Frenzied Fiction Part 2

"Oh, I can carry it," I said. "It's a mere nothing."

"My dear fellow," said Father Knickerbocker, a little testily I thought, "I'm as democratic and as plain and simple as any man in this city. But when it comes to carrying a handbag in full sight of all this crowd, why, as I said to Peter Stuyvesant about--about"--here a misty look seemed to come over the old gentleman's face--"about two hundred years ago, I'll be hanged if I will. It can't be done. It's not up to date."

While he was saying this, Father Knickerbocker had beckoned to a group of porters.

"Take this gentleman's handbag," he said, "and you carry his newspapers, and you take his umbrella. Here's a quarter for you and a quarter for you and a quarter for you. One of you go in front and lead the way to a taxi."

"Don't you know the way yourself?" I asked in a half-whisper.

"Of course I do, but I generally like to walk with a boy in front of me.

We all do. Only the cheap people nowadays find their own way."

Father Knickerbocker had taken my arm and was walking along in a queer, excited fas.h.i.+on, senile and yet with a sort of forced youthfulness in his gait and manner.

"Now then," he said, "get into this taxi."

"Can't we _walk_?" I asked.

"Impossible," said the old gentleman. "It's five blocks to where we are going."

As we took our seats I looked again at my companion; this time more closely. Father Knickerbocker he certainly was, yet somehow strangely transformed from my pictured fancy of the Sleepy Hollow days. His antique coat with its wide skirt had, it seemed, a.s.sumed a modish cut as if in imitation of the bell-shaped spring overcoat of the young man about town. His three-cornered hat was set at a rakish angle till it looked almost like an up-to-date fedora. The great stick that he used to carry had somehow changed itself into the curved walking-stick of a Broadway lounger. The solid old shoes with their wide buckles were gone.

In their place he wore narrow slippers of patent leather of which he seemed inordinately proud, for he had stuck his feet up ostentatiously on the seat opposite. His eyes followed my glance toward his shoes.

"For the fox-trot," he said. "The old ones were no good. Have a cigarette? These are Armenian, or would you prefer a Honolulan or a Nigerian? Now," he resumed, when we had lighted our cigarettes, "what would you like to do first? Dance the tango? Hear some Hawaiian music, drink c.o.c.ktails, or what?"

"Why, what I should like most of all, Father Knickerbocker--"

But he interrupted me.

"There's a devilish fine woman! Look, the tall blonde one! Give me blondes every time!" Here he smacked his lips. "By gad, sir, the women in this town seem to get finer every century. What were you saying?"

"Why, Father Knickerbocker," I began, but he interrupted me again.

"My dear fellow," he said. "May I ask you not to call me _Father_ Knickerbocker?"

"But I thought you were so old," I said humbly.

"Old! Me _old_! Oh, I don't know. Why, dash it, there are plenty of men as old as I am dancing the tango here every night. Pray call me, if you don't mind, just Knickerbocker, or simply Knicky--most of the other boys call me Knicky. Now what's it to be?"

"Most of all," I said, "I should like to go to some quiet place and have a talk about the old days."

"Right," he said. "We're going to just the place now--nice quiet dinner, a good quiet orchestra, Hawaiian, but quiet, and lots of women." Here he smacked his lips again, and nudged me with his elbow. "Lots of women, bunches of them. Do you like women?"

"Why, Mr. Knickerbocker," I said hesitatingly, "I suppose--I--"

The old man sn.i.g.g.e.red as he poked me again in the ribs.

"You bet you do, you dog!" he chuckled. "We _all_ do. For me, I confess it, sir, I can't sit down to dinner without plenty of women, stacks of them, all round me."

Meantime the taxi had stopped. I was about to open the door and get out.

"Wait, wait," said Father Knickerbocker, his hand upon my arm, as he looked out of the window. "I'll see somebody in a minute who'll let us out for fifty cents. None of us here ever gets in or out of anything by ourselves. It's bad form. Ah, here he is!"

A moment later we had pa.s.sed through the portals of a great restaurant, and found ourselves surrounded with all the colour and tumult of a New York dinner _a la mode_. A burst of wild music, pounded and thrummed out on ukuleles by a group of yellow men in Hawaiian costume, filled the room, helping to drown or perhaps only serving to accentuate the babel of talk and the clatter of dishes that arose on every side. Men in evening dress and women in all the colours of the rainbow, _decollete_ to a degree, were seated at little tables, blowing blue smoke into the air, and drinking green and yellow drinks from gla.s.ses with thin stems.

A troupe of _cabaret_ performers shouted and leaped on a little stage at the side of the room, unheeded by the crowd.

"Ha ha!" said Knickerbocker, as we drew in our chairs to a table. "Some place, eh? There's a peach! Look at her! Or do you like better that lazy-looking brunette next to her?"

Mr. Knickerbocker was staring about the room, gazing at the women with open effrontery, and a senile leer upon his face. I felt ashamed of him.

Yet, oddly enough, no one about us seemed in the least disturbed.

"Now, what c.o.c.ktail will you have?" said my companion. "There's a new one this week, the Fantan, fifty cents each, will you have that? Right?

Two Fantans. Now to eat--what would you like?"

"May I have a slice of cold beef and a pint of ale?"

"Beef!" said Knickerbocker contemptuously. "My dear fellow, you can't have that. Beef is only fifty cents. Do take something reasonable. Try Lobster Newburg, or no, here's a more expensive thing--Filet Bourbon a la something. I don't know what it is, but by gad, sir, it's three dollars a portion anyway."

"All right," I said. "You order the dinner."

Mr. Knickerbocker proceeded to do so, the head-waiter obsequiously at his side, and his long finger indicating on the menu everything that seemed most expensive and that carried the most incomprehensible name.

When he had finished he turned to me again.

"Now," he said, "let's talk."

"Tell me," I said, "about the old days and the old times on Broadway."

"Ah, yes," he answered, "the old days--you mean ten years ago before the Winter Garden was opened. We've been going ahead, sir, going ahead. Why, ten years ago there was practically nothing, sir, above Times Square, and look at it now."

I began to realize that Father Knickerbocker, old as he was, had forgotten all the earlier times with which I a.s.sociated his memory.

There was nothing left but the _cabarets_, and the Gardens, the Palm Rooms, and the ukuleles of to-day. Behind that his mind refused to travel.

"Don't you remember," I asked, "the apple orchards and the quiet groves of trees that used to line Broadway long ago?"

"Groves!" he said. "I'll show you a grove, a coconut grove"--here he winked over his winegla.s.s in a senile fas.h.i.+on--"that has apple-trees beaten from here to Honolulu." Thus he babbled on.

All through our meal his talk continued: of _cabarets_ and dances, or fox-trots and midnight suppers, of blondes and brunettes, "peaches" and "dreams," and all the while his eye roved incessantly among the tables, resting on the women with a bold stare. At times he would indicate and point out for me some of what he called the "representative people"

present.

"Notice that man at the second table," he would whisper across to me. "He's worth all the way to ten millions: made it in Government contracts; they tried to send him to the penitentiary last fall but they can't get him--he's too smart for them! I'll introduce you to him presently. See the man with him? That's his lawyer, biggest crook in America, they say; we'll meet him after dinner." Then he would suddenly break off and exclaim: "Egad, sir, there's a fine bunch of them," as another bevy of girls came trooping out upon the stage.

"I wonder," I murmured, "if there is nothing left of him but this?

Has all the fine old spirit gone? Is it all drowned out in wine and suffocated in the foul atmosphere of luxury?"

Then suddenly I looked up at my companion, and I saw to my surprise that his whole face and manner had altered. His hand was clenched tight on the edge of the table. His eyes looked before him--through and beyond the riotous crowd all about him--into vacancy, into the far past, back into memories that I thought forgotten. His face had altered. The senile, leering look was gone, and in its place the firm-set face of the Knickerbocker of a century ago.

He was speaking in a strange voice, deep and strong.