“Yes.”
“Oh, I wish we were married! If we just had a little place of our own! You could come home to me, and I could make you such nice things.”
I promised her happy days to come, but even as I said it I knew it would not be. I did not think I could build a life on my salary ... I did not know that I wanted to. Life was too wide and full. She seemed to sense something of this from the very beginning, and clung close to me now as we walked, looking up into my eyes, smiling almost sadly. As the hours slipped away into dusk and the hush of evening suggested change and the end of many things she sighed again.
“Oh, Dorse,” she said as we reached her doorstep, “if we could just be together always and never part!”
“We will be,” I said, but I did not believe my own words.
It was on this spring night that she attempted to persuade me, not by words or any great craft but merely by a yielding pressure, to take her and make her fully mine. I fancy she thought that if she yielded to me physically and found herself with child my sympathy would cause me to marry her. We in her own home threw some pillows on the floor, and there in my arms she kissed and hugged me, begging me to love her; but I had not the wish. I did not think that I ought to do that thing, then.
It was after this that the upward turn of my fortunes began. I was involved in the mock auction war for over three weeks and for two weeks following that with my buzzing dreams of leaving Chicago. In this rush of work, and in paying some attentions to Miss Winstead, I neglected Alice shamefully, once for ten days, not calling at her house or store or writing her a note. One Sunday morning, troubled about me and no doubt heartsick, she attended the ethical culture lecture in the Grand Theater, where I often went. On coming out she met me and I greeted her affectionately, but she only looked at me with sad and reproachful eyes and said: “Oh, Dorse, you don’t really care any more, do you? You’re just a little sorry when you see me. Well, you needn’t come any more. I’m going back to Harry. I’m only too glad that I can.”
She admitted that, misdoubting me, she had never dropped him entirely but had kept him calling occasionally. This angered me and I said to myself: “What is she that I should worry over her?” Imagine. And this double-dealing, essential as it was then, cut me to the quick, although I had been doing as much and more. When I thought it out I knew that she was entitled to protect herself against so uncertain a love as mine. Even then I could have taken her—she practically asked me to—but I offered reasons and excuses for delay. I went away both angry and sad, and the following Sunday, having received the telegram from St. Louis, I left without notifying her. Indeed I trifled about on this score debating with myself until Saturday night, when McEnnis asked me to go to dinner with him; afterwards when I hurried to her home she was not there. This angered me groundlessly, even though I knew she never expected me any more of a Saturday night. I returned to my room, disconsolate and gloomy, packed my belongings and then decided that I would go back after midnight and knock at her door. Remembering that my train left at seven-thirty next morning and having no doubt that she was off with my rival, I decided to punish her. After all, I could come back if I wished, or she could come to me. I wrote her a note, then went to bed and slept fitfully until six-thirty, when I arose and hurried to make my train. In a little while I was off, speeding through those wide flat yards which lay adjacent to her home, and with my nose pressed against the window, a driving rain outside, I could see the very windows and steps by which we had so often sat. My heart sank and I ached. I decided at once to write her upon my arrival in St. Louis and beg her to come—not to become my wife perhaps but my mistress. I brooded gloomily all day as I sped southward, picturing myself as a lorn youth without money, home, family, love, anything. I tried to be sad, thinking at the same time what wonderful things might not be going to befall me. But I was leaving Alice! I was leaving Chicago, my home, all that was familiar and dear! I felt as though I could not stand it, as though when I reached St. Louis I should take the next train and return.
CHAPTER XVI
The time was November, 1892. St. Louis, as I stepped off the train that Sunday evening, after leaving Chicago in cold dreary state, seemed a warmer clime. The air was soft, almost balmy; but St. Louis could be cold enough too, as I soon discovered. The station, then at Twelfth and Poplar (the new union Station at Eighteenth and Market was then building), an antiquated affair of brick and stone, with the tracks stretching in rows in front of it and reached by board walks laid at right angles to them, seemed unspeakably shabby and inconvenient to me after the better ones of Chicago. St. Louis, I said to myself, was not as good as Chicago. Chicago was rough, powerful, active; St. Louis was sleepy and slow. This was due, however, to the fact that I entered it of a Sunday evening and all its central portion was still. Contrasted with Chicago it was not a metropolis at all. While rich and successful it was a creature of another mood and of slower growth. I learned in time to like it very much, but for the things that set it apart from other cities, not for the things by which it sought to rival them.
But on that evening how dull and commonplace it seemed—how slow after the wave-like pulsation of energy that appeared to shake the very air of Chicago.
I made my way to a hotel called The Silver Moon, recommended to me by my mentor and sponsor, where one could get a room for a dollar, a meal for twenty-five cents. Outside of Joseph B. McCullagh, editor of the Globe-Democrat, and Edmond O’Neill, former editor of the Republic to whom I bore a letter, there was no one to whom I might commend myself. I did not care. I was in a strange city at last! I was out in the world now really, away from my family. My great interest was in life as a spectacle, this singing, rhythmic, mystic state in which I found myself. Life, the great sea! Life, the wondrous, colorful riddle!
After eating a bite in the almost darkened restaurant of this hotel I at once went out into Pine Street and stared at the street-cars, yellow, red, orange, green, brown, labeled Choteau Avenue, Tower Grove, Jefferson Avenue, Carondelet. My first business was to find the Globe-Democrat building, a prosperous eight-story brownstone and brick affair standing at Sixth and Pine. I stared at this building in the night, looking through the great plate glass windows at an onyx-lined office, and finally went in and bought a Sunday paper.
I went to my room and studied this paper—then slept, thinking of my coming introduction in the morning. I was awakened by the clangor of countless cars. Going to the stationary washstand I was struck at once by the yellowness of the water, a dark yellowish-brown, which deposited a yellow sediment in the glass. Was that the best St. Louis could afford? I asked myself in youthful derision. I drank it just the same, went down to breakfast and then out into the city to see what I should see. I bought a Globe-Democrat (a Republican party paper, by the way: an anachronism of age and change of ownership) and a Republic, the one morning Democratic paper, and then walked to Sixth and Pine to have another look at the building in which I was to work. I wandered along Broadway and Fourth Street, the street of the old courthouse; sought out the Mississippi River and stared at it, that vast river lying between banks of yellow mud; then I went back to the office of the Globe-Democrat, for it was nearing the time when its editor-in-chief might choose to put in an appearance.
Joseph B. McCullagh (“Little Mac” of Eugene Field’s verse) was a short, thick, aggressive, rather pugnacious and defensive person of Irish extraction. He was short, sturdy, Napoleonic, ursine rather than leonine. I was instantly drawn and thrown back by his stiff reserve. A negro elevator boy had waved me along a marble hall on the seventh floor to a room at the end, where I was met by an office boy who took in my name and then ushered me into the great man’s presence. I found him at a roll-top desk in a minute office, and he was almost buried in discarded newspapers. I learned afterward that he would never allow these to be removed until he was all but crowded out. I was racked with nervousness. Whatever high estimate I had conceived of myself had oozed out by the time I reached his door. I was now surveyed by keen gray Irish eyes from under bushy brows.
“Um, yuss! Um, yuss!” was all he deigned to say. “See Mr. Mitchell in the city room, Mr. Mitchell—um, yuss. Your salary will be—um—um—twenty dollars to begin with” (he was chewing a cigar and mumbled his words), and he turned to his papers.
Not a word, not a sign, that he knew I had ever written a line worth while. I returned to the handsome city room, and found only empty desks. I sat down and waited fully three-quarters of an hour, examining old papers and staring out of the windows over the roofs until Mr. Mitchell appeared.
Like his employer, he was thick-set, a bigger man physically but less attractive. He had a round, closely-cropped head and a severe and scowling expression. He reminded me of Squeers in Nicholas Nickleby. A savage fat man—can anything be worse? He went to his desk with a quick stride when he entered, never noticing me. When I approached and explained who I was and why I was there he scarcely gave me a glance.
“The afternoon assignments won’t be ready till twelve-thirty,” he commented drily. “Better take a seat in the next room.”
It was then only eleven-thirty, and I went into the next room and waited. It was empty but deliciously warm on this chilly day. How different from McEnnis, I thought. Evidently being called to a newspaper by telegram was not to be interpreted as auguring that one was to lie on a bed of roses.
A little bit afraid to leave for this hour, in case he might call, I hung about the two windows of this room staring at the new city. How wonderful it seemed, now this morning, after the quiet of the night before, how strong and forceful in this November air. The streets and sky were full of smoke; there was a clangor of street-car gongs below and the rumble of endless trucks. A block or two away loomed up a tall building of the newer order, twelve stories at least. Most of the buildings were small, old family dwellings turned into stores. I wondered about the life of the city, its charms, its prospects. What did it hold for me? How long would I remain here? Would this paper afford me any real advancement? Could I make a great impression and rise?
As I was thus meditating several newspaper men came in. One was a short bustling fellow with a golden-brown mustache and a shock of curly brown hair, whose name I subsequently learned was Hazard—a fitting name for a newspaper reporter. He wore a fedora hat, a short cream-colored overcoat which had many wrinkles about the skirts in the back, and striped trousers. He came in with a brisk air, slightly skipping his feet as he walked, and took a desk, which was nothing more than a segment of one long desk fastened to the wall and divided by varnished partitions of light oak. As soon as he was seated he opened a drawer and took out a pipe, which he briskly filled and lighted, and then began to examine some papers he had in his pockets. I liked his looks.
There sauntered in next a pale creature in a steel-gray suit of not too new a look, who took a seat directly opposite the first comer. His left hand, in a brown glove, hung at his side; apparently it was of wood or stuffed leather. Later there arrived a negro of very intellectual bearing, who took a seat next the second arrival; then a stout, phlegmatic-looking man with dark eyes, dark hair and skin, which gave me a feeling of something saturnine in his disposition. The next arrival was a small skippity man, bustling about like a little mouse, and having somewhat of a mousy look in his eyes, who seemed to be attached to the main city editorial room in some capacity.
A curious company gradually filed in, fourteen or fifteen all told. I gave up trying to catalogue them and turned to look out the window. The little bustling creature came through the room several times, looked at me without deigning to speak however, and finally put his head in at the door and whispered to the attendant group: “The book’s ready.” At this there was an immediate stir, nearly all of the men got up and one by one they filed into the next room. Assuming that they were going to consult the assignment book, I followed, but my name was not down. In Chicago my city editor usually called each individual to him in person; here each man was supposed to discover his assignment from a written page. I returned to the reporters’ room when I found my name was not down, wondering what I should be used for.
The others were not long gone before I was sought by the mouse—Hugh Keller Hartung by name—who whispered: “The city editor wants to see you”; and then for the second time I faced this gloomy man, whom I had already begun not only to dislike but to fear. He was dark and savage, in his mood to me at least, whether unconsciously so or not I do not know. His broad face, set with a straight full nose and a wide thin-lipped mouth, gave him a frozen Cromwellian outline. He seemed a queer, unliterary type to be attached to so remarkable a journalist as McCullagh.
“There’s been some trouble down at this number,” he said, handing me a slip of paper on which an address was written. “A fight, I think. See if you can find out anything about it.”
I hurried out, immensely relieved to get into the fresh air of the city. I finally made my way to the place, only to find a vacant lot. Thinking there might be some mistake, I went to the nearest police station and inquired. Nothing was known. Fearing to fall down on my first assignment, I returned to the lot, but could learn nothing. Gradually it began to dawn upon me that this might be merely a trial assignment, a bright idea of the frowning fat man, a bearings-finder. I had already conceived a vast contempt for him, a stumbling-block in my path, I thought. No wonder he came to hate me, as I learned afterward he did.
I wandered back through the city, looking at the strange little low houses (it was the region between the river and North Broadway, about a mile above the courthouse), and marveling at the darksome character of the stores. Never in my life had I seen such old buildings, all brick and all crowded together, with solid wood or iron shutters, modeled after those of France from whence its original settlers came and having something of the dourness of the poorer quarters of Paris about them, and windows composed of very small panes of glass, evidences of the influence of France, I am sure. Their interiors seemed so dark, so redolent of an old-time life. The streets also appeared old-fashioned with their cobblestones, their twists and turns and the very little space that lay between the curbs. I felt as though the people must be different from those in Chicago, less dynamic, less aggressive.
