Читать книгу The Workers: An Experiment in Reality. The West онлайн

55 страница из 79

ALL OF THEM WERE SHOUTING OATHS AND VIOLENT ABUSE.

I fell back to a safe distance. On the opposite side of the street I saw a gentleman carrying a heavy portmanteau. He was well past the beat of the organized ring about the station. In an instant I was beside him, and was offering to carry his load. He seemed disinclined to pay any heed at first, but he stopped in a moment with the remark:

“I’ll give you a quarter to carry this bag to my hotel.”

I assented joyfully. I swung the bag to my shoulder, and passed on ahead, while the traveller walked close behind me in the crowd, and directed me to his hotel in Wabash Avenue, where, together with what I already had, I was soon fifty-five cents to the good.

That afternoon yielded nothing more either in prospect of a steady job or in the fruit of chance employment, and at dusk I stood again in South Water Street anxiously awaiting Clark’s return. It was dark when he came at last, and as he approached me in the fierce light of the electric arc which gleamed from the top of the high iron post near by, I could see that he was paler and more careworn, and deeply dejected. We sat down for a few moments upon a doorstep. The street was nearly deserted, and the lights shone dismally through its blackened length. Clark began to tell me of his afternoon. No chance of work had been revealed beyond the vague suggestion of one boss that he might need an extra man in a week or two. Moreover Clark had found the shops so far away that he had been obliged, both in his going and return, to take a Lincoln Avenue cable-car, and so was out a fruitless ten cents in fare. He said very little beyond the bare statement of his afternoon’s experience. He was sitting with his elbows resting on his knees, with his hands clasped, and his flaxen head bowed almost to his arms. I knew that he was struggling with thoughts and feelings which he could not analyze, nor in the least express, and I waited in silence beside him.