THE BIG TOWN
When Clay stepped from the express into the Pennsylvania Station he
wondered for a moment if there was a circus or a frontier-day show in
town. The shouts of the porters, the rush of men and women toward the
gates, the whirl and eddy of a vast life all about him, took him back
to the few hours he had spent in Chicago.
As he emerged at the Thirty-Fourth Street entrance New York burst upon
him with what seemed almost a threat. He could hear the roar of it
like a river rushing down a canon. Clay had faced a cattle stampede.
He had ridden out a blizzard hunched up with the drifting herd. He had
lived rough all his young and joyous life. But for a moment he felt a
chill drench at his heart that was almost dread. He did not know a
soul in this vast populace. He was alone among seven or eight million
crazy human beings.
He had checked his suitcase to be free to look about. He had no
destination and was in no hurry. All the day was before him, all of
many days. He drifted down the street and across to Sixth Avenue. He
clung to the safety of one of the L posts as the traffic surged past.
The clang of surface cars and the throb of motors filled the air
constantly. He wondered at the daring of a pink-cheeked slip of a girl
driving an automobile with sure touch through all this tangle of
traffic. While he waited to plunge across the street there came a roar
overhead that reminded him again of a wall of water he had once heard
tearing down a canon in his home land.
Instinctively one arm clutched at the post. A monster went flying
through the air with a horrible, grinding menace. It was only the
Elevated on its way uptown. Clay looked around in whimsical admiration
of the hurrying people about him. None of them seemed aware either of
the noise or the crush of vehicles. They went on their preoccupied way
swiftly and surely.
"I never did see such a town, and me just hittin' the fringes of it
yet," Clay moaned aloud in comic despair, unaware that even New York
has no noisier street than Sixth Avenue.
Chance swept him up Sixth to Herald Square. He was caught in the river
of humanity that races up Broadway. His high-heeled boots clicked on
the pavement of one of the world's great thoroughfares as far as
Forty-Second Street. Under the shadow of the Times Building he stopped
to look about him. Motor-cars, street-cars, and trucks rolled past in
endless confusion. Every instant the panorama shifted, yet it was
always the same. He wondered where all this rush of people was going.
What crazy impulses sent them surging to and fro? And the girls--Clay
surrendered to them at discretion. He had not supposed there were so
many pretty, well-dressed girls in the world.
"I reckon money grows on trees in New York," he told himself aloud with
a grin.
Broadway fascinated him. He followed it uptown toward Longacre Circle.
The street was as usual in a state of chronic excavation. His foot
slipped and he fell into a trench while trying to cross. When he
emerged it was with a pound or two of Manhattan mud on his corduroy
suit. He looked at himself again with a sense that his garb did not
quite measure up to New York standards.
"First off I'm goin' to get me a real city suit of clothes," he
promised himself. "This here wrinkled outfit is some too woolly for
the big town. It's a good suit yet--'most as good as when I bought it
at the Boston Store in Tucson three years ago. But I reckon I'll save
it to go home in."
To a policeman directing traffic at a crossing he applied for
information.
"Can you tell me where there's a dry-goods store in this man's town?"
he asked. "I fell into this here Broadway and got kinda messed up."
"Watchawant?"
"Suit o' clothes."
The traffic cop sized him up in one swift glance. "Siventh Avenue," he
said, and pointed in that direction.
Clay took his advice. He stopped in front of a store above which was
the legend "I. Bernstein, Men's Garments." A small man with sharp
little eyes and well-defined nose was standing in the doorway.
"Might you would want a good suit of qvality clothes, my friendt," he
suggested.
"You've pegged me right," agreed the Westerner with his ready smile.
"Lead me to it."
Mr. Bernstein personally conducted his customer to the suit department.
"I wait on you myself on account you was a stranger to the city," he
explained.
The little man took a suit from a rack and held it at arm's length to
admire it. His fingers caressed the woof of it lovingly. He evidently
could bring himself to part with it only after a struggle.
"Worsted. Fine goods." He leaned toward the range-rider and whispered
a secret. "Imported."
Clay shook his head. "Not what I want." His eyes ranged the racks.
"This is more my notion of the sort of thing I like." He pointed to a
blue serge with a little stripe in the pattern.
The eyes of Mr. Bernstein marveled at the discrimination of his
customer. "If you had taken an advice from me, it would have been to
buy that suit. A man gets a chance at a superior garment like that,
understan' me, only once in a while occasionally."
"How much?" asked Lindsay.
The dealer was too busy to hear this crass question. That suit, Clay
gathered, had been the pride of his heart ever since he had seen it
first. He detached the coat lovingly from the hanger and helped his
customer into it. Then he fell back, eyes lit with enthusiastic
amazement. Only fate could have brought together this man and this
suit, so manifestly destined for each other since the hour when Eve
began to patch up fig leaves for Adam.
"Like a coat of paint," he murmured aloud.
The cowpuncher grinned. He understood the business that went with
selling a suit in some stores. But it happened that he liked this suit
himself. "How much?" he repeated.
The owner of the store dwelt on the merits of the suit, its style, its
durability, the perfect fit. He covered his subject with artistic
thoroughness. Then, reluctantly, he confided in a whisper the price at
which he was going to sacrifice this suit among suits.
"To you, my friendt, I make this garment for only sixty-five dollars."
He added another secret detail. "Below wholesale cost."
A little devil of mirth lit in Lindsay's eye. "I'd hate to have you
rob yoreself like that. And me a perfect stranger to you too."
"Qvality, y' understan' me. Which a man must got to live garments like
I done to appreciate such a suit. All wool. Every thread of it.
Unshrinkable. This is a qvality town. If you want the best it costs a
little more, but you got anyhow a suit which a man might be married in
without shame, understan' me."
The Arizonan backed off in apparent alarm. "Say, is this a weddin'
garment you're onload'n' on me? Do I have to sashay down a church
aisle and promise I do?"
Mr. Bernstein explained that this was not obligatory. All he meant was
that the suit was good enough to be married in, or for that matter to
be buried in.
"Or to be born anew in when Billy Sunday comes to town and I hit the
sawdust trail," suggested the purchaser.
Mr. Bernstein caressed it again. "One swell piece of goods," he told
himself softly, almost with tears in his eyes.
"All wool, you say?" asked Clay, feeling the texture. He had made up
his mind to buy it, though he thought the price a bit stiff.
Mr. Bernstein protested on his honor that there was not a thread of
cotton in it. "Which you could take it from me that when I sell a suit
of clothes it is like I am dealing with my own brother," he added.
"Every garment out of this store takes my personal guarantee."
Clay tried on the trousers and looked at himself in the glass. So far
as he could tell he looked just like any other New Yorker.
The dealer leaned forward and spoke in a whisper. Apparently he was
ashamed of his softness of heart. "Fifty-five dollars--to you."
"I'll take it," the Westerner said.
The clothier called his tailor from the rear of the store to make an
adjustment in the trousers. Meanwhile he deftly removed the tags which
told him in cipher that the suit had cost him just eleven dollars and
seventy-five cents.
Half an hour later Clay sat on top of a Fifth-Avenue bus which was
jerking its way uptown. His shoes were shined to mirror brightness.
He was garbed in a blue serge suit with a little stripe running through
the pattern. That suit just now was the apple of his eye. It proved
him a New Yorker and not a wild man from the Arizona desert.