Culhane resented this, I think.  He resented people using him or his methods to get anywhere, do anything more in life than he could do, and yet he received them.  He felt, and I think in the main that he was right, that they looked down on him because of his lowly birth and purely material and mechanical career, and yet having attained some distinction by it he could not forego this work which raised him, in a way, to a position of dominance over these people.  Now the sight of presumably so efficient a person in need of aid or exercise, to be built up, was all that was required to spur him on to the most waspish or wolfish attitude imaginable.  In part at least he argued, I think (for in the last analysis he was really too wise and experienced to take any such petty view, although there is a subconscious “past-lack” motivating impulse in all our views), that here he was, an ex-policeman, ex-wrestler, ex-prize fighter, ex-private, ex-waiter, beef-carrier, bouncer, trainer; and here was this grand major, trained at West Point, who actually didn’t know any more about life or how to take care of his body than to be compelled to come here, broken down at forty-eight, whereas he, because of his stamina and Spartan energy, had been able to survive in perfect condition until sixty and was now in a position to rebuild all these men and wastrels and to control this great institution.  And to a certain extent he was right, although he seemed to forget or not to know that he was not the creator of his own great strength, by any means, impulses and tendencies over which he had no control having arranged for that.

However that may be, here was the major a suppliant for his services, and here was he, Culhane, and although the major was paying well for his minute room and his probably greatly decreased diet, still Culhane could not resist the temptation to make a show of him, to picture him as the more or less pathetic example that he was, in order perhaps that he, Culhane, might shine by contrast.  Thus on the first day, having sent him around the short block with the others, it was found at twelve, when the “joggers” were expected to return, and again at twelve-thirty when they were supposed to take their places at the luncheon table, that the heavy major had not arrived.  He had been seen and passed by all, of course.  After the first mile or two probably he had given out and was making his way as best he might up hill and down dale, or along some more direct road, to the “shop,” or maybe he had dropped out entirely, as some did, via a kindly truck or farmer’s wagon, and was on his way to the nearest railway station.

At any rate, as Culhane sat down at his very small private table, which stood in the center of the dining-room and far apart from the others (a vantage point, as it were), he looked about and, not seeing the new guest, inquired, “Has any one seen that alleged army officer who arrived here this morning?”

No one could say anything more than that they had left him two or three miles back.