“I am ashamed that my sister’s husband should have forced his way into this room and destroyed your peace,” William said.
“Oh no,” she said. “It was very interesting. As a matter of fact—” but she left her sentence there and he did not ask for its end. Instead he got up and bent down to kiss her. She rather enjoyed his kiss and she leaned back her head to receive it.
“I want to keep you happy,” William said in a voice stifled by love. “I don’t want you troubled.”
“Thank you, dear,” she said. “I am not troubled.”
He went away and she heard him mount the stairs to his rooms. He would bathe and change and come down again soon looking rested and handsome, the gentleman that he was of wealth and increasing leisure. He did not need to work as once he did, he had told her only yesterday. They might go to Italy this winter, stopping at Hulme Castle, of course.
She sat for a moment thinking of this and of Clem. Then with a sudden decisive movement she touched the bell. There was really nothing she could do about Clem. She had chosen William and her world was William’s world.
The door opened. “Take away the tea things, please, Henry,” she said in her silvery English voice. “I am going upstairs and if any one telephones I am not to be disturbed.”
“Yes, madame,” Henry said.
From William’s house Clem went downtown. He wanted comfort and reassurance. Henrietta could always give him comfort and encouragement but no one, not even she, could understand that now at this moment he needed the reassurance of fact. He must learn by actual test whether what he was doing was more than he feared it was, a drop in the vast bucket of human hunger. He avoided the hotel and taking a bus he swung downtown to Mott Street where his largest restaurant stood. It was a dingy-looking place now but there was no need to have it otherwise. People had already learned that they could get free food there, too many people. He saw many men and some women with children standing in a ragged shivering line waiting in the wintry twilight and he pulled up his collar and stood at the end. In a few seconds there were twenty more behind him.
They moved step by step with intolerable slowness. He must speak to Kwok about this. People must be served more quickly on such bitter nights. Speed was essential. They must hire more waiters, hire as many people as necessary.
He got in at last and took his place at a table already crowded. A waiter swabbed it off and did not recognize his guest.
“Whatcha want to eat?” he asked, still swabbing.
Clem murmured the basic meal. He waited again, glancing here and there, seeing everything. The room was far too crowded but it was warm and reasonably clean. It was big but not nearly big enough. He must see if he could rent the upper floor. In spite of the crowd the place was silent, or almost silent. People were crouched over the tables, eating. Only a few were talking, or laughing and briefly gay.
His plate came and he ate it. The food was good enough, filling and hot. The waiter kept looking at him and Clem saw him stop a moment later at the cashier’s window. He ate as much as he could and then leaned to the man next to him at the long table, a young unshaven man who had cleaned his plate.
“Want this?” Clem muttered.
The sunken young eyes lit in the famished face. “Don’t you want it?”
“I can’t finish it—”
“Sure.”
The waiter was watching again but Clem got up and went to the cashier’s window with his check. He leaned toward the grating and said in a low voice, “I’m sorry I can’t pay anything.”
The sharp-faced Chinese girl behind the thin iron bars replied at once and her voice and accent were entirely American. “Oh yes, you can. You aren’t hungry — not with that suit of clothes!”
“My only decent clothes,” Clem muttered.
“Pawn them,” she said briskly. “Everybody’s doing that so’s to pay for their meals.”
He turned in sudden fury and walked across the restaurant, pushing his way through the waiters. He went straight to Mr. Kwok’s small office and found him there in his shirtsleeves, the oily sweat pouring down his face.
“Mr. Miller—” Mr. Kwok sprang to his feet. He pointed to his own chair. “Sit down, please.”
Clem was still furious. “No, I won’t sit down. Look here, I came in tonight to see how things were going on. I told the cashier I couldn’t pay just to try out the system. That damned girl at the window told me to go pawn my clothes!”
Mr. Kwok sweat more heavily. “Please, Mr. Miller, not so mad! You don’t unnerstan’. We going broke this way — too many people eating every day. In China you know how people starving don’t expect eating every day only maybe one time, two time, three time in a week. Here Americans expecting eating every day even they can’t pay. Nobody can do so, Mr. Miller, not even such a big heart like yours. It can’t be starving people eat like not starving. It don’t make sense, Mr. Miller. At first yes, very sensible, because most people pay, but now too many people don’t pay and still eating like before. What the hell! It’s depression.”
The wrath went out of Clem. What the Chinese said was true. Too many people now couldn’t pay. The job was beyond him, beyond anybody. Too many people, too many starving people.
“I guess you’re right,” he said after a long pause.
He looked so pale when he got up, he swayed so strangely on his feet that Mr. Kwok was frightened and put out his hands and caught Clem by the elbows. “Please, Mr. Miller, are you something wrong?”
Clem steadied himself. “No, I’m all right. I just got to think of something else, that’s all. Good night, Mr. Kwok.”
He wrenched himself away from the kind supporting hands and went out of the door into the street. His idea wasn’t working. Nothing was working. People were pawning their clothes in this bitter weather. They were being asked to pawn their clothes, pawn everything they could, doubtless. The waiters had been told to look and see what people wore. He remembered the hungry boy who had seized his plate and eaten the leftovers like a dog. That was what it had come to here in his own country. Someday people would be eating grass and roots and leaves here as they did in China.
“I got to get down to Washington,” he muttered into the cold darkness. “I gotta get down there one more time and tell them. …”
He found his way to the hotel where Henrietta waited for him, alarmed at his long absence.
“Clem—” she began, but he cut her off short.
“Get our things together, hon. We’re taking the next train to Washington. I’m going to get to that fellow in the White House if I have to bust my way in.”
He did not get in, of course. She knew he could not. She waited outside in the lobby and read a pamphlet on a table full of pamphlets and magazines that had been sent for the President to read. He had no time to read them and they had been put here to help the people who waited to while away the time. In a pamphlet of five pages, in words as dry as dust, in sentences as terse as exclamations, but passionless, she read the whole simple truth. For twenty-nine months American business had been shrinking. Industrial production was fifty per cent of what it had been three years ago. The deflation in all prices was thirty-five per cent. Profits were down seventy-five per cent. Nineteen railroads during the last year had gone bankrupt. Farm prices had shrunk forty-nine per cent so far and were still going down. But — and here she saw how everlastingly right Clem was — there was more food than ever! Farmers had grown ten per cent more food in this year of starvation than they had grown three years ago in a time of plenty.