Part 11

I do not mean to say that I was without money. All I do mean is that I had less than half that I should have had, unless I meant to cross the continent as a tramp in a "side-door Pullman," as the tramping fraternity call a box car, and the Pacific in the steerage. As a matter of fact, I proposed to do neither. I wanted a free pass over one of the American railroads, and if there had been time I should have got it. I tackled the agents, and "struck" them for a pass. I assured them that I was a person of illimitable influence, and that if I rode over their system, and simply mentioned the fact casually on my return, all Europe would follow me. I insinuated that their traffic returns would rise to heights unheard of: that their rivals would smash and go into the hands of receivers. It was indeed a beautiful, beautiful game, and reminded one of poker, but the railroad birds sat on the bough, and wouldn't come down. They are not so easy as they used to be, and I had so little time to work it. Then the last of the cheap trains to the San Francisco Midwater Fair were running, and if I played too long for a pass and got euchred after all, I should have to pay ninety dollars instead of forty-five. Then I should be the very sickest sort of traveller that ever was. In the end I bought a cheap ticket on the very last cheap train. By the very next post I got a pass over one of the lines. It made me very mad, and if I had been wise I should have sold it. I am very glad to say I withstood the temptation, and kept the pass as a warning not to hurry in future. I started out of New York with twenty-two pounds in my pocket. For I had found a beautiful, trustful New Yorker, who cashed me a cheque for fifteen pounds with a child-like and simple faith which was not unrewarded in the end.

My affairs stood thus. I had to stay in San Francisco for a fortnight till the next steamer, and as I have said even a steerage fare to Sydney was twenty pounds. I had two pounds to see me through the transcontinental journey of nearly five days and the time in the city of the Pacific slope. I looked for hard times and some rustling to get through it all. I had to rustle.

As a beginning of hard times I could not afford to take a sleeper. I was on the fast West-bound express, and the emigrant sleepers are on the slow train, which takes nearly two days more. The high-toned Pullman was quite beyond me, so I stuck to the ordinary cars and put in a mighty rough time. After twenty-four hours of the Lehigh Valley Road, which runs into Canada, I came to Chicago. There I had to do a shift from one station to another, and after half-an-hour's jolting I was landed at the depôt of the Chicago and North-Western Railroad. I hated Chicago always; I had starved in it once, and slept in a box car in the old days. And now I didn't love it. I tried to get a wash at the station, for I was like a buried city with dust and cinders.

"There used to be a wash-place here a year or two back," said a friendly porter, "but it didn't pay and was abolished."

Of course they only cared about the money. The comfort of passengers mattered little. This porter took me down into a rat-and-beetle-haunted basement, and gave me soap and a clean towel. I sluiced off the mud, and discovered somebody underneath that at anyrate reminded me of myself, and hunted for the porter to hand him twenty-five cents. But he had gone, and the train was ready. I had to save the money and run.

From thence on I had no good sleep. I huddled up in the narrow seats with no room to stretch or lie down. Once I tried to take up the cushions and put them crossways, but I found them fixed, and the conductor grinned.

"You can't do it now; they're fixed different," he said.

So I grunted, and was twisted and racked and contorted. In the morning I knew well that I was no longer twenty-five. Twelve years ago it wouldn't have mattered, I could have hung it out on a fence rail, but when one nears forty one tries a bit after ordinary comforts, and pays for such a racket in aches and pains, and a temper with a wire edge on it. But I chummed in after Ogden with a young school ma'am from Wisconsin who was going out to Los Angeles, and we had quite a good time. She assured me I must be lying when I said I was an Englishman, because I did not drop my H's. All the Englishmen she ever met had apparently known as much about the aspirate as the later Greeks did of the Digamma. This cheered me up greatly, and we were firm friends. In fact, I woke up in the Sierras and found her fast asleep with her head on my shoulder. It was an odd picture that swaying car at midnight in the lofty hills. Most of the passengers were sleeping uneasily in constrained attitudes, but some sat at the open windows staring at the moon-lit mountains and forests. The dull oil lights in the car were dim, so dim that I could see white sleeping faces hanging over the seats disconnected from any discoverable body. Some looked like death masks, and then next to them would be the elevated feet of some far-stretching person who had tried all ways for ease. It was a blessing to come to the divide and run down into the daylight and the plains. Yet even there, there was something ghastly with us. At Reno a young fellow, trying to beat his way, had jumped for the brake-beam under our car and been cut to pieces. He died silently, and few knew it. I was glad to get to San Francisco. I went to a third-class hotel on Ellis Street, and had a bath, which I most sorely needed. I went out to inspect the city.

It looked the same as when I knew it, and yet it was altered. The gigantic architectural horrors of New York and Chicago had leapt to the Pacific, and here and there ten or twelve-storied buildings thrust their monotonous ugliness into the sky.

In this city I had starved for three solid months, picking up a meal where I could find it. I had been without a bed for three weeks. I had shared begged food with beggars. Now I came back to it under far different circumstances. I walked in the afternoon to some of my old haunts, and, coming to the hideous den of a common lodging-house where I had once lived, my flesh crept. I remembered that once the agent for a directory had put down "Charles Roberts, labourer," as living there and I tried to get back into my old skin. For a while I succeeded, but the experiment was horrible, and I was glad to drop the dead past and leave the grimy water front where I had looked and looked in vain for work.

For a week I stayed in San Francisco. Then I had an experience which falls to few men, for I went to stay as a visitor at Los Guilucos, where I had once been a stableman. The situation was interesting, for there were still many men in the ranch who had worked with me; even the Chinese cook was there. In the old days he had often appealed to me for more wood to give his devouring dragon of a stove. But things were altered now. On the first morning of my stay I saw the wood pile, and could not help taking my coat off and lighting into it with the axe. The Chinaman came running out with uplifted hands.

"Oh, Mr Loberts, Mr Loberts, you no splittee me wood, you too much welly kind gentleman, you no splittee me wood!"

So things change, but I split him a barrow load all the same.

I was sorry to leave the ranch and go back to San Francisco, where nine men out of ten in all degrees of society are much too disagreeable for words. The only really decent fellows I met there were a Frenchman and a young mining engineer named Brandt, son of Dr Brandt, at Royat, who was once R. L. Stevenson's physician; and above all an Irish surveyor and architect, the most charming and genial of men. The Californians themselves are less worth knowing as they appear to have money; the moment they begin to fancy themselves a cut above the vulgar, their vulgarity is their chief feature, stupendous as the Rocky Mountains, as obvious as the Grand Duke of Johannisberg's nose. But I had other things to think of than the social parodies of the Slope.

I found at the Poste Restante a letter from my agent, which was a frank statement of misfortune and ill-luck. There was not a red cent in it, and I had only a hundred dollars left. This was just enough to pay my steerage fare to Sydney, but I had still some days to put in and there was my hotel bill. I concluded I had to make money somehow. I tried one of the papers, but though the editor willingly agreed to accept a long article from me, dealing with my old life in San Francisco from my new standpoint, his best scale of pay was so poor that I frankly declined to wet a pen for it. Journalistic rates in the East seem about three times as high as in the West.

I went to a man in the town who was under considerable obligations to me for holding my tongue about a certain transaction, and asked him to cash a cheque for a hundred dollars. He refused point-blank. I never regretted so in my life that there are things one can't do and still retain one's self-respect. I could, I know, have sold some information to his greatest enemy for a very considerable sum. I was, indeed, approached on the point. However, I couldn't do it, worse luck, so I washed my hands of this gentleman, and went to a comparatively poor man, who helped me over the fence. Even if I had no luck I could still go steerage. But I meant going first-class. And I did. If I had put up my ante I meant staying with the game.

For a day after my agent's letter came a letter from a shipping friend in Liverpool. I had been "previous" enough to write him from New York for a good introduction in San Francisco. He sent me a letter to an old friend of his who occupied a pretty important post in the city, one as important, let us say, as that of a Chief of Customs. I laughed when I saw the letter, for I knew if I could make myself solid with this gentleman I had the San Franciscan folks where their hair was short. It's a case of give or take there, sell or be sold, commercial honesty is good as long as it pays. I whistled and sang, and took a cocktail on the strength of it.

In these little commonplace adventures I had some luck. That I have written many articles on steamships has often helped me in travel, and it helped me now. It was an unexpected stroke of fortune that the gentleman to whom I took the letter was not only an extremely good sort, but when I learnt that he knew my name, and had seen some of my work, I found it was all right. I was not only all right, for inside of an hour I had a first-class ticket to Sydney, with a deck cabin thrown in, for the very reasonable sum of one hundred dollars. I have a suspicion that I might have got it for less, but I have found it a good business rule never to lose a good thing by trying for a better. I had accommodation equal to two hundred and twenty-five dollars. Of course, I regretted I dare not ask them one hundred dollars for condescending to go in their boat. If I had been full of money I might have tried it. However, I was quite happy and satisfied. That I might land in Sydney with nothing did not trouble me. Three days after I went on board the steamer, and was seen off by my friend the Irishman and one other.

I had never sailed on the Pacific, or at least that part of it, before, and its wonders were strange to me. I had not seen coral islands, nor cocoanuts growing. It grieved me that I could not afford to stay in Honolulu and visit Kilauea. I only remained some hours, which I spent in prowling about the town, which is like a tenth-rate city in America. And the business American has his claw into it for good. The Hawaiians, in truth, seem to care little. They go blithely in the streets crowned and garlanded with flowers, and even the leprosy that strikes one now and again with worse than living death seems far away.

On board the Monowai, most comfortable of ships, commanded by Captain Carey, best of skippers, life was easy and delightful. Our one romance was between San Francisco and the Islands, for an individual, with most incredible cheek, managed to go first-class from California almost to Honolulu without a ticket. Two days from the Islands he was bowled out, and set to shovel coals. We left him in gaol at Honolulu, and steamed south of Samoa.

It was good to be at last in the tropics, deep into them, and to wear white all day and feel the heat tempered by the Trades. We played games and sang and lazed and loafed, and life had no troubles. Why should I think of future difficulties when there were none at hand, and the weather was lovely? We ran at last into Apia, the harbour of Upolu, the island where the late Robert Louis Stevenson lived. I rushed ashore, met him, spent three more than pleasant hours with him, and away again round the island reefs with our noses pointed for Auckland.

Some of our passengers had left us at Honolulu, others dropped off at Samoa, but after Auckland, when the weather grew quite cold, we were a thin little band, and our spirits oozed away. We could not keep things lively, the decks seemed empty, I was glad to run into Sydney harbour. I found I had just enough money to get to Melbourne if I went at once, so I caught the mail train and soon smelt the Australian bush that I had left in 1878. On reaching Melbourne at mid-day I had fifteen shillings left. Dumping my baggage at the station, I hunted up my chief friend, a journalist. The very first thing he handed me was a cablegram demanding my instant return to England. My rage can be imagined; it would take strong language to describe it, for I had meant to stay in Australia for a year, and write a book about it from another standpoint than Land Travel and Seafaring.

I hadn't even enough money to live anywhere. I couldn't cable for any, for if my instructions had been obeyed, all available cash was now on its way to me, when I couldn't wait for it. I talked it over with my friend.

"Have you no money?" I asked, but then I knew he had none.

"Nobody has any money in Australia," he answered. "If it is known you have a sovereign in cash you will be pestered in Collins Square by millionaires, whose wealth is locked up in moribund banks, for mere half-crowns as a temporary accommodation."

I pondered a while.

"I have a plan whereby we may get a trifle in the meantime. You can write a long interview with me and I will take the money. Sit down and don't move."

He remonstrated feebly.