AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY. Theodore Dreiser
cream- tinted walls; the snow-white bowl lights in the ceiling — all seemed to him parts of a perfection and a social superiority which was almost unbelievable — so remote from all that he had ever known.
And finally, finding 882, he knocked timidly and was greeted after a moment by a segment of a very stout and vigorous body in a blue and white striped union suit and a related segment of a round and florid head in which was set one eye and some wrinkles to one side of it.
“Here’s a dollar bill, son,” said the eye seemingly — and now a hand appeared holding a paper dollar. It was fat and red. “You go out to a haberdasher’s and get me a pair of garters — Boston Garters — silk — and hurry back.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Clyde, and took the dollar. The door closed and he found himself hustling along the hall toward the elevator, wondering what a haberdasher’s was. As old as he was — seventeen — the name was new to him. He had never even heard it before, or noticed it at least. If the man had said a “gents’ furnishing store,” he would have understood at once, but now here he was told to go to a haberdasher’s and he did not know what it was. A cold sweat burst out upon his forehead. His knees trembled. The devil! What would he do now? Could he ask any one, even Hegglund, and not seem —
He pushed the elevator button. The car began to descend. A haberdasher. A haberdasher. Suddenly a sane thought reached him. Supposing he didn’t know what a haberdasher was? After all the man wanted a pair of silk Boston garters. Where did one get silk Boston garters — at a store, of course, a place where they sold things for men. Certainly. A gents’ furnishing store. He would run out to a store. And on the way down, noting another friendly Negro in charge, he asked: “Do you know if there’s a gents’ furnishing store anywhere around here?”
“One in the building, captain, right outside the south lobby,” replied the Negro, and Clyde hurried there, greatly relieved. Yet he felt odd and strange in his close-fitting uniform and his peculiar hat. All the time he was troubled by the notion that his small, round, tight-fitting hat might fall off. And he kept pressing it furtively and yet firmly down. And bustling into the haberdasher’s, which was blazing with lights outside, he exclaimed, “I want to get a pair of Boston silk garters.”
“All right, son, here you are,” replied a sleek, short man with bright, bald head, pink face and gold-rimmed glasses. “For some one in the hotel, I presume? Well, we’ll make that seventy-five cents, and here’s a dime for you,” he remarked as he wrapped up the package and dropped the dollar in the cash register. “I always like to do the right thing by you boys in there because I know you come to me whenever you can.”
Clyde took the dime and the package, not knowing quite what to think. The garters must be seventy-five cents — he said so. Hence only twenty-five cents need to be returned to the man. Then the dime was his. And now, maybe — would the man really give him another tip?
He hurried back into the hotel and up to the elevators. The strains of a string orchestra somewhere were filling the lobby with delightful sounds. People were moving here and there — so well- dressed, so much at ease, so very different from most of the people in the streets or anywhere, as he saw it.
An elevator door flew open. Various guests entered. Then Clyde and another bell-boy who gave him an interested glance. At the sixth floor the boy departed. At the eighth Clyde and an old lady stepped forth. He hurried to the door of his guest and tapped. The man opened it, somewhat more fully dressed than before. He had on a pair of trousers and was shaving.
“Back, eh,” he called.
“Yes, sir,” replied Clyde, handing him the package and change. “He said it was seventy-five cents.”
“He’s a damned robber, but you can keep the change, just the same,” he replied, handing him the quarter and closing the door. Clyde stood there, quite spellbound for the fraction of a second. “Thirty-five cents”— he thought —“thirty-five cents.” And for one little short errand. Could that really be the way things went here? It couldn’t be, really. It wasn’t possible — not always.
And then, his feet sinking in the soft nap of the carpet, his hand in one pocket clutching the money, he felt as if he could squeal or laugh out loud. Why, thirty-five cents — and for a little service like that. This man had given him a quarter and the other a dime and he hadn’t done anything at all.
He hurried from the car at the bottom — the strains of the orchestra once more fascinated him, the wonder of so well-dressed a throng thrilling him — and made his way to the bench from which he had first departed.
And following this he had been called to carry the three bags and two umbrellas of an aged farmer-like couple, who had engaged a parlor, bedroom and bath on the fifth floor. En route they kept looking at him, as he could see, but said nothing. Yet once in their room, and after he had promptly turned on the lights near the door, lowered the blinds and placed the bags upon the bag racks, the middle-aged and rather awkward husband — a decidedly solemn and bewhiskered person — studied him and finally observed: “Young fella, you seem to be a nice, brisk sort of boy — rather better than most we’ve seen so far, I must say.”
“I certainly don’t think that hotels are any place for boys,” chirped up the wife of his bosom — a large and rotund person, who by this time was busily employed inspecting an adjoining room. “I certainly wouldn’t want any of my boys to work in ’em — the way people act.”
“But here, young man,” went on the elder, laying off his overcoat and fishing in his trousers pocket. “You go down and get me three or four evening papers if there are that many and a pitcher of ice- water, and I’ll give you fifteen cents when you get back.”
“This hotel’s better’n the one in Omaha, Pa,” added the wife sententiously. “It’s got nicer carpets and curtains.”
And as green as Clyde was, he could not help smiling secretly. Openly, however, he preserved a masklike solemnity, seemingly effacing all facial evidence of thought, and took the change and went out. And in a few moments he was back with the ice-water and all the evening papers and departed smilingly with his fifteen cents.
But this, in itself, was but a beginning in so far as this particular evening was concerned, for he was scarcely seated upon the bench again, before he was called to room 529, only to be sent to the bar for drinks — two ginger ales and two syphons of soda — and this by a group of smartly-dressed young men and girls who were laughing and chattering in the room, one of whom opened the door just wide enough to instruct him as to what was wanted. But because of a mirror over the mantel, he could see the party and one pretty girl in a white suit and cap, sitting on the edge of a chair in which reclined a young man who had his arm about her.
Clyde stared, even while pretending not to. And in his state of mind, this sight was like looking through the gates of Paradise. Here were young fellows and girls in this room, not so much older than himself, laughing and talking and drinking even — not ice-cream sodas and the like, but such drinks no doubt as his mother and father were always speaking against as leading to destruction, and apparently nothing was thought of it.
He bustled down to the bar, and having secured the drinks and a charge slip, returned — and was paid — a dollar and a half for the drinks and a quarter for himself. And once more he had a glimpse of the appealing scene. Only now one of the couples was dancing to a tune sung and whistled by the other two.
But what interested him as much as the visits to and glimpses of individuals in the different rooms, was the moving panorama of the main lobby — the character of the clerks behind the main desk — room clerk, key clerk, mail clerk, cashier and assistant cashier. And the various stands about the place — flower stand, news stand, cigar stand, telegraph office, taxicab office, and all manned by individuals who seemed to him curiously filled with the atmosphere of this place. And then around and between all these walking or sitting were such imposing men and women, young men and girls all so fashionably dressed, all so ruddy and contented looking. And the cars or other vehicles in which some of them appeared about dinner time and later. It was possible for him to see them in the flare of the lights outside. The wraps,