Piccadilly Jim Part 21

"You will like America," she said.

"We are not discussing America."

"I am. It is a wonderful country for a man who wants to succeed.

If I were you, I should go out West."

"Do you live out West?"

"No."

"Then why suggest my going there? Where do you live?"

"I live in New York."

"I shall stay in New York, then."

Ann was wary, but amused. Proposals of marriage--and Jimmy seemed to be moving swiftly towards one--were no novelty in her life. In the course of several seasons at Bar Harbor, Tuxedo, Palm Beach, and in New York itself, she had spent much of her time foiling and discouraging the ardour of a series of sentimental youths who had laid their unwelcome hearts at her feet.

"New York is open for staying in about this time, I believe."

Jimmy was silent. He had done his best to fight a tendency to become depressed and had striven by means of a light tone to keep himself resolutely cheerful, but the girl's apparently total indifference to him was too much for his spirits. One of the young men who had had to pick up the heart he had flung at Ann's feet and carry it away for repairs had once confided to an intimate friend, after the sting had to some extent pa.s.sed, that the feelings of a man who made love to Ann might be likened to the emotions which hot chocolate might be supposed to entertain on contact with vanilla ice-cream. Jimmy, had the comparison been presented to him, would have endorsed its perfect accuracy. The wind from the sea, until now keen and bracing, had become merely infernally cold. The song of the wind in the rigging, erstwhile melodious, had turned into a d.a.m.ned depressing howling.

"I used to be as sentimental as any one a few years ago," said Ann, returning to the dropped subject. "Just after I left college, I was quite maudlin. I dreamed of moons and Junes and loves and doves all the time. Then something happened which made me see what a little fool I was. It wasn't pleasant at the time, but it had a very bracing effect. I have been quite different ever since. It was a man, of course, who did it. His method was quite simple. He just made fun of me, and Nature did the rest."

Jimmy scowled in the darkness. Murderous thoughts towards the unknown brute flooded his mind.

"I wish I could meet him!" he growled.

"You aren't likely to," said Ann. "He lives in England. His name is Crocker. Jimmy Crocker. I spoke about him just now."

Through the howling of the wind cut the sharp notes of a bugle.

Ann turned to the saloon entrance.

"Dinner!" she said brightly. "How hungry one gets on board ship!"

She stopped. "Aren't you coming down, Mr. Bayliss?"

"Not just yet," said Jimmy thickly.

CHAPTER VIII

PAINFUL SCENE IN A CAFE

The noonday sun beat down on Park Row. Hurrying mortals, released from a thousand offices, congested the sidewalks, their thoughts busy with the vision of lunch. Up and down the canyon of Na.s.sau Street the crowds moved more slowly. Candy-selling aliens jostled newsboys, and huge dray-horses endeavoured to the best of their ability not to grind the citizenry beneath their hooves.

Eastward, pressing on to the City Hall, surged the usual dense army of happy lovers on their way to buy marriage-licenses. Men popped in and out of the subway entrances like rabbits. It was a stirring, bustling scene, typical of this nerve-centre of New York's vast body.

Jimmy Crocker, standing in the doorway, watched the throngs enviously. There were men in that crowd who chewed gum, there were men who wore white satin ties with imitation diamond stick-pins, there were men who, having smoked seven-tenths of a cigar, were eating the remainder: but there was not one with whom he would not at that moment willingly have exchanged ident.i.ties.

For these men had jobs. And in his present frame of mind it seemed to him that no further ingredient was needed for the recipe of the ultimate human bliss.

The poet has said some very searching and unpleasant things about the man "whose heart has ne'er within him burned as home his footsteps he has turned from wandering on some foreign strand,"

but he might have excused Jimmy for feeling just then not so much a warmth of heart as a cold and clammy sensation of dismay. He would have had to admit that the words "High though his t.i.tles, proud his name, boundless his wealth as wish can claim" did not apply to Jimmy Crocker. The latter may have been "concentred all on self," but his wealth consisted of one hundred and thirty-three dollars and forty cents and his name was so far from being proud that the mere sight of it in the files of the New York _Sunday Chronicle_, the record-room of which he had just been visiting, had made him consider the fact that he had changed it to Bayliss the most sensible act of his career.

The reason for Jimmy's lack of enthusiasm as he surveyed the portion of his native land visible from his doorway is not far to seek. The _Atlantic_ had docked on Sat.u.r.day night, and Jimmy, having driven to an excellent hotel and engaged an expensive room therein, had left instructions at the desk that breakfast should be served to him at ten o'clock and with it the Sunday issue of the _Chronicle_. Five years had pa.s.sed since he had seen the dear old rag for which he had reported so many fires, murders, street-accidents, and weddings: and he looked forward to its perusal as a formal taking _seisin_ of his long-neglected country.

Nothing could be more fitting and symbolic than that the first morning of his return to America should find him propped up in bed reading the good old _Chronicle_. Among his final meditations as he dropped off to sleep was a gentle speculation as to who was City editor now and whether the comic supplement was still featuring the sprightly adventures of the Doughnut family.

A wave of not unmanly sentiment pa.s.sed over him on the following morning as he reached out for the paper. The sky-line of New York, seen as the boat comes up the bay, has its points, and the rattle of the Elevated trains and the quaint odour of the Subway extend a kindly welcome, but the thing that really convinces the returned traveller that he is back on Manhattan Island is the first Sunday paper. Jimmy, like every one else, began by opening the comic supplement: and as he scanned it a chilly discomfort, almost a premonition of evil, came upon him. The Doughnut Family was no more. He knew that it was unreasonable of him to feel as if he had just been informed of the death of a dear friend, for Pa Doughnut and his a.s.sociates had been having their adventures five years before he had left the country, and even the toughest comic supplementary hero rarely endures for a decade: but nevertheless the shadow did fall upon his morning optimism, and he derived no pleasure whatever from the artificial rollickings of a degraded creature called Old Pop Dill-Pickle who was offered as a subst.i.tute.

But this, he was to discover almost immediately, was a trifling disaster. It distressed him, but it did not affect his material welfare. Tragedy really began when he turned to the magazine section. Scarcely had he started to glance at it when this headline struck him like a bullet:

PICCADILLY JIM AT IT AGAIN

And beneath it his own name.

Nothing is so capable of diversity as the emotion we feel on seeing our name unexpectedly in print. We may soar to the heights or we may sink to the depths. Jimmy did the latter. A mere cursory first inspection of the article revealed the fact that it was no eulogy. With an unsparing hand the writer had muck-raked his eventful past, the text on which he hung his remarks being that ill-fated encounter with Lord Percy Whipple at the Six Hundred Club. This the scribe had recounted at a length and with a boisterous vim which outdid even Bill Blake's effort in the London _Daily Sun_. Bill Blake had been handicapped by consideration of s.p.a.ce and the fact that he had turned in his copy at an advanced hour when the paper was almost made up. The present writer was shackled by no restrictions. He had plenty of room to spread himself in, and he had spread himself. So liberal had been the editor's views in the respect that, in addition to the letter-press, the pages contained an unspeakably offensive picture of a burly young man in an obviously advanced condition of alcoholism raising his fist to strike a monocled youth in evening dress who had so little chin that Jimmy was surprised that he had ever been able to hit it. The only gleam of consolation that he could discover in this repellent drawing was the fact that the artist had treated Lord Percy even more scurvily than himself. Among other things, the second son of the Duke of Devizes was depicted as wearing a coronet--a thing which would have excited remark even in a London night-club.

Jimmy read the thing through in its entirety three times before he appreciated a _nuance_ which his disordered mind had at first failed to grasp--to wit, that this character-sketch of himself was no mere isolated outburst but apparently one of a series. In several places the writer alluded unmistakeably to other theses on the same subject.

Jimmy's breakfast congealed on its tray, untouched. That boon which the G.o.ds so seldom bestow, of seeing ourselves as others see us, had been accorded to him in full measure. By the time he had completed his third reading he was regarding himself in a purely objective fashion not unlike the att.i.tude of a naturalist towards some strange and loathesome manifestation of insect life.

So this was the sort of fellow he was! He wondered they had let him in at a reputable hotel.

The rest of the day he pa.s.sed in a state of such humility that he could have wept when the waiters were civil to him. On the Monday morning he made his way to Park Row to read the files of the _Chronicle_--a morbid enterprise, akin to the eccentric behaviour of those priests of Baal who gashed themselves with knives or of authors who subscribe to press-clipping agencies.

He came upon another of the articles almost at once, in an issue not a month old. Then there was a gap of several weeks, and hope revived that things might not be as bad as he had feared--only to be crushed by another trenchant screed. After that he set about his excavations methodically, resolved to know the worst. He knew it in just under two hours. There it all was--his row with the bookie, his bad behaviour at the political meeting, his breach-of-promise case. It was a complete biography.

And the name they called him. Piccadilly Jim! Ugh!

He went out into Park Row, and sought a quiet doorway where he could brood upon these matters.

It was not immediately that the practical or financial aspect of the affair came to scourge him. For an appreciable time he suffered in his self-esteem alone. It seemed to him that all these bustling persons who pa.s.sed knew him, that they were casting sidelong glances at him and laughing derisively, that those who chewed gum chewed it sneeringly and that those who ate their cigars ate them with thinly-veiled disapproval and scorn.

Then, the pa.s.sage of time blunting sensitiveness, he found that there were other and weightier things to consider.

As far as he had had any connected plan of action in his sudden casting-off of the flesh-pots of London, he had determined as soon as possible after landing to report at the office of his old paper and apply for his ancient position. So little thought had he given to the minutiae of his future plans that it had not occurred to him that he had anything to do but walk in, slap the gang on the back, and announce that he was ready to work. Work!--on the staff of a paper whose chief diversion appeared to be the satirising of his escapades! Even had he possessed the moral courage--or gall--to make the application, what good would it be?

He was a by-word in a world where he had once been a worthy citizen. What paper would trust Piccadilly Jim with an a.s.signment? What paper would consider Piccadilly Jim even on s.p.a.ce rates? A chill dismay crept over him. He seemed to hear the grave voice of Bayliss the butler speaking in his car as he had spoken so short a while before at Paddington Station.

"Is it not a little rash, Mr. James?"

Rash was the word. Here he stood, in a country that had no possible use for him, a country where compet.i.tion was keen and jobs for the unskilled infrequent. What on earth was there that he could do?

Well, he could go home... . No, he couldn't. His pride revolted at that solution. Prodigal Son stuff was all very well in its way, but it lost its impressiveness if you turned up again at home two weeks after you had left. A decent interval among the husks and swine was essential. Besides, there was his father to consider. He might be a poor specimen of a fellow, as witness the _Sunday Chronicle_ _pa.s.sim_, but he was not so poor as to come slinking back to upset things for his father just when he had done the only decent thing by removing himself. No, that was out of the question.

What remained? The air of New York is bracing and healthy, but a man cannot live on it. Obviously he must find a job. But what job?

What could he do?

A gnawing sensation in the region of the waistcoat answered the question. The solution--which it put forward was, it was true, but a temporary one, yet it appealed strongly to Jimmy. He had found it admirable at many crises. He would go and lunch, and it might be that food would bring inspiration.

He moved from his doorway and crossed to the entrance of the subway. He caught a timely express, and a few minutes later emerged into the sunlight again at Grand Central. He made his way westward along Forty-second Street to the hotel which he thought would meet his needs. He had scarcely entered it when in a chair by the door he perceived Ann Chester, and at the sight of her all his depression vanished and he was himself again.