Part 29 (2/2)
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 s.h.i.+p.
<script>