The Adventures of a Widow Part 13

"Yes," said Pauline quickly, lifting her face to his. "I hope it is really a bright side."

"It is--very. America receives these pitiful wretches, and after a few short months they are regenerated, transformed. There has never, in the history of the world, been a nation of the same magnificent hospitality as this. Before such droves of deplorable beings any other nation would shut her ports or arm her barriers, in strong affright. But America (which I have always thought a much more terse and expressive name than the United States) does nothing of the sort. With a superb kindness, which has behind it a sense of unexampled power, she bids them all welcome. And in a little while they breathe her vitalizing air with a new and splendid result. They forget the soldiers who kicked them, the tyrants who made them shoulder muskets in defence of thrones, the taxes wrung from their scant wages that princes might dance and feast. They forget all this gross despotism; they begin to live; their very frames and features change; their miserable past is like a broken fetter flung gladly away. And America does all this for them--this, which no other country has done or can do!"

He spoke with a fine heat, an impressive enthusiasm. Pauline, standing beside him, had earnestly fixed her look upon his handsome, virile face, noting the spark that pierced his light-blue eyes, between the black gloss of their lashes, and the little sensitive tremor that disturbed his nostril. She had never felt more swayed by his force of personality than now. She had never felt more keenly than now that his manful countenance and shape were both fit accompaniments of an important and robust nature.

"And what does America really do with these poor, maltreated creatures, after having greeted and domesticated them?" came her next words, filled with an appealing sincerity of utterance.

Something appeared suddenly to have changed Kindelon's mood. He laughed shortly and half turned away.

"Oh," he said, in wholly altered voice, "if they are Irish she sometimes makes Tammany politicians of them, and if they are Germans she sometimes turns them into howling socialists."

"Do you mean what you say?" exclaimed Pauline almost indignantly.

He bent his head and looked at her intently, for a moment, with a covert play of mirth under the crisp, dark flow of his mustache.

"I am afraid that I do," he replied, with another laugh.

"Then you think this grand American hospitality of which you have just spoken to be a failure--a sham?"

"No, no--far from that," he said rapidly, and with recurring seriousness. "I was only going back to the dark side of the question--that is all. You know, I told you it had both its dark and its bright side.... Come, let us leave this rabble. You have not really seen the Battery yet. Its true splendors lie just beyond...."

They were presently strolling along the stone-paved esplanade, with its granite posts connected by loops of one continuous iron chainwork. To the south they had a partial view of Brooklyn, that city which is a sort of reflective and imitative New York, with masts bristling from her distant wharves and more than a single remote church-spire telling of the large religious impulse which has given her a quaint ecclesiastical fame. But westward your eye could traverse the s.p.a.cious bay until it met the dull-red semicircle of Fort Columbus, planted low and stout upon the sh.o.r.e of Governor's Island, and the soft, swelling, purplish hills of Staten Island, where they loomed still further beyond. Boats of all shapes and kinds were pa.s.sing over the luminous waters, from the squat, ugly tug, with its hoa.r.s.e whistle, to the huge black bulk of an Atlantic steamer, bound for transpontine sh.o.r.es and soon to move majestically oceanward through the fair sea-gate of the Narrows. A few loiterers leaned against the stone posts, and a few more lounged upon the seats ranged further inland along this salubrious marine promenade. Back among the turfy levels that stretched broadly between the flagged pathways, you saw the timorous green of hardy gra.s.s, where an occasional pale wreath of unmelted snow yet lingered. People were pa.s.sing to and fro, with steps that rang hollow on the hard pavement. If you listened intently you could catch a kind of dreamy hum from the vast city, which might almost be said to begin its busy, tumultuous life here in this very spot, thence pushing through many a life-crowded street and avenue, sheer on to the rocky fields and goat-haunted gutters of dreary Harlem.

"What a glorious bay it is!" exclaimed Kindelon, while he and Pauline stood on the breezy esplanade. "There never was a city with more royal approaches than New York."

"That fort yonder," said Pauline, "will perhaps thunder broadsides, one day, at the fleet of an invading enemy. This is still such a young city compared with those of other lands.... I suppose these waters, centuries later, will see grand sights, as civilization augments."

"Perhaps they may see very mournful ones," objected Kindelon.

"But you are an evolutionist," declared Pauline, with a priggish little pursing of the lips that he found secretly very amusing. "You believe that everything is working toward n.o.bler conditions, though you laughed at Leander Prawle, the optimistic poet, the other evening, for his roseate prophecies about the human race."

"Oh, I'm an evolutionist," answered Kindelon. "I believe it will all come right by-and-by, like the gigantic unravelling of a gigantic skein.... But such views don't prevent me from feeling the probability of New York being reduced to ashes more than once in the coming centuries."

"Oh, yes, I remember," said Pauline. "There are often the apparent retrogressions--rhythmic variations of movement which temporarily r.e.t.a.r.d all progress in societies."

Kindelon burst into one of his mellowest and heartiest laughs. "You are delicious," he said, "when you try to recollect your Herbert Spencer.

You make me think of a flower that has been dropped among the leaves of an Algebra."

"I am not at all sure that I like your simile," said Pauline, tossing her head somewhat. "It is pleasant to be likened to a flower, but in this case it is rather belittling. And if it comes to recollecting my Herbert Spencer, perhaps the process is not one of very violent _effort_, either."

"Oh," said Kindelon ruefully, "I have offended you."

A sunny smile broke from her lips the next moment. "I can't be offended," she replied, "when I think how you rebuked my absurd outburst of pedantry. Ah! truly a little knowledge _is_ a dangerous thing, and I am afraid I have very little.... How lovely it all is, here," she proceeded, changing the subject, as they now began to move onward, while they still kept close to the edge of the smooth-paven terrace. "And what a pity that our dwelling-houses should all be away from the water! My grandparents--or my great-grandparents, I forget which--once lived close to the Battery. I recollect poor mamma telling me that I had an ancestress whom they used to call the belle of Bowling Green."

"That was certainly in the days before commerce had seized every yard of these unrivalled water-fronts," laughed Kindelon. "Babylon on its Euphrates, or Nineveh on its Tigris, could not eclipse New York in stately beauty if mansions were built along its North and East rivers.

But trade is a tyrant, as you see. She concedes to you Fifth Avenue, but she denies you anything more poetic."

"I wonder who is the belle of Bowling Green now?" said Pauline, looking up at her companion with a serio-comic smile.

He shook his head. "I am afraid your favored progenitress was the last of the dynasty."

"Oh, no," dissented Pauline, appearing to muse a trifle. "I fancy there is still a belle. Perhaps she has a German or an Irish name."

"It may be Kindelon," he suggested.

"No--it is something more usual than that. If she is not a Schmitt I suspect that she is an O'Brien. I picture her as pretty, but somewhat delicate; she works in some dreadful factory, you know, not far away, all through the week. But on Sunday she emerges from her narrow little room in a tenement-house, brave and smart as you please. The beaux fight for her smiles as they join her, and she knows just how to distribute them; she is a most astute little coquette, in her way."

"And the beaux? Are they worthy of her coquetries?"

"Oh, well, she thinks them so. I fear that most of them have soiled finger-nails, and that their Sunday coats fit them very ill.... But now let me pursue my little romance. The poor creature is terribly fond of one of them. There is always one, you know, dearer than the rest."

"Is there?" said Kindelon oddly. "You're quite elucidating. I didn't know that."

"Don't be sarcastic," reproved Pauline with mock grimness. "Sarcasm is always the death of romance. I have an idea that the secretly-adored one is more of a convert than all his fellows to the beautifying influences of soap. His Sunday face is bright and fresh; it looks conscientiously washed."

"And his finger-nails? Does your imagination also include those, or do they transcend its limits?"

"I have a vague perception of their relative superiority.... Pray let me continue without your prosaic interruptions. Poor little Mary.... Did I not say that her first name was Mary, by-the-by?"

"I have been under the impression for several seconds that you called her Bridget."

"Very well. I will call her so, if you insist. Poor little Bridget, who steals forth, _endimanchee_ and expectant, fails for an hour or two to catch a glimpse of her beloved. She is beginning to be sadly bored by the society of her present three, four, or five admirers, when suddenly she sees the Beloved approaching. Then she brightens and becomes quite sparklingly animated. And when her Ideal draws near, twirling a licorice cane--I insist upon having her Ideal twirl a licorice cane--she receives him with an air of the most unconcerned indifference. It is exquisite to observe the calm, careless way in which she asks him...."

"Pardon me," interrupted Kindelon, with a short and almost brusque tone, "but is not this gentleman coming toward us your cousin?"

"My cousin?" faltered Pauline.

"Yes--Mr. Courtlandt Beekman."

Pauline did not answer, for she had already caught sight of Courtlandt, advancing in her own direction from that of the South Ferry, which she and Kindelon were now rather near. She stopped abruptly in her walk, and perceptibly colored.

A moment afterward Courtlandt saw both herself and her escort. He showed great surprise, and then quickly conquered it. As he came forward, Pauline gave a shrill, nervous laugh. "I suppose you feel like asking me what on earth I am doing here," she said, in by no means her natural voice, and with a good deal of fluttered insecurity about her demeanor.

"I shouldn't think that necessary," replied Courtlandt. His sallow face had not quite its usual hue, but nothing could be steadier than the cool light of his eye. "It's very evident that you are taking a stroll with Mr. Kindelon." He then extended his hand, cased in a yellow dogskin glove, to Kindelon. "How are you?" he said to the man whom he entirely disliked, in a tone of neutral civility.

"Very well, this pleasant day," returned Kindelon, jovially imperturbable. "And you, Mr. Beekman?"

"Quite well, thanks." He spoke as if he were stating a series of brief commercial facts. "I had some business with a man over in Brooklyn, and took this way back to my office, which is only a street or two beyond."

He turned toward the brilliant expanse of the bay, lifting a big silver-k.n.o.bbed stick which he carried, waving it right and left. "Very nice down here, isn't it?" he went on. His look now dwelt in the most casual way upon Pauline. "Well, I must be off," he continued. "I've a lot of business to-day."

He had pa.s.sed them, when Pauline, turning, said composedly but sharply:

"Can't I take you to your office, Court?"

"Thanks, no. I won't trouble you. It's just a step from here." He lifted his hat--an act which he had already performed a second or so previously--and walked onward. He had not betrayed the least sign of annoyance all through this transient and peculiarly awkward interview.

He had been precisely the same serene, quiescent, demure Courtlandt as of old.

Pauline stood for some little time watching him as he gradually disappeared. When the curve near Castle Garden hid him, she gave an impatient, irritated sigh.