Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and Other Writings About New York (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (28 page)

As the servant skated forth on his errand, Mr. Whitney fell in a death-like swoon, unnoticed, as the company thronged about the adroit, the brave Erroll Van Dyck Strathmore. “Bravo, old man, you saved us!” “What skill, what diplomacy!” “Egad, but you have courage!”

Suddenly the clock noted the time of ten minutes after twelve. Mr. Depew sprang to his feet. A broad smile illuminated his face.

“Say, fellows, the other day—” But he was surrounded by slumbering figures. His smile changed then to a glare of bitter disappointment. In a burst of rage he hurled a champagne bottle at the clock and broke it to smithereens. Its cost was $4,675. He strode over to the ex-secretary. When Mr. Whitney had become aroused, the following conversation ensued:

“Say, Willie, what are we doing here?”

“I don’t know, Chauncey!”

“Well, let’s float,
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then!”

“Float it is, Chauncey!”

On the sidewalk they turned to regard each other.

“An antidote, Willie?”

“Well, I should say, Chauncey!”

They started on a hard run down the avenue.

AN EVENING, A NIGHT AND A MORNING WITH THOSE CAST OUT. THE TRAMP LIVES LIKE A KING BUT HIS ROYALTY, TO THE NOVITIATE, HAS DRAWBACKS OF SMELLS AND BUGS. LODGED WITH AN ASSASSIN. A WONDERFULLY VIVID PICTURE OF A STRANGE PHASE OF NEW YORK LIFE, WRITTEN FOR “THE PRESS” BY THE AUTHOR OF “MAGGIE.”

 

Two MEN STOOD REGARDING a tramp.

“I wonder how he feels,” said one, reflectively. “I suppose he is homeless, friendless, and has, at the most, only a few cents in his pocket. And if this is so, I wonder how he feels.”

The other being the elder, spoke with an air of authoritative wisdom. “You can tell nothing of it unless you are in that condition yourself. It is idle to speculate about it from this distance.”

“I suppose so,” said the younger man, and then he added as from an inspiration: “I think I’ll try it. Rags and tatters, you know, a couple of dimes, and hungry, too, if possible. Perhaps I could discover his point of view or something near it.”

“Well, you might,” said the other, and from those words begins this veracious narrative of an experiment in misery.

The youth went to the studio of an artist friend, who, from his store, rigged him out in an aged suit and a brown derby hat that had been made long years before. And then the youth went forth to try to eat as the tramp may eat, and sleep as the wanderers sleep. It was late at night, and a fine rain was swirling softly down, covering the pavements with a bluish luster. He began a weary trudge toward the downtown places, where beds can be hired for coppers. By the time he had reached City Hall Park he was so completely plastered with yells of “bum” and “hobo,” and with various unholy epithets that small boys had applied to him at intervals that he was in a state of profound dejection, and looked searchingly for an outcast of high degree that the two might share miseries. But the lights threw a quivering glare over rows and circles of deserted benches that glistened damply, showing patches of wet sod behind them. It seemed that their usual freights of sorry humanity had fled on this night to better things. There were only squads of well dressed Brooklyn people, who swarmed toward the Bridge.
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The young man loitered about for a time, and then went shuffling off down Park row.
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In the sudden descent in style of the dress of the crowd he felt relief. He began to see others whose tatters matched his tatters. In Chatham square
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there were aimless men strewn in front of saloons and lodging houses. He aligned himself with these men, and turned slowly to occupy himself with the pageantry of the street.

The mists of the cold and damp night made an intensely blue haze, through which the gaslights in the windows of stores and saloons shone with a golden radiance. The street cars rumbled softly, as if going upon carpet stretched in the aisle made by the pillars of the elevated road. Two interminable processions of people went along the wet pavements, spattered with black mud that made each shoe leave a scar-like impression. The high buildings lurked a-back, shrouded in shadows. Down a side street there were mystic curtains of purple and black, on which lamps dully glittered like embroidered flowers.

A saloon stood with a voracious air on a corner. A sign leaning against the front of the doorpost announced: “Free hot soup tonight.” The swing doors snapping to and fro like ravenous lips, made gratified smacks, as if the saloon were gorging itself with plump men.

Caught by the delectable sign, the young man allowed himself to be swallowed. A bartender placed a schooner of dark and portentous beer on the bar. Its monumental form up-reared until the froth a-top was above the crown of the young man’s brown derby.

“Soup over there, gents,” said the bartender, affably. A little yellow man in rags and the youth grasped their schooners and went with speed toward a lunch counter, where a man with oily but imposing whiskers ladled genially from a kettle until he had furnished his two mendicants with a soup that was steaming hot and in which there were little floating suggestions of chicken. The young man, sipping his broth, felt the cordiality expressed by the warmth of the mixture, and he beamed at the man with oily but imposing whiskers, who was presiding like a priest behind an altar. “Have some more, gents?” he inquired of the two sorry figures before him. The little yellow man accepted with a swift gesture, but the youth shook his head and went out, following a man whose wondrous seediness promised that he would have a knowledge of cheap lodging houses.

On the sidewalk he accosted the seedy man. “Say, do you know a cheap place t’ sleep?”

The other hesitated for a time, gazing sideways. Finally he nodded in the direction of up the street. “I sleep up there,” he said, “when I’ve got th’ price.”

“How much?”

“Ten cents.”

The young man shook his head dolefully. “That’s too rich for me.”

At that moment there approached the two a reeling man in strange garments. His head was a fuddle of bushy hair and whiskers from which his eyes peered with a guilty slant. In a close scrutiny it was possible to distinguish the cruel lines of a mouth, which looked as if its lips had just closed with satisfaction over some tender and piteous morsel. He appeared like an assassin steeped in crime performed awkwardly.

But at this time his voice was tuned to the coaxing key of an affectionate puppy. He looked at the men with wheedling eyes and began to sing a little melody for charity.

“Say, gents, can’t yeh give a poor feller a couple of cents t’ git a bed. Now, yeh know how a respecter’ble gentlem’n feels when he’s down on his luck an’ I—”

The seedy man, staring with imperturbable countenance at a train which clattered overhead, interrupted in an expressionless voice: “Ah, go t’ h—!”

But the youth spoke to the prayerful assassin in tones of astonishment and inquiry. “Say, you must be crazy! Why don’t yeh strike somebody that looks as if they had money?”

The assassin, tottering about on his uncertain legs, and at intervals brushing imaginary cobwebs from before his nose, entered into a long explanation of the psychology of the situation. It was so profound that it was unintelligible.

When he had exhausted the subject the young man said to him: “Let’s see th’ five cents.”

The assassin wore an expression of drunken woe at this sentence, filled with suspicion of him. With a deeply pained air he began to fumble in his clothing, his red hands trembling. Presently he announced in a voice of bitter grief, as if he had been betrayed: “There’s on’y four.”

“Four,” said the young man thoughtfully. “Well, look-a-here, I’m a stranger here, an’ if ye’ll steer me to your cheap joint I’ll find the other three.”

The assassin’s countenance became instantly radiant with joy. His whiskers quivered with the wealth of his alleged emotions. He seized the young man’s hand in a transport of delight and friendliness.

“B‘gawd,” he cried, “if ye’ll do that, b’gawd, I’d say yeh was a damned good feller, I would, an’ I’d remember yeh all m’ life, I would, b’ gawd, an’ if I ever got a chance I’d return th’ compliment” —he spoke with drunken dignity—“b’gawd, I’d treat yeh white, I would, an’ I’d allus remember yeh—”

The young man drew back, looking at the assassin coldly. “Oh, that’s all right,” he said. “You show me th’ joint—that’s all you’ve got t’ do.”

The assassin, gesticulating gratitude, led the young man along a dark street. Finally he stopped before a little dusty door. He raised his hand impressively. “Look-a-here,” he said, and there was a thrill of deep and ancient wisdom upon his face, “I’ve brought yeh here, an’ that’s my part, ain’t it? If th’ place don’t suit yeh yeh needn’t git mad at me, need yeh? There won’t be no bad feelin’, will there?”

“No,” said the young man.

The assassin waved his arm tragically and led the march up the steep stairway. On the way the young man furnished the assassin with three pennies. At the top a man with benevolent spectacles looked at them through a hole in the board. He collected their money, wrote some names on a register, and speedily was leading the two men along a gloom shrouded corridor.

Shortly after the beginning of this journey the young man felt his liver turn white, for from the dark and secret places of the building there suddenly came to his nostrils strange and unspeakable odors that assailed him like malignant diseases with wings. They seemed to be from human bodies closely packed in dens; the exhalations from a hundred pairs of reeking lips; the fumes from a thousand bygone debauches; the expression of a thousand present miseries.

A man, naked save for a little snuff colored undershirt, was parading sleepily along the corridor. He rubbed his eyes, and, giving vent to a prodigious yawn, demanded to be told the time.

“Half past one.”

The man yawned again. He opened a door, and for a moment his form was outlined against a black, opaque interior. To this door came the three men, and as it was again opened the unholy odors rushed out like released fiends, so that the young man was obliged to struggle as against an overpowering wind.

It was some time before the youth’s eyes were good in the intense gloom within, but the man with benevolent spectacles led him skillfully, pausing but a moment to deposit the limp assassin upon a cot. He took the youth to a cot that lay tranquilly by the window, and, showing him a tall locker for clothes that stood near the head with the ominous air of a tombstone, left him.

The youth sat on his cot and peered about him. There was a gas jet in a distant part of the room that burned a small flickering orange hued flame. It caused vast masses of tumbled shadows in all parts of the place, save where, immediately about it, there was a little gray haze. As the young man’s eyes became used to the darkness he could see upon the cots that thickly littered the floor the forms of men sprawled out, lying in deathlike silence or heaving and snoring with tremendous effort, like stabbed fish.

The youth locked his derby and his shoes in the mummy case near him and then lay down with his old and familiar coat around his shoulders. A blanket he handled gingerly, drawing it over part of the coat. The cot was leather covered and cold as melting snow. The youth was obliged to shiver for some time on this affair, which was like a slab. Presently, however, his chill gave him peace, and during this period of leisure from it he turned his head to stare at his friend, the assassin, whom he could dimly discern where he lay sprawled on a cot in the abandon of a man filled with drink. He was snoring with incredible vigor. His wet hair and beard dimly glistened and his inflamed nose shone with subdued luster like a red light in a fog.

Within reach of the youth’s hand was one who lay with yellow breast and shoulders bare to the cold drafts. One arm hung over the side of the cot and the fingers lay full length upon the wet cement floor of the room. Beneath the inky brows could be seen the eyes of the man exposed by the partly opened lids. To the youth it seemed that he and this corpse-like being were exchanging a prolonged stare and that the other threatened with his eyes. He drew back, watching this neighbor from the shadows of his blanket edge. The man did not move once through the night, but lay in this stillness as of death, like a body stretched out, expectant of the surgeon’s knife.

And all through the room could be seen the tawny hues of naked flesh, limbs thrust into the darkness, projecting beyond the cots; upreared knees; arms hanging, long and thin, over the cot edges. For the most part they were statuesque, carven, dead. With the curious lockers standing all about like tombstones there was a strange effect of a graveyard, where bodies were merely flung.

Yet occasionally could be seen limbs wildly tossing in fantastic nightmare gestures, accompanied by guttural cries, grunts, oaths. And there was one fellow off in a gloomy corner, who in his dreams was oppressed by some frightful calamity, for of a sudden he began to utter long wails that went almost like yells from a hound, echoing wailfully and weird through this chill place of tombstones, where men lay like the dead.

The sound, in its high piercing beginnings that dwindled to final melancholy moans, expressed a red and grim tragedy of the unfathomable possibilities of the man’s dreams. But to the youth these were not merely the shrieks of a vision pierced man. They were an utterance of the meaning of the room and its occupants. It was to him the protest of the wretch who feels the touch of the imperturbably granite wheels and who then cries with an impersonal eloquence, with a strength not from him, giving voice to the wail of a whole section, a class, a people. This, weaving into the young man’s brain and mingling with his views of these vast and somber shadows that like mighty black fingers curled around the naked bodies, made the young man so that he did not sleep, but lay carving biographies for these men from his meager experience. At times the fellow in the corner howled in a writhing agony of his imaginations.