"Vell, Mis’er Marriott, you nefer t’ought you see der oldt man shmokin’ cigarettes, huh?"
Marriott laughed, glad of the relief, and glad of the new sense of comradeship the tobacco brought.
"Now tell me, Mr. Koerner," he said, "are you in want--do you need anything?"
"Come on now," Marriott urged, "tell me--have you anything to eat in the house?"
Koerner hung his head then, in the strange, unaccountable shame people feel in poverty.
"Vell, I--undt der oldt voman--ve hafn’t had anyt’ing to eat to-day."
"Ve gif dem der last dis morning alreadty."
Marriott closed his eyes in the pain of it. He reproached himself that he who argued so glibly that people in general lack the cultured imagination that would enable them to realize the plight of the submerged poor, should have had this condition so long under his very eyes and not have seen it. He was humbled, and then he was angry with himself--an anger he was instantly able to change into an anger with Koerner.
"Well, Mr. Koerner," he said. "I don’t know that I ought to sympathize with you, after all. You might have told me; you might have known I should be glad to help you; you might have saved me--"
He was about to add "the pain," but he recognized the selfishness of this view, and paused.
"I’ll help you, of course," he went on. "My God, man, you mustn’t go hungry! Won’t the grocer trust you?"
The old man was humbled now, and this humility, this final acquiescence and submission, this rare spirit beaten down and broken at last, this was hardest of all to bear, unless it were his own self-consciousness in this presence of humiliated age--these white hairs and he himself so young! He felt like turning from the indignity of this poverty, as if he had been intruding on another’s unmerited shame.
"I’ll go and attend to it," said Marriott, rising at once.
"No, you vait," said Koerner, "chust a minute. You know my boy, Mis’er Marriott, Archie? Vell, I write him aboudt der case, but I don’t get a answer. He used to write eff’ry two veeks, undt now--he don’t write no more. Vot you t’ink, huh?" The old man looked up at him in the hunger of soul that is even more dreadful than the hunger of body.
"I’ll attend to that, too, Mr. Koerner; I’ll write down and find out, and I’ll let you know."