Lot & Company

by Will Levington Comfort

Bellair concluded he had better buy a stimulant first of all, so he led the way across the Square to Kiltie’s. They lined up against the bar, and warmed themselves, the idea in Bellair’s mind being to give something beside money. Now the old man (not in the least understanding more than it was the whim of the stranger to do something for him), was so intent on what was to be done that he could not listen. Bellair had to come to the point. They went to a table for a bite of lunch, and the spectacle of a beggar’s mind opened—a story lacking imagination and told with the pitiful endeavour to fit into what was imagined to be the particular weakness of this listener.

For months, Bellair had not touched the little orbit of the trodden lives. The story was not true, for no single group of ten words hinged upon what had been said, or folded into the next statement. The old man was not simple, but his guile was simple, and the simplicity of that was obscene. Begging might be a fine art, but men chose or fell into their work without thought of making an art of it. The old man did not know his own tremendous drama. Had he dared plainly to be true, he would have captivated the world with his own poor faculties. Behind the affectations were glimpses of great realities—if only the fallen mind could accept his days and tell them as they came—just the imperishable fruits of his days. As it was, the whiskey swept them farther away, and the creature attempted to act; his pitiful conception of effects were called into being. The throb of it all was the way the world was brought back to Bellair. His whole past city life thronged into mind. This was but a shocking example of myriads of lives—trying to be what their undeveloped senses prompted for the moment, rather than to be themselves. This was the salesman’s voice and manner, he had seen in Broadwell.... He stopped his revery by handing over the present.

The old man’s eyes were wild now with hope and anguish to get away; a mingling of fear, too, lest the great sum of money in one piece be counterfeit; lest the stranger ask it back, or some one knock him down and take it away.

“I sat in a small boat,” Bellair was saying, “for ten days, with very little food and water. I saw one man die like a beast of thirst—or fear of thirst; and I saw another man master it—so that he died smiling—as only a man can die——”

Bellair did not finish. He had tried to catch the old man’s attention with this—to hold it an instant, thinking that some word would get home, something of the immortal facts in his heart, something greater than cash ... but the old man believed him insane, a liar, a fool or all three.

“Yes, yes,” he said, looking to the side, and to the door.

So he could listen, neither before nor afterward. Bellair eased his agony by letting him go—the money gripped in his hands, his limbs hastening, eyes darting to the right and left, as he sped through the swinging door.... For several moments, Bellair sat in the sorrow of it—lost in the grimmest of all tragedies—that here we are, a human family, all designed for lofty and majestic ends, yet having lost the power to articulate to each other. Suddenly Bellair remembered that the old face had looked into his for a swift second, when he was released—shaken, ashen, a murmur of something like “God thank you,” on the trembling lips. There was a bit of a ray in that.... Then he settled back into the tragedy again. It was this—that the old man had thought him insane for trying to help him; that he had seen something foreign and altogether amiss in the landlady’s eyes, in Ben Broadwell’s, and what was more touching to him, in Davy Acton’s.

Bellair straightened his shoulders. The misery of the thing oppressed him until he brought it to the laugh. Formerly he would have tried to escape. It was not his business if the old man would not be helped; he had tried. If a man can succeed in radiating good feelings and a spirit of helpfulness, he has done his part; the consequences are out of his hand. He saw that he had wanted to help; that what he had taken from the open boat and from the woman had brought this impulse to the fore in all his thinking. After that he must be an artist in the work; must become consummate; but having done his best—he must not spend energy in moods and personal depressions.... As for Lot & Company, he must meet them on their own footings—forgetting everything but their points of view. It was his business now to make a black spot clean, and it was an ugly material matter to be coped with as such, calling forth will-power and acumen of a world kind. He would see if he was to fail.

Bellair’s laugh was hard at first, from the tensity of the temptation to give up and let New York have its way in his case. Having whipped that (and it was a fair afternoon’s work) the smile softened a little, and he entered upon the task of the evening.

... Brandt’s was just as he had left it. The crowd increased; the quartette came. Bessie was lovely as ever; slightly different, since he had thought of her so much in the old hat. She did not see him, but her smile was like a flower of warmth and culture. A touch of the old excitement mounted in his breast, as they sang.... This was New York—among men—food and drink and warmth. This, too, was life; these were men who toil every day, who cannot take months to dream in, who cannot cross the sea and observe heroes and saints, but men who crowd and toil and fight, even expire, for their pleasures—such were the surgings of Bellair’s brain in the midst of the music. Bessie was the arch of it all—the arch of the old home, New York,—not this Bessie, but the Bessie that might be, the significant woman it was his work to make and mould. He was living his own thoughts, as much as listening. They vanished when the music stopped.... He sent a waiter to her with this written on a blank card: