“Not a thing,” he smiled. “I haven’t been trying very hard, I guess.”
I told him what I knew of St. Louis, how things went generally, and offered to give him letters or personal introductions to McCullagh, a managing editor on the Chronicle, to Wandell, and several others. He thanked me, and then I invited him to come and live in my room, which he declined at the time, taking instead a room next door to mine on the same floor—largely because it was inexpensive and central and not, I am sure, because it was near me. Here he stayed nearly a month, during which time he doubtless made efforts to find something to do, which I also did. Suddenly he was gone, and a little later, and much to my astonishment, Dunlap informed me that he had concluded that I had been instrumental in keeping him from obtaining work here! This he had deduced not so much from anything he knew or had heard, but by some amazing process of reversal; since I was much beholden to him and in a position to assist him, I, by some perversion of nature, would resent his coming and would do everything in my power to keep him out!
No event in my life ever gave me a queerer sense of being misunderstood and defeated. Of all the people I knew, I would rather have aided Maxwell than any one else. Because I felt so sure that I could not recommend him for anything good enough for him, I felt ashamed to try. I did the little I could, but after a while he left without bidding me good-by.
But before he went there were many gatherings in his room or mine, and always he assumed the same condescending and bantering tone toward me that he had used in Chicago, which made me feel as though he thought my present standing a little too good for me. And yet at times, in his more cheerful moods, he seemed the same old John, tender, ranting, filled with a sincere desire for the welfare of any untutored beginner, and only so restless and irritable now because he was meshed in financial difficulties.
At that, he attempted to do me one more service, which, although I did not resent it very much, I completely misunderstood. This was in regard to Miss W——, whose photograph he now saw and whose relation to me he gathered to be serious, although what he said related more to my whole future than to her. One day he walked into my room and saw the picture of my love hanging on the wall. He paused first to examine it.
“Who’s this?” he inquired curiously.
I can see him yet, without coat or waistcoat, suspenders down, his fat stomach pulled in tightly by the waistband of his trousers, his fat face pink with health, his hair tousled on his fine round head.
“That’s the girl I’m engaged to,” I announced proudly. “I’m going to marry her one of these days when I get on my feet.” Then, lover-like, I began to expatiate on her charms, while he continued to study the photograph.
“Have you any idea how old she is?” he queried, looking up with that queer, cynical, unbelieving look of his.
“Oh, about my age.”