Don-A-Dreams/Part 3/Chapter 6

by Harvey J. O'Higgins

VI

The Bowery is not only a 'Rogues* Highway"; it is, to the tenements of the East Side, what the theatre district of Broadway is to the rest of the city; and Don's "Musee" was a crude but honest house of amusement for the poor and for the slumming parties that came to see the poor amused. It was not one of those "fake fronts"—as Tower had called them—which allure the morbidly curious with promises of an indecent exhibition and turn them out a side door, disappointed. Nevertheless, it lived in the heart of a pollution which slowly—as Don slowly realized it—repelled and saddened while it puzzled him. Here was life reduced to its lowest terms of bestiality: vice without its disguising glitter, suffering that had no illusion to make it noble, and crime miserable in its own hell. Where did this inferno find its place in the scientific universe that gave to crime the joy of its plunder as it gave the wild beast the joy of its prey? And if Man were merely a higher animal, why were these animals not brutally happy in their dens?

It was an experience of life for which Don's books had not prepared him. It was a lesson from life itself, and not the colourless argument of a theory of life. And confused by the thousand changing incidents that repeated the question incessantly around him, touched in his sympathies and revolted in his ideals, he went about his "boosting" as if bewildered by the noises of the street, staring and distracted.

Tower did not come on that second afternoon to see him "started," and he worked alone, without any smiling companionship to disguise from him the hypocrisy of his employment. He finished, that day, with a shame of it all which prevented him from telling his room-mates what he had been doing; but he returned to it, on the morrow, in the loyal expectation of seeing Tower; and he continued secretly at his post, day after day, because he could not find any other work to do, and because he felt himself bound in gratitude to Tower to avail himself of the opportunity which he owed to his fellow-countryman. The sights which he saw did, as Tower had promised, put him "wise to a lot of life"; but they had the first effect of driving him in on himself as they would turn a nun to her prayers. The hot and unclean street reminded him—by contrast—of the fir-trees and the underbrush and the rustling coolness of his woods; and he took refuge in the memory of these. The women of the pavements, whom he saw drinking in the "beer gardens" or loitering in the side doors of saloons, gave him back that dear ideal of girlish innocence who had sat beside him under a green bower of branches in a childish idyll—and met him like a vision in the snows of an enchanted Sunday morning—and looked across a lovers' valley at the sunset with him, holding hands, under a quiet pine. And when he received a letter from her, written in Paris, he went to Madison Square to read it among those exiled trees that were as dusty as himself and as lonely for the country and the call of birds.

She wrote, in voluble good spirits, of an ocean voyage that had apparently been to her a ten days' "excursion"—an excursion on which she had not missed a single meal, on which all her fellow-picnickers had been "lovely," on which she had had "such a good time." And this prattle was as sweet to him as poetry. She had seen London and Windsor Castle and a host of her mother's relatives and Westminster Abbey; and she was now in Paris, but they were only to stay a week; they were going right on to Germany, It was all, indescribable. He must see it for himself. She had met a charming girl, a "forty-second cousin," who was studying music, too; and they were travelling together, and her cousin spoke French. It was terribly warm, and there were no soda-water fountains—not even ice-water at the English hotels. New York was better than that! What was he doing? He must write to her as soon as they were settled some place. She had to stop now, because her cousin was taking her to an art gallery. She was his "sincerely, 'Miss Margaret.'"

The faint odour of violets—her favourite perfume—came to him from the paper. He put it back in his breast pocket, folded his arms over it, and smiled at the sun-cracked asphalt of the walk. "Miss Margaret!"

Next day, he spent his forenoon in Central Park, and thereafter he made daily visits to one or another of the green oases in the city's desert of brick and stone, refreshing himself for the afternoon's work, and pondering over his new experience of life which that work him given him. His evenings he spent with Conroy, who was full of anecdotes of "Scotty" and "Redney" and the Irish truck-drivers and warehousemen with whom he worked. And when Conroy and Pittsey went out together, Don remained to write his letters to his mother—whom he tried to cheer with vague reports that he was well and happy and at work—and to his uncle, far whom he had the good news of Conroy's steadiness. He was never interrupted by the expected arrival of the mysterious Tower. He took out his volume of Emerson, one night, but only that he might recover from it his fading picture of Margaret. He cut out the shadowy face and put it in the back of his watch-case where he might look at it, the last thing before going to bed, under pretence of seeing the time; and his thoughts of her were like an evening prayer to him.

It was on one of his trips to Central Park that he saw Tower again—from the street car, as Tower was hurrying down Sixth Avenue towards the theatrical agencies that house near Herald Square—and on a characteristic impulse he dropped from the side-step of the car and ran after Tower to greet him.

Tower turned, startled, and shook hands, apparently confused by the surprise of an unexpected meeting.

"Where have you been? Why didn't you come to see us?"

He answered nervously: "I lost your address."

"But why didn't you—— You could have found me at the same place, down the Bowery?"

He met Don's cordiality with a shifting eye. He coughed. "Well," he said, to tell the truth, I was ashamed to call."

Don cried: "Why?"

"Well . . . I'm his brother."

"Whose?"

"Bert's."

"Pitt's?"

"Yes."

"No! Really? Why, he'd—he'd have been delighted to——"

"I should have called before. He wrote me that he was coming."

"But even so, he——" Don frowned over it.

Tower turned back, up the street, with him. "In the first place, I didn't want him to come—to New York."

"Why?"

"Well . . . I can't tell you that."

"Oh."

"I thought that if I didn't answer his letter, he would think better of it, and stay at college. . . . Did you tell him you'd met me?"

"You asked me not to."

"Yes. . . . Yes, so I did." He walked in a troubled silence. 'Tower' is my stage name." Don did not reply; he did not know what to say; he did not understand the situation at all. Where were you going?" Tower asked.

"To Central Park—for a walk. I saw you from a car."

"Are you still boosting?"

"Yes."

"How do you like it?"

"Not—not very well."

Tower nodded. They went along together, under the rattle of elevated trains that made conversation impossible. When they reached the comparative quiet of 59th Street and crossed to the gate of the Park, Tower said suddenly: "You see, I've not been very prosperous of late, and Bert—and the others at home—got exaggerated ideas of what I was doing here—and—I was ashamed to have him know that I'd been boosting and all that, this summer, while I was trying to get an engagement—and meeting you that way—I thought he'd guess." His voice faded out on an explanation that contradicted itself. His difficulty communicated itself to Don, who looked down at his feet, guiltily, beginning to see the truth behind this screen of words. "I knew he wouldn't know who 'Tower' was, even if you told him. It's not the name I use—always. I——"

Don plucked a leaf from a bush as he passed it. "He'll meet you some day, on the street."

"Yes. . . . That's what I'm afraid of." He laughed unexpectedly. "I've been going around town like a thief."

The path dipped into an arched tunnel that supported the driveway overhead. Their foot-falls rang hollowly on the echo there. When they came out on the silence of a grove, Don said: "It would be better—— If you come to see him, I'll not let him know that I've met you before. He doesn't know that I've been boosting, anyway."

"Didn't you tell him?"

"No. I was ashamed to, too."

Tower" smiled. "It isn't much of a job, is it? I've been doing a good deal of it myself."

With that confession as a bond of sympathy between them, the rest of their conversation was easy; and Don, seated beside him, on a bench that faced the driveway, learned more of "Tower" than he had ever expected to know.

He was one of those wanderers who leave their homes to try their fortunes in large cities and who go from place to place with no certain means of earning a living, but with a resourceful knowledge of how to support themselves from day to day. He had begun life as a hotel clerk, and had left his desk to sell tickets in the box office of a theatre. Then he had gone as the "press agent" of a theatrical company "on the road"; and when the failure of the company had left him "stranded" in a Western town, he had done some newspaper work, managed a news-stand in Chicago, been conductor on a street-car in St. Louis, worked in a cigar shop in Pittsburg, travelled in the cabooses of freight trains to New England, "clerked it" in Boston, and come to New York as help to a baggage-man on a passenger-boat. Here, fascinated by the life of the "Rialto"—which satisfied all his restless cravings for Bohemianism and continual change—he had lived in the background of the stage world, a looker-on, playing "thinking parts" in Broadway theatres, sometimes assisting in stage management in the cheaper houses and sometimes returning to the ticket wicket of a box office. Lately he had had a "run of bad luck," and he had been left for the summer with nothing to do but this "boosting" and "spieling" at Coney Island or on the Bowery. He had been going the round of the employment agencies on the morning he met Don, afraid that in his work at the musees he might meet his brother. "As soon as the theatrical season opens," he said, "I'll be all right."

"It's mighty hard to find work, isn't it?" Don sympathized.

"Why, no!" he replied. "I never had any trouble in finding something. The fact of the matter is, I believe that has been the curse of me. I found out how easy it was to get along at a certain level and how hard it was to get above it—and I have stopped at merely getting along."

He gave it in his gentle voice that had for Don such a fascinating note of wisdom and experience; and Don felt that here was a man who could solve all his problems for him. He tried to put in words the effect which the Bowery had had on him and the questions which it had aroused in him; and "Tower" listened to his stammering explanations, nodding across the blundering pauses and keeping his eyes on the sunlit driveway with a thoughtful attention.

"Why do we know these people are wrong—living that way? Why are they committing suicide—and drinking themselves stupid—and looking like a lot of miserable condemned wretches—terrible faces all eaten up with disease and wretchedness—if there's no reason why we shouldn't be brutes—if it's natural for us to be brutes—if we are all brutes? That's what I don't understand. If honesty and morality are just poppycock stuff that we learn when we're children—like Santa Claus—why aren't frank dishonesty and frank immorality happy instead of openly miserable—and killing themselves?"

"Tower" shook his head. "I don't know, I'm sure. I never thought of them that way. They're just people to me—people I meet. I suppose I get along with them so well, because I just take them as I would anyone else. . . . I can see, though," he added, "why they kept you boosting down there."

"Why?"

He looked at Don, as if summing him up, feature by feature. "Because that sort of thing shows in your face."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, anyone can see that you're not one of them."

Don blushed girlishly. "Neither are you."

"I act not to be—so that no one will think I am. You aren't—and anyone can see that you're not acting it."

"I wish I were out of it."

"Well, I hear they're going to begin rehearsing some early openings next month. There'll be suping."

"Is that better?"

"Oh my, yes. . . . I'll call on Bert to-night or to-morrow, and then we'll see what we can do. . . . Let's take a walk now, and forget it."

Don returned to his "boosting," that afternoon, with the hope that he should soon be free of it; but he returned in a disgust of it which made it almost unendurable now that "Tower" had admitted what a degradation it was. The day was steamingly hot and humid; the air was blue with a choking haze; and the stones of the Bowery, still wet from a previous night's rain, seemed sweating, greased, slimy with a thin mud that slipped under the heel. The "barker" in the door of the Musee was shouting impatiently, the perspiration running down his neck into the soiled handkerchief which he had stuffed inside his collar. The free performance dragged on without spirit. The "spieler" wiped his forehead, his eloquence gone mechanical, a thing learned by rote and feebly repeated. The manager chafed over the meagreness of the audiences that gathered to all this "ballyhooing" and were herded in by Don and his fellow boosters.

Don did not speak to any of the other "touts"; he had never done so; and they had never made any approaches to him, knowing—as "Tower" had said—that he was not one of them. They showed no curiosity concerning him, for curiosity is not encouraged on the Bowery. They accepted him as a young fellow "down on his luck," and were more indifferent to him than he was to them. One of them asked him for a match, and merely nodded at Don's polite reply that he was sorry he had none—nodded as if the answer was what he had expected. The manager, in the exit, as Don went out, pleaded hoarsely: "Say, 'bo, fer G——'s sake, shove 'em up. String 'em. String 'em." And Don did not reply—because he did not understand.

He was coming out from the second push of the final take—returning to his pocket the dime which he had just received from the manager—when a hand was laid on his shoulder from behind and he looked around at the grinning Dixon, the man who had been tout for the unspeakable Vandever.

"Well, I'm d——d!" he said. "If you ain't the slickest con on the walk. Yuh took me all right! Yuh played me fer a sucker." Don stared at his admiring smile of good fellowship. "What sort o' back-cappin' were yuh tryin' to come on me anyway, that day?"

"What?"

"Aw, shuffle 'em. Shuffle 'em," he laughed. "I'm on."

"I don't understand what you're talking about."

Dixon spat on the sidewalk and smiled undiscouraged. "Say, what's the use? I got a graft worth two o' this d——d supper show here—if yuh want some boostin'—out on Coney. It's playin' too close to the cushion fer me. An' these touts—I been sizin' 'em up—they ain't the thing. They'd get the turn called on 'em, first hand. Yuh're the guy I want. Yuh've got a mug to steer Mary's little lamb." He saw the disgust of Don's expression, and misunderstood it. "Honest, now. I ain't tryin' to sting y' again. This 's on the straight. If yuh want the dough——"

Don had been watching a street-car approaching behind Dixon; when it was almost opposite, he darted aside, as if dodging an attempt to catch him, ran out into the roadway and sprang on the step of the car as it clanged at full speed up the street. And looking back over his shoulder, panting, as if in fear of pursuit, he saw the amazed Dixon staring after him, open-mouthed. As he sank into his seat, the shame of having fallen to Dixon's level broke on him in a hot blush. It burned him like a brand of infamy when the conductor—who had seen him running like a pickpocket and had expected a policeman to appear on his trail—looked at his money suspiciously, hesitated, and then reluctantly rang up his fare.

He was noticeably silent at the dinner-table. "What's wrong, Don?" Conroy asked him, when they were washing dishes together. "Have you been 'fired'?"

"No," he said. "I've 'left.'"

"What was it? What have you been doing?"

Don shook his head. He felt that no matter how long he lived, he must carry the guilt of that employment with him as a crime which he could not confess. He shuddered to think that some day he might tell her—unable to have such a secret between them—and that she would despise him for it.

He went to bed, that night, without looking at her face in his watch.