Don-A-Dreams/Part 3/Chapter 4

by Harvey J. O'Higgins

IV

The first heat of the New York summer had begun to oppress the dry streets with an intolerable glare of sun all day and a stifling sluggishness of exhausted air all night; and Don dragged himself from office to office—in his heavy clothing, in his sun-greened felt hat, in his burning winter shoes—pale and spiritless. Everyone in the city seemed to be short-tempered; the motormen of the cable cars, in their hot uniforms, stamped on the ringers of their gongs; the drivers lashed their horses with whips that cracked angrily in the fierce light; the crowds on the sidewalks pushed and fretted under the scant shade of shop-front awnings. It was the time of year when the police records of spring suicides begin to fall off, and the tenement house murders take their places on the sergeants' "blotters."

Don went. Jostled and elbowed, up Broadway to Madison Square, drawn by the sight of green leaves ahead of him. The working world no longer contented itself with merely ignoring him; it had turned on him irritably and shouldered him out of its way into the gutter. He stopped at a print-shop window attracted by a snow scene that reminded him of Canada—a picture of a dejected wolf on a hill-top looking down, over the drifts, on a little village with lighted windows, the smoke of kitchen chimneys rising straight and still in the frozen air. And Don understood the sneaking droop of that wolf's lean shoulders, and sympathized with it.

He crossed to the benches under the trees, to sit among the flotsam of the streets, among the idlers and vagabonds who gather into these stagnant pools of Broadway traffic. He turned his back on the activities of the pavement and the sight of all those fortunate beings who had cause to be impatient and in haste. He looked at the grass and the leaves, and at the fountain that danced and sparkled mechanically in its pool of water-lilies, like something imprisoned there and trained. He remembered his ravine in Coulton and the little waterfall that chuckled over its stones.

He did not notice a man who passed and repassed him with keen glances, studying his clothes, his shoes, his general air of limp discouragement. But he awoke with a start when this stranger sat down on the bench beside him so heavily that the whole seat jarred; and when the man opened his newspaper and turned to the page of "want ads," Don read the list out of the end of his eye, with the involuntary interest of the unemployed. "Never seem to get any less," the man said good-naturedly.

Don looked away, ashamed of having betrayed himself.

"I s'pose they're like that ev'ry day in the year," he went on. And when Don did not speak, he added: "I know it's over a year since I looked at 'em—an' there was just as many then." He glanced around at Don with a cheerful impudence, and Don nodded. He had colourless eyes under heavy eyebrows; his cheek and chin were blue-black with close shaving. "Yes," he said, dropping his paper to his knee, "over a year ago! I was on the rocks, fer fair—sittin' down in Union Square with no more backbone than a string o' fish—readin' those ads without expectin' to find anythin' fer me either." He laughed. "I might 've been readin' them yet—fer all the good it 'd 'a' done me. That's the hell of it in this town. Yuh're on the other side o' the fence, lookin' at the apples. Yuh can look at 'em till yer eyes drop out, if yuh don't get a lift over the pickets."

Don turned again. The man was smiling thoughtfully at the fountain. "An ol' frien' o' mine came along an' says: 'What're yuh doin', Jim?' 'Doin'?' I says. 'Doin' nothin'! Carryin' the banner! Poun'in' the sidewalks!' He says 'Hell!'—he says—'Why don't yuh get to work?' 'Why?' I says. 'Why don't I? 'Cause I can't. That's the why! 'Cause there don't seem to be any work to get?' 'Been to see ol' Whitten?' he asks me. 'Whitten?' I says. 'No! Who's Whitten?' He doesn't say a word. He jus' crooks his finger at me. 'Come along,' he says. 'I'll put yuh wise.'"

He pushed back his hat impatiently. "That's the hell o' this town. There's lot o' jobs lookin' fer young fullahs that're on the square. The trouble is the employers don't know how to find 'em. This ol' guy's a sort o' religious crank, an' whenever he can pick up a young fullah that's out o' work an' goin' to the dogs, he puts him in the first place that's open. A lot o' the best business houses take their ban's from him. Yuh see he makes in-quiries an' knows his men. It ain't charity either. He makes the office pay fer itself by chargin' five dollars. But hell, what's five dollars when yuh get a good thing at fifteen a——"

Don broke in, clutching at the opportunity, in a trembling haste: "Do you think—I'm—I'm out of work. I'd pay him anything. I——"

The man turned with a slow grin that brought the blood to Don's face. "Well, I'm d——d! How did I come to tell y' about it! Well, I'm d——d!" He showed tobacco-stained teeth in a wrinkled smile. "I tell yuh what I'll do: I'll take y' over to his joint an' give y' a knock-down to him, eh?"

Don's shame passed in a gratitude that swelled in his throat speechlessly. He heard the man say "over on Twelf Street, near Sixt' Avenuh." They rose together.

The stranger was short and sturdy, with a leg that bowed out behind him, at the calf, like the blade of a sickle; and he walked on his heels, his hands in his trousers' pockets, his hat slanted down on his puckered eyes. He talked breezily. Don went in silence, tall beside him, his immature shoulders sloping from his thin neck, his head erect, vacantly smiling. The noises of the street beat around him unheard. A myriad of woman-shoppers rushed back and forth below him. His starved hopes were gorging themselves in a blind greediness that saw nothing but their food.

The man was saying: "Well, it's a great place, ain't it? Get yer start here an' rise to any thin'—anythin'! Get yer start, that's all! It's worth anythin' to get yer start. It's a reg'lar gold-mine, once yuh get yer pick into it." He looked at Don, as if suspicious of his silence. Don appeared to be wistfully studying the faces of the women as they passed. "Girls too," he laughed. "Good-lookers at that! Get yer money an' take yer choice. An' they dress to do yuh proud. Get yer start, that's all. . . . Got any recommends? Eh? Any letters from yer las' job?"

Don explained that he had just left college; that the only letter he had was from the Dean of the University.

"What!" He tilted his hat over one ear, scratching his temple humorously. "A college education! Well, I'm d——d! Won't ol' Whitten warm to that! An' a Dean! Say, why didn't yuh get pass-me-ons from the President an' Gov'ner What's-his-name, while yuh were? This 's easier 'n cashin' a cheque. What d'yuh want? How'd private secret'ry to a Fift' Avenuh coupon-cutter do yuh?"

Don laughed rather uncertainly. "I'm afraid there's not much chance of that?"

"Afraid? Hell! Afraid nothin'! I wish 't I'd had yer chance the day Jim walked me down here. Where the—— It was down aroun' here somewheres." He looked up a side street. "Well, if he's moved, we can tree him in the d'rect'ry. It must be along further."

Don winked rapidly at the faltering of his hope. The clatter of an elevated train overhead broke in upon him with a return of the old jostled discouragement of these heedless streets. He read the signboards as he walked, vainly trying to occupy his mind in the suspense.

The man said: "Here y' are. I thought the ol' guy——"

Don tripped on the threshold as he followed in, weak in the knees. A red-haired girl, at a desk, nodded in reply to the man's "Mr. Whitten in?"—looking not at him but at Don. Her hard grey eye pursued him with an indifferent curiosity as he passed through to the inner office.

Mr. Whitten rose, peering short-sightedly, and Don, as he stood behind his companion's glib explanations, stared at something in the face which he thought he had seen before. The grey beard and moustache were unfamiliar; the hair was wrong, but the forehead and the nose, the eyebrows——

"Ah?" Mr. Whitten said. "Yes . . . I recall you, Mr.—Mr.——"

It was the voice——

"Dixon."

"Exactly! I recall you distinctly."

It was the voice of Mr. Vandever!—Vandever, no longer clean-shaven, Vandever without his gold-rimmed glasses and his beamingly benign regard—but undoubtedly the benevolent Vandever. And Don, for the first time, looked at an old man infamous.

It held him like a horror. It revolted while it fascinated him. The squinting eyes, weak without their glasses, were hideously hypocritical. The false smile, the pretence of kindliness, the affected warmth of manner, were a disgusting villainy so incredible to him that he could not take his eyes from them. He did not hear what "Dixon" was saying. He stood gaping until Vandever held out a hand to him, and then the approach of contact with this dishonoured old rogue woke him to loathing and shame. He shook his head, red and stammering, refusing the hand-clasp; he looked at "Dixon" appealingly and saw in the man's face that he, too, was a partner in the abominable business; then he turned and hurried from the office with the echo of Dixon's "What the hell!" following him like the vile odour of this degradation from which he fled, holding his breath until he could reach the clean air of the street.

He ran against a young man who appeared to be hesitating at the doorway. He began: "Don't—go in. They're——" But the suspicion that this might be another "Dixon" stopped his voice; and with a despairing disgust of mankind he pulled his hat down on his eyebrows and strode off tragically.

The young man followed and caught up to him. "What? What did you say?"

"They're—thieves—fakirs."

"Oh. . . . Thanks. What's the matter?"

Don, safe at a distance from the office, leaned against a lamp-post, and between laboured breaths explained what had happened. The other smiled easily. "I saw you going in with that 'tout.' I was wondering whether he was on the level now. The street's full of these con. agents. Don't ever pay them in advance. If they're straight, they'll only ask a rake-off from your first month's wages."

"An old man too—like that!" Don was trembling like a girl who has been insulted on the streets; and the other watched him, a little amused, a little sorry for him.

"You're new here?"

Don nodded, his mind set on the memory of Vandever's face.

"You'll get used to that sort of thing. There's a lot of it. . . . Looking for work?"

"Yes," he answered mechanically, staring at the gutter, miserable, in a world of roguery.

"What have you found?"

"Nothing! I can't. I can't find anything."

It was the voice of abject hopelessness. His companion studied him, debating something with himself. He coughed. "Well," he said, "I don't know where you'll get anything regular, but there are a lot of little things to do, to earn a dollar or two, if you want to."

"Where?"

He smiled at Don's amazement. "Why, all over town. You could try boosting down on the Bowery——"

"Boosting?"

"Yes."

"What's that?"

"Well." He coughed again. "I'll show you—if you care to try it. It's fifty cents for an afternoon—a dollar a day if you work nights too."

Don clenched his hands. "I'll do anything."

He suppressed a smile for this boyish tone of heroic desperation. "Have you had your luncheon?"

"No. I——"

"You'd better come and have it."