People of the Whirlpool Part 6

"What is it?" we asked of the verger, who was preparing to close the doors.

"There will be a funeral of one of the oldest members of the congregation to-morrow, and they are about to go through the music of the office."

Suddenly a rich ba.s.s voice, strong in conviction, trumpeted forth--"I am the resurrection and the life!" And only a stone's throw away jingled the money market of the western world. The temple and the table of the money changers keep step as of old. Ah, wonderful New York!

The afternoon was clear staccato and mild withal, and the sun, almost at setting, lingered above orange and dim cloud banks at the end of the vista Broadway made.

"Are you tired? Can you walk half a dozen blocks?" asked Evan of Miss Lavinia, as we came out.

"No, quite the reverse; I think that I am electrified," she replied briskly.

"Then we will go to Battery Park," he said, turning south.

"Battery Park, where all the immigrants and roughs congregate! What an idea! We shall catch smallpox or have our pockets picked!"

"Have you ever _been_ there?" persisted Evan.

"Yes, once, I think, when steamship pa.s.sengers lathed at the barge office, and of course I've seen it often in going to Staten Island to visit Cousin Lucretia."

Evan's only reply was to keep on walking. We did not cross the "bowling green," but swung to the right toward Pier I, and took the path between old Castle Garden and the sea wall at the point where one of the fire patrol boats was resting, steam up and hose nozzles pointed, lance couchant wise.

Ah, what a picture! No wonder Miss Lavinia adjusted her gla.s.ses quickly (she is blindly nearsighted), caught her breath, and clung to Evan's arm as the fresh sea breeze coming up from the Narrows wheeled her about.

Before us Staten Island divided the water left and right, while between it and the Long Island sh.o.r.e, just leaving quarantine and dwarfing the smaller craft, an ocean liner, glistening with ice, was coming on in majestic haste. All about little tugs puffed and snorted, and freighters pa.s.sed crosswise, parting the floating ice and churning it with their paddles, scarcely disturbing the gulls, that flew so close above the water that their wings touched, or floated at leisure.

The sun that had been gilding everything from masthead to floating spar gathered in its forces, and for one moment seemed to rest upon Liberty's torch, throwing the statue into clear relief, and then dropped rapidly behind the river's night-cloud bank, and presently lights began to glimmer far and near, the night breath rose from the water, and the wave-cradled gulls slept.

"Do you like our New York?" asked Evan, turning to go.

"Don't speak," whispered Miss Lavinia, hanging back.

But we were no sooner on the elevated train than she found use for her tongue, for whose feet should I stumble over on entering, quite big feet too, or rather shoes, for the size of the man, but Martin Cortright's, and of course he was duly presented to Miss Lavinia.

V

FEBRUARY VIOLETS

That night Miss Lavinia was forced to ask "for time for 'forty winks'"

before she could even think of dinner, and Evan and I sat them out in the deep, hospitable chairs by the library fire. We were not tired, simply held in check; country vitality shut off from certain ways for six months is not quickly exhausted, but, on the other hand, when it is spent, it takes several months to recuperate.

The first night that I leave home for these little excursions I have a sense of virtue and simmering self-congratulation. I feel that I am doing a sensible thing in making a break from what the theorists call "the narrowing evenness of domestic existence." Of course it is a good thing for me to leave father and the boys, and see and hear something new to take back report of to them; it is better for them to be taught appreciation of me by absence; change is beneficial to every one, etc., etc., and all that jargon.

The second night I am still true to the theory, but am convinced that to the highly imaginative, a city day and its doings may appear like the Biblical idea of eternity--reversed--"a thousand years." The third night I am painfully sure of this, and if I remain away over a fourth, which is very rare, I cast the whole theory out to the winds of scepticism, and am so restless and disagreeable that Evan usually suggests that I take a morning train home and do not wait for him, which is exactly the responsibility that I wish him to a.s.sume, thus saving me from absolute surrender.

We always have a good time on our outings, and yet after each the pleasure of return grows keener, so that occasionally Evan remonstrates and says: "Sometimes I cannot understand your att.i.tude; you appear to enjoy every moment keenly, and yet when you go home you act as if you had mercifully escaped from a prison that necessitated going through a sort of thanksgiving ceremony. It seems very irrational."

But when I ask him if it would be more rational to be sorry to come home, he does not answer,--at least not in words.

"Where do we dine to-night?" I asked Evan, as he was giving unmistakable signs of "meditation," and I heard by the footsteps overhead that Miss Lavinia was stirring.

"At the Art and Nature Club. You can dress as much or as little as you please, and we can get a table in a cosey corner, and afterward sit about upstairs for an hour, for there will be music to-night. I have asked Martin Cortright to join us. It has its interesting side, this--a transplanted Englishman married to a country girl introducing old bred-in-the-bone New Yorkers to New Manhattan."

When I go to town my costuming consists merely in change of waists, as street and public conveyances alike are a perpetual menace to one's best petticoats, so in a few moments we were on our way uptown.

We did not tell Miss Lavinia where we were going until we were almost there, and she was quite upset, as dining at the two or three hotels and other places affected by the Whirlpoolers implies a careful and special toilet to run the gantlet of society reporters, for every one is somebody in one sense, though in another "n.o.body is really any one."

She was rea.s.sured, however, the moment that she drew her high-backed oak chair up to the table that Evan had reserved in a little alcove near the fireplace. Before the oysters arrived, and Martin Cortright appeared to fill the fourth seat, she had completely relaxed, and was beaming at the bra.s.s jugs and pottery beakers ranged along a shelf above the dark wainscot, and at the general company, while the warmth from the fire logs gave her really a very pretty colour, and she began to question Martin as to who all these people, indicating the rapidly filling-up tables, were.

But Martin gazed serenely about and confessed he did not know.

The people came singly, or in twos and threes, men and women together or alone, a fact at which Miss Lavinia greatly marvelled. Greetings were exchanged, and there was much visiting from table to table, as if the footing was that of a private house.

"Nice-looking people," said Miss Lavinia, meditatively scrutinizing the room through her lorgnette without a trace of sn.o.bbery in her voice or att.i.tude, yet I was aware that she was mentally drawing herself apart.

"Some of them quite unusual, but there is not a face here that I ever saw in society. Are they members of the Club? Where do they come from? Where do they live?"

Evan's lips shut together a moment before he answered, and I saw a certain steely gleam in his eye that I always regarded as a danger signal.

"Perhaps they might ask the same questions about you," he answered; "though they are not likely to, their world is so much broader. They are men and women chiefly having an inspiration, an art or craft, or some vital reason for living besides the mere fact that it has become a habit.

They are none of them rich enough to be disagreeable or feel that they own the right to trample on their fellows. They all live either in or near New York, as best suits their means, vocations, and temperaments.

Men and women together, they represent, as well as a gathering can, the hopeful spirit of our New York of New Manhattan that does not grovel to mere money power."

Miss Lavinia seemed a little abashed, but Martin Cortright, who had been a silent observer until now, said: "It surprises me to see fraternity of this sort in the midst of so many inst.i.tutions of specialized exclusiveness and the decadence of clubs, that used to be veritable brotherhoods, by unwise expansion. I like the general atmosphere, it seems cheerful and, if one may blend the terms, conservatively Bohemian."

"Come upstairs before the music begins, so that we can get comfortably settled in the background, that I may tell you who some of these 'unknown-to-Whirlpool-society' people are. You may be surprised," said Evan to Miss Lavinia, who had by this time finished her coffee.

The rooms were cheerful with artistic simplicity. The piano had been moved from the lounging room into the picture gallery opposite to where a fine stained gla.s.s window was exhibited, backed by electric lights.

We stowed ourselves away in a deep seat, shaped something like an old-fashioned school form, backed and cushioned with leather, to watch the audience gather. Every phase of dress was present, from the ball gown to the rainy weather skirt, and enough of each grade to keep one another in countenance. About half the men wore evening suits, but those who did not were completely at their ease.

There was no regular ushering to seats, but every one was placed easily and naturally. Evan, who had Miss Lavinia in charge, was alert, and rather, it seemed to me, on the defensive; but though Martin asked questions, he was comfortably soothing, and seemed to take in much at a glance.

That short man with the fine head, white hair and beard, aquiline nose, and intense eyes is not only a poet, but the first American critic of pure literature. He lives out of town, but comes to the city daily for a certain stimulus. The pet.i.te woman with the pretty colour who has crossed the room to speak to him is the best known writer of New England romance.

That shy-looking fellow standing against the curtain at your right, with the brown mustache and broad forehead, is the New England sculptor whose forcible creations are known everywhere, yet he is almost shrinkingly modest, and he never, it seems, even in thought, has broken the injunction of "Let another praise thee, not thine own lips."

Half a dozen promising painters are standing in the doorway talking to a young woman who, beginning with newspaper work, has stepped suddenly into a niche of fiction. The tall, loose-jointed man at the left of the group, the editor of a conservative monthly, has for his vis-a-vis the artist who has had so much to do with the redemption of American architecture and decoration from the mongrel period of the middle century. Another night you may not see a single one of these faces, but another set, yet equally interesting.

Meanwhile Martin Cortright had discovered a man, a financier and also a book collector of prominence, who was reputed to have a complete set of some early records that he had long wished to consult; he had never found a suitable time for meeting him, as the man, owing to having been oftentime the prey of both unscrupulous dealers and parasitic friends, was esteemed difficult.

Infected by the freedom of his surroundings, Martin plucked up courage and spoke to him, the result being an interchange of cards, book talk, and an invitation to visit the library.

Then the music began, and lasted not above an hour, with breathing and chatting intervals, followed by claret cup and lemonade. A pleasant evening's recreation, with no opportunity of acc.u.mulating the material for either mental or physical headache.

The night air was very soft, but of that delusive quality that in February portends snow, and not the return of bluebirds, as the uninitiated might expect. Miss Lavinia was fascinated by the lights and motion of Herald Square, and at her suggestion, it being but a little past ten, we strolled homeward down Broadway instead of taking a car. Her delight at the crowd of promenaders, the picturesque florists' shops, and the general buzz of night life was almost pathetic. Her after-dark experience having been to get to and from specified places as quickly as possible with Lucy for escort, solicitous when in a street car lest they should pa.s.s their destination, and trembling even more when in a cab lest the driver should have committed the variable and expansive crime of "taking something." She bought a "ten o'clock edition" of the _Telegram_, some of "Match Mary's" wares, that perennially middle-aged woman who haunts the theatre region, and suggested that we have ice-cream soda at a particularly glittering drug store, but this desire was switched into hot bouillon by Evan, who retains the Englishman's dislike of chilling his internals.

New York is really a fine city by night, that is, in parts at least, and yet it is very strange how comparatively few of the rank and file of its inhabitants walk abroad to see the spectacle.