_Confessions of an Exiled Bus_
After all, it was a hoary-haired scoundrel of a bus; a very reprobate of
a bus; an envious, evil-thinking, ill-conditioned, flagrantly thieving,
knavish blackguard of a bus. Under no circumstances am I proud of the
acquaintance. But then, in extenuation, be it said that it was never
anything but an acquaintance of Shadow-Land, conjured up, perhaps, by a
material repast that had been palatable and indigestible.
Have you read Alphonse Daudet's delightful "Tartarin of Tarascon"? Are
you acquainted with the "baobab villa," and the elusive Montenegrin
Prince, who had spent three years in Tarascon, but who never went out,
and who decamped with Tartarin's well-filled wallet; and the jaundiced
Costlecalde, and the embarrassingly affectionate camel, and the blind
lion from the hide of which grew the great man's subsequent fame, and
all the other whimsical creations of the novelist's pleasant fancy? The
book is one of my favourite books, one of the tomes that are taken to
bed to pave the way to restful, happy slumber. Perhaps that night it
had been the last volume to be tossed aside before turning out the
light, for as I slept, to use the words of the tinker of Bedford, I
dreamed a dream.
There was a consciousness of being jolted about abominably in a
ramshackle vehicle. The surroundings were vague, as they always are in
dreams. Low hills and sandy waste and sparse shrubs. Where was it, the
"Great Desert," or some stretch in South America or in Mexico? In my
dream I was dozing, trying to forget the painful bumping and twisting. A
familiar voice brought me to with a sudden start.
"Say! Listen! Hey you! Wake up, can't you?" Far off as the voice seemed
at first, there was a delicious, home-sickness-provoking, nasal twang to
the accents.
"Who are you?" I asked sleepily.
"Who am I? Now that is a question. Don't you recognize me? Why I am one
of the old Fifth Avenue buses that used to run from Washington Square up
to Fifty-ninth Street. That's who I am."
"But why are you here?" I stammered. "What brought you to this strange
corner of the world?"
"Believe me," the spluttering voice replied, "I am not here of my own
will. You can bet your tintype on that, Mr. Washington Arch, or Mr.
Hoffman House Bar, or Mr. Flatiron Building."
"Your mode of address is somewhat obsolete," I ventured. "Changes have
taken place."
"Yes, I know. You want to be strictly up-to-date, like all the rest of
the New Yorkers. As you say, changes have taken place. That is our
unfortunate story. We were discarded, tossed aside, just as soon as they
found that they could replace us by those evil-smelling, noise-making,
elongated, double-decked children of the devil. Without a word, without
a regret, they packed us off. Some of us were sent to the end of Long
Island, some to Florida to haul crackers and northern tourists, some,
like myself, to the uttermost ends of the earth. But the worst fate was
that of those who stayed. They were sold to a department store, and kept
to run between its door and a Third Avenue El. station, to be packed to
bursting with fat women and squalling children from the Bronx. Think of
their degradation! Think of their feelings when they reflect upon the
days of past glory!
"It was hard," the confidences continued, "but I do not complain. We
were growing old, no doubt of that. We were of yesterday, and you know
the old saying of the ring that youth must be served. Even John L.
learned that, and before him, Joe Coburn and Paddy Ryan. Then Jim
Corbett learned it too, and freckled 'Bob' Fitzsimmons, and now there
is a young fellow named Jim Jeffries who perhaps will find it out in his
turn. You see, in my youth I was something of a patron of sport. I knew
them all, and they are all down and out, and I am down and out." There
was a plaintive whine in the spluttering, squeaky voice.
"We knew that our hour was passing. We read the story in the averted
eyes of those who in earlier days we had regarded as our fast friends,
or we heard it in the outspoken, contemptuous remarks of those who had
no regard whatever for our feelings. To strangers, above all, were we
objects of derision. Throaty, mid-western voices made disparaging
comparison reflecting, not only on us, but on our fair city. Visiting
Englishmen surveyed us through monocles and talked of the buses of the
Strand and Regent Street. There was a French artist, a Baron
Somebody-or-other, who afterwards wrote a book called 'New York as I
Have Seen It.' He had married an American girl, the daughter of a
comedian at whose clever whimsicalities my passengers used to laugh
uproariously. I had carried him often--that actor, and knew him as one
of the most genial and companionable of men. One day the Frenchman,
accompanied by his father-in-law, stopped me at a street corner down
near Washington Square, climbed up beside my driver, and rode to the
end of the route. Here, thought I, is where I get a little appreciation.
Here is a critic from the older civilization, a man with a proper
reverence for the past, who can look beyond the freshness of varnish. I
have a right to expect something in the nature of consideration from
him. Bah! All he said was: 'Among the splendid carriages and the
high-priced automobiles, perhaps to prove that we are in a land of
freedom, the black, dirty, wretched omnibuses ply from one end of the
Avenue to the other.' Honest now, wouldn't it jar you?
"I called you Mr. Washington Arch just now. I was wrong," the accents
were now no longer plaintive, but raucous and sneering. If I had doubted
before, there was now no questioning the old rascal's claim to
recognition as a fellow New Yorker. "But I was wrong. You are Mr. Piker
from Uptown Somewhere. Had you been Mr. Arch, you would have recognized
me as soon as I did you. We real ones do not forget. But I have your
number. Would you like me to tell you a few things? Oh, I have your
_dossier_, all right. Let me see. The first time I carried you you were
an infant howling abominably. You were lifted in somewhere in the
'Fifties,' and three blocks farther down a fat old man got out,
muttering, 'Why don't they keep those brats off the stages!' The next
time you were still howling. You were about six, and you had been taken
to the old Booth Theatre at the corner of Twenty-third Street and Sixth
Avenue, and had seen 'Little Red Riding Hood,' and when the wolf said,
'All the better to eat you with, my dear,' you burst into a frightened
bawl, and had to be hurried out. Soon after I saw you on a balcony near
the Square watching a political procession go by. Then there were a few
years that I missed you, and then a period when I saw you often. I had
grown rather to like you, until one Thanksgiving Day morning. You
snubbed me direct. There were buses covered with coloured bunting in
front of the Fifth Avenue Hotel. You climbed on one. Again you were
howling, this time methodically, deliberately, in chorus with a number
of other young lunatics. I tried my best to be friendly, but not a look
would you give me. You were too busy shouting and waving a flag. Say, do
you want any more of those little personal reminiscences?"
I did not. I mumbled a few words of lame apology, pleading the
thoughtlessness of youth. The excuses were apparently taken in the
proper spirit, for again the voice was tearful.
"Ah, but those were the good old days! Out here I love to think of them
and to recall my youth. I am battered now, and my joints creak. But
once I was all fresh paint and varnish, one of the aristocrats of city
travel. How I used to look down upon the bob-tailed cars at the
cross-town streets. Besides I was not merely one of the splendid Old
Guard, I was _the_ bus--the one of which they used to tell the famous
story. Others may claim the distinction, but they are impostors, sir,
rank impostors. I was the bus. What! You don't mean to say that you have
never heard it?"
Humbly I acknowledged my ignorance, and listened to a tale that, I was
assured, had once been told in every club corner and over every dinner
table on the Avenue.
"It was nine o'clock of a blustery March night. Mulligan was not my
driver on the trip, but Casey, who had been imbibing rather freely at
the corner place of refreshment during the wait. Empty we left the
starting point under the 'L. curve on South Fifth Avenue. Empty we
crossed the Square. At the Eighth Street corner, in front of the
Brevoort, we stopped. A gentleman and his wife entered. We proceeded. At
Nineteenth Street we were again hailed. Three young men were standing at
the curb. The one in the middle had evidently been drinking, for his
head was drooping, and he was leaning heavily upon his companions. He
was helped in and placed far forward, just under the coin box. Casey
pulled the strap attached to his leg, closing the door, and we moved
on, across Madison Square, past St. Leo's, up the slope of Murray Hill.
At Thirty-seventh Street there was a tug at the strap, and one of the
young men said a curt 'good-night' and alighted. We passed the old
Reservoir, crossed Forty-second Street. Two blocks more and the second
of the young men signalled. 'Good-night, Dick!' he said and was gone.
As we resumed the journey the gentleman who with his wife had climbed
aboard at Eighth Street noticed that the head of the third young man,
the one apparently intoxicated, was sinking lower and lower. Thinking
that he might be carried beyond his destination he stepped forward and
touched his arm. 'We are passing Fifty-third Street,' he said. There
was no response. He shook the shoulder and repeated the information.
Suddenly he turned to his wife. 'We will get out,' he said quickly.
'But, George--' she began. 'We will get out,' he repeated, pulling the
strap. As they stood under the lamp light at the corner the wife
continued her protests. 'But there were four more blocks to go.' 'My
dear,' said the husband, '_that young man's throat was cut from ear to
ear!_'"
"You are," I remarked crossly, "a most infernal old liar."
"Maybe, maybe," was the wheezy response.
[Illustration: "THE SITE OF THE OLD LENOX LIBRARY IS NOW OCCUPIED BY
THE HOUSE OF MR. HENRY C. FRICK, ONE OF THE GREAT SHOW RESIDENCES OF THE
AVENUE AND THE CITY. A BROAD GARDEN SEPARATES THE HOUSE, WHICH IS
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ENGLISH, FROM THE SIDEWALK"]
"But I haven't said that it was true, have I? Nor again have I said
that it wasn't. Strange things have happened on the Avenue. There have
been nights of violence. Sometimes, on late trips, my nerves have jumped
at the sound of some terrified cry. Often it has come from one of the
most respectable of houses. Again, in broad daylight, I have seen
startled faces pressed against upper windows. I have seen hands dropping
notes to the pavement. Once in a while a passer-by has picked up one of
those notes. But as a rule they were caught by the wind and whisked
away. What was in those notes? That's what I want to know. Again, when
it was dark, there has been the sound of running feet, and a panting man
has jumped from the roadway to my rear step while we were in motion. The
next morning there were stains on my cushions--the stains left by bloody
hands. They never could wash them out. They never could wash them out."
There was a lurch as a wheel bumped down into a hollow in the rough
road, and the exile fell to groaning and blaspheming.
"Ah, my rheumatic joints; my poor old bones! This climate!"
So the old Fifth Avenue bus complained of the rheumatism. I recalled
that the diligence that carried M. Tartarin across the Algerian desert
also gave vent to many "Ai's" about aching joints and sudden twinges.
What creatures of imitation we are, to be sure!
"But it is the loss of old friends that hurts the most," so the
confidences went on. "There was Mulligan, for example, of whom I was
speaking just now--he of the long coat and the dented brown derby hat.
Far up, near the end of the line, there was an old one-story frame
roadhouse, that had been there in my father's time, in my grandfather's
time, in my great-grandfather's time. Mulligan knew it well, and many
the time, when he came out of it, he was swaying slightly, and had to
pull himself up to the box by means of the seat rails. Then there were
anxious moments, as we raced over the cobble-stones, and my wheels
scraped other wheels to the right and left. In those days there was a
strap, one end of which was attached to the driver's boot, and the other
end to the door at the rear. When a passenger wished to alight he pulled
the strap and the driver released his hold. Sometimes the young
bucks--we called them dudes in those days--inside had been dining well,
and were hunting for mischief. Two or three of them would grab the strap
and pull with all their strength. My sides are creaky now, but they ache
with laughing when I recall how Mulligan used to swear. Sometimes the
strap gave and sometimes the driver' leg was twisted half off. Was that
the origin of the expression 'pulling his leg'? I wonder! The fare was
dropped into the box up in front. At first the driver was the one who
made the change. Later the change was handed out in sealed paper
envelopes. Mulligan was of the early days. What became of him? Oh, he
went into politics.
"I'll tell you what you can do for me," the exile went on. "Some day,
when you are back in the old town just drop into the Hoffman House bar
and take a drink for me, all the time looking up at the pictures of the
lovely ladies about to go in bathing in a beautiful brook in the woods."
"Stop!" said I, sternly. The piratical old plagiarist of a vehicle was
about to begin filching from another source. There had been a guilty
squeak in the voice that had roused my suspicions. "No doubt," I said,
with pointed sarcasm, "among the many passengers you carried at various
times was the late Mr. Richard Harding Davis. He was a literary man of
parts, and wrote, among other books, a charming little story called 'The
Exiles.'"
"What! Is he d----? I mean I never heard of the gent," was the brazen
response. "There was a Davis, now, a Sebastian Davis, I think the name
was, in the hair-oil business, if I am not mistaken. A little fellow,
with mutton-chop side whiskers. But as I was saying, I don't know
anything better than Fifth Avenue at Madison Square of a summer's night,
with the hobos dozing already on the park benches, and people hanging
round the entrance of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and the men lined up three
deep at the Hoffman bar, and the girls walking by on their way to dance
the minuet at the Haymarket up at Sixth Avenue and Thirtieth Street. I
said the minuet. Do you get me?" There was an evil chuckle. "Across the
Square Diana is twinkling up there in the sky, and beneath, in the
Garden, they are pulling off a middle-weight bout to a decision. Just
round the corner, in the Madison Square Theatre, you can hear the
clapping. The play is Hoyt's 'A Trip to Chinatown.' Listen:
"'Oh, the Bowery, the Bowery,
They say such things and they do such things
On the Bowery,'
"Or maybe it's:
"'You will think she's going to faint,
But she'll fool you, for she ain't;
She has been there many times before.'"
"I see," said I, for both the theft of ideas and the pretence of
innocence were too flagrant; "that your memories are of what we lovingly
called 'the golden,' and detractors called the 'yellow' nineties. We
were both young once."
But the assumption of friendliness seemed only to irritate.
"The nineties! Why, I was an old man in the nineties! An old, old man! I
wasn't a youngster in the eighties, or the seventies, for that matter.
There's another one of the old Avenue buses on this line. No. 27. He
says he is older than I am. He's a liar. Sometimes I think I am the
oldest bus in all the world, and that I ought to be enjoying myself in
the Smithsonian, instead of dragging out my existence bumping over
boulders and prairie grass.
"Come to think of it," the old bus went on meditatively, "the
Smithsonian does not appeal to me after all. I think that I would be
better pleased in a corner of the Third Degree room down at Number 300
Mulberry Street, or in the Chamber of Horrors at the Eden Musée. For, as
you may have noticed, I am partial to crime. It is the result of my
bringing up. It is the excitement of my early days that I miss most now.
When I first came out here it was with a feeling of pleased expectancy.
I anticipated a daily hold-up. I had visions of stage robbers in cambric
masks, and running gun fights, and horses in frightened flight, and my
driver stricken to the heart and tumbling from his seat. But it is a
degenerate and tame world out here. Give me little old New York."
"But the statistics--" I began.
"You do not know one-quarter. The police do not know one-half. But I
know. You have read what the papers have printed, or what some retired
Inspector has seen fit to tell in his Memoirs. You did not pass, night
after night, the sinister house of the woman whose open boast was that,
if she wished to, she could take half the roofs off the Avenue. You did
not know how real that terrible threat was, for you never saw the
cloaked men issuing from its doors bearing their ghastly burdens. You
have heard of the Burdell murder but you never knew the real solution.
You have read of the Nathan murder at the corner of the Avenue and
Twenty-third Street. But you did not hear, as I heard, that piercing
wail, or see the shaking figure that climbed on my rear step at
Twenty-fourth Street and rode twenty blocks northward. A man once wrote
an Australian story called 'The Mystery of a Hansom Cab.' My life had
not one mystery but a score of mysteries. You think you know something
of Fifth Avenue. What do you know of the killing the Girl in Green, or
of Colt and the William Street printer, the Suicides of No. X Washington
Square, North, or The Enigma of the Fifteenth Street House, or of The
Case of Giuseppe and the Italian Ambassador, which was hushed up by
orders from Washington and Rome, or The Affair of the Titled Sexton, or
The Madison Square Tower Episode?"
But I was growing weary of the voice of the old impostor.
"Ever hear of Conan Doyle?" I asked.
"Now come to think of it, a drummer from Altoona left a paper copy of
one of his books the last trip."