Lord Loveland Discovers America Part 21

"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 pa.s.ses 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 blase, Val interested to the point of self-forgetfulness. A few doors to the left, after pa.s.sing a shooting gallery and a drinking saloon which called itself a cafe, 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 a.s.sembled 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 part.i.tioned 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sed.

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.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Izzie of the Almond Eyes

It was not often that Loveland came into personal relations with sunrise, and to see the rose and golden banners float high and higher above the roofs and sleeping windows of New York, was like being first gazer at some great painting in a Private View. There was hope and promise of joy in such beauty, but he felt wretchedly out of the picture in his rumpled evening clothes.

The virginal purity of dawn, translucent above the turgid darkness of the town, made Lesley Dearmer seem suddenly to be very near him, so that the air shone with her invisible presence. How sweet she was, how delicately quaint in all her thoughts, how kind to others despite her clear wit, and how sure of ultimate goodness, as she was of life!

Lesley had said that she had "faith in his other side," as she had faith in the other side of the moon, though she did not expect ever to see either. "You will always go on getting what you want," she had prophesied just before they parted. What would she think of that prophecy if she were even to dream of this humiliated figure, creeping out of night to a new day?

Bill's hatchet face glimmered sallow and shabby through the pearly twilight, and there was a frayed look under the patient, humourous eyes.

"Are you cold?" he asked.

"A little," replied Val. "But I don't mind."

"You ain't used to the climate yet," said Bill, "and I'd make you squeeze into my overcoat, only I'm a bit too sketchy underneath. Can't afford to get me winter wardrobe back from my uncle's yet."

They pa.s.sed out of the Bowery, and turned into Twelfth Street. Most of the houses still had their eyelids shut in sleep, and their brick faces looked dull, lacking all interest in life, as if it were hardly worth while to wake up for another day patterned upon a dreary yesterday. But in the middle of the first block there was one house which showed some faint signs of life.

Originally it had resembled its neighbours in all essential features, but the front on the ground floor had been altered, a large window of plate gla.s.s having been put in; and from this window a sleepy, sulky, bullet-headed youth was in the act of removing a few gouts of mud splashed up by some pa.s.sing cart. Above the wide window, in all the glory of red and gold paint not yet faded, was the legend: "This is Alexander the Great's." Inside, its face turned towards the gla.s.s, was a big, framed blackboard covered with pictorial advertis.e.m.e.nts of various dishes, done in chalks of violent hues, while from a gilded strip of cornice depended large squares of cardboard glorifying Alexander the Great and his system, in lettering of black and scarlet.

"Yesterday's show," explained Bill. "My work, the whole lot. The cards last out the week; but the meenoo on the blackboard's new every day. I tell you, it takes brain work! Hurry up, chum. I'm late."

The sleepy youth left the door open, and they went in, pa.s.sing directly into a room fitted up as a restaurant. The walls were painted with lurid representations of Alexander the Great's battles, the costumes and scenery having been studied more with a view to sensational effect than accuracy of historical detail. There was a wild melee of warriors mixed with palm trees, against backgrounds of rose-red sky, and cobalt sea; and the face of Alexander--always a prominent figure in each scene--was evidently a portrait done from a Hebraic model.

"What do you think of it?" asked Bill, who was hastily unb.u.t.toning his overcoat, to reveal a collar of immaculate celluloid and a jacket or "blazer" of blue and yellow stripes.

"It's very striking," replied Val.

"My idea," said Bill, proudly. "Got it from the name over the door, as I pa.s.sed by that first day. Came to me like a shot. And then I thought of the picture meenoos. When they're goin' to have rabbit, give 'em a rabbit nibblin' a bit of lettuce--make it realistic. When they're goin'

to hev punkin pie, just make their mouths water only to see its portrait in the window, so they've _got_ to walk in and eat a chunk of the old original, if it takes their bottom nickel. Now, while I work like heat lightnin', you amuse yerself examinin' my Shay Doovers."

As he spoke, he darted to a door at the back of the room, in front of which hung a red curtain. Behind this curtain he disappeared with his cherished overcoat, returning in a moment without the coat and with the materials for his work, in a wooden box originally intended for starch.

Whistling melodiously "I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls," he mounted the low platform in the window, which supported the blackboard, and began to mop out yesterday's brilliant triumphs with a wet sponge.

A list of the princ.i.p.al dishes for the day had been jotted down for him in pencil on a bit of paper which he pinned to the frame of the blackboard lest memory prove treacherous in some succulent detail; and then, with true artistic abandonment, he forgot everything except his work.

Meanwhile, Loveland sought the neighbourhood of a huge stove which, its flaming mouth muzzled with talc, looked like a black, round-bodied goblin squatting, short-legged, on an island of zinc. The sulky boy had made up the fire; and carrying off a coal-scuttle full of grey ashes which he had raked out, he too vanished behind the red curtain.

Evidently ventilation was not one of the many popular specialities of Alexander the Great's establishment, for the atmosphere of the restaurant was heavy with the fumes of yesterday's food, the pictorial advertis.e.m.e.nts of which were being now expunged from the blackboard.