Vignettes of Manhattan; Outlines in Local Color Part 25

As he stood at last in the verdant oasis in the centre of the square, suddenly the electric light whitewashed the pavement, and his unexpected shadow lay black and sprawling under his feet. He looked up, startled, and he saw the infinite arch of the sky curving over him--clear, cloudless, and illimitable. The faint sickle of the new moon hung low on the horizon. A towering building thrust its thin height into the air, and the yellow lights in its upper windows seemed like square panels inlaid in the deep blue of the sky. The beauty of the moment lifted him out of his present misery, and he was glad to be alive. The plash of the fountain fell on his ears and charmed them. The broad leaves of the aquatic plants swayed languidly as a gentle breeze blew across the surface of the water.

With a sigh of relief, McDowell Sutro dropped upon one of the park benches. Until he sat down he did not know how tired he was. His feet ached, and his stomach cried for food. And yet he was stout of heart.

"If I've got to spend a night _a la belle etoile_," he said to himself, "I could have no better luck. There are beautiful stars a-plenty this evening. It's like that night in Venice when Tom Pixley and I took the two Morton girls out in our gondolas, and their aunt couldn't find us. I remember we had had a good dinner at Florian's, with an immense dish of _risotto milanese_--so big we had to leave some. I wish I had the chance again. I could finish it now if it was twice as much."

Over on Fourth Avenue, behind the equestrian statue of George Was.h.i.+ngton, there was a Hungarian restaurant, and from his bench at the edge of the gra.s.s McDowell Sutro could see the table right in the window at which an old man and a young woman were having dinner. He could follow every movement of their hands; he could count every mouthful they ate. At last he could bear it no longer, and he changed his seat to a bench nearer Broadway. Here he found himself facing another eating-room, in the broad windows of which many kinds of food were alluringly displayed. Men came out and lingered in the door-way long enough to light a cigarette.

When McDowell Sutro noted this, the craving for tobacco seized him. A smoke would not stay his stomach, but it would be a solace none the less. He rose to his feet and felt in all his pockets, in the vain hope that his fingers might touch some overlooked fragment of a cigar. There was something at the bottom of one of the pockets of his coat, but it mocked him by revealing itself as a match. He sank down on the bench and turned his eyes away from the restaurant, for he could not bear to gaze on the cakes and pies piled up behind the plate-gla.s.s, or to observe the smoke curling up from the lips of men who had eaten and drunk abundantly.

There was a bar-room under the hotel on the corner of Broadway, and every now and then two or three men pushed inside the swinging doors, to reappear five or ten minutes later. Farther down Broadway stood a theatre, and there was now a throng about its broad door-way. Another theatre faced the square, gay with prismatic signs and besprinkled with electric lights. McDowell Sutro watched men and women step up to the box-office of this place of amus.e.m.e.nt and buy their tickets and disappear within. He wondered why these men and women should have money to spare on a show, when he had not enough to pay for a meal and a night's lodging.

Perhaps it was the fatigue of his useless day, and perhaps it was the hypnotic influence of the revolving lights before the variety theatre, which caused the lonely young man to fall asleep. How long he slept he did not know, nor what waked him at last. But he had a doubtful memory of a human touch upon his body, and three of his pockets were turned inside out. When he discovered this, he laughed outright. The attempt to rob him then struck him as the funniest thing that had ever happened.

He must have slept for two or three hours at least, for the appearance of the square had changed. It was no longer evening; it was now night.

While he looked about him he saw the doors of the theatre in Broadway pushed open, and the audience began to pour forth. A few moments later little knots of the play-goers pa.s.sed him, still laughing with remembrance of the farce they had been witnessing. In another quarter of an hour the people began to come out of the other theatre, the variety show on the square, and the lights that flared above the door-way went out, all at once.

It was nearly midnight when two men sat down on the bench of which McDowell Sutro had been the sole occupant hitherto. They were tall and thin, both of them; they were clean-shaven; their clothes were shabby; and yet they carried themselves with an indescribable air, as though they were accustomed to brave the gaze of the world.

"No," said the elder of the two, continuing their conversation, "she's no good. She has a figure like a flat-iron and a voice like a fog-horn, hasn't she? Well, there's no draft in that, is there? She's a Jonah, that's what she is, and she'd hoo-doo any show. Why, the last time I was on the road she tried to queer my act. I called her down right there and then, and when the star backed her up, I was going to give my two weeks'

notice; and I'd have done it, too, but I was playing cases then, and I didn't want to come back here walking on my uppers. But if I had quit, they'd have closed in a month, I tell you! They didn't know who was drawing the money to their old show; but I did! You ought to have been in the one-night towns on the oil circuit and heard me do Shamus...o...b..ien. That used to fetch 'em every night--I tell you it did! And it used to make her tired!"

"Did you ever see me play Laertes?" asked the younger. "I did it first in 'Frisco in '72, when Larry Barrett came out there. Well, while I was on the stage with him, Hamlet didn't get a hand. I've got a notice here now that said I was the Greatest Living Laertes."

"I played Iago once with Larry Barrett," said the first speaker, "and I gave them such a realistic impersonation they used to hiss me off the stage almost."

"Have a cigarette?" asked the other, holding out a package.

"Don't care if I do," was the answer. "I've got a match."

"That's lucky, for I haven't," said the owner of the cigarettes.

"Well, I haven't, after all," the elder actor had to confess, after a vain search in his pockets.

"Let me provide the match," broke in McDowell Sutro. "I've only one, but it's at your service."

"Thank you," was the response. "Can I not offer you a cigarette?"

"I don't care if I do," the young man answered, involuntarily repeating the phrase he had just heard, as he thrust out his hand eagerly.

The first whiff of the smoke was like meat and drink to him; and in the sensuous enjoyment of the luxury he almost neglected to respond to the remark addressed to him. But in a minute he found himself chatting with the two actors pleasantly. Although they had been to California more than once, they knew none of his friends; but it cheered merely to hear again the names of familiar landmarks. There was more than a suggestion of haughtiness in the way they both condescended to him; but he did not resent this, even if he remarked it. Human companions.h.i.+p was sweet to him; and to drop into a chat with casual strangers on a bench in Union Square at midnight, even this diminished the desolation of his loneliness.

The talk lasted perhaps a quarter of an hour, and then the two other men rose to go. McDowell Sutro stood up also, as though he were at home and they were his guests.

"Come over and have a drink," said the elder of the two.

And again the young man answered, "I don't care if I do."

He would rather have had food than drink, but he could not tell two strangers that he was hungry.

As they pa.s.sed before the statue of Lafayette and crossed the car tracks, he wondered whether the saloon where they were going to was one of those which set out a free lunch.

When they entered the bar-room his eyes swept it wolfishly, and then fixed themselves at the end of the counter, where there were broad dishes with cheese and crackers and sandwiches. He could hardly control himself; he wanted to rush there and s.n.a.t.c.h the food and devour it. But shame kept him standing near the door with the two actors, though his gaze was fastened on the dishes only a few feet from him.

The barkeeper set the bottle before them, and they poured out the liquor. Then they looked at each other and said, "How!"

The elder actor half finished his drink at a single gulp. As he set down his gla.s.s he caught McDowell Sutro staring at the free lunch.

"That's not a bad idea," he said, moving along the bar--"not half bad.

I'll take a sandwich myself. I feel a bit hollow to-night. I got three encores after I gave them the 'Pride of Battery B,' and I need something to build me up. Have a sandwich?"

"I don't care if I do," responded the hungry man, as his fingers closed on the bread. Yet when he took the first mouthful it almost choked him.

Five minutes later he had said good-night to his two chance acquaintances and he was again back in the square. The scant food he had been able to take lay hard in his stomach, and the liquor he had drunk, little as that was also, was yet enough to make his head whirl. He did not walk unsteadily, although he was conscious that it took an effort for him to carry himself without swerving.

The bench on which he had been sitting was now occupied by four very young men in evening dress, who were gravely smoking pipes, as though they were trying to acquire a taste for this novel pastime. So he went to the centre of the square, where he stood for a while looking at the aquatic plants and listening to the spurtle of the fountain.

All the seats around the fountain were occupied by men and women, most of whom seemed to have settled themselves for the night, as though they were used to sleeping there. McDowell Sutro found himself speculating whether he, too, would soon be accustomed to spending his nights in the open air, without a roof over him.

One solid German had fallen into a slumber so heavy that his snore became a loud snort. Then a gray-coated policeman waked the sleeper by smiting the soles of his feet with the club.

"This park ain't no bedroom," said the policeman, "and I ain't goin' to have you fellows goin' to sleep here either! See?"

After walking three or four times around on the outer circle of the little park, the young man found a vacant seat on a bench near the corner of Broadway and Seventeenth Street. The brilliantly lighted cable-cars still glided swiftly up and down Broadway with their insistent gongs, but they were now fewer and fewer; and the cross-town horse-cars pa.s.sed only two or three an hour. The long day of the city was nearly over at last, and for the two or three hours before dawn there would be peace and a cessation of the struggle.

As he sat back on the bench, sick with weariness, the occupant of the seat next to him aroused herself. She was an elderly woman, with grizzled hair.

"I beg your pardon--if I waked you up?" said the young man.

"You did wake me up," she answered, "but I forgive you. It's only cat-naps I get anyway nowadays. I haven't stretched my legs out between the sheets and had my fill of sleep for a month of Sundays. And I'm a glutton for sleeping if I've the chance. But I'm getting used to sitting up late," and she laughed without bitterness. "What time is it now?" she asked.

McDowell Sutro involuntarily lifted his hand to the pocket of his waistcoat, and then he dropped it quickly. Blus.h.i.+ng, he answered, "I don't know--I--"

"Time's up, isn't it?" she returned, with a laugh of understanding. "I haven't got my watch with me either; I left it in my other clothes at my uncle's. But Mr. Tiffany is a kind-hearted man, and he keeps a clock all lighted up for us to see. Your eyes are younger than mine--what time is it now?"

McDowell Sutro looked intently for half a minute before he could make out the hour. At last he answered, "It's almost half-past one, I think."

"Then I've a couple of hours for another nap before the sparrows wake us all up," she returned. "Is it the first night you have come to this hotel of ours?"

"Yes," he replied.

"I thought so," she continued, "by your feeling for your watch. You'll get out of the way of doing that soon."

His face blanched with fear that she might be predicting the truth.

Would the time ever come when he should be used to sleeping in the open air?

The old woman turned a little, so that she could look at him.

"It's a handsome young fellow you are," she went on; "there's more than one house in town where they'd take you in on your looks--and tuck you up in bed, too, and keep you warm."

"Perhaps I'm better off here," he remarked, feeling that he was expected to say something.