Don-A-Dreams/Part 3/Chapter 5
V
He had a low voice and a good manner, an ingratiating gentleness, an attractive quiet address; and to Don he seemed prosperously well-clothed, though a keener eye might have seen that his blue serge was worn shiny on the seams, that his straw hat was a lemon-yellow from frequent cleanings with acid and sulphur, that his enamelled-leather shoes were shabby with a network of small cracks. His features were almost ascetically lean and bony, and he had the mouth of a public speaker that smiled with a slow ease very pleasant to see. After a silence, he always cleared his throat with a deliberate cough, before he spoke. Altogether, he reminded Don of a young curate whom he had known in his Sunday-school days in Goulton; and unconsciously Don was drawn to him by this memory of his prototype, trusted him, and was ready to confide in him.
They went to a cheap Hungarian café where Don understood neither the names of the dishes nor the ingredients of them; but in a revulsion of emotion, taking everything—including his food—on trust, he was moved to tell this chance acquaintance more of himself and his circumstances than he could have told anyone but an intimate friend; and it was always, afterwards, a marvel to him that he had done so, for the clerical stranger, after introducing himself as "Walter Tower," merely listened and smiled and nodded, with the manner of an elder who understood, but with no return of confidences in kind. Beyond this sympathetic attention, he contented himself with recalling Don to his neglected food. "Yes?" he would say encouragingly. "These Hungarians do not serve butter. We can order some, if you like, but it'll be unsalted." Or, "Try this dessert. It tastes like Purim cake. Have you ever done any stage work?" And when they had paid the beaming foreigner in shirt-sleeves—behind a counter full of bread and pies and boxes of cheap cigars—Trump held the door open and passed Don out with the same protective smile, somewhat amused but always sympathetic.
They took the elevated railroad around the Battery to Chatham Square.
It was, for Don, a descent into the city's unknown lower regions, but Tower seemed as much at home and as incuriously observant of familiar surroundings as he had been when sauntering along the line of employment agencies on Sixth Avenue. "This is the Bowery," he said, as they came down the station steps. "The 'Rogues' Highway.'" He led silently past the "beer gardens," the "musees," the "amusement parlours," and all the sour drinking resorts and tinselled "fake shows" of the street, apparently unconscious of the vicious and miserable faces that he met, of the staggering drunkenness of ragged men and the pathetic finery of painted women. "This is 'Suicides' Hall,'" he explained mildly, as they passed a saloon. "About three girls a month, on the average, drink carbolic acid there. Don't stare," he added. "And don't answer if you're spoken to." Don proceeded, silent with the oppression of spirits which seemed to exhale in the stale air of the street, in the paleness of faces that were marked by the summer heat with a drawn exhaustion instead of a healthy tan, in the hoarse cries of the "barkers" at the doors, and in the smell of spotted fruit that came from the push-carts of pedlars at the curb and from the water-melon rinds in the gutters.
They stopped before the "Palace of Illusions: The original Bowery Musee," and Tower said, "Wait here a minute." He nodded to the "barker" in the entrance, passed the inner ticket office and disappeared. Don studied the yellow photographs of a fat woman, an acrobat in tights, a girl in dancing skirts posed on a rustic fence with her back to the seashore, a pugilist menacing a punching bag—until Tower came out again with a man of Dixon's type, who looked Don over—his hands in his pockets, a cigar in his mouth—and said: "A' right. We're goin' to start the grind in about ten minutes. Got a dime? A' right." He turned to Tower. "We're makin' three pushes to a take. Yuh don't want to do any spielin', do you? The man we got 's a heel."
"No," Tower said. "I'm out of practice. I'd sooner boost.'
"A' right, 'bo. String 'em up. The other boys 'll be along in a shake."
He went in. Tower put his hand on Don's shoulder and started him up the street again. "We have nothing to do," he explained, "but to walk up to that door when the man you saw there begins to call out that the show is 'on.' We wait inside, where they have the free performance, until a crowd has gathered; then, when the 'spieler' (they call him) says 'Right this way,' we push over to the box office, pay ten cents and pass in. He'll give you back your money inside. The idea is to start the crowd going in."
To a youth of another temperament, it might have been either an amusing adventure or a shocking fall into a lower world; but Don had not the self-detachment which could either enjoy his surroundings as apart from himself or pity himself as above his surroundings; and he was so accustomed to having events leap upon him unforeseen that he accepted this last bewildering turn of fortune in his usual dazed absorption of new sights. It was no more abrupt and strange to him than his meetings with Margaret or his partings from her, his arrival at college or his leaving it, his varying relations with Conroy, with his father, with the whole world, in fact—this world of which he never seemed able to discern the motives or foresee the acts. Always, as soon as he had planned a future to the last detail of desire, a turn of the road faced him with the unexpected, and he stood lost.
At the barker's hoarse cry of "All free, gents. All free. Step right inside," Tower and he sauntering past the door, appeared to stop and hesitate. "It costs yuh nothin', now. It's free gratis, free—all free—an' the fines' show on the Bowery. Step right inside." Tower replied to this invitation, "jollying" the barker, and two or three of the passers-by stood to smile and listen. They followed Tower in, for he looked liked a visitor to town "doing the Bowery," and his smiling curiosity was infectious. Within, on a raised "ballyhoo" platform, there was a "fire-eater" in a Mephistophelian costume, a long-haired "Hindo" who danced bare-footed on broken glass, and a perspiring juggler in faded blue tights; and Tower, watching them go through their "stunts," played his part of inquisitive idler with the ease of an actor, making humorous remarks to Don in loud asides that amused his neighbours in the crowd, and challenging the "spieler" with impertinent questions when that eloquent official came out on the platform to eulogize the acts that were to be "witnessed on the inside fer a dime, ten cents." As soon as the spieler concluded his harangue with "Step this way to the box office," Tower said to Don: "Well, it's only a dime. Come on. Let's have some fun with them"; and as he made his way to the wicket—taking care to press forward those in front of him with a persuasive shoulder—he started a current towards the entrance and drew behind him a following of smiling sightseers who wished to hear him "have soms fun" with the performance. Once inside the main hall, with its "side-show" array of booths and small stages, Don and he disappeared behind the curtains of the exit, where the manager returned them their dimes and let them out on the street again for the next "push."
All this occurred with a bewildering rapidity that made it rather difficult for Don to understand; he was puzzled by Tower's part in it; he did not think about his own. "Do you do this every day?" he asked.
"No," Tower said, turning him up the street again. "I haven't done it since I first came to town—six years ago."
"You're doing it to show me how?"
"Principally. Yes."
Don flushed with gratitude. "Thanks."
"Well," Tower said, "it isn't a highly respectable job, I suppose, but I couldn't think of anything else—on the spur of the moment—anything that you can do. And the show is worth ten cents. It isn't as if you were doing it for one of those fake 'fronts' down the street."
"It's—it's mighty good of you," Don stammered, "taking your time and"
"Not at all. I've nothing else to do just now."
"What do you do— generally."
"When I have an engagement, I act."
"On the stage?"
Tower smiled. "Up—at the back of the stage, principally. Yes. . . . How do you like 'boosting'?"
"I don't know yet."
"Well"—Tower cleared his throat—"it can't do you any hurt. This sort of thing—seeing the Bowery—puts you wise to a lot of life. It gives you the underside of a good deal. I'd stick at it for a while if I were you. When the theatres open, you can get some 'suping.'"
"What's that?"
"I'll show you, some day."
The barker greeted them afresh: "All free, gents. All free on the inside. Step right in. It costs you nothin'. All free."
Tower stopped. "Is it a free lunch or a public library?"
The barker waved his hand genially. "Neither, my Christian friend. Neither ner both. If yuh're an eats-'em-alive, yuh'll find yer cage down the street. This is the on'y original 'Palace of Illusions,' the famous Bowery musee. Step right inside, an' keep yer mouth shut an' yer eyes open. Free performance, gents."
"Come on," Tower said. "Let's see what they give for nothing."
It was not, as Tower had said, "a highly respectable job," but it was the first opportunity that Don had had to do anything for himself, and he went through it with the nervous seriousness of a resolve to prove himself capable. He felt that he was being given a trial at last; that he owed it to Tower to flinch at nothing; that he must prove himself to himself, to the world, and to the man who had helped him. He crushed down his conscientious scruples against playing the hypocrite and counterfeiting a fresh interest in each of the free performances; and he tried to pay his money into the ticket office with a properly alluring eagerness. After all, the show was worth ten cents, and he was only leading the public on to its own amusement.
When the last "take" was netted, at half-past five, he took his fifty cents from the manager as the first wages of his proven usefulness, and walked out, with Tower, full of a splendid confidence in himself. He had "found his feet" at last, he thought.
He invited Tower to have dinner with Conroy and Pittsey in their rooms, explaining the circumstances of their housekeeping. And Tower said: "Pittsey? What is his Christian name?"
"Bert. Herbert."
"Oh! . . . Don't tell him you met me. I'll call some evening and surprise him."
"Really! You know him? He's been here before."
"Yes. How's he getting on?"
Don related his friend's successes with pride. "Where did you meet him?"
"I used to know him in Canada."
"What!" He stopped on a crowded corner. "Are you a Canadian, too?"
Tower took him by the arm, amusedly, and guided him across the street. "I was born so. There are several thousands of us here—in New York—you know."
"Did you know I was?"
"I supposed so, from your University pin."
Don put his hand up to it, flushing excitedly. "Now I understand why I I—I couldn't make out why you did it. You've been . . . mighty decent to"
Tower tried to make light of this awkward gratitude, turning it off jokingly. "Don't mention it—not to your friend Pittsey, at any rate. This is your station here. I'm going across town." He held out his hand. "Will you be boosting to-morrow?"
Don closed on his fingers with an eager warmth, as if to detain him until the surprise of the new situation could wear off and leave their parting less abrupt. "Won't I though! Will you?"
"Well, I'll be down at one o'clock to see you started. Till to-morrow, then." He slipped from Don's grasp. "Good-bye."
As he turned the corner, he nodded and waved his hand to Don, who stood beaming at the foot of the station steps, obstructing the passage. The hot and impatient men and women who bumped against him and shouldered him out of their way did not understand that he was no longer a useless impediment to the traffic of the streets, that he was a tried and accepted earner of wages, and one of themselves. He forgave them with an abstracted smile that carried him into a City Hall train instead of the one which he should have taken to the Battery.
He arrived at his rooms for supper, late but jubilant, with a water-melon which he had bought to celebrate his success; and he was met at the door of the dining-room by an equally jubilant announcement from Conroy that he, too, had found work—in the shipping department of a wholesale grocery. "Answering fake advertisements—that's not the way! I just went from one door to another, all along the street, asking for something to do. They gave me this job when they found out I knew how to put addresses on boxes and barrels, with a brush—you know—the way they print them." He had learned that art in his father's warehouse. "What did you get, Don?"
"I'll tell you—some day. It's a secret."
"What is it?"
"Never mind," he laughed. "I met someone. You'll see." He plumped his water-melon on the table. "Look at that!"
Pittsey struck an attitude. "The first fruits of honest labour! Gee! Let us gorge."
They gorged. With the appetites of youth and the sauce of their new enthusiasm, they ate bacon and fried eggs for a summer dinner, laughing and talking as if they were on a picnic, making uncouth gurgles as they devoured the water-melon, and shooting the seeds out the window, by squeezing them between thumb and forefinger, in a hilarious trial of skill.
"And this," Pittsey said, as he aimed with another seed, "this is poverty in New York City! Why, off the Bowery the Italians eat water-melon seeds for dessert. Watch me t'rowin' good grub out the window. Ping!"
Don bit a seed to taste it. "Poor beggers," he said.
"Poor nothing!" Pittsey cried. "I think they have the best of the bargain. There are more seeds than anything else in a water-melon, anyway."