Monday's mail for the Arrowhead was brought in by the Chinaman while Ma
Pettengill and I loitered to the close of the evening meal: a canvas
sack of letters and newspapers with three bulky packages of merchandise
that had come by parcels post. The latter evoked a passing storm from my
hostess. Hadn't she warned folks time and again to send all her stuff by
express instead of by parcels post, which would sure get her gunned some
day by the stage driver who got nothing extra for hauling such matter?
She had so!
We trifled now with a fruity desert and the lady regaled me with a brief
exposure of our great parcels-post system as a piece of the nerviest
penny pinching she had ever known our Government guilty of. Because why?
Because these here poor R.F.D. stage drivers had to do the extra hauling
for nothing.
"Here's old Harvey Steptoe with the mail contract for sixty dollars a
month, three trips a week between Red Gap and Surprise Valley,
forty-five miles each way, barely making enough extra on express matter
and local freight to come out even after buying horse-feed. Then comes
parcels post, and parties that had had to pay him four bits or a dollar
for a large package, or two bits for a small one, can have 'em brought
in by mail for nothing. Of course most of us eased up on him after we
understood the hellish injustice of it. We took pains not to have things
sent parcels post and when they come unbeknown to us, like these here
to-night, we'd always pay him anyway, just like they was express. It was
only fair and, besides, we would live longer, Harvey Steptoe being
morose and sudden.
"Like when old Safety First Timmins got the idea he could have all his
supplies sent from Red Gap for almost nothing by putting stamps on 'em.
He was tickled to death with the notion until, after the second load of
about a hundred pounds, some cowardly assassin shot at him from the
brush one morning about the time the stage usually went down past his
ranch. The charge missed him by about four inches and went into the barn
door. He dug it out and found a bullet and two buckshot. Old Safety
First ain't any Sherlock Holmes, but even Doctor Watson could of solved
this murderous crime. When Harvey come by the next night he went out and
says to him, 'Ain't you got one of them old Mississippi Yaegers about
seventy-five years old that carries a bullet and two buckshot?' Harvey
thought back earnestly for a minute, then says,'Not now I ain't. I used
to have one of them old hairlooms around the house but I found they
ain't reliable when you want to do fine work from a safe distance; so I
threw her away yesterday morning and got me this nice new 30-30 down to
Goshook & Dale's hardware store.'
"He pulled the new gun out and patted it tenderly in the sight of old
Timmins. 'Ain't it a cunning little implement?' he says; 'I tried it out
coming up this afternoon. I could split a hair with it as far, say, as
from that clump of buck-brush over to your barn. And by the way, Mr.
Timmins,' he says, 'I got some more stuff for you here from the Square
Deal Grocery--stuff all gummed up with postage stamps.' He leans his new
toy against the seat and dumps out a sack of flour and a sack of dried
fruit and one or two other things. 'This parcels post is a grand thing,
ain't it?' says he.
"'Well--yes and no, now that you speak of it,' says old Safety First.
'The fact is I'm kind of prejudiced against it; I ain't going to have
things come to me any more all stuck over with them trifling little
postage stamps. It don't look dignified.' 'No?' says Harvey. 'No,' says
Safety First in a firm tone. 'I won't ever have another single thing
come by mail if I can help it.' 'I bet you're superstitious,' says
Harvey, climbing back to his seat and petting the new gun again. 'I bet
you're so superstitious you'd take this here shiny new implement off my
hands at cost if I hinted I'd part with it.' 'I almost believe I would,'
says Safety First. 'Well, it don't seem like I'd have much use for it
after all,' says Harvey. 'Of course I can always get a new one if my
fancy happens to run that way again.'
"So old Safety First buys a new loaded rifle that he ain't got a use on
earth for. It would of looked to outsiders like he was throwing his
money away on fripperies, but he knew it was a prime necessity of life
all right. The parcels post ain't done him a bit of good since, though I
send him marked pieces in the papers every now and then telling how the
postmaster general thinks it's a great boon to the ultimate consumer.
And I mustn't forget to send Harvey six bits for them three packages
that come to-night. That's what we do. Otherwise, him being morose and
turbulent, he'd get a new gun and make ultimate consumers out of all of
us. Darned ultimate! I reckon we got a glorious Government, like
candidates always tell us, but a postmaster general that expected stage
drivers to do three times the hauling they had been doing with no extra
pay wouldn't last long out at the tail of an ... route. There'd be
pieces in the paper telling about how he rose to prominence from the
time he got a lot of delegates sewed up for the people's choice and how
his place will be hard to fill. It certainly would be hard to fill out
here. Old Timmins, for one, would turn a deaf ear to his country's
call."
Lew Wee having now cleared the table of all but coffee, we lingered for
a leisurely overhauling of the mail sack. Ma Pettengill slit envelopes
and read letters to an accompanying rumble of protest. She several times
wished to know what certain parties took her for--and they'd be fooled
if they did; and now and again she dwelt upon the insoluble mystery of
her not being in the poorhouse at that moment; yes, and she'd of been
there long ago if she had let these parties run her business like they
thought they could. But what could a lone defenceless woman expect?
She'd show them, though! Been showing 'em for thirty years now, and
still had her health, hadn't she?
Letters and bills were at last neatly stacked and the poor weak woman
fell upon the newspapers. The Red Gap Recorder was shorn of its wrapper.
Being first a woman she turned to the fourth page to flash a practised
eye over that department which is headed "Life's Stages--At the
Altar--In the Cradle!--To the Tomb." Having gleaned recent vital
statistics she turned next to the column carrying the market quotations
on beef cattle, for after being a woman she is a rancher. Prices for
that day must have pleased her immensely for she grudgingly mumbled that
they were less ruinous than she had expected. In the elation of which
this admission was a sign she next refreshed me with various personal
items from a column headed "Social Gleanings--by Madame On Dit."
I learned that at the last regular meeting of the Ladies' Friday
Afternoon Shakespeare Club, Mrs. Dr. Percy Hailey Martingale had read a
paper entitled "My Trip to the Panama-Pacific Exposition," after which a
dainty collation was served by mine hostess Mrs. Judge Ballard; that
Miss Beryl Mae Macomber, the well-known young society heiress, was
visiting friends in Spokane where rumour hath it that she would take a
course of lessons in elocution; and that Mrs. Cora Hartwick Wales,
prominent society matron and leader of the ultra smart set of Price's
Addition, had on Thursday afternoon at her charming new bungalow, corner
of Bella Vista Street and Prospect Avenue, entertained a number of her
inmates at tea. Ma Pettengill and I here quickly agreed that the
proofreading on the Recorder was not all it should be. Then she
unctuously read me a longer item from another column which was signed
"The Lounger in the Lobby":
"Mr. Benjamin P. Sutton, the wealthy capitalist of Nome, Alaska, and a
prince of good fellows, is again in our midst for his annual visit to
His Honour Alonzo Price, Red Gap's present mayor, of whom he is an
old-time friend and associate. Mr. Sutton, who is the picture of health,
brings glowing reports from the North and is firm in his belief that
Alaska will at no distant day become the garden spot of the world. In
the course of a brief interview he confided to ye scribe that on his
present trip to the outside he would not again revisit his birthplace,
the city of New York, as he did last year. 'Once was enough, for many
reasons,' said Mr. Sutton grimly. 'They call it "Little old New York,"
but it isn't little and it isn't old. It's big and it's new--we have
older buildings right in Nome than any you can find on Broadway. Since
my brief sojourn there last year I have decided that our people before
going to New York should see America first."
"Now what do you think of that?" demanded the lady. I said I would be
able to think little of it unless I were told the precise reasons for
this rather brutal abuse of a great city. What, indeed, were the "many
reasons" that Mr. Sutton had grimly not confided to ye scribe?
Ma Pettengill chuckled and reread parts of the indictment. Thereafter
she again chuckled fluently and uttered broken phrases to herself.
"Horse-car" was one; "the only born New Yorker alive" was another. It
became necessary for me to remind the woman that a guest was present. I
did this by shifting my chair to face the stone fireplace in which a
pine chunk glowed, and by coughing in a delicate and expectant manner.
"Poor Ben!" she murmured--"going all the day down there just to get one
romantic look at his old home after being gone twenty-five years. I
don't blame him for talking rough about the town, nor for his criminal
act--stealing a street-car track."
It sounded piquant--a noble theft indeed! I now murmured a bit myself,
striving to convey an active incredulity that yet might be vanquished by
facts. The lady quite ignored this, diverging to her own opinion of New
York. She tore the wrapper from a Sunday issue of a famous metropolitan
daily and flaunted its comic supplement at me. "That's how I always
think of New York," said she--"a kind of a comic supplement to the rest
of this great country. Here--see these two comical little tots standing
on their uncle's stomach and chopping his heart out with their
axes--after you got the town sized up it's just that funny and horrible.
It's like the music I heard that time at a higher concert I was drug to
in Boston--ingenious but unpleasant."
But this was not what I would sit up for after a hard day's
fishing--this coarse disparagement of something the poor creature was
unfitted to comprehend.
"Ben Sutton," I remarked firmly.
* * * * *
"The inhabitants of New York are divided fifty-fifty between them that
are trying to get what you got and them that think you're trying to get
what they got."
"Ben Sutton," I repeated, trying to make it sullen.
"Ask a man on the street in New York where such and such a building is
and he'll edge out of reaching distance, with his hand on his watch,
before he tells you he don't know. In Denver, or San Francisco now, the
man will most likely walk a block or two with you just to make sure you
get the directions right."
"Ben Sutton!"
"They'll fall for raw stuff, though. I know a slick mining promoter from
Arizona that stops at the biggest hotel on Fifth Avenue and has himself
paged by the boys about twenty times a day so folks will know how
important he is. He'll get up from his table in the restaurant and
follow the boy out in a way to make 'em think that nine million dollars
is at stake. He tells me it helps him a lot in landing the wise ones."
"Stole a street-car track," I muttered desperately.
"The typical New Yorker, like they call him, was born in Haverhill,
Massachusetts, and sleeps in New Rochelle, going in on the 8:12 and
coming out on the--"
"I had a pretty fight landing that biggest one this afternoon, from that
pool under the falls up above the big bend. Twice I thought I'd lost
him, but he was only hiding--and then I found I'd forgotten my landing
net. Say, did I ever tell you about the time I was fishing for steel
head down in Oregon, and the bear--" The lady hereupon raised a hushing
hand.
* * * * *
Well, as I was saying, Ben Sutton blew into town early last September
and after shaking hands with his old confederate, Lon Price, he says how
is the good wife and is she at home and Lon says no; that Pettikins has
been up at Silver Springs resting for a couple weeks; so Ben says it's
too bad he'll miss the little lady, as in that case he has something
good to suggest, which is, what's the matter with him and Lon taking a
swift hike down to New York which Ben ain't seen since 1892, though he
was born there, and he'd now like to have a look at the old home in
Lon's company. Lon says it's too bad Pettikins ain't there to go along,
but if they start at once she wouldn't have time to join them, and Ben
says he can start near enough at once for that, so hurry and pack the
suitcase. Lon does it, leaving a delayed telegram to Henrietta to be
sent after they start, begging her to join them if not too late, which
it would be.
While they are in Louis Meyer's Place feeling good over this coop, in
comes the ever care-free Jeff Tuttle and Jeff says he wouldn't mind
going out on rodeo himself with 'em, at least as far as Jersey City
where he has a dear old aunt living--or she did live there when he was a
little boy and was always very nice to him and he ain't done right in
not going to see her for thirty years--and if he's that close to the big
town he could run over from Jersey City for a look--see.
Lon and Ben hail his generous decision with cheers and on the way to
another place they meet me, just down from the ranch. And why don't I
come along with the bunch? Ben has it all fixed in ten seconds, he being
one of these talkers that will odd things along till they sound even,
and the other two chiming in with him and wanting to buy my ticket right
then. But I hesitated some. Lon and Ben Sutton was all right to go with,
but Jeff Tuttle was a different kittle of fish. Jeff is a decent man in
many respects and seems real refined when you first meet him if it's in
some one's parlour, but he ain't one you'd care to follow step by step
through the mazes and pitfalls and palmrooms of a great city if you're
sensitive to public notice. Still, they was all so hearty in their
urging, Ben saying I was the only lady in the world he could travel that
far with and not want to strangle, and Lon says he'd rather have me than
most of the men he knew, and Jeff says if I'll consent to go he'll take
his full-dress suit so as to escort me to operas and lectures in a
classy manner, and at last I give up. I said I'd horn in on their party
since none of 'em seemed hostile.
I'd meant to go a little later anyway, for some gowns I needed and some
shopping I'd promised to do for Lizzie Gunslaugh. You got to hand it to
New York for shopping. Why, I'd as soon buy an evening gown in Los
Angeles as in Portland or San Francisco. Take this same Lizzie
Gunslaugh. She used to make a bare living, with her sign reading "Plain
and Fashionable Dressmaking." But I took that girl down to New York
twice with me and showed her how and what to buy there, instead of going
to Spokane for her styles, and to-day she's got a thriving little
business with a bully sign that we copied from them in the East
--"Madame Elizabeth, Robes et Manteaux." Yes, sir; New York has at least
one real reason for taking up room. That's a thing I always try to get
into Ben Sutton's head, that he'd ought to buy his clothes down there
instead of getting 'em from a reckless devil-dare of a tailor up in
Seattle that will do anything in the world Ben tells him to--and he
tells him a plenty, believe me. He won't ever wear a dress suit,
either, because he says that costume makes all men look alike and he
ain't going to stifle his individuality. If you seen Ben's figure once
you'd know that nothing could make him look like any one else, him being
built on the lines of a grain elevator and having individuality no
clothes on earth could stifle. He's the very last man on earth that
should have coloured braid on his check suits. However!
My trunk is packed in a hurry and I'm down to the 6:10 on time. Lon is
very scared and jubilant over deserting Henrietta in this furtive way,
and Ben is all ebullient in a new suit that looks like a lodge regalia
and Jeff Tuttle in plain clothes is as happy as a child. When I get
there he's already begun to give his imitation of a Sioux squaw with a
hare lip reciting "Curfew Shall Not Ring To-night" in her native
language, which he pulls on all occasions when he's feeling too good.
It's some imitation. The Sioux language, even when spoken by a trained
elocutionist, can't be anything dulcet. Jeff's stunt makes it sound like
grinding coffee and shovelling coal into a cellar at the same time.
Anyway, our journey begun happily and proved to be a good one, the days
passing pleasantly while we talked over old times and played ten-cent
limit in my stateroom, though Jeff Tuttle is so untravelled that he'll
actually complain about the food and service in a dining-car. The poor
puzzled old cow-man still thinks you ought to get a good meal in one,
like the pretty bill of fare says you can.
Then one morning we was in New York and Ben Sutton got his first shock.
He believed he was still on the other side of the river because he
hadn't rid in a ferryboat yet. He had to be told sharply by parties in
uniform. But we got him safe to a nice tall hotel on Broadway at last.
Talk about your hicks from the brush--Ben was it, coming back to this
here birthplace of his. He fell into a daze on the short ride to the
hotel--after insisting hotly that we should go to one that was pulled
down ten years ago--and he never did get out of it all that day.
Lon and Jeff was dazed, too. The city filled 'em with awe and they made
no pretense to the contrary. About all they did that day was to buy
picture cards and a few drinks. They was afraid to wander very far from
the hotel for fear they'd get run over or arrested or fall into the new
subway or something calamitous like that. Of course New York was looking
as usual, the streets being full of tired voters tearing up the
car-tracks and digging first-line trenches and so forth.
It was a quiet day for all of us, though I got my shopping started, and
at night we met at the hotel and had a lonesome dinner. We was all too
dazed and tired to feel like larking about any, and poor Ben was so
downright depressed it was pathetic. Ever read the story about a man
going to sleep and waking up in a glass case in a museum a thousand
years later? That was Ben coming back to his old town after only
twenty-five years. He hadn't been able to find a single old friend nor
any familiar faces. He ordered a porterhouse steak, family style, for
himself, but he was so mournful he couldn't eat more than about two
dollars' worth of it. He kept forgetting himself in dismal
reminiscences. The onlysright thing he'd found was the men tearing up
the streets. That was just like they used to be, he said. He maundered
on to us about how horse-cars was running on Broadway when he left and
how they hardly bothered to light the lamps north of Forty-second
Street, and he wished he could have some fish balls like the old
Sinclair House used to have for its free lunch, and how in them golden
days people that had been born right here in New York was seen so
frequently that they created no sensation.
He was feeling awful desolate about this. He pointed out different
parties at tables around us, saying they was merchant princes from
Sandusky or prominent Elks from Omaha or roystering blades from
Pittsburgh or boulevardeers from Bucyrus--not a New Yorker in sight. He
said he'd been reading where a wealthy nut had seat out an expedition to
the North Pole to capture a certain kind of Arctic flea that haunts only
a certain rare fox--but he'd bet a born New Yorker was harder to find.
He said what this millionaire defective ought to of done with his
inherited wealth was to find a male and female born here and have 'em
stuffed and mounted under glass in a fire-proof museum, which would be a
far more exciting spectacle than any flea on earth, however scarce and
arctic. He said he'd asked at least forty men that day where they was
born--waiters, taxi-drivers, hotel clerks, bartenders, and just anybody
that would stop and take one with him, and not a soul had been born
nearer to the old town than Scranton, Pennsylvania. "It's
heart-rending," he says, "to reflect that I'm alone here in this big
city of outlanders. I haven't even had the nerve to go down to West
Ninth Street for a look at the old home that shelters my boyhood
memories. If I could find only one born New Yorker it would brace me up
a whole lot."
It was one dull evening, under this cloud that enveloped Ben. We didn't
even go to a show, but turned in early. Lon Price sent a picture card of
the Flatiron Building to Henrietta telling her he was having a dreary
time and he was now glad he'd been disappointed about her not coming, so
love and kisses from her lonesome boy. It was what he would of sent her
anyway, but it happened to be the truth so far.
Well, I got the long night's rest that was coming to me and started out
early in the A.M. to pit my cunning against the wiles of the New York
department stores, having had my evil desires inflamed the day before by
an afternoon gown in chiffon velvet and Georgette crepe with silver
embroidery and fur trimming that I'd seen in a window marked down to
$198.98. I fell for that all right, and for an all-silk jersey sport
suit at $29.98 and a demi-tailored walking suit for a mere bagatelle,
and a white corduroy sport blouse and a couple of imported evening
gowns they robbed me on--but I didn't mind. You expect to be robbed for
anything really good in New York, only the imitation stuff that's worn
by the idle poor being cheaper than elsewhere. And I was so busy in this
whirl of extortion that I forgot all about the boys and their troubles
till I got back to the hotel at five o'clock.
I find 'em in the palm grill, or whatever it's called, drinking
stingers. But now they was not only more cheerful than they had been the
night before but they was getting a little bit contemptuous and Western
about the great city. Lon had met a brother real estate shark from Salt
Lake and Jeff had fell in with a sheep man from Laramie--and treated him
like an equal because of meeting him so far from home in a strange town
where no one would find it out on him--and Ben Sutton had met up with
his old friend Jake Berger, also from Nome. That's one nice thing about
New York; you keep meeting people from out your way that are lonesome,
too. Lon's friend and Jeff's sheep man had had to leave, being
encumbered by watchful-waiting wives that were having 'em paged every
three minutes and wouldn't believe the boy when he said they was out.
But Ben's friend, Jake Berger, was still at the table. Jake is a good
soul, kind of a short, round, silent man, never opening his head for any
length of time. He seems to bring the silence of the frozen North down
with him except for brief words to the waiter ever and anon.
As I say, the boys was all more cheerful and contemptuous about New
York by this time. Ben had spent another day asking casual parties if
they was born in New York and having no more luck than a rabbit, but it
seemed like he'd got hardened to these disappointments. He said he might
leave his own self to a museum in due time, so future generations would
know at least what the male New Yorker looked like. As for the female,
he said any of these blondes along Broadway could be made to look near
enough like his mate by a skilled taxidermist. Jeff Tuttle here says
that they wasn't all blondes because he'd seen a certain brunette that
afternoon right in this palm grill that was certainly worth preserving
for all eternity in the grandest museum on earth--which showed that Jeff
had chirked up a lot since landing in town. Ben said he had used the
term "blonde" merely to designate a species and they let it go at that.
Lon Price then said he'd been talking a little himself to people he met
in different places and they might not be born New Yorkers but they
certainly didn't know anything beyond the city limits. At this he looks
around at the crowded tables in this palm grill and says very bitterly
that he'll give any of us fifty to one they ain't a person in the place
that ever so much as even heard of Price's Addition to Red Gap. And so
the talk went for a little, with Jake Berger ever and again crooning to
the waiter for another round of stingers. I'd had two, so I stayed out
on the last round. I told Jake I enjoyed his hospitality but two would
be all I could think under till they learned to leave the dash of
chloroform out of mine. Jake just looked kindly at me. He's as chatty as
Mount McKinley.
But I was glad to see the boys more cheerful, so I said I'd get my
lumpiest jewels out of the safe and put a maid and hairdresser to work
on me so I'd be a credit to 'em at dinner and then we'd spend a jolly
evening at some show. Jeff said he'd also doll up in his dress suit and
get shaved and manicured and everything, so he'd look like one in my own
walk of life. Ben was already dressed for evening. He had on a totally
new suit of large black and white checks looking like a hotel floor from
a little distance, bound with braid of a quiet brown, and with a vest of
wide stripes in green and mustard colour. It was a suit that the
automobile law in some states would have compelled him to put dimmers
on; it made him look egregious, if that's the word; but I knew it was no
good appealing to his better nature. He said he'd have dinner ordered
for us in another palm grill that had more palms in it.
Jake Berger spoke up for the first time to any one but a waiter. He
asked why a palm room necessarily? He said the tropic influence of these
palms must affect the waiters that had to stand under 'em all day,
because they wouldn't take his orders fast enough. He said the
languorous Southern atmosphere give 'em pellagra or something. Jeff
Tuttle says Jake must be mistaken because the pellagra is a kind of a
Spanish dance, he believes. Jake said maybe so; maybe it was tropic
neurasthenia the waiters got. Ben said he'd sure look out for a fresh
waiter that hadn't been infected yet. When I left 'em Jake was holding a
split-second watch on the waiter he'd just given an order to.
By seven P.M. I'd been made into a work of art by the hotel help and
might of been observed progressing through the palatial lobby with my
purple and gold opera cloak sort of falling away from the shoulders.
Jeff Tuttle observed me for one. He was in his dress suit all right,
standing over in a corner having a bell-hop tie his tie for him that he
never can learn to do himself. That's the way with Jeff; he simply
wasn't born for the higher hotel life. In his dress suit he looks
exactly like this here society burglar you're always seeing a picture of
in the papers. However, I let him trail me along into this jewelled palm
room with tapestries and onyx pillars and prices for food like the town
had been three years beleagured by an invading army. Jake Berger is
alone at our table sipping a stinger and looking embarrassed because
he'll have to say something. He gets it over as soon as he can. He says
Ben has ordered dinner and stepped out and that Lon has stepped out to
look for him but they'll both be back in a minute, so set down and order
one before this new waiter is overcome by the tropic miasma. We do the
same, and in comes Lon looking very excited in the dress suit he was
married in back about 1884.
"Ben's found one," he squeals excitedly--"a real genuine one that was
born right here in New York and is still living in the same house he was
born in. What do you know about that? Ben is frantic with delight and is
going to bring him to dine with us as soon as he gets him brushed off
down in the wash room and maybe a drink or two thrown into him to revive
him from the shock of Ben running across him. Ain't it good, though!
Poor old Ben, looking for a born one and thinking he'd never find him
and now he has!"
We all said how glad we was for Ben's sake and Lon called over a titled
aristocrat of foreign birth and ordered him to lay another place at the
table. Then he tells us how the encounter happened. Ben had stepped out
on Broadway to buy an evening paper and coming back he was sneaking a
look at his new suit in a plate-glass window, walking blindly ahead at
the same time. That's the difference between the sexes in front of a
plate-glass window. A woman is entirely honest and shameless; she'll
stop dead and look herself over and touch up anything that needs it as
cool as if she was the last human on earth; while man, the coward, walks
by slow and takes a long sly look at himself, turning his head more and
more till he gets swore at by some one he's tramped on. This is how Ben
had run across the only genuine New Yorker that seemed to be left. He'd
run across his left instep and then bore him to the ground like one of
these juggernuts or whatever they are. Still, at that, it seemed kind of
a romantic meeting, like mebbe the hand of fate was in it. We chatted
along, waiting for the happy pair, and Jake ordered again to be on the
safe side because the waiter would be sure to contract hookworm or
sleeping sickness in this tropic jungle before the evening was over.
Jeff Tuttle said this was called the Louis Château room and he liked it.
He also said, looking over the people that come in, that he bet every
dress suit in town was hired to-night. Then in a minute or two more,
after Jake Berger sent a bill over to the orchestra leader with a card
asking him to play all quick tunes so the waiters could fight better
against jungle fever, in comes Ben Sutton driving his captive New Yorker
before him and looking as flushed and proud as if he'd discovered a
strange new vest pattern.
The captive wasn't so much to look at. He was kind of neat, dressed in
one of the nobby suits that look like ninety dollars in the picture and
cost eighteen; he had one of these smooth ironed faces that made him
look thirty or forty years old, like all New York men, and he had the
conventional glue on his hair. He was limping noticeably where Ben had
run across him, and I could see he was highly suspicious of the whole
gang of us, including the man who had treated him like he was a
cockroach. But Ben had been persuasive and imperious--took him off his
feet, like you might say--so he shook hands all around and ventured to
set down with us. He had the same cold, slippery cautious hand that
every New York man gives you the first time so I says to myself he's a
real one all right and we fell to the new round of stingers Jake had
motioned for, and to the nouveaux art-work food that now came along.
Naturally Ben and the New Yorker done most of the talking at first;
about how the good old town had changed; how they was just putting up
the Cable Building at Houston Street when Ben left in '92, and wasn't
the old Everett House a good place for lunch, and did the other one
remember Barnum's Museum at Broadway and Ann, and Niblo's Garden was
still there when Ben was, and a lot of fascinating memories like that.
The New Yorker didn't relax much at first and got distinctly nervous
when he saw the costly food and heard Ben order vintage champagne which
he always picks out by the price on the wine list. I could see him plain
as day wondering just what kind of crooks we could be, what our game was
and how soon we'd spring it on him--or would we mebbe stick him for the
dinner check? He didn't have a bit good time at first, so us four others
kind of left Ben to fawn upon him and enjoyed ourselves in our own way.
It was all quite elevating or vicious, what with the orchestra and the
singers and the dancing and the waiters with vitality still unimpaired.
And New York has improved a lot, I'll say that. The time I was there
before they wouldn't let a lady smoke except in the very lowest table
d'hotes of the underworld at sixty cents with wine. And now the only one
in the whole room that didn't light a cigarette from time to time was a
nervous dame in a high-necked black silk and a hat that was never made
farther east than Altoona, that looked like she might be taking notes
for a club paper on the attractions or iniquities of a great metropolis.
Jeff Tuttle was fascinated by the dancing; he called it the "tangle" and
some of it did look like that. And he claimed to be shocked by the
flagrant way women opened up little silver boxes and applied the paints,
oils, and putty in full view of the audience. He said he'd just as lief
see a woman take out a manicure set and do her nails in public, and I
assured him he probably would see it if he come down again next year,
the way things was going--him talking that way that had had his white
tie done in the open lobby; but men are such. Jake Berger just looked
around kindly and didn't open his head till near the end of the meal. I
thought he wasn't noticing anything at all till the orchestra put on a
shadow number with dim purple lights.
"You'll notice they do that," says Jake, "whenever a lot of these people
are ready to pay their checks. It saves fights, because no one can see
if they're added right or not." That was pretty gabby for Jake. Then I
listened again to Ben and his little pet. They was talking their way up
the Bowery from Atlantic Garden and over to Harry Hill's Place which,
it seemed the New Yorker didn't remember, and Ben then recalled an old
leper with gray whiskers and a skull cap that kept a drug store in
Bleecker Street when Ben was a kid and spent most of his time watering
down the sidewalk in front of his place with a hose so that ladies going
by would have to raise their skirts out of the wet. His eyes was quite
dim as he recalled these sacred boyhood memories.
The New Yorker had unbent a mite like he was going to see the mad
adventure through at all costs, though still plainly worried about the
dinner check. Ben now said that they two ought to found a New York club.
He said there was all other kinds of clubs here--Ohio clubs and Southern
clubs and Nebraska societies and Michigan circles and so on, that give
large dinners every year, so why shouldn't there be a New York club;
maybe they could scare up three or four others that was born here if
they advertised. It would of course be the smallest club in the city or
in the whole world for that matter. The New Yorker was kind of cold
toward this. It must of sounded like the scheme to get money out of him
that he'd been expecting all along. Then the waiter brought the check,
during another shadow number with red and purple lights, and this lad
pulled out a change purse and said in a feeble voice that he supposed we
was all paying share and share alike and would the waiter kindly figure
out what his share was. Ben didn't even hear him. He peeled a large
bill off a roll that made his new suit a bad fit in one place and he
left a five on the plate when the change come. The watchful New Yorker
now made his first full-hearted speech of the evening. He said that Ben
was foolish not to of added up the check to see if it was right, and
that half a dollar tip would of been ample for the waiter. Ben pretended
not to hear this either, and started again on the dear old times. I says
to myself I guess this one is a real New Yorker all right.
Lon Prince now says what's the matter with going to some corking good
show because nothing good has come to Red Gap since the Parisian Blond
Widows over a year ago and he's eager for entertainment. Ben says "Fine!
And here's the wise boy that will steer us right. I bet he knows every
show in town."
The New Yorker says he does and has just the play in mind for us, one
that he had meant to see himself this very night because it has been
endorsed by the drama league of which he is a regular member. Well, that
sounded important, so Ben says "What did I tell you? Ain't we lucky to
have a good old New Yorker to put us right on shows our first night out.
We might have wasted our evening on a dead one."
So we're all delighted and go out and get in a couple of taxicabs, Ben
and this city man going in the first one. When ours gets to the theatre
Ben is paying the driver while the New Yorker feebly protests that he
ought to pay his half of the bill, but Ben don't hear him and don't hear
him again when he wants to pay for his own seat in the theatre. I got
my first suspicion of this guy right there; for a genuine New Yorker he
was too darned conscientious about paying his mere share of everything.
You can say lots of things about New Yorkers, but all that I've ever met
have been keenly and instantly sensitive to the presence of a determined
buyer. Still I didn't think so much about it at that moment. This one
looked the part all right, with his slim clothes and his natty cloth hat
and the thin gold cigarette case held gracefully open. Then we get into
the theatre. Of course Ben had bought a box, that being the only place,
he says, that a gentleman can set, owing to the skimpy notions of
theatre-seat builders. And we was all prepared for a merry evening at
this entertainment which the wise New Yorker would be sure to know was a
good one.
But that curtain hadn't been up three minutes before I get my next shock
of disbelief about this well-known club man. You know what a good play
means in New York: a rattling musical comedy with lively songs, a tenor
naval lieutenant in a white uniform, some real funny comedians, and a
lot of girls without their stockings on, and so forth. Any one that
thinks of a play in New York thinks of that, don't he? And what do we
get here and now? Why, we get a gruesome thing about a ruined home with
the owner going bankrupt over the telephone that's connected with Wall
Street, and a fluffy wife that has a magnetic gentleman friend in a
sport suit, and a lady crook that has had husband in her toils, only he
sees it all now, and tears and strangulations and divorce, and a
faithful old butler that suffers keenly and would go on doing it without
a cent of wages if he could only bring every one together again, and a
shot up in the bathroom or somewhere and gripping moments and so
forth--I want to tell you we was all painfully shocked by this break of
the knowing New Yorker. We could hardly believe it was true during the
first act. Jeff Tuttle kept wanting to know when the girls was coming
on, and didn't they have a muscle dancer in the piece. Ben himself was
highly embarrassed and even suspicious for a minute. He looks at the New
Yorker sharply and says ain't that a crocheted necktie he's wearing, and
the New Yorker says it is and was made for him by his aunt. But Ben
ain't got the heart to question him any further. He puts away his base
suspicions and tries to get the New Yorker to tell us all about what a
good play this is so we'll feel more entertained. So the lad tells us
the leading woman is a sterling actress of legitimate methods--all too
hard to find in this day of sensationalism, and the play is a triumph of
advanced realism written by a serious student of the drama that is
trying to save our stage from commercial degradation. He explained a lot
about the lesson of the play. Near as I could make out the lesson was
that divorce, nowadays, is darned near as uncertain as marriage itself.
"The husband," explains the lad kindly, "is suspected by his wife to
have been leading a double life, though of course he was never guilty of
more than an indiscretion--"
Jake Berger here exploded rudely into speech again. "Thai wife is
leading a double chin," says Jake.
"Say, people," says Lon Price, "mebbe it ain't too late to go to a show
this evening."
But the curtain went up for the second act and nobody had the nerve to
escape. There continued to be low murmurs of rebellion, just the same,
and we all lost track of this here infamy that was occurring on the
stage.
"I'm sure going to beat it in one minute," says Jeff Tuttle, "if one of
'em don't exclaim: 'Oh, girls, here comes the little dancer!'"
"I know a black-face turn that could put this show on its feet," says
Lon Price, "and that Waldo in the sport suit ain't any real reason why
wives leave home--you can't tell me!"
"I dare say this leading woman needs a better vehicle," says the New
Yorker in a hoarse whisper.
"I dare say it, too," says Jeff Tuttle in a still hoarser whisper. "A
better vehicle! She needs a motor truck, and I'd order one quick if I
thought she'd take it."
Of course this was not refined of Jeff. The New Yorker winced and loyal
Ben glares at all of us that has been muttering, so we had to set there
till the curtain went down on the ruined home where all was lost save
honour--and looking like that would have to go, too, in the next act.
But Ben saw it wasn't safe to push us any further so he now said this
powerful play was too powerful for a bunch of low-brows like us and we
all rushed out into the open air. Everybody cheered up a lot when we got
there--seeing the nice orderly street traffic without a gripping moment
in it. Lon Price said it was too late to go to a theatre, so what could
we do to pass the time till morning? Ben says he has a grand idea and we
can carry it out fine with this New York man to guide us. His grand idea
is that we all go down on the Bowery and visit tough dives where the
foul creatures of the underworld consort and crime happens every minute
or two. We was still mad enough about that play to like the idea. A good
legitimate murder would of done wonders for our drooping spirits. So Ben
puts it up to the New Yorker and he says yes, he knows a vicious resort
on the Bowery, but we'd ought to have a detective from central office
along to protect us from assault. Ben says not at all--no
detective--unless the joints has toughened up a lot since he used to
infest 'em, and we all said we'd take a chance, so again we was in
taxicabs. Us four in the second cab was now highly cynical about Ben's
New Yorker. The general feeling was that sooner or later he would sink
the ship.
Then we reach the dive he has picked out; a very dismal dive with a room
back of the bar that had a few tables and a piano in it and a
sweet-singing waiter. He was singing a song about home and mother, that
in mem-o-ree he seemed to see, when we got to our table. A very gloomy
and respectable haunt of vice it was, indeed. There was about a dozen
male and female creatures of the underworld present sadly enjoying this
here ballad and scowling at us for talking when we come in.
Jake Berger ordered, though finding you couldn't get stingers here and
having to take two miner's inches of red whiskey, and the New Yorker
begun to warn us in low tones that we was surrounded by danger on every
hand--that we'd better pour our drink on the floor because it would be
drugged, after which we would be robbed if not murdered and thrown out
into the alley where we would then be arrested by grafting policemen.
Even Ben was shocked by this warning. He asks the New Yorker again if he
is sure he was born in the old town, and the lad says honest he was and
has been living right here all these years in the same house he was born
in. Ben is persuaded by these words and gives the singing waiter a five
and tells him to try and lighten the gloom with a few crimes of violence
or something. The New Yorker continued to set stiff in his chair, one
hand on his watch and one on the pocket where his change purse was that
he'd tried to pay his share of the taxicabs out of.
The gloom-stricken piano player now rattled off some ragtime and the
depraved denizens about us got sadly up and danced to it. Say, it was
the most formal and sedate dancing you ever see, with these gun men
holding their guilty partners off at arm's length and their faces all
drawn down in lines of misery. They looked like they might be a bunch of
strict Presbyterians that had resolved to throw all moral teaching to
the winds for one purple moment let come what might. I want to tell you
these depraved creatures of the underworld was darned near as depressing
as that play had been. Even the second round of drinks didn't liven us
up none because the waiter threw down his cigarette and sung another
tearful song. This one was about a travelling man going into a gilded
cabaret and ordering a port wine and a fair young girl come out to sing
in short skirts that he recognized to be his boyhood's sweetheart Nell;
so he sent a waiter to ask her if she had forgot the song she once did
sing at her dear old mother's knee, or knees, and she hadn't forgot it
and proved she hadn't, because the chorus was "Nearer My God to Thee"
sung to ragtime; then the travelling man said she must be good and pure,
so come on let's leave this place and they'd be wed.
Yes, sir; that's what Ben had got for his five, so this time he give the
waiter a twenty not to sing any more at all. The New Yorker was
horrified at the sight of a man giving away money, but it was well spent
and we begun to cheer up a little. Ben told the New Yorker about the
time his dog team won the All Alaska Sweepstake Race, two hundred and
six miles from Nome to Candle and back, the time being 76 hours, 16
minutes, and 28 seconds, and showed him the picture of his lead dog
pasted in the back of his watch. And Jake Berger got real gabby at last
and told the story about the old musher going up the White Horse Trail
in a blizzard and meeting the Bishop, only he didn't know it was the
Bishop. And the Bishop says, "How's the trail back of you, my friend?"
and the old musher just swore with the utmost profanity for three
straight minutes. Then he says to the Bishop, "And what's it like back
of you?" and the Bishop says, "Just like that!" Jake here got
embarrassed from talking so much and ordered another round of this
squirrel poison we was getting, and Jeff Tuttle begun his imitation of
the Sioux squaw with a hare lip reciting "Curfew Shall Not Ring
To-night." It was a pretty severe ordeal for the rest of us, but we was
ready to endure much if it would make this low den seem more homelike.
Only when Jeff got about halfway through the singing waiter comes up,
greatly shocked, and says none of that in here because they run an
orderly place, and we been talking too loud anyway. This waiter had a
skull exactly like a picture of one in a book I got that was dug up
after three hundred thousand years and the scientific world couldn't
ever agree whether it was an early man or a late ape. I decided I didn't
care to linger in a place where a being with a head like this could pass
on my diversions and offenses so I made a move to go. Jeff Tuttle says
to this waiter, "Fie, fie upon you, Roscoe! We shall go to some
respectable place where we can loosen up without being called for it."
The waiter said he was sorry, but the Bowery wasn't Broadway. And the
New Yorker whispered that it was just as well because we was lucky to
get out of this dive with our lives and property--and even after that
this anthropoid waiter come hurrying out to the taxis after us with my
fur piece and my solid gold vanity-box that I'd left behind on a chair.
This was a bitter blow to all of us after we'd been led to hope for
outrages of an illegal character. The New Yorker was certainly making a
misdeal every time he got the cards. None of us trusted him any more,
though Ben was still loyal and sensitive about him, like he was an only
child and from birth had not been like other children.
The lad now wanted to steer us into an Allied Bazaar that would still be
open, because he'd promised to sell twenty tickets to it and had 'em on
him untouched. But we shut down firmly on this. Even Ben was firm. He
said the last bazaar he'd survived was their big church fair in Nome
that lasted two nights and one day and the champagne booth alone took in
six thousand dollars, and even the beer booth took in something like
twelve hundred, and he didn't feel equal to another affair like that
just yet.
So we landed uptown at a very swell joint full of tables and orchestras
around a dancing floor and more palms--which is the national flower of
New York--and about eighty or a hundred slightly inebriated débutantes
and well-known Broadway social favourites and their gentlemen friends.
And here everything seemed satisfactory at last, except to the New
Yorker who said that the prices would be something shameful. However, no
one was paying any attention to him by now. None of us but Ben cared a
hoot where he had been born and most of us was sorry he had been at all.
Jake Berger bought a table for ten dollars, which was seven more than it
had ever cost the owner, and Ben ordered stuff for us, including a
vintage champagne that the price of stuck out far enough beyond other
prices on the wine list, and a porterhouse steak, family style, for
himself, and everything seemed on a sane and rational basis again. It
looked as if we might have a little enjoyment during the evening after
all. It was a good lively place, with all these brilliant society people
mingling up in the dance in a way that would of got 'em thrown out of
that gangsters' haunt on the Bowery. Lon Price said he'd never witnessed
so many human shoulder blades in his whole history and Jeff Tuttle sent
off a lot of picture cards of this here ballroom or saloon that a waiter
give him. The one he sent Egbert Floud showed the floor full of
beautiful reckless women in the dance and prominent society matrons
drinking highballs, and Jeff wrote on it, "This is my room; wish you was
here." Jeff was getting right into the spirit of this bohemian night
life; you could tell that. Lon Price also. In ten minutes Lon had made
the acquaintance of a New York social leader at the next table and was
dancing with her in an ardent or ribald manner before Ben had finished
his steak.
I now noticed that the New Yorker was looking at his gun-metal watch
about every two minutes with an expression of alarm. Jake Berger noticed
it, too, and again leaned heavily on the conversation. "Not keeping you
up, are we?" says Jake. And this continual watch business must of been
getting on Ben's nerves, too, for now, having fought his steak to a
finish, he says to his little guest that they two should put up their
watches and match coins for 'em. The New Yorker was suspicious right off
and looked Ben's watch over very carefully when Ben handed it to him. It
was one of these thin gold ones that can be had any place for a hundred
dollars and up. You could just see that New Yorker saying to himself,
"So this is their game, is it?" But he works his nerve up to take a
chance and gets a two-bit piece out of his change purse and they match.
Ben wins the first time, which was to of settled it, but Ben says right
quick that of course he had meant the best two out of three, which the
New Yorker doesn't dispute for a minute, and they match again and Ben
wins that, too, so there's nothing to do but take the New Yorker's watch
away from him. He removes it carefully off a leather fob with a gilt
acorn on it and hands it slowly to Ben. It was one of these extra
superior dollar watches that cost three dollars. The New Yorker looked
very stung, indeed. You could hear him saying to himself, "Serves me
right for gambling with a stranger!" Ben feels these suspicions and is
hurt by 'em so he says to Jeff, just to show the New Yorker he's an
honest sport, that he'll stake his two watches against Jeff's solid
silver watch that he won in a bucking contest in 1890. Jeff says he's
on; so they match and Ben wins again, now having three watches. Then Lon
Price comes back from cavorting with this amiable jade of the younger
dancing set at the next table and Ben makes him put up his gold
seven-jewelled hunting-case watch against the three and Ben wins again,
now having four watches.
Lon says "Easy come, easy go!" and moves over to the next table again to
help out with the silver bucket of champagne he's ordered, taking Jeff
Tuttle with him to present to his old friends that he's known for all of
twenty minutes. The New Yorker is now more suspicious then ever of Ben;
his wan beauty is marred by a cynical smile and his hair has come
unglued in a couple of places. Ben is more sensitive than ever to these
suspicions of his new pal so he calls on Jake Berger to match his watch
against the four. Jake takes out his split-second repeater and him and
Ben match coins and this time Ben is lucky enough to lose, thereby
showing his dear old New Yorker that he ain't a crook after all. But the
New Yorker still looks very shrewd and robbed and begins to gulp the
champagne in a greedy manner. You can hear him calling Jake a
confederate. Jake sees it plain enough, that the lad thinks he's been
high-graded, so he calls over our waiter and crowds all five watches
onto him. "Take these home to the little ones," says Jake, and dismisses
the matter from his mind by putting a wine glass up to his ear and
listening into it with a rapt expression that shows he's hearing the
roar of the ocean up on Alaska's rockbound coast.
The New Yorker is a mite puzzled by this, but I can see it don't take
him long to figure out that the waiter is also a confederate. Anyway,
he's been robbed of his watch forever and falls to the champagne again
very eager and moody. It was plain he didn't know what a high-powered
drink he was trifling with. And Ben was moody, too, by now. He quit
recalling old times and sacred memories to the New Yorker. If the latter
had tried to break up the party by leaving at this point I guess Ben
would of let him go. But he didn't try; he just set there soggily
drinking champagne to drown the memory of his lost watch. And pretty
soon Ben has to order another quart of this twelve-dollar beverage. The
New Yorker keeps right on with the new bottle, daring it to do its worst
and it does; he was soon speaking out of a dense fog when he spoke at
all.
With his old pal falling into this absent mood Ben throws off his own
depression and mingles a bit with the table of old New York families
where Lon Price is now paying the checks. They was the real New Yorkers;
they'd never had a moment's distrust of Lon after he ordered the first
time and told the waiter to keep the glasses brimming. Jeff Tuttle was
now dancing in an extreme manner with a haggard society bud aged
thirty-five, and only Jake and me was left at our table. We didn't count
the New Yorker any longer; he was merely raising his glass to his lips
at regular intervals. He moved something like an automatic chess player
I once saw. The time passed rapidly for a couple hours more, with Jake
Berger keeping up his ceaseless chatter as usual. He did speak once,
though, after an hour's silence. He said in an audible tone that the New
Yorker was a human hangnail, no matter where he was born.
And so the golden moments flitted by, with me watching the crazy crowd,
until they began to fall away and the waiters was piling chairs on the
naked tables at the back of the room. Then with some difficulty we
wrenched Ben and Lon and Jeff from the next table and got out into the
crisp air of dawn. The New Yorker was now sunk deep in a trance and just
stood where he was put, with his hat on the wrong way. The other boys
had cheered up a lot owing to their late social career. Jeff Tuttle said
it was all nonsense about its being hard to break into New York society,
because look what he'd done in one brief evening without trying--and he
flashed three cards on which telephone numbers is written in dainty
feminine hands. He said if a modest and retiring stranger like himself
could do that much, just think what an out-and-out social climber might
achieve!
Right then I was ready to call it an absorbing and instructive evening
and get to bed. But no! Ben Sutton at sight of his now dazed New Yorker
has resumed his brooding and suddenly announces that we must all make a
pilgrimage to West Ninth Street and romantically view his old home which
his father told him to get out of twenty-five years ago, and which we
can observe by the first tender rays of dawn. He says he has been having
precious illusions shattered all evening, but this will be a holy moment
that nothing can queer--not even a born New Yorker that hasn't made the
grade and is at this moment so vitrified that he'd be a mere glass crash
if some one pushed him over.
I didn't want to go a bit. I could see that Jeff Tuttle would soon begin
dragging a hip, and the streets at that hour was no place for Lon Price,
with his naturally daring nature emphasized, as it were, from drinking
this here imprisoned laughter of the man that owned the joint we had
just left. But Ben was pleading in a broken voice for one sight of the
old home with its boyhood memories clustering about its modest front and
I was afraid he'd get to crying, so I give in wearily and we was once
more encased in taxicabs and on our way to the sacred scene. Ben had
quite an argument with the drivers when he give 'em the address. They
kept telling him there wasn't a thing open down there, but he finally
got his aim understood. The New Yorker's petrified remains was carefully
tucked into the cab with Ben.
And Ben suffered another cruel blow at the end of the ride. He climbed
out of the cab in a reverent manner, hoping to be overcome by the sight
of the cherished old home, and what did he find? He just couldn't
believe it at first. The dear old house had completely disappeared and
in its place was a granite office building eighteen stories high. Ben
just stood off and looked up at it, too overcome for words. Up near the
top a monster brass sign in writing caught the silver light of dawn. The
sign sprawled clear across the building and said PANTS EXCLUSIVELY.
Still above this was the firm's name in the same medium--looking like a
couple of them hard-lettered towns that get evacuated up in Poland.
Poor stricken Ben looked in silence a long time. We all felt his
suffering and kept silent, too. Even Jeff Tuttle kept still--who all the
way down had been singing about old Bill Bailey who played the Ukelele
in Honolulu Town. It was a solemn moment. After a few more minutes of
silent grief Ben drew himself together and walked off without saying a
word. I thought walking would be a good idea for all of us, especially
Lon and Jeff, so Jake paid the taxi drivers and we followed on foot
after the chief mourner. The fragile New Yorker had been exhumed and
placed in an upright position and he walked, too, when he understood
what was wanted of him; he didn't say a word, just did what was told him
like one of these boys that the professor hypnotizes on the stage. I
herded the bunch along about half a block back of Ben, feeling it was
delicate to let him wallow alone in his emotions.
We got over to Broadway, turned up that, and worked on through that
dinky little grass plot they call a square, kind of aimless like and
wondering where Ben in his grief would lead us. The day was well begun
by this time and the passing cars was full of very quiet people on their
way to early work. Jake Berger said these New Yorkers would pay for it
sooner or later, burning the candle at both ends this way--dancing all
night and then starting off to work.
Then up a little way we catch sight of a regular old-fashioned horse-car
going crosstown. Ben has stopped this and is talking excitedly to the
driver so we hurry up and find he's trying to buy the car from the
driver. Yes, sir; he says its the last remnant of New York when it was
little and old and he wants to take it back to Nome as a souvenir.
Anybody might of thought he'd been drinking. He's got his roll out and
wants to pay for the car right there. The driver is a cold-looking old
boy with gray chin whiskers showing between his cap and his comforter
and he's indignantly telling Ben it can't be done. By the time we get
there the conductor has come around and wants to know what they're
losing all this time for. He also says they can't sell Ben the car and
says further that we'd all better go home and sleep it off, so Ben hands
'em each a ten spot, the driver lets off his brake, and the old ark
rattles on while Ben's eyes is suffused with a suspicious moisture, as
they say.
Ben now says we must stand right on this corner to watch these cars go
by--about once every hour. We argued with him whilst we shivered in the
bracing winelike air, but Ben was stubborn. We might of been there yet
if something hadn't diverted him from this evil design. It was a string
of about fifty Italians that just then come out of a subway entrance.
They very plainly belonged to the lower or labouring classes and I
judged they was meant for work on the up-and-down street we stood on,
that being already torn up recklessly till it looked like most other
streets in the same town. They stood around talking in a delirious or
Italian manner till their foreman unlocked a couple of big piano boxes.
Out of these they took crowbars, axes, shovels, and other instruments of
their calling. Ben Sutton has been standing there soddenly waiting for
another dear old horse-car to come by, but suddenly he takes notice of
these bandits with the tools and I see an evil gleam come into his tired
eyes. He assumes a businesslike air, struts over to the foreman of the
bunch, and has some quick words with him, making sweeping motions of the
arm up and down the cross street where the horse-cars run. After a
minute of this I'm darned if the whole bunch didn't scatter out and
begin to tear up the pavement along the car-track on this cross street.
Ben tripped back to us looking cheerful once more.
"They wouldn't sell me the car," he says, "so I'm going to take back a
bunch of the dear old rails. They'll be something to remind me of the
dead past. Just think! I rode over those very rails when I was a tot."
We was all kind of took back at this, and I promptly warned Ben that
we'd better beat it before we got pinched. But Ben is confident. He says
no crime could be safer in New York than setting a bunch of Italians to
tearing up a street-car track; that no one could ever possibly suspect
it wasn't all right, though he might have to be underhanded to some
extent in getting his souvenir rails hauled off. He said he had told the
foreman that he was the contractor's brother and had been sent with this
new order and the foreman had naturally believed it, Ben looking like a
rich contractor himself.
And there they was at work, busy as beavers, gouging up the very last
remnant of little old New York when it was that. Ben rubbed his hands in
ecstasy and pranced up and down watching 'em for awhile. Then he went
over and told the foreman there'd be extra pay for all hands if they got
a whole block tore up by noon, because this was a rush job. Hundreds of
people was passing, mind you, including a policeman now and then, but no
one took any notice of a sight so usual. All the same the rest of us
edged north about half a block, ready to make a quick getaway. Ben kept
telling us we was foolishly scared. He offered to bet any one in the
party ten to one in thousands that he could switch his gang over to
Broadway and have a block of that track up before any one got wise.
There was no takers.
Ben was now so pleased with himself and his little band of faithful
workers that he even begun to feel kindly again toward his New Yorker
who was still standing in one spot with glazed eyes. He goes up and
tries to engage him in conversation, but the lad can't hear any more
than he can see. Ben's efforts, however, finally start him to muttering
something. He says it over and over to himself and at last we make out
what it is. He is saying: "I'd like to buy a little drink for the party
m'self."
"The poor creature is delirious," says Jake Berger.
But Ben slaps him on the back and tells him he's a good sport and he'll
give him a couple of these rails to take to his old New York home; he
says they can be crossed over the mantel and will look very quaint. The
lad kind of shivered under Ben's hearty blow and seemed to struggle out
of his trance for a minute. His eyes unglazed and he looks around and
says how did he get here and where is it? Ben tells him he's among
friends and that they two are the only born New Yorkers left in the
world, and so on, when the lad reaches into the pocket of his natty
topcoat for a handkerchief and pulls out with it a string of funny
little tickets--about two feet of 'em. Ben grabs these up with a strange
look in his eyes.
"Bridge tickets!" he yells. Then he grabs his born New Yorker by the
shoulders and shakes him still further out of dreamland.
"What street in New York is your old home on?" he demands savagely. The
lad blinks his fishy eyes and fixes his hat on that Ben has shook loose.
"Cranberry Street," says he.
"Cranberry Street! Hell, that's Brooklyn, and you claimed New York,"
says Ben, shaking the hat loose again.
"Greater New York," says the lad pathetically, and pulls his hat firmly
down over his ears.
Ben looked at the imposter with horror in his eyes. "Brooklyn!" he
muttered--"the city of the unburied dead! So that was the secret of your
strange behaviour? And me warming you in my bosom, you viper!"
But the crook couldn't hear him again, haying lapsed into his trance and
become entirely rigid and foolish. In the cold light of day his face now
looked like a plaster cast of itself. Ben turned to us with a hunted
look. "Blow after blow has fallen upon me to-night," he says tearfully,
"but this is the most cruel of all. I can't believe in anything after
this. I can't even believe them street-car rails are the originals.
Probably they were put down last week."
"Then let's get out of this quick," I says to him. "We been exposing
ourselves to arrest here long enough for a bit of false sentiment on
your part."
"I gladly go," says Ben, "but wait one second." He stealthily approaches
the Greater New Yorker and shivers him to wakefulness with another
hearty wallop on the back. "Listen carefully," says Ben as the lad
struggles out of the dense fog. "Do you see those workmen tearing up
that car-track?"
"Yes, I see it," says the lad distinctly. "I've often seen it."
"Very well. Listen to me and remember your life may hang on it. You go
over there and stand right by them till they get that track up and don't
you let any one stop them. Do you hear? Stand right there and make them
work, and if a policeman or any one tries to make trouble you soak him.
Remember! I'm leaving those men in your charge. I shall hold you
personally responsible for them."
The lad doesn't say a word but begins to walk in a brittle manner toward
the labourers. We saw him stop and point a threatening finger at them,
then instantly freeze once more. It was our last look at him. We got
everybody on a north-bound car with some trouble. Lon Price had gone to
sleep standing up and Jeff Tuttle, who was now looking like the society
burglar after a tough night's work at his trade, was getting turbulent
and thirsty. He didn't want to ride on a common street car. "I want a
tashicrab," he says, "and I want to go back to that Louis Château room
and dance the tangle." But we persuaded him and got safe up to a
restaurant on Sixth Avenue where breakfast was had by all without
further adventure. Jeff strongly objected to this restaurant at first,
though, because he couldn't hear an orchestra in it. He said he couldn't
eat his breakfast without an orchestra. He did, however, ordering apple
pie and ice cream and a gin fizz to come. Lon Price was soon sleeping
like a tired child over his ham and eggs, and Jeff went night-night,
too, before his second gin fizz arrived.
Ben ordered a porterhouse steak, family style, consuming it in a moody
rage like a man that has been ground-sluiced at every turn. He said he
felt like ending it all and sometimes wished he'd been in the cab that
plunged into one of the forty-foot holes in Broadway a couple of nights
before. Jake Berger had ordered catfish and waffles, with a glass of
Invalid port. He burst into speech once more, too. He said the nights in
New York were too short to get much done. That if they only had nights
as long as Alaska the town might become famous. "As it is," he says, "I
don't mind flirting with this city now and then, but I wouldn't want to
marry it."
Well, that about finished the evening, with Lon and Jeff making the room
sound like a Pullman palace car at midnight. Oh, yes; there was one
thing more. On the day after the events recorded in the last chapter, as
it says in novels, there was a piece in one of the live newspapers
telling that a well-dressed man of thirty-five, calling himself Clifford
J. Hotchkiss and giving a Brooklyn address, was picked up in a dazed
condition by patrolman Cohen who had found him attempting to direct the
operations of a gang of workmen engaged in repairing a crosstown-car
track. He had been sent to the detention ward of Bellevue to await
examination as to his sanity, though insisting that he was the victim
of a gang of footpads who had plied him with liquor and robbed him of
his watch. I showed the piece to Ben Sutton and Ben sent him up a pillow
of forget-me-nots with "Rest" spelled on it--without the sender's card.
No; not a word in it about the street-car track being wrongfully tore
up. I guess it was like Ben said; no one ever would find out about that
in New York. My lands! here it is ten-thirty and I got to be on the job
when them hayers start to-morrow A.M. A body would think I hadn't a care
on earth when I get started on anecdotes of my past.