John Marvel, Assistant Part 21

The new conditions with which I was confronted had a singular effect on me. I was accustomed to a life where every one knew me and I knew, if not every one, at least something good or bad about every one.

Here I might have committed anything short of murder or suicide without comment, and might have committed both without any one outside of the reporters and the police and Dix caring a straw about it.

I felt peculiarly lonely because I was inclined to be social and preferred to a.s.sociate with the first man I met on the street to being alone. In fact, I have always accounted it one of my chief blessings that I could find pleasure and entertainment for a half-hour in the company of any man in the world except a fool or a man of fashion, as the old writers used to speak of them, or as we call them now, members of the smart set.

The first things that struck me as I stepped out into the thronged streets of the city were the throngs that hurried, hurried, hurried along, like a torrent pouring through a defile, never stopping nor pausing--only flowing on, intent on but one thing--getting along. Their faces, undistinguished and indistinguishable in the crowd, were not eager, but anxious. There was no rest, and no room for rest, more than in the rapids of Niagara. It was the bourgeoisie at flood, strong, turgid, and in ma.s.s, ponderant; but inextinguishably common. As I stood among them, yet not of them, I could not but remark how like they were in ma.s.s and how not merely all distinction but all individuality perished in the mixing. I recalled a speech that my father had once made. "I prefer countrymen," he said, "to city men. The latter are as like as their coats. The ready-made-clothing house is a great civilizer, but also a great leveler. Like the common school of which you boast, it may uplift the ma.s.s, but it levels--it destroys all distinction."

This came home to me now.

I had a proof of its truth, and, I may add, of the effect of urban influences not long after I launched on the restless sea of city life. I was pa.s.sing one day along a street filled with houses, some much finer than others, when my way was blocked by a child's funeral in front of a small but neat house beside one much more pretentious. The white hea.r.s.e stood at the door and the little white coffin with a few flowers on it was just about to be borne out as I came up. A child's funeral has always appealed to me peculiarly. It seems so sad to have died on the threshold before even opening the door. It appeared to me suddenly to have brought me near to my kind. And I stopped in front of the adjoining house to wait till the sorrowing little cortege had entered the carriage which followed behind the hea.r.s.e. A number of other persons had done the same thing. At this moment, the door of the larger house next door opened, and a woman, youngish and well-dressed, appeared and stood on her steps waiting for her carriage which stood at some little distance.

As I was standing near her, I turned and asked her in an undertone:

"Can you tell me whose funeral this is?"

"No, I cannot," she said, so sharply that I took a good look at her as she stood trying to b.u.t.ton a tight glove.

"Oh! I thought, perhaps, you knew as they are your next-door neighbors."

"Well, I do not. It's no concern of mine," she said shortly. She beckoned to her carriage across the way. The coachman who had been looking at the funeral caught sight of her and with a start wheeled his horses around to draw up. The number of persons, however, who had stopped like myself prevented his coming up to her door, which appeared to annoy the lady.

"Can't you move these people on?" she demanded angrily of a stout officer who stood like the rest of us, looking on.

"It's a funeral," he said briefly.

"Well, I know it is. I don't expect you to interfere with that. It's these idlers and curiosity mongers who block the way that I want moved to clear a way for my carriage. And if you can't do it, I'll ask Mr.

McSheen to put a man on this beat who can. As it happens I am going there now." Insolence could go no farther.

"Let that carriage come up here, will you?" said the officer without changing his expression. "Drive up, lad," he beckoned to the coachman who came as near as he could.

"To Mrs. McSheen's," said the lady in a voice evidently intended for the officer to hear, "and next time, don't stand across the street staring at what you have no business with, but keep your eyes open so that you won't keep me waiting half an hour beckoning to you." She entered the carriage and drove off, making a new attack on her glove to close it over a pudgy wrist. I glanced at the coachman as she closed the door and I saw an angry gleam flash in his eye. And when I turned to the officer he was following the carriage with a look of hate. I suddenly felt drawn to them both, and the old fight between the People and the Bourgeoisie suddenly took shape before me, and I found where my sympathies lay. At this moment the officer turned and I caught his eye and held it. It was hard and angry at first, but as he gave me a keen second glance, he saw something in my face and his eye softened.

"Who is Mr. McSheen?" I asked.

"The next mayor," he said briefly.

"Oh!" I took out my card under an impulse and scribbled my office address on it and handed it to him. "If you have any trouble about this let me know."

He took it and turning it slowly gazed at it, at first with a puzzled look. Then as he saw the address his expression changed.

He opened his coat and put it carefully in his pocket.

"Thank you, sir," he said finally.

I turned away with the consciousness that I had had a new light thrown on life, and had found it more selfish than I had dreamed. I had begun with high hopes. It was, indeed, ever my nature to be hopeful, being healthy and strong and in the prime of vigorous youth. I was always rich when at my poorest, only my heavy freighted ship had not come in. I knew that though the larder was lean and storms were beating furiously off the coast, somewhere, beating her way against the contrary winds, the argosy was slowly making headway, and some day I should find her moored beside my pier and see her stores unladen at my feet. The stress and storm of the struggle were not unwelcome to me. I was always a good fighter when aroused; but I was lazy and too indolent to get aroused.

Now, however, I was wide awake. The greatness of the city stirred my pulses. Its blackness and its force aroused my sleeping powers, and as I stepped into the surf and felt the rush of the tides as they swept about and by me, I felt as a fair swimmer might who steps for the first time in a fierce current and feels it clutch his limbs and draw him in. I was not afraid, only awakened and alive to the struggle before me, and my senses thrilled as I plunged and rose to catch my breath and face the vast unknown. Later on I found that the chief danger I had not counted on: the benumbing of the senses, the slow process under which spirit, energy, courage, and even hope finally die.

One who has never had the experience of starting in a big city alone, without a connection of any kind, cannot conceive what it means: the loneliness--utter as in a desert--the waiting--the terrible waiting--being obliged to sit day after day and just wait for business to come, watching your small funds ooze out drop by drop, seeing men pa.s.s your door and enter others' offices and never one turn in at yours, till your spirit sinks lower and lower and your heart dies within you.

One who has not felt it does not know what it is to be out of work and not able to get it. The rich and fat and sleek--the safe and secure--what know they of want! Want, not of money, but of work: the only capital of the honest and industrious poor! It is the spectre that ever haunts the poor. It makes the world look as though the whole system of society were out of joint--as if all men were in conspiracy against you--as if G.o.d had forgotten you. I found men in a harder case than mine--men in mult.i.tude, with wives and children, the babe perishing at the mother's withered breast, the children dying for food, staggering along the streets seeking work in vain, while wealth in a glittering flood poured through the streets in which they perished. This bitter knowledge I came to learn day after day till I grew almost to hate mankind. The next step is war against society. Not all who wage it hate the men they fight. It is the cause they hate. There I sat day after day, full of hope and eagerness and--now that my conceit was somewhat knocked out of me--with not only abundant ability, but the stern resolve to transact any business which might be entrusted to me, and just rotted to despair. No wonder men go to the devil, and enlist to fight the whole establishment of organized society. I almost went. When I look back at it now it seems like a miracle that I did not go wholly. Pride saved me. It survived long after hope died. Sometimes, I even thought of the pistol I had in my trunk. But I had made up my mind to live and win.

There, too, came in Pride. I could not bear to think of Lilian Poole and Peck. How she would congratulate herself and how Peck would gloat! No, I could not give him that satisfaction. Peck did me a good turn there. A strong enmity, well based, is not always without good results; but Peck should not smear my memory with pretended pity. So I starved, but held on. When I got so that I could endure it no longer, I used to go out and walk up and down the streets--sometimes the fashionable streets--and look at the handsome residences and the fine carriages and automobiles flashing by and the handsomely dressed people pa.s.sing, and recall that I was as good as they--in my heart, I thought, better. Some of them with kind faces I used to fancy my friends; but that they did not know I was in town. This conceit helped me. And at times I used to fancy that I lived in a particular house, and owned a particular team: thus living for a brief moment like a child in "making pictures." A house is sometimes personal and well-nigh human to me. It appears to have qualities almost human and to express them on its face: kindness, hostility, arrogance, breadth or narrowness, and brutal selfishness are often graven on its front. I have often felt that I could tell from the outside of a house the characteristics of the people within. Arrogance, ignorance, want of tact, pretentiousness and display, spoke from every ma.s.sy doorway and gaudy decoration with a loudness which would have shocked a savage. This being so, what characters some of the wealthy people of our cities must have! It must be one of the compensations of the poor that the houses of the rich are often so hideous and unhome-like.

The mansion I selected finally as mine was a light stone mansion, simple in its style, but charming in its proportions; not one of the largest, but certainly one of the prettiest in the whole city. Amid a waste of splendid vulgarity it was almost perfect in its harmonious architectural design and lines, and had a sunny, homelike look. It stood in an ample lot with sun and air all around it, and gra.s.s and flowers about it. Our fathers used to say, "seated," which has a more established and restful sound. It looked a home of refinement and ease. Its stable was set back some distance behind and a little to one side, so that I could see that it was of the same stone with the mansion and just enough of the same general style to indicate that it belonged to the mansion, and the teams that came out of it were the nattiest and daintiest in the city.

One day as I was walking, trying to divert myself from my loneliness, a brougham rolled out of this stable with a pair of airy, prancing bays, shining like satin, and drew up to the carriage-block a little before me, and a young lady came out of the house as I pa.s.sed by. My heart gave a leap, for it was the girl I had seen on the train. I took her in, rather than scanned her as she tripped down the stone steps, and she glanced at me for a second as if she thought I might be an acquaintance.

She made as she stood there one of the loveliest pictures I had ever laid eyes on: her trim, slim figure, exquisitely dressed, in the quietest way; soft, living brown hair, brushed back from a white, broad forehead; beautiful, speaking eyes under nearly straight brows; and a mouth neither too big for beauty nor too small for character; all set off by a big black hat with rich plumes that made a background for what I thought the loveliest face I had ever seen.

Something pleasant had evidently just happened within; for she came out of the door smiling, and I observed at the same moment her eyes and her dimples. I wondered that people did not always smile: that smile suddenly lit up everything for me. I forgot my loneliness, my want of success, myself. Her hands were full of parcels as she came down the steps, and just as I pa.s.sed the wind lifted the paper from one--a bunch of flowers, and in trying to recover it she dropped another and it rolled down to my feet. I picked it up and handed it to her. It was a ball, one of those big, squashy, rubber b.a.l.l.s with painted rings around it, that are given to small children because they cannot do anything with them. She thanked me sweetly and was turning to her carriage, when under a sudden impulse, I stepped to the door, just as I should have done at home, and, lifting my hat, said, "I beg your pardon, but mayn't I open your door for you?"

She bowed, looking, perhaps, just the least shade surprised. But, having handed her in, I was afraid of embarra.s.sing her, and was backing away and pa.s.sing on when she thanked me again very graciously. Again I lifted my hat and again got a look into her deep eyes. As the carriage rolled off, she was leaning back in it, and I felt her eyes upon me from under the shade of that big hat with a pleasant look, but I had a.s.sumed an unconscious air, and even stopped and picked up, as though carelessly, a couple of violets she had dropped as she crossed the sidewalk; and after a sniff of their fragrance, dropped them into my pocket-book, because they reminded me of the past and because I hated to see them lie on the hard pavement to be crushed by pa.s.sing feet. The book was empty enough otherwise, but somehow I did not mind it so much after the violets were there.

"Who lives in that house?" I asked of an officer.

"Mr. Leigh, the banker and big west-side street-car man--runs all the lines out that way--all the Argand estate don't run," he added. He waved his arm to include a circle that might take in half the town or half the world. "The big house in the middle of the block is Mrs. Argand's--the great Philanthropist, you know? Everybody knows her." I did not, but I did not care; I knew all I wanted to know--I knew who Miss Leigh was. I reflected with some concern that this was the name of the vice-president of the Railway whom I had attacked through Kalender and of the man to whom Mr. Poole's perfunctory letter was addressed. I went back to my office in better spirits, and, having no brief to work on, even wrote a poem about the violets--about her leaving a track of violets behind her.

I was drawn to that street a number of times afterward, but I saw her no more.

I don't believe that love often comes at first sight; but that it may come thus, or at least, at second sight, I have my own case to prove. It may be that my empty heart, bruised and lonely in that great city, was waiting with open door for any guest bold enough to walk in and claim possession. It may be that that young lady with her pleasant smile, her high-bred face and kindly air, crossing my path in that stranger-thronged wilderness, was led by Providence; it may be that her grace and charm were those I had pictured long in the Heavenward dreams of youth and but now found. However it was, I went home in love with an ideal whose outward semblance was the girl with the children's toys--truly in love with her. And the vision of Lilian Poole never came to me again in any guise that could discomfort me. From this time the vision that haunted me and led me on was of a sweet-eyed girl who dimpled as she smiled and dropped her violets. The picture of Lilian Poole, standing by the marble mantel in her plush-upholstered parlor, adjusting her bracelet so as to set off her not too small wrist, while I faced my fate, flitted before my mind, but she was a ghost to me, and my heart warmed as I thought of the lady of the violets and the children's toys.

XVI

THE SHADOW OF SHAM

I soon changed back to my first boarding-house. After my two weeks were out for which I had prepaid, I went to my landlady, Mrs. Starling, a tall, thin woman with high cheek bones, a cold eye and a close mouth, and told her frankly I could not pay any more in advance, and that, though I would certainly pay her within a short time, it might not be convenient for me to pay her by the week, and I left it with her whether she would keep me on these terms. She did not hesitate a second. Her first duty was to herself and family, she said, by which she meant her daughter, "Miss Starling," as she always spoke of her, but whom the irreverent portion of the boarders whom I a.s.sociated with always spoke of as "Birdy," a young woman who dressed much in yellow, perhaps because it matched her blondined hair, played vehemently on the piano, and entertained the young men who boarded there. "Besides, she wanted the room for a dressing-room for a gentleman who wished a whole suite," she added, with what I thought a little undue stress on the word "gentleman," as the "gentleman" in question was the person who had borrowed my money from me and never returned it: Count Pushkin, who occupied the big room next my little one. He had, as I learned, cut quite a dash in town for a while, living at one of the most fashionable hotels, and driving a cart and tandem, and paying a.s.siduous attention to a young heiress in the city, daughter of a manufacturer and street-car magnate; but latterly he had taken a room at Mrs. Starling's, "in order," he gave out, "that he might be quiet for a time," as a duke or d.u.c.h.ess or something--I am not sure he did not say a king--who was his relative, had died in Europe. He had taken the greater part of the boarding-house by storm, for he was a tall, showy-looking fellow, and would have been handsome but for a hard and shifty eye. And I found myself in a pitiful minority in my aversion to him, which, however, after a while, gained some recruits among the young men, one of them, my young reporter, Kalender, who had moved there from Mrs. Kale's.

The boarding-house keeper's daughter was desperately in love with Pushkin, and, with her mother's able a.s.sistance, was making a dead set for him, which partiality the count was using for what it was worth, hardly attempting meantime to disguise his amus.e.m.e.nt at them. He sang enough to be pa.s.sable, though his voice was, like his eye, hard and cold; and he used to sing duets with Miss Starling: the method by which, according to a vivacious young Jew, named Isadore Ringarten, who lived in the house, he paid his board. I never knew how he acquired his information, but he was positive.

"I vish," said Isadore, "I could pay my board in vind--vith a little song. Now, I can sing so the Count he would give me all he is vorth to sing so like I sing; but I am not a count--efen on this side."

However this was, Pushkin paid the girl enough attention to turn the poor thing's head, and made her treat harshly my reporter, Kalender, who was deeply in love with her, and spent all his salary on her for flowers, and lavished theatre tickets on her.

The evening before I left I had to call Pushkin down, who had been drinking a little, and I must say, when I called, he came promptly. It was after dinner in "the smoking room," as the apartment was called, and he began to ridicule poor Victoria cruelly, saying she had told him her hair was yellow like that of the girls of his own country, and he had told her, no, that hers was natural, while theirs was always dyed, and she swallowed it.

"She is in loaf mit me. She swallow whatefer I gif her--" he laughed.

The others laughed, too. But I did not. I thought of Lilian Poole and Peck. Perhaps, I was thinking of my money, and I know I thought of the account of the ball which took place the day I arrived. I told him what I thought of his ridiculing a girl he flattered so to her face. He turned on me, his eyes snapping, his face flushed, but his manner cool and his voice level.

"Ha-ah! Are you in loaf mit her, too, like poor Kalender, who spent all hees moneys on her, and what she laugh at to make me amused? I gif her to you, den. I too not want her--I haf had her, you can take her."

He made a gesture as if tossing something contemptuously into my arms, and put his cigarette back in his teeth and drew a long breath. There were none but men present, and some of them had stopped laughing and were looking grave.

"No, I am not in love with her," I said quietly, standing up. "I only will not allow you to speak so of any lady in my presence--that is all."

I was thinking of a girl who lived in a sunny house, and had once taken a lot of little dirty-faced children to feed them, and once had smiled into my eyes. I only knew her name, but her violets were in my pocket near my heart. I was perfectly calm in my manner and my face had whitened, and he mistook it, for he blurted out:

"Oh! I vill nod? I vill nod speaks in your presence. You vill gif me one little lesson? You who know te vorl so vell. I tank you, Millot!"

He bowed low before me, spreading out his arms, and some of the others t.i.ttered. It encouraged him and he straightened up and stepped in front of me.