Chapter Fourteen
On Wednesday Neil McCloud had lost his job of mechanic for the Ajax people. At least the top boss had come along and Neil had surmised from the dark looks he cast in his direction, as he spoke in a confidentially low tone to Neil’s boss, that he was ragging him for keeping on such a handicapped man when there were hundreds of good men to choose from. So Neil had gone up, as soon as the fellow had left, and discharged himself. His boss had a wife and small children. Nobody’s position was any too secure these days. And the top boss had had a very nasty look in his eye not only for Neil, but for Neil’s benefactor. Neil had quaked under it. But not for himself. So he walked out of the place, just another fellow out of a job.
A week ago, he had done a rash thing. One of the friends of his married days—still, supposedly, a friend of Edyth’s—had seen him in crowded Summer Street, rushed up to him and said that she must have some money. Her husband had failed to meet her with it as he had promised, her bags were waiting in the South Station for a week-end she was spending on the Cape with friends, Neil must give her every cent he had on him and probably that wouldn’t be enough! But would he hurry! He had hurried. He pulled his roll from his pocket—Saturday was pay day—and pushed it into pretty, smart Joyce Clayton’s yawning snakeskin purse. His only thought during the act was gratitude that the woman was in such a tearing hurry that she seemed not to notice his wordlessness. It was his pride that none of that crowd should know how things were with him, and until this meeting with Joyce, success had seemed childishly easy; they hadn’t bothered. But as Joyce had rolled off in the taxi into which he had put her silent—and she not noticing his wordlessness—she had leaned out and called back, “Your address, Neil darling! For heaven’s sake, what is it? I’ll send a check to-morrow.” He had smiled, raised his hat and blotted himself out from her eyes in the crowds of Summer Street. When he discovered that he hadn’t even any loose change in his pocket and must walk back to his room supperless and even put off breakfast until he could borrow at the works on next week’s salary, he was not much concerned. He had some chocolate in his room and plenty of cigarettes. The chocolate served for supper and breakfast, and the few dollars he let himself borrow on Monday kept him fed until Wednesday, when—instead of asking for more—he walked out penniless an hour after getting to the garage. There would be no more wages to ask an advance on.
He walked over to the Common and sat on a bench all morning, doing what he described to himself as face the situation. But every little while he stopped looking into the ugly face of his predicament and tried to speak. If he could only even whisper! He tried to say his own name. He tried it dozens of times but the only result was the ghost of a sob.
When the noon bells and whistles sounded he came, before they ceased, to a determination. He would look for work—yes—go into machine shops and garages with pencil and pad in his hand, and offer his services. He would face down all the curiosity and jeers that would come to him for his inability to speak. He would scour Boston for any sort of job where speech was not essential. But he would not go to any one to borrow money for food. If he got a job, O.K. If not, starving would be a natural way out and nobody, not even his guardian angel, could call it suicide.
Neil had followed what seemed to him this fair plan with action. Hungry, he had job-hunted steadily, until Friday morning. Friday morning, in the pursuit of the impossible job, he had stumbled, in a dirty alley, on a little abandoned paper bag half full of peanuts. Yes, it seemed too good to be true; and indeed he was by this time in such a giddy state that it might very easily be illusion. He had not been sure it wasn’t, until he had them in his teeth. Then, as he threw the bag from him, empty, Neil remembered that to-morrow his room rent would be due. But something else about Saturday was important too. After some groping he remembered—an appointment with Doctor Pryne.
Doctor Pryne! The handful of peanuts seemed only to have increased his hunger. Good luck, stumbled upon so astonishingly, had weakened his will, he thought; but anyway, he would ask Doctor Pryne for the loan of a dollar. Then he would buy himself food. He would go now and get the money. With meat and coffee to back him up, the Saturday’s séance must work—Doctor Pryne must cure him. Anyway, it would be Neil’s last shot before letting himself starve. There was some chance it might work. Pryne was always holding out hope—always seemed expectant of the thing’s breaking. But even if it didn’t work, and the cure didn’t come through on Saturday, and consequently he never got another job, and starved, and so never paid back that dollar,—Pryne was a good fellow. Neil would rather be owing Doctor Lewis Pryne a dollar through eternity than any other soul he knew. He’d give himself that one more chance.
So he had walked the miles up to the doctor’s office on the strength of the peanuts. And a new girl in the reception office—only she looked like something in a fairy tale, and almost as illusory as the peanuts—had said Pryne couldn’t possibly see him till his appointment the next day.
What he had done between then and his return just now a little ahead of his appointment time, Neil could not have told—or written. The one thing he knew, knew constantly, was that he had not eaten.