomily, as he came up the steps and sat down on the tiny front porch where Minnie was sewing, and keeping an eye on their child, digging in the sunny gutter. “What about a cup of tea?”
Then he noticed that she looked “queer.”