Book: Somewhere in Red Gap

H >> Harry Leon Wilson >> Somewhere in Red Gap




Jake Berger spoke up for the first time to any one but a waiter. He
asked why a palm room necessarily? He said the tropic influence of these
palms must affect the waiters that had to stand under 'em all day,
because they wouldn't take his orders fast enough. He said the
languorous Southern atmosphere give 'em pellagra or something. Jeff
Tuttle says Jake must be mistaken because the pellagra is a kind of a
Spanish dance, he believes. Jake said maybe so; maybe it was tropic
neurasthenia the waiters got. Ben said he'd sure look out for a fresh
waiter that hadn't been infected yet. When I left 'em Jake was holding a
split-second watch on the waiter he'd just given an order to.

By seven P.M. I'd been made into a work of art by the hotel help and
might of been observed progressing through the palatial lobby with my
purple and gold opera cloak sort of falling away from the shoulders.
Jeff Tuttle observed me for one. He was in his dress suit all right,
standing over in a corner having a bell-hop tie his tie for him that he
never can learn to do himself. That's the way with Jeff; he simply
wasn't born for the higher hotel life. In his dress suit he looks
exactly like this here society burglar you're always seeing a picture of
in the papers. However, I let him trail me along into this jewelled palm
room with tapestries and onyx pillars and prices for food like the town
had been three years beleagured by an invading army. Jake Berger is
alone at our table sipping a stinger and looking embarrassed because
he'll have to say something. He gets it over as soon as he can. He says
Ben has ordered dinner and stepped out and that Lon has stepped out to
look for him but they'll both be back in a minute, so set down and order
one before this new waiter is overcome by the tropic miasma. We do the
same, and in comes Lon looking very excited in the dress suit he was
married in back about 1884.

"Ben's found one," he squeals excitedly--"a real genuine one that was
born right here in New York and is still living in the same house he was
born in. What do you know about that? Ben is frantic with delight and is
going to bring him to dine with us as soon as he gets him brushed off
down in the wash room and maybe a drink or two thrown into him to revive
him from the shock of Ben running across him. Ain't it good, though!
Poor old Ben, looking for a born one and thinking he'd never find him
and now he has!"

We all said how glad we was for Ben's sake and Lon called over a titled
aristocrat of foreign birth and ordered him to lay another place at the
table. Then he tells us how the encounter happened. Ben had stepped out
on Broadway to buy an evening paper and coming back he was sneaking a
look at his new suit in a plate-glass window, walking blindly ahead at
the same time. That's the difference between the sexes in front of a
plate-glass window. A woman is entirely honest and shameless; she'll
stop dead and look herself over and touch up anything that needs it as
cool as if she was the last human on earth; while man, the coward, walks
by slow and takes a long sly look at himself, turning his head more and
more till he gets swore at by some one he's tramped on. This is how Ben
had run across the only genuine New Yorker that seemed to be left. He'd
run across his left instep and then bore him to the ground like one of
these juggernuts or whatever they are. Still, at that, it seemed kind of
a romantic meeting, like mebbe the hand of fate was in it. We chatted
along, waiting for the happy pair, and Jake ordered again to be on the
safe side because the waiter would be sure to contract hookworm or
sleeping sickness in this tropic jungle before the evening was over.
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 nobby 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
cockroach. 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
assured 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 embarrassed 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 nobody 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 hoarse whisper.

"I dare say it, too," says Jeff Tuttle in a still hoarser 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 pass 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 assault. 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 ship.

Then we reach the dive he has picked out; a very dismal dive with a room
back of the bar that had a few tables and a piano in it and a
sweet-singing waiter. He was singing a song about home and mother, that
in mem-o-ree he seemed to see, when we got to our table. A very gloomy
and respectable haunt of vice it was, indeed. There was about a dozen
male and female creatures of the underworld present sadly enjoying this
here ballad and scowling at us for talking when we come in.

Jake Berger ordered, though finding you couldn't get stingers here and
having to take two miner's inches of red whiskey, and the New Yorker
begun to warn us in low tones that we was surrounded by danger on every
hand--that we'd better pour our drink on the floor because it would be
drugged, after which we would be robbed if not murdered and thrown out
into the alley where we would then be arrested by grafting policemen.
Even Ben was shocked by this warning. He asks the New Yorker again if he
is sure he was born in the old town, and the lad says honest he was and
has been living right here all these years in the same house he was born
in. Ben is persuaded by these words and gives the singing waiter a five
and tells him to try and lighten the gloom with a few crimes of violence
or something. The New Yorker continued to set stiff in his chair, one
hand on his watch and one on the pocket where his change purse was that
he'd tried to pay his share of the taxicabs out of.

The gloom-stricken piano player now rattled off some ragtime and the
depraved denizens about us got sadly up and danced to it. Say, it was
the most formal and sedate dancing you ever see, with these gun men
holding their guilty partners off at arm's length and their faces all
drawn down in lines of misery. They looked like they might be a bunch of
strict Presbyterians that had resolved to throw all moral teaching to
the winds for one purple moment let come what might. I want to tell you
these depraved creatures of the underworld was darned near as depressing
as that play had been. Even the second round of drinks didn't liven us
up none because the waiter threw down his cigarette and sung another
tearful song. This one was about a travelling man going into a gilded
cabaret and ordering a port wine and a fair young girl come out to sing
in short skirts that he recognized to be his boyhood's sweetheart Nell;
so he sent a waiter to ask her if she had forgot the song she once did
sing at her dear old mother's knee, or knees, and she hadn't forgot it
and proved she hadn't, because the chorus was "Nearer My God to Thee"
sung to ragtime; then the travelling man said she must be good and pure,
so come on let's leave this place and they'd be wed.

Yes, sir; that's what Ben had got for his five, so this time he give the
waiter a twenty not to sing any more at all. The New Yorker was
horrified at the sight of a man giving away money, but it was well spent
and we begun to cheer up a little. Ben told the New Yorker about the
time his dog team won the All Alaska Sweepstake Race, two hundred and
six miles from Nome to Candle and back, the time being 76 hours, 16
minutes, and 28 seconds, and showed him the picture of his lead dog
pasted in the back of his watch. And Jake Berger got real gabby at last
and told the story about the old musher going up the White Horse Trail
in a blizzard and meeting the Bishop, only he didn't know it was the
Bishop. And the Bishop says, "How's the trail back of you, my friend?"
and the old musher just swore with the utmost profanity for three
straight minutes. Then he says to the Bishop, "And what's it like back
of you?" and the Bishop says, "Just like that!" Jake here got
embarrassed from talking so much and ordered another round of this
squirrel poison we was getting, and Jeff Tuttle begun his imitation of
the Sioux squaw with a hare lip reciting "Curfew Shall Not Ring
To-night." It was a pretty severe ordeal for the rest of us, but we was
ready to endure much if it would make this low den seem more homelike.
Only when Jeff got about halfway through the singing waiter comes up,
greatly shocked, and says none of that in here because they run an
orderly place, and we been talking too loud anyway. This waiter had a
skull exactly like a picture of one in a book I got that was dug up
after three hundred thousand years and the scientific world couldn't
ever agree whether it was an early man or a late ape. I decided I didn't
care to linger in a place where a being with a head like this could pass
on my diversions and offenses so I made a move to go. Jeff Tuttle says
to this waiter, "Fie, fie upon you, Roscoe! We shall go to some
respectable place where we can loosen up without being called for it."
The waiter said he was sorry, but the Bowery wasn't Broadway. And the
New Yorker whispered that it was just as well because we was lucky to
get out of this dive with our lives and property--and even after that
this anthropoid waiter come hurrying out to the taxis after us with my
fur piece and my solid gold vanity-box that I'd left behind on a chair.
This was a bitter blow to all of us after we'd been led to hope for
outrages of an illegal character. The New Yorker was certainly making a
misdeal every time he got the cards. None of us trusted him any more,
though Ben was still loyal and sensitive about him, like he was an only
child and from birth had not been like other children.

The lad now wanted to steer us into an Allied Bazaar that would still be
open, because he'd promised to sell twenty tickets to it and had 'em on
him untouched. But we shut down firmly on this. Even Ben was firm. He
said the last bazaar he'd survived was their big church fair in Nome
that lasted two nights and one day and the champagne booth alone took in
six thousand dollars, and even the beer booth took in something like
twelve hundred, and he didn't feel equal to another affair like that
just yet.

So we landed uptown at a very swell joint full of tables and orchestras
around a dancing floor and more palms--which is the national flower of
New York--and about eighty or a hundred slightly inebriated debutantes
and well-known Broadway social favourites and their gentlemen friends.
And here everything seemed satisfactory at last, except to the New
Yorker who said that the prices would be something shameful. However, no
one was paying any attention to him by now. None of us but Ben cared a
hoot where he had been born and most of us was sorry he had been at all.

Jake Berger bought a table for ten dollars, which was seven more than it
had ever cost the owner, and Ben ordered stuff for us, including a
vintage champagne that the price of stuck out far enough beyond other
prices on the wine list, and a porterhouse steak, family style, for
himself, and everything seemed on a sane and rational basis again. It
looked as if we might have a little enjoyment during the evening after
all. It was a good lively place, with all these brilliant society people
mingling up in the dance in a way that would of got 'em thrown out of
that gangsters' haunt on the Bowery. Lon Price said he'd never witnessed
so many human shoulder blades in his whole history and Jeff Tuttle sent
off a lot of picture cards of this here ballroom or saloon that a waiter
give him. The one he sent Egbert Floud showed the floor full of
beautiful reckless women in the dance and prominent society matrons
drinking highballs, and Jeff wrote on it, "This is my room; wish you was
here." Jeff was getting right into the spirit of this bohemian night
life; you could tell that. Lon Price also. In ten minutes Lon had made
the acquaintance of a New York social leader at the next table and was
dancing with her in an ardent or ribald manner before Ben had finished
his steak.

I now noticed that the New Yorker was looking at his gun-metal watch
about every two minutes with an expression of alarm. Jake Berger noticed
it, too, and again leaned heavily on the conversation. "Not keeping you
up, are we?" says Jake. And this continual watch business must of been
getting on Ben's nerves, too, for now, having fought his steak to a
finish, he says to his little guest that they two should put up their
watches and match coins for 'em. The New Yorker was suspicious right off
and looked Ben's watch over very carefully when Ben handed it to him. It
was one of these thin gold ones that can be had any place for a hundred
dollars and up. You could just see that New Yorker saying to himself,
"So this is their game, is it?" But he works his nerve up to take a
chance and gets a two-bit piece out of his change purse and they match.
Ben wins the first time, which was to of settled it, but Ben says right
quick that of course he had meant the best two out of three, which the
New Yorker doesn't dispute for a minute, and they match again and Ben
wins that, too, so there's nothing to do but take the New Yorker's watch
away from him. He removes it carefully off a leather fob with a gilt
acorn on it and hands it slowly to Ben. It was one of these extra
superior dollar watches that cost three dollars. The New Yorker looked
very stung, indeed. You could hear him saying to himself, "Serves me
right for gambling with a stranger!" Ben feels these suspicions and is
hurt by 'em so he says to Jeff, just to show the New Yorker he's an
honest sport, that he'll stake his two watches against Jeff's solid
silver watch that he won in a bucking contest in 1890. Jeff says he's
on; so they match and Ben wins again, now having three watches. Then Lon
Price comes back from cavorting with this amiable jade of the younger
dancing set at the next table and Ben makes him put up his gold
seven-jewelled hunting-case watch against the three and Ben wins again,
now having four watches.

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