Part 35 (1/2)

The matter with it was that it was bare and dingy and empty, like the room in which he sat. But what was not? Everything was like that, if you didn't believe the nonsense written about it, if you looked at it and saw it. It wasn't to be supposed that he, Neale Crittenden, would go and be a missionary, was it, or any of those pious priggish make-s.h.i.+ft devices to pretend that you were doing something worth while? Or join the Salvation Army and beat a drum? He was an American business-man.

What in h.e.l.l did Emerson think you _could_ do?

He got up and walked restlessly around the dreadful little room, helpless before its bareness. Nothing to read in the place, not even a time-table. Nothing but the Emerson. He went over to where it lay on the bench, opened his valise, put the book back in, down among his s.h.i.+rts, and snapped the valise shut on it. A whistle sounded down the track. He looked at his watch. No, his train was not due for half an hour yet. He went to the door and watched a through freight roll past, noting the names on the cars as they flashed into the light from the station-agent's window,--N. Y. Central, Pere Marquette, Wabash, Erie, Boston and Maine,--shoes and groceries and hardware, structural-steel, cement--all the thousand things needed every day to keep the wheels of daily material life moving, all made, bought and sold, s.h.i.+pped and handled by men like him. All necessary honest goods, all necessary honest work ... but that couldn't be _all_ of life! The train pounded off, the silence of the night closed in on him, and in that silence he heard the echo of those appalling sobs, and the slam of the door. Queer thing, human life was, wasn't it? Think of poor Mr. Gates paying that price, and very likely for something he didn't care so much about when he got it. It wasn't the price you paid, that bothered Neale. If it were something worth your while, you were willing to pay all you had. But to pay so much, just to make money for Neale Crittenden ... he couldn't see it that way. He'd have a smoke on it anyhow.

As he filled his pipe it came to him that once before he had felt the same aching restlessness, so intense that it was pain. That was the time when he had gone stale. He'd been put out of the game, and had sat on the side-lines eating his heart out. He was there again, gone stale, out of the game. He had the strength, he had the speed, now as then. Why was it he stood outside the game? Other men were giving their souls to it.

Maybe he _was_ a quitter, after all. There had certainly been quitting or _something_ the matter in his relations with Martha ... how empty life was without Martha.... But he was mighty glad he wasn't going to marry her.

He was a fine specimen anyhow!

”Well now, well now,” he shook himself together, ”let's consider all this. What's the best thing to do when you go stale and have a slump?”

Atkins had showed him what to do that other time. He had actually profited by it in the end, profited immensely by being temporarily out of the game, so that he could consider and understand the real inwardness of what it was all about.

Why, perhaps that was what he needed to do now, pull out for a while, get away from the whole thing, look at it from a distance, get a line on what it was all about.

He sucked on his pipe, c.o.c.king his head sidewise to look at the ceiling, his hands deep in his pockets. There was nothing to hinder his taking a year off. He had money enough. And not a tie on earth to prevent his doing as he pleased. He'd lose his job, of course. But he didn't seem to be just madly in love with his job anyhow. And there were other jobs.

”Well, by George, why not?”

Where should he go? Anywhere that wasn't the lumber business. There was the whole world, the round globe hurtling through the infinite. What in G.o.d's name was he doing in Hoosick Junction?

There was England; and France; and Italy; and after that, why, anywhere again! Wherever he pleased ... the East, China, and where there were Malays and jungles. When his money gave out, if he still wanted to stay on he could earn his living as well there as here. ”There!” That meant anywhere else. Anywhere else must be less dusty and frowsy and empty than here.

Why under the sun had he not thought of this before? Their d.a.m.ned old labels do stick after all. But he would soak them off!

His heart unfolded from its painful tight compression. The way out? Why had he been so long in seeing it? The way out was to put on your hat and go.

_BIRTHDAYS IN SEVERAL LANGUAGES_

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

I

Ashley, Vermont, May, 1904.

Horace Allen's cousin was astonished to the limit of astonishment by the news, and cried out accusingly, ”Why, I thought the other time it was only because Flora wanted to go. I thought you thought it would put you on the shelf altogether. I thought you hated it.”

Horace considered this, sitting heavily on a bench while cousin Hetty pruned a nearby rose-bush, rigorously. Although she did not break in on his silence with a, ”Well?” or, ”Did you hear what I said?” she made him quite aware that she was relentlessly waiting for his answer.

”Well, I did,” he admitted finally, ”and I do yet. And it did put me on the shelf. That's all I'm good for now. It's because of my experience in Bayonne they want me to take charge of the Paris office.”

”You don't have to go if they do,” she pointed out; and this as she expected, brought out the real reason.

”Those four years in France have spoiled me for living here,” he said and awaited doggedly her inevitable cry of amazement.

”_You!_” She stood up from her shorn rose-bush, her huge shears in one clumsily-gloved hand, a large thorned spray in the other, ”Well for goodness' sake, _how_?”

He was in no haste to answer this either, meditating silently, the spring sun pouring an incongruous flood of golden young light on the sagging heaviness of his middle-aged face. Cousin Hetty let him alone again, and went on with the ruthless snip! clas.h.!.+ of her great shears.