At about the same hour that Stella reached her decision to call on Elsa Utterbourne, the employes of the business houses along lower Market street were streaming out into the hazy noon in quest of lunch, the stomach being sovereign and benevolent tyrant there as in all walks of life. A few had brought lunches from home wrapped in a bit of paper, and among these was Jerome Stewart, an employe of Oaks, Ferguson & Whitley, Ships’ Chandlers. He was one of a little group sprawled on the doorstep of a wholesale candy factory which made a leader of forty-nine-cent chocolates. He sat huddled somewhat, his knees raised so high as to provide a very slanting table indeed for his stock of viands. However, the clerk was quite unconscious of the fact that his position in the universe might not be considered a thing of overwhelming delight.
He never had anything much to say at these times—a[11] dearth which by no means applied all round. A clerk from a fishing tackle store was delivering a very graphic lecture on the difficult art of casting for bass, and exacted the half guarded attention of the little group.
“The mistake most fishermen make is to whip their rod when they cast—like that.” You saw exactly. “But,” he demonstrated, “the right way is like this—v-e-r-y gently.”
Jerome thought he would like to be able to cast well. “I suppose it’s only a knack,” he mused. But how did one go about it to learn the knack? The tackle clerk might have told him, in a general way: application, patience; but Jerome seldom carried his inchoate ambitions that far.
Another clerk, though his profession was selling typewriters, had a passion for architecture, and began expatiating a trifle thickly across his hard boiled egg. And Jerome followed him with considerable interest, musing in much the same strain as before. Still, Jerome had never, at best, felt more than a flirtatious interest in architecture, though he had talked some of studying it on the side. Well, when analysed, it proved to be pretty much in a class with many other idle ambitions: for example, the sea. The sea, oddly enough, had come very near amounting to a passion with Jerome Stewart. He had spoken rather grandly once of taking to the high seas. Even to this day a mild penalty pursued him; one of the group, suddenly leaning over to jog his shoulder, urged:
“Come on! You haven’t done your jig for months. Boys, are we going to let him sit here and hide his talent?”
The crowd laughed goodnaturedly. “Sure! Out you go! Limber up!” And there was a shuffling movement, as though the clerk might be about to find himself precipitated on to the sidewalk, where an admiring ring would form.
Jerome, however, had a very well developed sense of his own dignity. He resisted, and the interest waned; however, it was quite true that he had an accomplishment. In the dim long ago, a seaman at the waterfront had taught him the hornpipe. Those were the brave, adventurous days. But[12] after all, he had been content in the end to take up ship chandlery; and it must ever remain not the least of his humiliations that once when the chance came to go out for a day in a fishing tug he had grown fatally reluctant at the last moment because, to his land-locked eyes, there was a deal of a sea slopping in. Jerome had come at length to take it modestly for granted that nearly everything in life was more or less unattainable.
As he consumed his bread and cheese, with a generous dessert of home-made cocoanut cake in the offing, the clerk scanned such snatches of relatively current news as revealed themselves down the columns of the Chronicle from which his banquet had emerged. This helped him keep posted on the affairs of the great world. Sometimes there would be only advertisements, in which case he knew how to accommodate himself without a struggle. Or it would be the sporting page, and he always liked that. Jerome seldom saw a game, but, like most normal individuals, read the sporting news religiously—almost superstitiously. Today it was mostly small type about stock and bond matters. Sometimes he wondered dimly about the stock exchange. But after all it was no great matter, one way or another.
Some young lady stenographers, arms linked and lips vocal with fun, strolled past, leaving in their wake a havoc of masculine eyes. One of the clerks sketchily whistled a perfectly unsuggestive tune suggestively. The little passing thrill subsided; and then Jerome began thinking about his own affair of the heart. It was a curious thing, but the clerk, although he saw her nearly every day, could never conjure in his mind a wholly satisfactory picture of the girl he was going to marry. There was no doubt about his loving her. He loved her very much indeed. Besides, he was very anxious to be married; the desire for a hearth of his own “and kiddies” was firmly fixed in his soul. But it was always just a little through a haze that he saw the girl herself. He could never, for one thing, remember definitely whether she had a dimple; though he knew she was fair, with fresh colour,[13] and that her hair looked like gold when the sun caught it right.
Jerome filled his short little pipe and lighted it. The pipe always gave him a faintly jaunty feeling. If he ever thought of his destiny as a bit obscure it was certainly never at such times as this. And at worst, though his destiny obviously lacked a great many things he more or less desired, he wouldn’t be willing to change it for anybody else’s.
The world moved busily on every side, heeding him not a bit. Every one, as a matter of fact, had more important things to do than notice a chandlery clerk who wasn’t even sure if his girl had a dimple. What all the world missed, therefore, was a young man of about twenty or so, thin but quite well built, a little unkempt, with a somewhat sallow look. His hair was parted in the middle, and in the back it overlapped his collar just a trifle—it was that kind of hair. His clothes had been, in their jeunesse, a bit loud, which would be a weakness belonging to his years and the fact that he was engaged; but they had never fitted any too well, and long continuance of careless carriage had scarcely improved matters in this direction. Finally, he wore a bright tie which was fastened near its extremities to his shirt by means of a patent clip. The clip seemed urging his shoulders forward and downward. Yes, upon the whole he seemed pretty obscure; yet it wasn’t that he didn’t want to learn the knack of life, but only that he thought he couldn’t.
Some whistles blew presently, and a city clock boomed. The group on the steps of the candy factory broke up, and Jerome took his way back to the ancient and musty mercantile house with all sorts of things pertaining to ships displayed in the windows. He proceeded automatically to a special peg and hung up his hat, encountering in the vicinity Mr. Ormand Whitley, the junior partner, indulging in a drink of water at the old-fashioned cooler. Whitley was only seventy-five and decidedly spry yet. He eyed the returning clerk over a crockery cup and very solemnly announced, with a gesture toward the water:
“My boy, that killed off every one once except Noah and a few animals!”
And then he laughed—a laugh which had a bursting start, like the operation of a steam valve. Yes, there was something undeniably frivolous about the junior partner, even though, curiously enough, his head made one think instantly of the head of some profound Greek philosopher. It might almost have been the head of Socrates.