Impressions of a War Correspondent Part 4

Coming out of a newspaper office in New York I happened to meet an old friend of the Cuban war times. Paler, thinner, and more drawn his face looked in the V of his turned-up collar than when I had seen him last. After talking for a few minutes I asked him whither he was going, and found he was going to take a special kind of bath and rubbing, which was part of the treatment he was undergoing for the desperate nervous trouble he was suffering from.

"It is pretty hard lines," said he. "As you know, I never drank, and took fairly good care of myself. I have not slept more than an hour or two for the past week."

Then he told me how, going home to Brooklyn a few evenings before, the nervousness had come so badly on him that he had to hire a boy to go with him. He could not go across the bridge alone.

"At the present moment," said he, "there are nine men in our office suffering from the same complaint."

He seemed to think that the treatment was doing little good; that doctors could do next to nothing.

"Rest, long rest, is what we want, I suppose; but how can a fellow get rest working in a big newspaper office in this city?"

The Remington machine had been rattling on like a Maxim gun in action, the operator taking down dictation on to the machine so quickly that it was almost as good as short-hand. It stopped suddenly, and the fragile anaemic woman who was working it laid down her hands in her lap, saying she was afraid she could not continue. In reply to the question if she was ill she said no-that it was simply she was nervous. She said she had only just returned from the country, where she had been resting for a week-a rest that she could ill afford, but it evidently had not been long enough.

"It is terrible, especially for those who have to keep working for a living, who have to work on to keep their heads above water."

"I suppose it is the penalty we pay for all this," she said, looking out from the window at which she sat.

Down far below was one of the busiest squares in New York; a double line of trolly-cars perpetually running through it that clanged their bells as they swung around the corner; automobiles that pinged their warning gongs and darted in and out amongst the stream of traffic fish-like; labouring horses struggling under heavy loads; the cars packed with people like cattle, standing up and hanging from the straps in the roof, toilers coming back from work; the sidewalks crowded with hurrying people. The seats in the centre of the square held slouching figures with bent heads, figures of dog-tired men-dog-tired with work or the looking for it. A sharp insistent clanging arose above the other sounds like a wailing scream of pain as an automobile ambulance rushed hospital-wards, carrying off one of those wounded in the struggle.

No one can quietly watch the seething life of the City of Unrest without being struck with the prevalence of nervous troubles amongst the people. Every day one meets instances. "I dare not drink coffee; I have not drunk it for years," one so often hears-then the piteous longing for sleep denied. "I am not going to any dances this winter; my doctor will not allow me, on account of my nerves," one of the most charming girls in New York said to me a few days ago. The doctors all declare that this nervousness is alarmingly on the increase, and throughout every cla.s.s of the community-from those who work hardest, through the longest hours, to earn their bread, to those who work at the pursuit of pleasure-the mad social rush of the Charge of the Four Hundred. It is obvious that this pace cannot slacken-every year adds fresh impetus. What will it be in fifty years-at the end of the century? What will the offspring of these quivering, twitching, highly strung men and women be like? Quo vadis, Americane?

Already there are antidotes or remedies for this growing evil-sanatoria where the worn-out over-worked are compelled to seek refuge, asylums of repose for those who have long lost the art of enjoying it. More useful, perhaps, are the facilities for getting healthy exercise which are offered by athletic clubs, gymnasia, and the squash courts and tennis courts now being laid out on the tops of so many of the best houses. But these are only trifling against the magnitude of the menacing evil. Thousands have not the time to enjoy them, and must pay the penalty of the pace of their progress in the City of Unrest.

XV

THE MILLION-MASTER IN THE CITY OF UNREST

Seven-thirty o'clock: the coffee and toast had been placed by the valet on the table beside his bed; the warm water was already running into the bath in the adjoining room; three suits of clothes, carefully brushed and ironed, were laid on the sofa when he was called. He seemed to be awake all of a sudden-quite awake. As he was called, a young man came into the room with a bundle of newspapers. "Let me see," said Mr. X., "I think I can take half an hour extra this morning-read away;" and then the young man began reading rapidly from the papers. He had from long training learned to know what interested the boss, and read selections from one paper after another which he had previously gone over-some closing prices of particular stocks first, then some foreign and general news summary, and then X. asked him to read particulars of what he wanted to learn more about. After about fifteen minutes he had had enough, and one of his secretaries, with a bundle of letters in one hand and a notebook in the other, came in. As he read the letters, X. dictated, or mostly just indicated, the replies; they were all business letters. Then his place was taken by another. His letters were mostly invitations, charitable appeals, letters from his steward and the head of his stables at Lakewood, from the skipper of his yacht, from dealers who had pictures that he ought to buy, from the caretaker of his house in Newport, and letters from house-agents in London about a house he wanted there for the Coronation. At eight he took his bath, and while drying and dressing the litany of letters and responses continued, punctuated at intervals by the bell of the telephone on the table by his bedside, and so on through the breakfast, now laid in an adjoining study, until it was time to telephone to the stables for his automobile. Same telephone message occupied fifteen minutes. Just before leaving he sent to his wife's room to find out where he was dining. Madame was being ma.s.saged, but sent word that they were giving a dinner-party at Sherry's, having three boxes at the theatre afterwards, and that then she expected him to come to the As...o...b..lts' ball. Long cigar, fur coat, gloves, and into the automobile, his secretary sitting beside him, still going through the unfinished letters.

Three inches of snow had fallen during the night-hard, dry snow, on which the horses slipped and struggled as it was being beaten flat, and on which his automobile would have skidded ungovernably if Fifth Avenue had not been already well sprayed by the sand-sprinklers. Progress in the upper part of the Avenue was rapid enough; but from Madison Square slow, halting, and intermittent, horses were falling in all directions, stopping the surface-cars packed with a mult.i.tude of toilers, all going city-wards; the gong of the automobile clanged petulantly. Down town the upper alt.i.tudes of the sky-sc.r.a.pers were lost in a vague mist of swirling snow that eddied through the chasm-like clefts between them-there were gaps where other gigantic iron frames were rising up to the rattling Maxim-gun-like sound of the steam riveters.

At length they arrived at the high pilloried portico of the immense building in which his office was situated; pa.s.sing through the revolving doors-mill-wheels perpetually kept turning by a stream of humanity-one of a number of elevators brought him to the floor entirely occupied by his offices. The walls and counters were of white grey-lined marble; polished mahogany desks and burnished bra.s.s railings glistened everywhere. Through waiting-rooms and offices he pa.s.sed to his private office. It was a plain room, richly carpeted, soft leather chairs, a big table on which were only a few papers; a telephone stood on the right-hand side of the blotter. There were some maps on the walls, nothing more. On a mahogany stand against the wall in the centre of the room, near his desk, stood the ticker, like a sacred image on a pedestal. Strange little G.o.d, mysterious little oracle-I don't think I would have felt surprised if on entering he had knelt down before it and said a short prayer. Instead, he seated himself at his desk and commenced speaking into the telephone. There was a switch-board of his private exchange outside the private office which communicated to each of the heads of his departments. Without the delay of sending or going for them, he spoke to six or seven one after the other. Then his confidential clerk came in with a number of papers in his hands. Tickety, tickety, tick, the oracle was speaking all the time, but he took no notice of its remarks-still it went on, as if knowing that sooner or later he would be drawn towards it; and so he was, and pa.s.sed the tape through his fingers, pausing here and there; and so throughout the day that little chattering fetish dominated him and every one that entered the room. Men came in, and while waiting, or in a pause in conversation, would be drawn to see what was on its tongue. There is nothing more striking about business in New York than the ease and rapidity with which business is carried out. There had been a bad break in sugar in the morning; X. meant to have some if it came to a certain figure. All the morning down, down, it toppled. Within a few seconds of the time a deal was made from the centre of the Stock Exchange it appeared on the tape in X.'s office. It dropped to his price. "Now, time this," said he; "1204 I want. Buy me 5000 sugar at 92" (twenty seconds gone). "He has got my message, and I am holding the wire till I get a reply. Now he has sent it on his private wire to the Stock Exchange; his own telephone-boy has already his number on the telegraph-board. If he is not immediately available a two-dollar broker will execute the order." Here comes the reply: "3000 at 92 was all he could get at the price." (Time, 1 min. 35 sec.) To those who are used to the aggravating slowness of the telephone in London, that in New York is a revelation of rapidity, and so much does it enter into the daily life of the community that it would now give something like a stroke of paralysis to the City if all the telephone-wires should be suddenly swept down or the operators suddenly go on strike.

A lunch at the luxuriously furnished Club situated at the top of the building, and not such a serious interruption to business, as during it three messengers come with notes from his office for him. Not much time to dawdle over lunch, as he had three meetings to preside at during the afternoon; then up to the Union Club, a few moments' chat with some friends-change into evening clothes, on to Sherry's-inside the door of the great restaurant he sees a number of people he knows. "Hallo, you, with whom are you dining to-night?" "Why, with you." "Glad of it." Then he sees Mr. Sherry, and finds his table to see how many he has dining with him. A little late, but radiant in a Worth gown and wearing black pearls, his wife arrives-it is the first time he has seen her during the day.

"So sorry to be late, poppa, but that last rubber of bridge was such a slow one, and I won eight dollars." "Good for you." After dinner he sits in the back of the box; the play or the plot does not interest him; his mind is full of more dramatic scenes-plots that, instead of play, can be made into reality-real live characters that he could make dance to the music of his millions. Then on to that great ball in one of the palaces of Fifth Avenue, a palace to which architects, painters, sculptors, have combined to raise into a dream of luxury such as Rome never equalled.

Strolling through the picture-gallery with an old friend, she who, though born to millions, kept fresh that perfume of womanliness which we call charm: "You look tired to-night," said he. "No wonder; out every night now for four months; lunches, bridge, calls, dinners, theatres, suppers, dances, and the treadmill never stops. I sometimes wish Tom only owned a tiny cottage, and that I had to cook his dinner for him." "And that you might ask me to dine off pork and beans." "You, too, look tired, my master of millions." "I am," said he, "but I am not master of millions, it is the millions who are my master-slave-masters with many-lashed whip that keep me hourly toiling in their service, that never let me rest, keep me working and fighting, and have robbed me of repose, keep a glare of limelight on my life, and after all can buy so little, not real success (I was beaten this week by K. in that Union-Pacific deal), not one drop of blue blood into my veins, not one night of sound delicious sleep, not one kiss from the lips of love."

XVI

THE WOMAN WHO WORKS IN THE CITY OF UNREST

At a quarter to seven the alarm-clock went off next her bed-how she would have liked to sleep for another hour, or lie warm and cosy under the clothes! The training in the habit of doing what she did not like helped her into a little tin bath, and to dress close to the radiator, as it was a bitterly cold morning. At 7.30 she stepped out into a snow-covered street and then hurried across Was.h.i.+ngton-square. Bitterly cold wind s.h.i.+vered through the white coral-like branches of the trees. The snow brought out the carving on the Was.h.i.+ngton Arch; the snow seemed to suit the whole square, and make it seem still less a part of the City-the Sleepy Hollow in the City of Unrest, with the solid big houses around it where ladies and gentlemen lived who had refused to be hustled into joining in the general dollar scramble.

In the street on the other side of the square she entered a restaurant, already full of breakfasters. She sat down at one of the marble tables with a couple of men she knew, ordered an orange, coffee, porridge, roll, two eggs-total, thirty cents. Her friends were in offices down town, one of them not earning as much as she was. They were comrades, chums, so much that he often borrowed a dollar from her during those critical days at the month's end.

General Yule's Column On The Way To Ladysmith.

Breakfast finished, and a glance at the paper-at least, enough to read the headings-and then out on Broadway to take the down-town car. Two pa.s.sed as she stood at the corner, so packed that there was not standing-room even on the platform for another; then one stopped from which a few pa.s.sengers struggled out, and she got in. All along the centre of the car men and women were standing, holding on to the straps, swaying backwards and forwards as the car swooped forward, and jerking forward every time it stopped. No idea in such a car of the men sitting down, against whose knees hers rubbed, to get up and relinquish their seats-why should they? She did not expect it. Was she not by her very going down town taking the place of a possible man there? was she not showing that she could do a man's work? Equality-he might think himself called on to give up his seat to one of the weaker s.e.x. But there is no s.e.x in the City. Swaying, squeezing, jostling, twenty minutes of uncomfortable cattle-truck-like journey brought her to the big office where she worked.

Men do not doff their hats in the down-town elevators which brought her up to the big office where she was employed, a great room near the top of one of the high down-town buildings; the windows looked out on the river, now a white ma.s.s of down-flowing ice, through which the calling steamers worked their way laboriously towards the harbour, to the Statue of Liberty standing beside what now looked a white gravel path of entry to the city.

There were about fifty people at work in the room, three-fourths women, seated at desks and tables, and some occupied the dignified position of little gla.s.s-part.i.tioned rooms. She had one of these to herself, in which there was also a table for a stenographer. It was a publis.h.i.+ng-house; books, ill.u.s.trations, ma.n.u.scripts, were in evidence everywhere. Near the door was a sort of railed-in pen where men with bundles of ma.n.u.script under their arms were usually to be seen seated, waiting. Some of these were even shown into her office, and left minus their bundles, or more often with them. There was a hum of chattering typewriting machines constantly in the air, like the chirruping of insects heard from tropical trees. Constantly her telephone rang and she had to make excursions to the manager's office, and head printers and printers'-ink-marked men came to her with proof-sheets, and so on, till 12.30, when she went out to lunch at the women's cafe and had lunch not unlike her breakfast.

The room was full of girls similarly employed, ten to thirty cents being the average of their expenditure; all real workers, none of them the fancy stenographers that their employers frequently take out to little lunches at the smarter restaurants at safe distance from their wives up town. They were not a very attractive crowd-thin, flat-chested, and often anaemic, occasionally with pretty faces, hair, or eyes; but work, daily work, had left its impress on them all. Some (their luncheon bills did not exceed ten cents) looked, with their thin fingers and arms, like human attachments to typewriting machines. There was a something not in the least mannish, but still not appealingly womanly, in these self-reliant, quiet business beings. Was it a sort of neuter gender, a s.e.xless being that was there in course of development? Somehow, they did not strike one as beings who would bear and suckle and nurse children. Was this severe struggle and necessity of existence to eliminate the supreme joy of motherhood from their lives?

Back to the office, where they joined their fellow men-workers; they were just fellow-workers, no quarter given or looked for in the failure to do their work. Some of them earned fine salaries, yet there seemed a limit-point-thus far and no farther-men were always in the highest positions. Put it down to tenacity of possession, jealousy, prejudice-anything but want of perseverance, circ.u.mspection, industry: the obviousness of the fact remains.

Until half-past five her work goes on just the same as before lunch, and then up town on the elevator. Dry snow is spotting the swirling wind that eddies round the corners; the sidewalks are thick with hurrying people; the elevator is packed to the platforms with men and women tightly crushed together, worse even than coming down. She dines at a little Italian restaurant, where the proprietor, his wife, and children personally attend on their customers; it is known only to a few who mostly know each other-constant habitues-magazine writers and magazine artists, and miscellaneous, but interesting, nondescripts; and her dinner, with Italian wine included, costs forty cents. It is the pleasantest part of the day for her-men and women of that little writing, artistic, thoughtful, and, in a way, thoughtless set she had known for years; men who could never boom themselves or others, or keep up a bluff even enough to advertise themselves; the slow steps of actual merit made their progress seem like marking time. Ruggles, commonly known to his friends as Rembrandt, saw her home-old Ruggles, who painted better pictures than half the foreigners who came to New York, but who would never be a prophet in his own country. Nice old boy, Ruggles; but the fire was burning low in him, its only fuel being the ashes of disappointment.

The sky had cleared, and the moon shone out on the glorious old square, and red lights suggestive of old port and big wood fires streaked the silent snow from the windows. "Bully, isn't it?" And the silent pressure of her arm was affirmative of complete understanding. Her tiny sitting-room was warm; the cheap eastern rugs and dark green background of the walls and some clever original sketches, all were in the harmony of taste that loved restfulness. She lit the gas-stove of imitation logs; Ruggles wheeled a chair in front of it and filled his pipe; from his match she glowed a cigarette, and with a great sigh of relief and tiredness lay back on the sofa.

Then they chatted chum-like of many things. She was doing well-doing a man's work and getting a man's pay, supporting her mother and the two younger girls in the country. It was a strain; but is not successful effort Brian L'Estrange's definition of happiness? So they chatted on until it was time for Ruggles to go.

"Thank you so much for coming, dear old Ruggles; it is so lonely when I come back here by myself."

"Why don't you get married?"

"Ah! I don't know. Perhaps I'm getting old working, and the men I would like to marry don't care for me, and those that would I don't like. I don't think I want really to marry any one, either."

As he shook hands at the door he said, "You ought to get married, girlie. What a good, and true, and beautiful mother you would make for a boy-child!"

The shooting of the door-hasp seemed to let go the flood-gates of her heart. There was the great longing of her heart-to bear a boy-child. "For joy that a man is born into the world" seemed vaguely ringing in her ears. Like a deep-down spring surface-seeking, that old desire welled up, the perfect reward and crown of valiant womanhood-and she felt how good and tender and true a mother she could be; and as the desolation of denial flooded her soul she threw herself on that sofa made of empty cases, held the cus.h.i.+ons to her, and cried-cried as if her heart would break.

Being independent and alone in her own room, she could cry out her lone cry without any one interfering with unwelcome comforting. Then, pale-faced and red-eyed, she got up, the sobs still coming in little gasps. She looked in the gla.s.s as she pushed the black hair back from her blue-veined forehead. With one of those strange revelations of reality that come to people in life when in solitude they look at their own reflection in a mirror-she thought-spoke. "It is too late-too late-for me to be the mother of a boy-child."

Then she went and set her alarm-clock to a quarter to seven in the morning.

XVII

THE HOU-MEN OF THE DINGY CITY

How they call with different voices, these cities of men-from the Maxim-gun-like rattle of New York, with its chorus of strenuous steamers calling from the water, on over the gamut of different capitals to Tokio, where the city voice is the tinkling of stilted wooden shoes; not "Twinkle, twinkle, little star," but "Tinkle, tinkle, little feet," go the small wooden shoes on the wide firmament of pavement.

Most strident are the American cities; the most sweet-sounding are those of j.a.pan, except in those few streets raided by tram-cars.

What is the voice of London? Is it not the plod, plod, dumping plod of the horses' hoofs and the jangling rattle of harness and bells, which last we hardly hear, so close is the sound to our ears, like things we cannot see because they are so close to our eyes? As it is a murmurous and noisy city in comparison with those of j.a.pan, so it is peaceful and quiet in comparison with Chicago or New York. A friend of mine from that City of Unrest says that the sound of the London streets has a soothing, lulling effect on him, and makes him sleepy, like the sound of falling water.

As I went up to Euston to-day to meet an Oriental visitor, I fell to speculating how the city might look to him. A very cultured, intellectual fellow he is, who looks into the backs of the eyes of things. A Chinaman born, he had been through college in America, and knew American cities; he had also been studying in Paris, but this was his first visit to London. A wet, drizzling day was not the most propitious for his first impressions. Slopping along in a cab through the muddy streets, as I went under the portico of Euston Station I was forcefully reminded of one of the big gates of Pekin. There is a suggestion of the same ma.s.siveness; but the ma.s.siveness is only make-face, like the painted cannon on a Chinese city gate. It was an imposing portico to a shamble of sheds.

The railway terminus is the real gate of the modern city.

Yet what absurdly incongruous things these London city gates are-a salad jumble of architecture and machinery with a mayonnaise of train-oil and soot!

As I waited for my friend long trains came rumbling in under a canopy of smoke that hung about the grim iron rafters of this labyrinth. Fifteen minutes ago these trains had been spinning along through the green fields and across the shady lanes of what looked like "Merrie England," although now shaved down and trimmed to intense respectability of cultivation. The heavens darkened and the air thickened as they came close to their journey's end, until they slow down as if gropingly finding their way into the cavernous gateway of the great dingy city.

What a strange conglomeration of people was waiting on each platform! There was a train leaving to catch the steamer for New York, there was a line of people waiting to take tickets for a close-by station, there was a line of soldiers waiting to be entrained; an American girl was standing on an automatic machine, and getting the railway porter to translate from stones into pounds how much she weighed after her visit to Europe. A couple of Oriental servants seemed to have lost themselves in the labyrinthine station, and were wandering round with Oriental indifference. Porters, with hands and faces and uniforms toned down to the universal greyness of things, trundled their hand-lorries to the monotonous calling of "B' your leave, b' your leave"; and variegated specimens of humanity were looking around after their luggage as one might imagine disembodied souls looking for their bodies in the Valley of Jehoshaphat on the Last Day. There were not a few touches of cosmopolitanism suggestive of that gathering.