There was just a faint trace of mollification in his voice as he spoke of “the kind of people we got here”. One felt that on this side reverence lay. “The kind of people we got here” were, at all odds, to be protected and preserved.
“That’s the only reason they hang round this place,” the old man went on. “They know they can play on the sympathy of the people in this building. Only the other night I saw one of ‘em panhandle Mrs. Jack for a dollar. A big fellow, as well and strong as you are! I’d a good notion to tell her not to give him anything! If he wanted work, he could go and get him a job the same as you and me! It’s got so if ain’t safe for a woman in the house to take the dog round the block. Some greasy bum will be after her before she gets back. If I was the management I’d put a stop to it. A house like this can’t afford it. The kind of people we got here don’t have to stand for it!”
Having made these pronouncements, so full of outraged propriety and his desire to protect “the kind of people we got here” from further invasions of their trusting sanctity by these cadging frauds, old John, somewhat appeased, went in at the service entrance of the south wing, and in a few minutes he was at his post in the service elevator, ready for the night’s work.
John Enborg had been born in Brooklyn more than sixty years before, the son of a Norwegian seaman and an Irish serving-girl. In spite of this mixed parentage, one would have said without hesitation that he was “old stock” American—New England Yankee, most likely. Even his physical structure had taken on those national characteristics which are perhaps the result, partly of weather and geography, partly of tempo, speech, and local custom—a special pattern of the nerves and vital energies wrought out upon the whole framework of flesh and bone, so that, from whatever complex sources they are derived, they are recognised instantly and unmistakably as “American”.
In all these ways old John was “American”. He had the dry neck—the lean, sinewy, furrowed neck that is engraved so harshly with so much weather. He had the dry face, too, seamed and squeezed of its moisture; the dry mouth, not brutal, certainly, but a little tight and stiff and woodenly inflexible; and the slightly outcropping lower jaw, as if the jarring conflicts in the life around him had hardened the very formations of the bone into this shape of unyielding tenacity. He was not much above the average height, but his whole body had the same stringy leanness of his neck and face, and this made him seem taller. The old man’s hands were large and bony, corded with heavy veins, as if he had done much work with them. Even his voice and manner of talking were distinctively “American”. His speech was spare, dry, nasal, and semi-articulate. It could have passed with most people as the speech of a Vermonter, although it did not have any pronounced twang. What one noticed about it especially was its Yankee economy and tartness, which seemed to indicate a chronic state of sour temper. But he was very far from being an ill-natured old man, though at times he did appear to be. It was just his way. He had a dry humour and really loved the rough and ready exchange of banter that went on among the younger elevator men around him, but he concealed his softer side behind a mask of shortness and sarcastic denial.
This was evident now as Herbert Anderson came in. Herbert was the night operator of the passenger elevator in the south entrance. He was a chunky, good-natured fellow of twenty-four or five, with two pink, mottled, absurdly fresh spots on his plump cheeks. He had lively and good-humoured eyes, and a mass of crinkly brownish hair of which one felt he was rather proud. He was John’s special favourite in the whole building, although one might not have gathered this from the exchange that now took place between them.
“Well, what do you say, Pop?” cried Herbert as he entered the service elevator and poked the old man playfully in the ribs. “You haven’t seen anything of two blondes yet, have you?”
The faint, dry grin about John Enborg’s mouth deepened a little almost to a stubborn line, as he swung the door to and pulled the lever.
“Ah-h,” he said sourly, almost in disgust, “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about!”
The car descended and stopped, and he pulled the door open at the basement floor.
“Sure you do!” Herbert flung back vigorously as he walked over to the line of lockers, peeled off his coat, and began to take off his collar and tie. “You know those two blondes I been tellin’ you about, doncha, Pop?” By this time he was peeling the shirt off his muscular shoulders, then he supported himself with one hand against the locker while he stooped to take off his shoe.
“Ah-h,” said the old man, sour as before, “you’re always tellin’ me about something. I don’t even pay no attention to it. It goes in one ear and out the other.”
“Oh yeah?” said Herbert with a rising, ironical inflection. He bent to unlace his other shoe.