Episodes Before Thirty/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII
The influences that decided the purchase of the Hub were emotional, at any rate, not rational; there lay some reaction in me, as of revolt. "You can do things out here you could not do at home," ran like a song through the heart all day long, and life seemed to hold its arms wide open. Fortunes were quickly made. Speculation was rife. Pork went up and wheat went down, and thousands were made or lost in a few hours. No enterprise was despised, provided it succeeded. All this had its effect upon an impressionable and ignorant youth whose mind now touched so-called real life for the first time. The example of others had its influence, too. The town was sprinkled with young Englishmen, but untrained Englishmen the country did not need, though it needed their money; and this money they speedily exchanged, just as I had done, for experience—and then tried to find work.
The pathos of it all was, though, that for an average young Englishman to find a decent job was impossible. I was among the unsuccessful ones. Kay was another, but Kay and myself were now—we thought—to prove the exception.
"We'll show 'em!" was the way Kay's sanguine twenty-three years phrased it. We both knew men of splendid education and real ability, earning precarious livings in positions that would have been ludicrous if they were not so pathetic. Men from Oxford and Cambridge, with first rate classical training, were slinging drinks behind bars, or running about the country persuading the farmers to insure their stacks and outhouses; others with knowledge of languages and pronounced literary talent were adding figures in subordinate positions in brokers' offices. But by far the greater number were working as common labourers for small farmers all over the country.
"They missed their chance when it came," Kay repeated. "We won't miss ours. A chance like the Hub won't come twice." A year of disagreeable, uncongenial work and then--success! Retire! Off to the primeval woods, canoes, Indians, camp fires, books ... a dozen dreams flamed up.
Within a month we had completed the purchase, and the Hub opened with flying colours and high hopes; the newspapers gave us what they called a "send off"; both "House of Lords" and "House of Commons" were packed; the cash-registers clicked and rang all day, and the Hub, swept and garnished, fairly sparkled with the atmosphere of success, congratulations, and promise of good business. Billy Bingham's association with it was a thing of the past; it became the most respectable place of its kind in the whole town.
All day long the shoal of customers flocked in and rattled their money across the busy counters. Each individual wanted a word with the proprietors. Buyers and brewery agents poured in too, asking for orders, and newspaper reporters took notes for descriptive articles which duly appeared next morning. The dining-room did a roaring trade and every stool at the long lunch counter had its occupant. How easy it all seemed! And no one the worse for liquor! Everybody was beaming, and, as a partner in the Hub Wine Company, I already felt that my failure in the dairy farm was forgotten, an unlucky incident at most; a boyish episode due to inexperience, but now atoned for.
Lord Dufferin, a few years before, had been Governor-General of Canada, and a huge framed photograph of him hung above the cold meat, game pies and salads of the lunch counter. A connexion of my father's, the newspapers had insisted upon a closer relationship, and while some thought he would do better as a first cousin, others preferred him as my uncle. As an exceedingly popular Governor-General, his place above the good Canadian food seemed appropriate at any rate, and the number of customers, both known and unknown, who congratulated me upon our distinguished framed patron, gave me the odd feeling that somehow the shock to my father was thereby lessened. The stories of what Dufferin and his wife had done for Tom, Dick and Harry, for their wives and their children or their dogs, told to me beside our House of Lords' bar that opening day proved good for business. I had come to the colony somewhat overburdened with distinguished relations of heavy calibre who, to extend the simile a little, neither now nor later, ever fired a single shot on my behalf. The mere inertia of their names, indeed, weighed down my subsequent New York days with the natural suspicion that a young man so well born must have done something dreadful at home to be forced to pose to artists for a living. Why, otherwise, should he suffer exile in the underworld of a city across the seas? Lord Dufferin's photograph augustly throned above the Hub luncheon counter, certainly, however, fired a shot on my behalf, making the cash-registers clink frequently. His effect on our bar-trade, innocently uncalculated, deserves this word of gratitude.
There were three white-coated bar-tenders in the House of Lords, Jimmy Martin, their principal, in charge of it; a couple managed the House of Commons trade in the lower bar, down a step and through an arch; and here, too, were tables and chairs, rooms curtained off, and other facilities for back-street customers who wanted to sit and talk over their beer. Between the two, a door in the wall led to my own quarters upstairs by means of a private staircase. Sharp on eleven we closed our doors that first night, and proceeded, with Jimmy Martin's aid, to open the cash-registers and count up our takings. There was just under 250 dollars, or £50 in English money. Then, having said good night to our chief bar-tender, we spent a happy hour making calculations for the future. The first day, of course, could not be taken as an average, but prospects, we assured ourselves, were brilliant. Later we were to discover things that were to prove a source of endless trouble and vexation of spirit to us both--daily worries we both learned to dread. At the moment, however, it was in sanguine mood that I went to bed that night of our opening day. The money was locked away, ready for me to take to the bank next morning--our first deposit. Before that I must be at the market to buy provisions--six o'clock--and Kay was to be in attendance in the bars at nine-thirty.
"It's a go all right," were his good-night words, as he thumped down my private staircase and let himself into the street with his latch-key.
Lucky beggar! He hadn't got to write home and explain to evangelical and teetotal parents what he was doing!
Some customers, I discovered, arrived early. That a man should want to swallow raw spirits at 9 A.M. amazed me. Some of these were men we knew socially; with one of them, who arrived regularly at 9.15, I often dined in his cosy little bungalow beside the lake. His wife was charming, I played with his children. He was a lawyer. He came for what he called an "eye-opener." Another of this early brigade was a stockbroker, who later made a fortune speculating in wheat on margin, lost it again, and disappeared mysteriously across the border into the States. His manner of taking his "eye-opener" was peculiar, puzzling me for a long time. I had never seen it before. It made me laugh heartily the first morning, for I thought he was doing it to amuse me--till his injured expression corrected me. Producing a long silk handkerchief, he flung it round his neck, one end held by the hand that also held his brimming glass. With the free hand he then pulled the other end very slowly round his collar, levering thus the shaking glass to his lips. Unless he used this pulley, the glass shook and rattled so violently against his teeth that its contents would be spilt before he could get it into his mouth. The horror of it suddenly dawned on me. I was appalled. The stuff that poisoned this nervous wreck was sold by myself and partner at 100 per cent. profit!
"If he doesn't get it here," said Kay, "he'll go to Tim Sullivan's across the way, and get bad liquor. Ours at least is pure." During the long twelve hours that the Hub was open either Kay or myself was always on duty, talking to customers, keeping an eye (as we hoped!) on the bar-tenders, showing ourselves with an air of authority in the House of Commons when, as usually, it became too rowdy--Kay enjoying the occasional "chucking out." At lunch time and from four to half-past six or seven o'clock, the bars were invariably crowded. The amount of milkless tea we drank ought to have poisoned us both, but we never fell from grace in this respect, and we kept faithfully, too, to Jimmy Martin's advice never to "put 'em up" for others.
Days were long and arduous. Though we soon closed the dining room after lunch, doing no supper trade, there were public dinners once or twice a week for Masonic societies, football clubs and the like, and at these one or other of the proprietors was expected to show himself. To my great relief, Kay rather enjoyed this light duty. His talent for acting was often in demand too; he would don his Henry Irving wig and give the company an imitation of the great actor in "The Bells."
Kay was very successful at these "banquets," and sometimes a Society would engage the room on the condition that he performed for them after dinner. What annoyed him was that "the silly idiots always order champagne!" There was no profit worth mentioning in "wine," as it was called. The profit was in beer and "liquor." The histrionic talent, at any rate, was an accomplishment that proved useful later in our difficult New York days, when Kay not only got a job on the stage himself, but provided me with a part as well.
The shadow of that East 19th Street boarding-house was already drawing nearer ... and another customer of the Hub who was to share it with us was Louis B----, a voluble, high-strung fat little Frenchman, of mercurial temperament and great musical gifts. When a Hub banquet had seen enough of the Irving wig, and expressed a wish to hear the other proprietor, it was always Louis B---- who accompanied my fiddle on the piano. Raff's "Cavatina" was tolerated, the "Berçeuse" from "Jocelyn" enjoyed, but the popular songs of the day, Louis extemporizing all accompaniments with his perfect touch, it was these that were good for "business." The fat, good-natured little man, with his bright dark eyes and crisp curly black hair, demanded several absinthes before he would play. He was a born musician. He loved, in the order mentioned, music, horses, his wife, and from the last he always had to obtain permission to "play at the Hub." Towards midnight he would dash to the telephone and say pleadingly to his wife: "They want me to play one more piece--only one. Do you mind? I shan't be long!"
The Hub Wine Company, camouflaging the saloon business of two foolish young idiots, passed through its phases towards the inevitable collapse. Business declined; credit grew difficult; prompt payment for supplies more difficult still. We closed the Dining Room, then the House of Commons. The Banquets ceased. Selling out at "top price" became a dream, loss of all my capital a fact. Those were funereal days. To me it was a six months' horror. The impulsive purchase was paid for dearly. It was not only the declining business, the approaching loss of my small capital, the prospect of presently working for some farmer at a dollar a day and green tea--it was not these things I chiefly felt. It was, rather, the fact that I had taken a step downhill, betrayed some imagined ideal in me, shown myself willing to "sell my soul" for filthy lucre. The price, though not paid in lucre, was certainly paid in mental anguish, and the letters from home, though patient, generously forgiving, even understanding, increased this tenfold....
My own nature, meanwhile, wholly apart from any other influence, sought what relief it could. My heart had never really been in the venture, my body now kept out of it as much as possible. The loathing I had felt for the place from the very beginning was quite apart from any question of success or failure. I hated the very atmosphere, the faces of the staff, the sound of voices as I approached the swinging doors. While attending strictly to business, never shortening my hours on duty by five minutes, and eagerly helping Kay in our efforts to get in another partner with money, my relief when once outside the actual building was immense. We had engaged a new manager, whose popularity in the town—he was a great cricketer—brought considerable fresh custom, but whose chief value in my eyes lay in the fact that I need not be present quite as much as before. Collins, who weighed twenty stone, was a character. Known for some reason as "the Duke," he had no other title to nobility. He helped trade for a few brief weeks, but also helped himself at the same time, and his exit, not unlike that of Jimmy—who was "fired" for the same reason—was attended by threats of a slander suit, which also, like Jimmy's, was set down in the Greek kalends.