Just that.... He saw the millinery woman afterward, so it wasn’t she.... The air in the old halls was of a character all its own. It was stronger than the emanations from any of the rooms. The separate currents lost their identity like streams in the ocean, like souls in Brahma.... How strangely apart he had kept all that five years! A face not seen before in the halls, and he did not know if it were a newcomer or old. So few came to the board to dine—the chorus-woman from the Hippodrome, who came up nightly from the water.... He saw the view from his window—over the roofs and areas. It was a wall of windows—dwellers in the canyon sides; boxes of food hanging out, clothing out to freshen itself in the dingy and sluggish airs—the coloured stockings and the faces that looked out. Everything was monotonous but the faces—faces grim and sharp—faces of kittens and bulls and rabbits and foxes, faces of ferrets, sleek faces, torn faces, red and brutal, white and wasted faces; faces of food and drink, faces of hunger and fear; the drugged look; few tears but much dry yearning, and not a face of joy.
There was no joyousness and peace in the lower runways, but pain and heavy pressures.... Bellair saw himself moving among those halls again, not a stranger, but with a hand, a smile, a dollar. No one would moan for days without his knowing. He would find day-work for the little telephone miss, and send orders for hats to the milliner. He would awaken that shadow of all the shadows, the landlady, with kindness and healing. He would call across the windowed cavern.... They would say, “Come over and help us,” and he would rush down stairs, and around into other streets, and faces there would be ready to show him. He saw it all clearly, such as it was, but no facts. They would not call to him. They would not be healed. They would take a dollar, but say he was cracked. He could move about passing forth a dollar here and there—that was all. They would welcome him at Lot & Company’s if he passed it out quietly enough. The dollar would go into the Sproxley system and emerge unbroken to the firm itself, there to be had and held and marked down in the house of Lot—Jabez, Nathan, Eben, Seth, each a part, the jovial Mr. Rawter a small but visible part—one hundred Sproxley-measured cents.... Davy Acton wouldn’t get one, nor Broadwell, nor the girls upstairs. The firm would not encourage him passing beyond the cage of Mr. Sproxley.... There were many who wanted food and drink and hats—hats——”
He was with Bessie Brealt now ... that night and the kiss. It was another life.... He went back to those who needed food—New York so full of food. Then he felt the heavy wallet against his breast—one paper in there would fill the open boat with food....
“My God,” he said.
He didn’t try to explain.... Sometimes he fell into a little dream as he sat. Once he was drinking at the narrow throat of a green bottle,—a magic bottle whose base was in the sea, and the trickle that passed through was freshened drop by drop. But it was a trick like all else in the world and the drops passed with agonising slowness. He came to, sucking hard upon his brass key, his mouth ulcered from it.... There were times in the long days that he hungered for the stars almost as for drink; times in the night when the stars bored him like some man-pageantry that he had seen too much of; times when the thought of God was less than the thought of water; and times when the faith and the glory of the spirit of the world made thirst a thing to laugh at, and death whimsical and insignificant.... Sometimes in the night, he fancied the woman was Bessie Brealt. It would come like a little suspicion first hardly stirring his faculties; finally it would be real—that the singing girl was there, all but her song. He would sit up rubbing his eyes in rebellion. Once he had spoken to be sure.
“Yes, it is I,” she said huskily, and the voice was not Bessie Brealt’s.
10
They did not speak of ships. Through the wakeful night hours they watched for the lights of ships, but they did not speak of vigils. Their eyes were straining for uncharted shores during the days, but they did not speak of land; nor of rain, though they watched passionately the change and movement of wind and cloud.
It is true that they suffered less in the days that followed the passing of Stackhouse. The underworld was gone from the seat in the stern; sunlight and sea air had cleansed it from the boat. They were weaker, but pangs of thirst were weaker, too. Small pieces of metal in their mouths kept the saliva trickling. The real difference was an exaltation which even Bellair shared at times, and which had come to them the fifth morning with Fleury’s talk, and with refining intensity since.