My extra quarter flashed into my mind as a hopeful resource. I held out the two quarters and a nickel on the palm of my hand where the street light would strike them. I told Clark of my windfall, and of the possible chance of many another such to help us out in the future.
“I earned this in ten minutes,” I said, holding out a quarter, “and I know where twenty cents of it will buy us each a hot stew and all the bread that we can eat. And then I’ve found a lodging-house in South Clark Street where we can each get a wash and a fairly decent bed in good air for fifteen cents, and we’ll have enough left to keep us in food to-morrow.”
Clark hesitated. I enlarged on the attractiveness of the restaurant and the comfort of eating at leisure at one of its clean tables, and the long, unbroken rest that we should have at the lodgings. Clark was tired to the bone, and he yielded. It was my turn now to give him a shoulder as we walked to our evening meal.
We were soon seated opposite each other at one of the side tables of the restaurant. The lights were reproduced in myriad reflections in the mirrors, and we seemed to be sitting near the centre of a vast dining-hall with multitudes at its countless tables and its farther portions fading in the perspective of dim distance. The Irish stew and bread were indescribably good, and in the company of other diners we felt that we were among our fellow-men and of them, and we were free for the time from the torment of that haunting isolation which keeps one unspeakably lonely even in the thronging crowd.
Light-hearted and full of hope again we walked to the lodging-house, and after a wash we were soon fast asleep, each on a rough cot in a wooden closet, the electric lights streaming in upon us through the wire netting which was spread over the tops of long lines of such sleeping booths, that stood separated by thin board partitions like the bath-houses at the sea.
Friday and Saturday came and passed with the same vain search for work, and with varying fortune in odd jobs. We took separate routes through the day, but always agreed at parting upon an hour and place of meeting. The Young Men’s Christian Association rooms became our rendezvous. When we met there on Friday evening I had a quarter and Clark was high-spirited and opulent with forty-five cents to his credit. He was full of his good fortune. In the middle of the forenoon he had chanced upon the job of shifting coal in the cellar of a private house. The work having been finished he was allowed to wash himself in the kitchen with an abundance of hot water and soap and the luxury of a towel. And then he sat down at the kitchen-table to a dinner of hot turkey and cranberry-sauce, and any number of vegetables, and all the bread and coffee he wanted, and finally a towering saucer of plum-pudding. Fifty cents was added to the dinner in payment for his work, and, as he had had a dime left in his pocket after breakfast, he did not hesitate at an expenditure of fifteen cents in car-fare to facilitate his search for work.
My quarter had come, as on the day before, by way of a porter’s service—only this time from a woman. I caught sight of her as she was crossing the Lake Front from the station of the Illinois Central Railroad at the head of Randolph Street. Under her left arm were parcels of various shapes and sizes, and with some apparent effort she carried a bag in her right hand. The parcels were troublesome, for now and again she was obliged to rest the bag upon the pavement until she had adjusted her arm to a surer hold upon them. She was a woman nearing middle life, well dressed in warm, comfortable, winter garments which bore the general marks of the prevailing mode.
So completely had the present way of living possessed me that I fear that my first impulse at sight of her was born of the hope of a porter’s fee and not of the thought of helpfulness. But I grew more interested as I neared her, and increasingly embarrassed. There was a touch of beautiful coloring in her round, full face, and about the mouth was an expression of rare sweetness, while her dark-blue eyes looked out through gold-rimmed spectacles with preternatural seriousness. But my eye was drawn most by the hair that appeared beneath her bonnet; a heavy mass it was, and tawny red like that of Titian’s “Magdalene” in the Pitti. She might have been a shopkeeper’s wife come to the city from the suburbs or from some provincial village, and she was nervous in the noisy atmosphere of the unfamiliar. I had not yet offered my services to a woman in this new capacity of street porter, and I found myself puzzled as to how I should approach her. But the actual situation solved the difficulty, for when we were but a few steps apart, her bundles fell again into a state of irritating insecurity under her arm and she was again obliged to adjust them.
Instantly I was beside her, bowing, hat in hand:
“I beg your pardon, madam; won’t you let me help you?”