The noise and rush of traffic, the clamour of the signboards, the glitter of the innumerable shops distracted him from his purpose, and hours passed as he strayed on curiously from street to street. Some faculty separate from mind or heart, something detached and keen, was roused in him by this tumult of life and wealth and energy, this ceaseless outpour of more people, more noises, more motors, more shopfuls of tempting and expensive things. He thought what fun it would be to write a novel of New York and call it Loot—and he began to picture how different life would have seemed that morning had he had the typescript of the finished novel under his arm, and been on his way to the editorial offices of one of the big magazines. The idea for a moment swept away all his soreness and loneliness, and made his heart dilate with excitement. “Well, why not? … I’ll stay here till I’ve done it,” he swore to himself in a fever of defiance.
He halted before a shop window displaying flowers in gilt baskets, or mounted in clusters tied with big pink bows. The money Mrs. Tracy had returned was burning in his pocket, and he said to himself that he could not keep it another minute. In one corner of the window was an arrangement which particularly took his fancy: a stuffed dove perched on the gilt handle of a basket of sweet peas and maidenhair fern. It recalled to him Miss Spear’s description of that temple to Apollo, somewhere in Greece, which had been built by the birds and bees; and looking at the burnished neck of the dove he thought: “That might have been one of the birds.” There was a good-natured-looking woman in the shop, and he ventured to ask her the price of the object he coveted. She smiled a little, as if surprised. “Why, that’s twenty-five dollars.”
Vance crimsoned. “I was looking for something for thirty.”
“Oh, were you?” said the woman, still smiling. “Well, there’s those carnations over there.”
Vance didn’t care for the carnations; the bird on the basket handle was what attracted him. “Laura Lou’ll like it anyhow,” he thought. And suddenly an idea occurred to him, and he asked the woman whether, for thirty dollars, she would have the basket carried for him that very morning to the house of a lady at Paul’s Landing. She looked still more surprised, and then amused, and after they had hunted up Paul’s Landing in the telephone book, she said, yes, she guessed she could, and Vance, delighted, pulled out thirty dollars, and his pen to write the address. She pushed a card toward him, and after a moment’s perplexity he wrote: “I thank you, Cousin Lucilla,” addressed the envelope, and walked out with a lighter step. The woman was already wrapping up the dove.
He was beginning to feel hungry, and the instinct of clinging to the relatively familiar drew him back to the Grand Central, where he knew he could lunch. As he entered he almost ran into a motherly-looking woman with a large yellowish face and blowsy gray hair, who wore a military felt hat with a band inscribed: “The Travellers’ Friend.” Vance went up to her, and her smile of welcome reassured him before he had spoken. He wanted to know of a nice quiet rooming house? Why, surely—that was just what she was there for. Country boy, she guessed? Well, why wouldn’t he bring his things right round to Friendship House, just a little way off, down in East Fiftieth—she fumbled in her bag and handed him the address on a card with: “Bring your friend along—always room for one more,” in red letters across the top. That, she explained, was the men’s house; she herself was in the station to look after women and girls, and there was another house for them not far off; but Vance had only to mention her name to Mr. Jakes and they’d find a room for him, and give him the addresses of some respectable rooming houses. She shook his hand, beamed on him maternally, and turned away to deal with a haggard bewildered-looking woman who was saying: “My husband said he’d sure be at the station to meet me, but I can’t find him, and the baby’s been sick in the cars all night. …”
At Friendship House Vance was received by an amiable man with gold teeth, given supper of coffee and bread and butter, and assigned to a spotless cubicle. Not till he was falling asleep did it occur to him that Mrs. Tracy had a row of sweet peas in her own garden, and that a stuffed dove could hardly compensate her for the cost of his fortnight’s board. He felt ashamed of his stupidity, and was haunted all night by the vision of the dreary smile with which she would receive his inappropriate tribute. Probably even Laura Lou would not know what to do with a stuffed dove. Yet that basket, with the lustrous bird so lightly poised on it, had seemed all poetry when he chose it. …
The weeks passed. After Vance’s regulation twenty-four hours at Friendship House he was recommended to a rooming house which was certainly as respectable as they had promised, but offered few other attractions, at
