"Stole a street-car track," I muttered desperately.
"The typical New Yorker, like they call him, was born in Haverhill, Ma.s.sachusetts, and sleeps in New Roch.e.l.le, 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 cla.s.sy 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 pa.s.sing 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 gla.s.s 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 b.a.l.l.s 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 gla.s.s 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 tr.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 enc.u.mbered 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 embarra.s.sed 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 t.i.tled 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-gla.s.s window, walking blindly ahead at the same time. That"s the difference between the s.e.xes in front of a plate-gla.s.s 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 Chateau 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 n.o.bby 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 c.o.c.kroach. 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 a.s.sured 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 embarra.s.sed 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 n.o.body 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 hoa.r.s.e whisper.
"I dare say it, too," says Jeff Tuttle in a still hoa.r.s.er 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sault. 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.