The Lights of New York
It seemed to Lord Loveland that he had never known how dazzling light could be, till the night-lights of New York flung their diamonds into his eyes.
Though it was nearly midnight when he emerged from behind the purple bed-curtains of the sleeping Park, there was no sign that less secluded quarters of the city thought of sleep.
The amazing jewels of the city still scintillated against the sky, flashing coloured fire. The Great White Way still blazed with brightness brighter than day: the huge plate-glass windows of shops closed to customers, advertised attractions for tomorrow. Electric cars were still crowded, going up and down. Overhead was a ceaseless rush and roar of elevated trains: and Herald Square, which the comrades reached by short cuts and devious ways known to the initiated, seemed the beating heart of the big, vital body whose diamond-crowned head was in the sky.
In the glass-sided palace of the "Herald," tomorrow morning's paper was visibly going to press. There was a chewing rumble of huge printing machines, and from somewhere out of sight of the bronze owls' staring, electric eyes sprang covered wagons loaded with "up-state" editions, which must catch early trains. Newsboys were yelling extras, trying to howl each other down above the confused storm of sound; and as "Willing Bill" towed his convoy into the Square, Minerva lifted her noble bronze arm to give the midnight signal. Her pair of obedient blacksmiths swung their hammers lustily, and struck the bell twelve times.
Val and his companion were nearly the last in a long procession of applicants for newspaper hospitality, and for the first time in his life Lord Loveland found himself among the dregs of humanity, learning what it might be to suffer as they suffered, they who seethed in the cauldron of the world's misery.
He had known that this sort of thing existed; that there were men and women who went hungry and thirsty, who slept out of doors, and who had no place on earth's surface which even for a night they might call their own; but he had been wont to skip paragraphs about them in the papers, and had always avoided brushing against a shabby person in a crowded street. He had never felt any tie of blood between himself and common men, except the Tommy Atkins who fought and died round him in South Africa. Yet these weary ones on whom the light of Herald Square blazed down, these men of hopeless, concave faces, beaten in by sin or sorrow, pressed near to Loveland's soul and waked some feeling in it which he had never known. It was as if his friend of the Park had initiated him into some strange, secret society, in joining which the bare fact of membership gave at once a mysterious sense of brotherhood. Val was surprised that he felt no repulsion against the ragged wretches who crowded round him. He did not draw himself away from them, or resent their lack of respect for him as a superior being. He was sorry for them all, with a consciousness of kinship, which, he thought, he would probably remember with amusement tomorrow.
"They think you're some fly reporter, takin' notes; or a swell doin' the night sights," said Bill. "They don't like you much. But they won't bother you neither, only some chap may say 'What queer things you see, when you haven't got your gun.' If he does, don't you take notice, that's all."
Loveland promised forbearance, but his patience was not tried. In his turn (which came when his nose had turned a pale lilac with cold, and the silk-clad insteps above his pumps were slowly congealing) he received a tin of hot coffee, and a roll. Food and drink were so good, and, as Bill said, "filled such a long-felt want," that Val bolted them greedily, only to yearn for more when both were gone. But etiquette was strictly preserved in Herald Square. No one asked for a second helping, and each applicant, when he had drained his coffee to the last drop, walked away without a word unless it were a "thank you."
"Now, ho for the Bat Hotel," exclaimed Bill cheerfully. "It's a goodish step; but as for me, after that grub, I feel like I could do a sprint round the world."
Loveland was refreshed, too, and more than ever inclined to look on the experience as an adventure over which he would laugh tomorrow night. But he did not intend to forget Bill Willing when he forgot the troubles through which Bill was his pilot. He must do something for the poor chap, he said to himself, and glowed with hot coffee and a sense of warm generosity.
Bill's hotel, it appeared, was situated in the Bowery. There were others more or less of the same sort, dotted about in various streets of far eastern and far western New York, but Bill would not guarantee these. "I ain't a top wave swell myself—yet," he said, "but dirt and I ain't friends, and I won't risk no menagerie for neither of us, nor Shakespeare either. I've raised him to be particular. He's that sad when he's made a public thoroughfare of by one or two o' them critters as boarded the ark in disguise, that he won't look me in the face."
Shakespeare, who had shared his master's roll, and lapped the last spoonful of coffee, was an incredibly small, black animal of somewhat moth-eaten texture, who in form rather resembled a grasshopper. He had a little sharp nose, which might have been whittled into shape with a penknife; his legs were too long for his tiny body, and not much thicker than a pencil; but his gentle eyes, curiously like his master's, beamed with affection, and he was turning grey in the flower of his youth, owing to the lava heat of his boiling emotions.
Loveland had visions of buying Shakespeare a red collar when he had cashed his letter of credit tomorrow; but with a sudden pang, he remembered a difficulty concerning that letter of credit which had not occurred to him before. He had wired to the bank in London in the afternoon, and given as his address the Waldorf-Astoria. After the way in which he had been treated, and the manner of his exit, it would be beneath his dignity to go back, on any errand whatever. He must send to the hotel for the cablegram which, it seemed certain, would arrive during the morning; also for the visiting cards which some of Jim and Betty Harborough's friends were sure to leave after calling and finding him gone. Perhaps some of these cards would make the hotel people regret the error of their ways. But apologies would be in vain. He would go to the Plaza, or the Belmont——
"We approach the castle doors, me lord," grandiloquently announced Bill, little guessing that his jesting way of address was that to which Loveland was accustomed from his inferiors.
Val started from the reverie in which he had been walking at his companion's side like a mechanical figure. He waked to find himself in a brilliantly illuminated street, like a tenth-rate imitation of Broadway, lined with lighted shops, gaudy restaurants and strange houses of entertainment.
"This is the Bowery," Bill mentioned with pride.
The Bowery? English Loveland had vaguely expected a gentle suburb of trees and flowers, such as American Bill might have pictured Bloomsbury. And as Willing knew naught of the pleasant "Bouweries" of old Dutch days, he had no explanation to mitigate his companion's disillusionment.
They passed a tall building whose red front was pictorial with advertisements of Wonders such as the world could not have survived had it seen them in the flesh.
"My old pitch," said Bill. "I painted the Fat Twins with their heads under their arms, and the Half-Zebra-Half-Camel. The Fair One with Golden Locks, too, and the Human Bone are my Shay Doovers. What do you think of 'em, chum?"
"Chum" was filled with respectful admiration of the artist's imagination, if not of his technique, and he replied fervently that the Shay Doovers in question were marvellous.
"Here's where I used to bark," went on Bill with a sigh for past glories. "They'd ought to give us free passes for a look round, if you'd like, but the Boss ain't built that way, and there's nothing to see anyhow. The Freaks ain't what they're painted. Couldn't be, for a dime."
Loveland answered that no doubt the pictures were the best part of the show, which pleased the artist, and they walked on, Bill blasé, Val interested to the point of self-forgetfulness. A few doors to the left, after passing a shooting gallery and a drinking saloon which called itself a café, Mr. Willing paused in front of a tall building which loomed up dingy and ill-lighted in comparison with its gaudy neighbors. A lamp over a low-browed door drew sufficient attention to the announcement, printed in faded lettering, that this was "The Bat Hotel. For Gentlemen Only."
Bill Willing opened the door as if he were at home, as indeed he was, for "The Bat" had been his headquarters, more or less, for years. He sometimes paid in advance for a week, or weeks, at a time, and then the same bed and locker were scrupulously reserved for him; but he had been a little irregular lately, owing to his many promiscuous charities.
"Come in, do," he said hospitably, and Loveland obeyed, to find himself standing directly at the foot of a long, dimly lit stairway, the steps of which were protected from the wear and tear of time and boots by strips of iron.
At the top was a closed door; and this open, Loveland was plunged into the life and movement of the Bat Hotel, appropriately named for its night activities. Behind a grating, which formed a small room, stood the proprietor or manager of the establishment, ready to accept payment, allot beds, inscribe the names of new clients in a book, and deal out keys of lockers or cubicles. This tiny office was cut out of a long narrow room, in which fifty or sixty men were sitting glancing over the newspapers, or writing a last letter before they went to bed. They were grouped at one of several long tables that ran down the length of the room, or assembled round a huge iron stove whose fat body was almost red hot. The crude white light of unshaded electric lamps exaggerated the hollows in tired faces, and brought out a kind of tragic family likeness among them, different as were the types, and features: the likeness born of the same kind of hardships endured without hope of anything better in the world.
There were two windows at front and back of the long room, but they were closed, save perhaps for a furtive crack at the top, and the heated atmosphere was charged with the smell of cheap tobacco (for the men were allowed to smoke, though not to drink, in the Bat Hotel), badly aired clothing and hot humanity. As Bill easily leaned his elbows on a narrow shelf in front of the office grating, explaining his errand to the manager, Loveland wished himself back in the Park again, half drowned in perfumed, moony vapour; but it was too late. He was "in for it" now, he said to himself, as Bill, with a certain pride, announced that "his friend" wanted a room. "A bed for mine," he went on pleasantly. "I'd be glad of 81, if it's free. I always sleep mighty well in 81."
Eighty-one was engaged, but Bill got another number to which he was accustomed, and then his friend's name was asked.
"Anything you like, up to Edward Seventh, or down to J. Smith," whispered Mr. Willing, as he moved away that Loveland might take his place at the grating.
Loveland hesitated for an instant, and then gave the name of P. Gordon, one to which he had a right, among many others.
As Bill was competent to play host, they were given their keys, and allowed to find their own way to their quarters. Loveland's number was on the next floor, but Bill's cheaper lodging was higher up.
At the top of another flight of iron-bound stairs was a row of cubicles, boarded in half-way up to the ceiling, and protected above by thick wire netting, lest some nimble night-prowler, moved by curiosity or a less fanciful motive, should be minded to enter his neighbour's dwelling in spite of lock and key.
The cubicles were not numerous, for such accommodation de luxe was beyond the means, beyond even the ambition of a hundred out of the hundred and sixty men whom the Bat Hotel sheltered each night. The row (called "Fifth Avenue" by those who could not afford to sleep there) was partitioned off from a long room the size of the reading-room below; but here, instead of tables and benches running along the walls, were beds, many beds, placed at small, irregular distances from each other. A faint light revealed them, and the straight dark shapes of the lockers shared, half and half, by the sleepers whom Loveland could dimly see hunched up under their grey blankets.
Some men slept in their clothes for warmth, though the room was not cold. Here and there a hat or cap made a black blot on a thin, flattened pillow, and the turned-up collar of an overcoat appeared above a tightly-wrapped blanket. At the back, dark door-ways led to the washroom; and a few wearily drooping figures flitted to and fro, silently as the bat which lent its name to their lodging. Save for their dragging footsteps, which scarcely sounded on the cement floor, damp with disinfectant, there was no sound in the big dormitory, unless an occasional snore or a word blurted out in sleep.
Bill unlocked the door of Loveland's cubicle for him. "This is pretty complete, ain't it?" he asked in a whisper which respected the slumber of others. "The beds are good enough for mine; but these rooms are fit for a lord."
It was a much humbled lord who shut himself up in the boasted magnificence of No. 15, there finding himself possessed of a narrow hospital bed spread with a grey blanket strongly scented with carbolic, and just space enough in the case to undress if he chose. But for reasons which seemed good to him he did not choose.
Having bidden Bill "good-night" without saying a word in disparagement of the Bat Hotel (moved by a new unselfishness which would not for the world have hurt his friend's feelings) Loveland took off collar, necktie and shoes, to roll himself up in the disinfected blanket. The bed was not more than three or four inches too short for his tall body, and though the mattress and pillow were as flat as stale jokes, and hard as poverty, Val fell asleep.
Sleeping, dreams came to him, more real in seeming than any happenings of the strange, nightmare day just passed.
They were of storms at sea, of fighting in South Africa; and when a light persistent tapping at the thin door wrenched him awake he thought he was being called for a night sortie.
"Yes! All right!" he muttered, sitting up dazedly. "I—what——"
"Sh! You'll rouse everybody," whispered Bill Willing's warning voice. "Unlock the door, will you?"
Still half asleep, Loveland blinked in the dim light, found the key in the lock and turned it. Like a shabby ghost, Bill stole into the cubicle. "Mighty sorry to rout you out so early," he said, in cautiously lowered tones, "but it's six o'clock, and in half an hour I've got to be at the restaurant to begin work. If you'll get ready and come along, the Boss's daughter, Miss Izzie, may take a shine to you, and smuggle you a breakfast when Alexander the Great, her pa, ain't there to say no."
By the time that Bill had made his plans clear, Loveland's drugged memory had begun to work. He recalled everything, with the sensation of having opened a gate to set free a troop of grunting wild pigs. He was cold: the carbolic smell, which he hated, made him feel sick. His head throbbed as if tacks were being stuck into his temples and torn out again. His muscles were stiff, and he felt more tired than when he had lain down. It was disgusting to think that he had slept in his clothes, in such a place as this, and had nothing fresh to put on, and he loathed his own body because of the squalor in which it had consented to wallow.
How he longed for a cold bath in a great white porcelain tub, clean linen, neat tweeds, and the luxurious silver toilet things, all of which would have been his morning portion at home, or at the Waldorf-Astoria! But repinings only added to the hatefulness of his situation. He saw that, and shook them off, yet it was on the tip of his tongue to vent his irritation on Bill, and yesterday he would have yielded as soon as tempted. But something had changed in him since yesterday. Something stirred, that through all his life had been asleep.
He made himself as neat as he could, did not grumble at the washing accommodation, and moved with caution for fear of disturbing men whom twenty-four hours ago he would have considered no more than sheep. That was because he had been of the brotherhood, and though he expected soon to give up his membership, he would never be able to forget. Men such as these with whom he had touched shoulders would never be Things for him again.
It was still night in the Bat Hotel as Loveland and Bill slipped their keys into the key-box, and tip-toed downstairs; but outside, though the lights of New York had been put out, the light of the world, climbing up the far horizon, had begun to gild the city's domes.