Porters, cooks, firemen, clerks--all were over him.Moreover his appearance did not please these individuals--his temper was too lonely--and they made it disagreeable for him.
With the stolidity and indifference of despair, however, he endured it all, sleeping in an attic at the roof of the house, eating what the cook gave him, accepting a few dollars a week, which he tried to save.His constitution was in no shape to endure.
One day the following February he was sent on an errand to a large coal company's office.It had been snowing and thawing and the streets were sloppy.He soaked his shoes in his progress and came back feeling dull and weary.All the next day he felt unusually depressed and sat about as much as possible, to the irritation of those who admired energy in others.
In the afternoon some boxes were to be moved to make room for new culinary supplies.He was ordered to handle a truck.
Encountering a big box, he could not lift it.
"What's the matter there?" said the head porter."Can't you handle it?"
He was straining to lift it, but now he quit.
"No," he said, weakly.
The man looked at him and saw that he was deathly pale.
"Not sick, are you?" he asked.
"I think I am," returned Hurstwood.
"Well, you'd better go sit down, then."
This he did, but soon grew rapidly worse.It seemed all he could do to crawl to his room, where he remained for a day.
"That man Wheeler's sick," reported one of the lackeys to the night clerk.
"What's the matter with him?"
"I don't know.He's got a high fever."
The hotel physician looked at him.
"Better send him to Bellevue," he recommended."He's got pneumonia."
Accordingly, he was carted away.
In three weeks the worst was over, but it was nearly the first of May before his strength permitted him to be turned out.Then he was discharged.
No more weakly looking object ever strolled out into the spring sunshine than the once hale, lusty manager.All his corpulency had fled.His face was thin and pale, his hands white, his body flabby.Clothes and all, he weighed but one hundred and thirty-