“Why?”
“Because—because—oncet ye try that they’ll—they’ll never let ye go.”
“But suppose you don’t want them to let you go?”
He backed away from me. If the dead eyes could waken to expression, they
did it then.
“Oh, sonny!” He shook as if palsied. “Ye don’t know ’em, my boy. I’ve
summered and wintered ’em—by lookin’ on. I’ve had pals of my own—”
“And what are they doing now, those pals of your own?”
“God knows; I don’t. Yes, I do; some of ’em. I see ’em round, goin’ to
work as reg’lar as reg’lar, and no more spunk in ’em than in a goldfish
when ye shakes yer finger at their bowl.”
Afraid of exciting suspicion by standing still, we began drifting with
the crowd.
“Is there much that you can call spunk in you and me?”
Again he lifted those piteous, drunken eyes. “We’re fellas together,
ain’t we? We’re buddies. I ’ear ye say so yerself when you was speakin’
to that Eyetalian.”
I have to confess that with his inflection something warm crept into my
cold heart. You have to be as I was to know what the merest crumbs of
trust and affection mean. A dog as stray and homeless as myself might
have been more to me; but since I had no dog....
“Yes, Lovey,” I answered, “we’re buddies, all right. But for that very
reason don’t you think we ought to try to help each other up?”
He stopped, to turn to me with hands crossed on his breast in a spirit of
petition.
“But, sonny, you don’t mean—you carn’t mean—on—on the wagon?”
“I mean on anything that’ll get us out of this hell of a hole.”
“Oh, well, if it’s only that, I’ve—I’ve been in tighter places than this
before—and—and look at me now. There’s ways. Ye don’t have to jump at
nothink onnat’rel. If ye’d only ’ave listened to me yesterday—but it
ain’t too late even now. What about to-night? Just two old ladies—no
violence—nothink that’d let you in for nothink dishonorable.”
“No, Lovey.”
We drifted on again. He spoke in a tone of bitter reproach.
“Ye’d rather go to the Down and Out! It’ll be the down, all right, sonny;
but there’ll be no out to it. Ye’ll be a prisoner. They’ll keep at ye
and at ye till yer soul won’t be yer own. Now all these other places ye
can put it over on ’em. They’re mostly ladies and parsons and greenhorns
that never ’ad no experience. A little repentance and they’ll fall for it
every time. Besides”—he turned to me with another form of appeal—“ye’re a
Christian, ain’t ye? A little repentance now and then’ll do ye good. It’s
like something laid by for a rainy day. I’ve tried it, so I know. Ye’re
young, sonny. Ye don’t understand. And when it’ll tide ye over a time
like this—they’ll git ye a job, very likely—and ye can backslide by and
by when it’s safe. Why, it’s all as easy as easy.”
“It isn’t as easy as easy, Lovey, because you say you don’t like it
yourself.”
“I like it better than the Down and Out, where they won’t let ye
backslide no more. Why, I was in at Stinson’s one day and there was a
chap there—Rollins was his name, a plumber—just enj’yin’ of himself
like—nothink wrong—and come to find out he’d been one of their men. Well,
what do ye think, sonny? A fellow named Pyncheon blew in—awful ’ard
drinker for a young ’and, he used to be—and he sat down beside Rollins
and pled with ’im and plod with ’im, and—well, ye don’t see Rollins
round Stinson’s no more. I tell ye, sonny, ye carn’t put nothing over on
’em. They knows all the tricks and all the trade. Give me kind-’earted
ladies; give me ministers of the gospel; give me the stool o’ repentance
two or three times a month; but don’t give me fellas that because they’ve
knocked off the booze theirselves wants every one else to knock it off,
too, and don’t let it be a free country.”
We came to the corner to which I had been directing our seemingly aimless
steps. It was a corner where the big red and green jars that had once
been the symbols for medicines within now stood as a sign for soda-water
and ice-cream.
“Let’s go in here.”
Lovey hung back. “What’s the use of that? That ain’t no saloon.”
“Come on and let us try.”
Pushing open the screen door, I made him pass in before me. We found
ourselves in front of a white counter fitted up like a kind of bar. As a
bar of any sort was better than none, Lovey’s face took on a leaden shade
of brightness.
In the way of a guardian all we could see at first was a white-coated
back bent behind the counter. When it straightened up it was topped by a
friendly, boyish face.
Lovey leaped back, pulling me by the arm.
“That’s that very young Pyncheon I was a-tellin’ you of,” he whispered,
tragically; “him what got Rollins, the plumber, out of Stinson’s. Let’s
’ook it, sonny! He won’t do us no good.”
But the boyish face had already begun to beam.
“Hel-lo, old sport! Haven’t seen you in a pair of blue moons. Put it
there!”
The welcome was the more disconcerting because in the mirror behind
Pyncheon I could see myself in contrast to his clean, young, manly
figure. I have said I was shabby without being hideously so, but that was
before I had slept a fourth night on the bare boards of a lumber-yard,
to be drenched with rain in the morning. It was also before I had gone
a fourth morning without shaving, and with nothing more thorough in the
way of a wash than I could steal in a station lavatory. The want of food,
the want of drink, to say nothing of the unspeakable anguish within, had
stamped me, moreover, with something woebegone and spectral which, now
that I saw it reflected in the daylight, shook me to the soul.
I never was so timid, apologetic, or shamefaced in my life as when I
grasped the friendly hand stretched out to me across the counter. I
had no smile to return to Pyncheon’s. I had no courtesies to exchange.
Not till that minute had I realized that I was outside the system of
fellowship and manhood, and that even a handshake was a condescension.
“Pyn,” I faltered, hoarsely, “I want you to take me to the Down and Out.
Will you?”
“Sure I will!” He glanced at Lovey. “And I’ll take old Lovikins, too.”
“Don’t you be so fresh with your names, young man!” Lovey spoke up,
tartly. “’Tain’t the first time I’ve seen you—”
“And I hope it won’t be the last,” Pyn laughed.
“That’ll depend on how polite ye’re able to make yerself.”
“Oh, you can count me in on politeness, old sport, so long as you come to
the Down and Out.”
“I’ll go to the Down and Out when I see fit. I ain’t goin’ to be dragged
there by the ’air of the ’ead, as I see you drag poor Rollins, the
plumber, a month or two ago.”
“Quit your kiddin’, Lovey. How am I going to drag you by the ’air of the
’ead when you’re as bald as a door-knob? Say, you fellows,” he went on,
pulling one of the levers before him, “I’m going to start you off right
now with a glass of this hot chocolate. The treat’s on me. By the time
you’ve swallowed it Milligan will be here, and I can get off long enough
to take you over to Vandiver Street.” He dashed in a blob of whipped
cream. “Here, old son, this is for you; and there’s more where it came
from.”
“I didn’t come in ’ere for nothink of the kind,” Lovey protested. “I
didn’t know we was comin’ in ’ere at all. You take it, sonny.”
“Go ahead, Lovikins,” Mr. Pyncheon insisted. “’E’s to ’ave a bigger one,”
he mimicked. “Awful good for the ’air of the ’ead. ’Ll make it sprout
like an apple-tree—I beg your pardon, happle-tree—in May.”
Before Pyncheon had finished, the primitive in poor Lovey had overcome
both pride and reluctance, and the glass of chocolate was pretty well
drained. The sight of his sheer animal avidity warned me not to betray
myself. While Pyncheon explained to Milligan and made his preparations
for conducting us, I carried my chocolate to the less important part of
the shop, given up to the sale of tooth-brushes and patent medicines, to
consume it at ease and with dignity.
Pyncheon having changed to a coat, in the buttonhole of which I noticed
a little silver star, and a straw hat with a faint silver line in the
hatband, we were ready to depart.
“I’ll go with ye, sonny,” Lovey explained; “but I ain’t a-goin’ to stay.
No Down and Out for mine.”
“You wouldn’t leave me, Lovey?” I begged, as I replaced the empty glass
on the counter. “I’m looking to you to help me to keep straight.”
He edged up to me, laying a shaking hand on my arm.
“Oh, if it’s that— But,” he added more cheerfully, “we don’t have to stay
no longer than we don’t want to. There’s no law by which they can keep us
ag’in’ our will, there ain’t.”
“No, Lovey. If we want to go we’ll go—but we’re buddies, aren’t we? And
we’ll stick by each other.”
“Say, you fellows! Quick march! I’ve only got half an hour to get there
and back.”
Out in the street, Lovey and I hung behind our guide. He was too brisk
and smart and clean for us to keep step with. Alone we could, as we
phrased it, get by. With him the contrast called attention to the fact
that we were broken and homeless men.
“You go ahead, Pyn—” I began.
“Aw, cut that out!” he returned, scornfully. “Wasn’t I a worse looker
than you, two and a half years ago? Old Colonel Straight picked me up
from a bench in Madison Square—the very bench from which he’d been picked
up himself—and dragged me down to Vandiver Street like a nurse’ll drag a
boy that kicks like blazes every step of the way.”
As we were now walking three abreast, with Pyn in the middle, I asked the
question that was most on my mind:
“Was it hard, Pyn—cutting the booze out?”
“Sure it was hard! What do you think? You’re not on the way to a picnic.
For the first two weeks I fought like hell. If the other guys hadn’t sat
on my head—well, you and old Lovey wouldn’t have had no glass of hot
chocolate this morning.”
“I suppose the first two weeks are the worst.”
“And the best. If you’re really out to put the job through you find
yourself toughening to it every day.”
“And you mean by being out to put the job through?”
“Wanting to get the durned thing under you so as you can stand on it and
stamp it down. Booze’ll make two kinds of repenters, and I guess you guys
stand for both. Old Lovey here”—he pinched my companion’s arm—“he’ll
forsake his bad habits just long enough to get well fed up, a clean shirt
on his back, and his nerves a bit quieted down. But he’ll always be
looking forward to the day when he’ll be tempted again, and thinking of
the good time he’ll have when he falls.”
“If you’ll mind yer own business, young Pyn—” Lovey began, irritably.
“Then there’s another kind,” this experienced reformer went on,
imperturbably, “what’ll have a reason for cutting the blasted thing out,
like he’d cut out a cancer or anything else that’ll kill him. I’ve always
known you was that kind, Slim, and I told you so nearly a year ago.”
“I seen ye,” Lovey put in. “Was speakin’ about it only yesterday. Knew
you was after no good. I warned ye, didn’t I, Slim?”
Curiosity prompted me to say, “What made you think I had a motive for
getting over it?”
“Looks. You can always tell what a man’s made for by the kind of looker
he is. As a looker you’re some swell. Lovikins here, now—”
“If I can’t do as well as the likes o’ you, ye poor little snipe of a
bartender for babies—”
“What’ll you bet you can’t?” Pyn asked, good-naturedly.
“I ain’t a bettin’ man, but I can show!”
“Well, you show, and I’ll lay fifty cents against you. You’ll be umpire,
Slim, and hold the stakes. Is that a go?”
“I don’t ’ave no truck o’ that kind,” Lovey declared, loftily. “I’m a
doer, I am—when I get a-goin’. I don’t brag beforehand—not like some.”