The Literary World Seventh Reader Part 11

My special amus.e.m.e.nt in New York is riding on the elevated railway. It is curious to note how little one can see on the crowded sidewalks of this city. It is simply a rush of the same people--hurrying this way or that on the same errands, doing the same shopping or eating at the same restaurants. It is a [v]kaleidoscope with infinite combinations but the same effects. You see it to-day, and it is the same as yesterday.

Occasionally in the mult.i.tude you hit upon a [v]_genre_ specimen, or an odd detail, such as a prim little dog that sits upright all day and holds in its mouth a cup for pennies for its blind master, or an old bookseller, with a grand head and the deliberate motions of a scholar, moldering in a stall--but the general effect is one of sameness and soon tires and bewilders.

Once on the elevated road, however, a new world is opened, full of the most interesting objects. The cars sweep by the upper stories of the houses, and, running never too swiftly to allow observation, disclose the secrets of a thousand homes, and bring to view people and things never dreamed of by the giddy, restless crowd that sends its impatient murmur from the streets below. In a course of several months' pretty steady riding from Twenty-third Street, which is the station for the Fifth Avenue Hotel, to Rector, which overlooks Wall Street, I have made many acquaintances along the route, and on reaching the city my first curiosity is in their behalf.

One of these is a boy about six years of age--akin in his fragile body and his serious mien--a youngster that is very precious to me. I first saw this boy on a little balcony about three feet by four, projecting from the window of a poverty-stricken fourth floor. He was leaning over the railing, his white, thoughtful head just clearing the top, holding a short, round stick in his hand. The little fellow made a pathetic picture, all alone there above the street, so friendless and desolate, and his pale face came between me and my business many a time that day.

On going uptown that evening just as night was falling, I saw him still at his place, white and patient and silent.

Every day afterward I saw him there, always with the short stick in his hand. Occasionally he would walk around the balcony, rattling the stick in a solemn manner against the railing, or poke it across from one corner to another and sit on it. This was the only playing I ever saw him do, and the stick was the only plaything he had. But he was never without it. His little hand always held it, and I pictured him every morning when he awoke from his joyless sleep, picking up his poor toy and going out to his balcony, as other boys go to play. Or perhaps he slept with it, as little ones do with dolls and whip-tops.

I could see that the room beyond the window was bare. I never saw any one in it. The heat must have been terrible, for it could have had no ventilation. Once I missed the boy from the balcony, but saw his white head moving about slowly in the dusk of the room. Gradually the little fellow became a burden to me. I found myself continually thinking of him, and troubled with that remorse that thoughtless people feel even for suffering for which they are not in the slightest degree responsible. Not that I ever saw any suffering on his face. It was patient, thoughtful, serious, but with never a sign of petulance. What thoughts filled that young head--what contemplation took the place of what should have been the [v]ineffable upspringing of childish emotion--what complaint or questioning were living behind that white face--no one could guess. In an older person the face would have betokened a resignation that found peace in the hope of things hereafter. In this child, without hope or aspiration, it was sad beyond expression.

One day as I pa.s.sed I nodded at him. He made no sign in return. I repeated the nod on another trip, waving my hand at him--but without avail. At length, in response to an unusually winning exhortation, his pale lips trembled into a smile, but a smile that was soberness itself.

Wherever I went that day that smile went with me. Wherever I saw children playing in the parks, or trotting along with their hands nestled in strong fingers that guided and protected, I thought of that tiny watcher in the balcony--joyless, hopeless, friendless--a desolate mite, hanging between the blue sky and the gladsome streets, lifting his wistful face now to the peaceful heights of the one, and now looking with grave wonder on the ceaseless tumult of the other. At length--but why go any further? Why is it necessary to tell that the boy had no father, that his mother was bedridden from his birth, and that his sister pasted labels in a drug-house, and he was thus left to himself.

It is sufficient to say that I went to Coney Island yesterday, and watched the bathers and the children--listened to the crisp, lingering music of the waves--ate a robust lunch on the pier--wandered in and out among the booths, tents, and hub-bub--and that through all these pleasures I had a companion that enjoyed them with a gravity that I can never hope to [v]emulate, but with a soulfulness that was touching. As I came back in the boat, the breezes singing through the [v]cordage, music floating from the fore-deck, and the sun lighting with its dying rays the shipping that covered the river, there was sitting in front of me a very pale but very happy bit of a boy, open-eyed with wonder, but sober and self-contained, clasping tightly in his little fingers a short, battered stick. And finally, whenever I pa.s.s by a certain overhanging balcony now, I am sure of a smile from an intimate and esteemed friend who lives there.

HENRY W. GRADY.

ARIEL'S TRIUMPH[141-*]

This story is taken from Booth Tarkington's novel, _The Conquest of Canaan_, which gives an admirable description of modern life in an American town. Joe Louden, the hero, and Ariel Tabor, the heroine, were both friendless and, in a way, forlorn. How both of them triumphed over obstacles and won success and happiness is the theme of a book which is notable for keen observation of character and for a quiet and delightful humor.

I

Ariel had worked all the afternoon over her mother's wedding-gown, and two hours were required by her toilet for the dance. She curled her hair frizzily, burning it here and there, with a slate-pencil heated over a lamp-chimney, and she placed above one ear three or four large artificial roses, taken from an old hat of her mother's, which she had found in a trunk in the store-room. Possessing no slippers, she carefully blacked and polished her shoes, which had been clumsily resoled, and fastened into the strings of each small rosettes of red ribbon; after which she practised swinging the train of her skirt until she was proud of her manipulation of it.

She had no powder, but found in her grandfather's room a lump of magnesia, which he was in the habit of taking for heartburn, and pa.s.sed it over and over her brown face and hands. Then a lingering gaze into her small mirror gave her joy at last; she yearned so hard to see herself charming that she did see herself so. Admiration came, and she told herself that she was more attractive to look at than she had ever been in her life, and that, perhaps, at last she might begin to be sought for like other girls. The little gla.s.s showed a sort of prettiness in her thin, unmatured young face; tripping dance-tunes ran through her head, her feet keeping the time--ah, she did so hope to dance often that night! Perhaps--perhaps she might be asked for every number. And so, wrapping an old water-proof cloak about her, she took her grandfather's arm and sallied forth, with high hopes in her beating heart.

It was in the dressing-room that the change began to come. Alone, at home in her own ugly little room, she had thought herself almost beautiful; but here in the brightly lighted chamber crowded with the other girls it was different. There was a big [v]cheval-gla.s.s at one end of the room, and she faced it, when her turn came--for the mirror was popular--with a sinking spirit. There was the contrast, like a picture painted and framed. The other girls all wore their hair after the fashion introduced to Canaan by Mamie Pike the week before, on her return from a visit to Chicago. None of them had "crimped" and none had bedecked their tresses with artificial flowers. Her alterations of the wedding-dress had not been successful; the skirt was too short in front and higher on one side than on the other, showing too plainly the heavy-soled shoes, which had lost most of their polish in the walk through the snow. The ribbon rosettes were fully revealed, and as she glanced at their reflection, she heard the words, "Look at that train and those rosettes!" whispered behind her, and saw in the mirror two pretty young women turn away with their handkerchiefs over their mouths and retreat hurriedly to an alcove. All the feet in the room except Ariel's were in dainty kid or satin slippers of the color of the dresses from which they glimmered out, and only Ariel wore a train.

She went away from the mirror and pretended to be busy with a hanging thread in her sleeve.

She was singularly an alien in the chattering room, although she had been born and had lived all her life in the town. Perhaps her position among the young ladies may be best defined by the remark, generally current among them that evening, to the effect that it was "very sweet of Mamie to invite her." Ariel was not like the others; she was not of them, and never had been. Indeed, she did not know them very well. Some of them nodded to her and gave her a word of greeting pleasantly; all of them whispered about her with wonder and suppressed amus.e.m.e.nt, but none talked to her. They were not unkindly, but they were young and eager and excited over their own interests,--which were then in the "gentlemen's dressing-room."

Each of the other girls had been escorted by a youth of the place, and, one by one, joining these escorts in the hall outside the door, they descended the stairs, until only Ariel was left. She came down alone after the first dance had begun, and greeted her young hostess's mother timidly. Mrs. Pike--a small, frightened-looking woman with a ruby necklace--answered her absently, and hurried away to see that the [v]imported waiters did not steal anything.

Ariel sat in one of the chairs against the wall and watched the dancers with a smile of eager and benevolent interest. In Canaan no parents, no guardians or aunts were haled forth o' nights to [v]duenna the junketings of youth; Mrs. Pike did not reappear, and Ariel sat conspicuously alone; there was nothing else for her to do, but it was not an easy matter.

When the first dance reached an end, Mamie Pike came to her for a moment with a cheery welcome, and was immediately surrounded by a circle of young men and women, flushed with dancing, shouting as was their wont, laughing [v]inexplicably over words and phrases and unintelligible [v]monosyllables, as if they all belonged to a secret society and these cries were symbols of things exquisitely humorous, which only they understood. Ariel laughed with them more heartily than any other, so that she might seem to be of them and as merry as they were; but almost immediately she found herself outside of the circle, and presently they all whirled away into another dance, and she was left alone again.

So she sat, no one coming near her, through several dances, trying to maintain the smile of delighted interest upon her face, though she felt the muscles of her face beginning to ache with their fixedness, her eyes growing hot and glazed. All the other girls were provided with partners for every dance, with several young men left over, these latter lounging [v]hilariously together in the doorways. Ariel was careful not to glance toward them, but she could not help hating them. Once or twice between the dances she saw Miss Pike speak appealingly to one of the [v]superfluous, glancing, at the same time, in her own direction, and Ariel could see, too, that the appeal proved unsuccessful, until at last Mamie approached her, leading Norbert Flitcroft, partly by the hand, partly by will power. Norbert was an excessively fat boy, and at the present moment looked as patient as the blind. But he asked Ariel if she was "engaged for the next dance," and, Mamie, having flitted away, stood [v]disconsolately beside her, waiting for the music to begin. Ariel was grateful for him.

"I think you must be very good-natured, Mr. Flitcroft," she said, with an air of [v]raillery.

"No, I'm not," he replied, [v]plaintively. "Everybody thinks I am, because I'm fat, and they expect me to do things they never dream of asking anybody else to do. I'd like to see 'em even _ask_ 'Gene Bantry to go and do some of the things they get me to do! A person isn't good-natured just because he's fat," he concluded, morbidly, "but he might as well be!"

"Oh, I meant good-natured," she returned, with a sprightly laugh, "because you're willing to waltz with me."

"Oh, well," he returned, sighing, "that's all right."

The orchestra flourished into "La Paloma"; he put his arm mournfully about her, and taking her right hand with his left, carried her arm out to a rigid right angle, beginning to pump and balance for time. They made three false starts and then got away. Ariel danced badly; she hopped and lost the step, but they persevered, b.u.mping against other couples continually. Circling breathlessly into the next room, they pa.s.sed close to a long mirror, in which Ariel saw herself, although in a flash, more bitterly contrasted to the others than in the cheval-gla.s.s of the dressing-room. The clump of roses was flopping about her neck, her crimped hair looked frowzy, and there was something terribly wrong about her dress. Suddenly she felt her train to be [v]grotesque, as a thing following her in a nightmare.

A moment later she caught her partner making a [v]burlesque face of suffering over her shoulder, and, turning her head quickly, saw for whose benefit he had constructed it. Eugene Bantry, flying expertly by with Mamie, was bestowing upon Mr. Flitcroft a commiserative wink. The next instant she tripped in her train and fell to the floor at Eugene's feet, carrying her partner with her.

There was a shout of laughter. The young hostess stopped Eugene, who would have gone on, and he had no choice but to stoop to Ariel's a.s.sistance.

"It seems to be a habit of mine," she said, laughing loudly.

She did not appear to see the hand he offered, but got on her feet without help and walked quickly away with Norbert, who proceeded to live up to the character he had given himself.

"Perhaps we had better not try it again," she laughed.

"Well, I should think not," he returned with the frankest gloom. With the air of conducting her home, he took her to the chair against the wall whence he had brought her. There his responsibility for her seemed to cease. "Will you excuse me?" he asked, and there was no doubt he felt that he had been given more than his share that evening, even though he was fat.

"Yes, indeed." Her laughter was continuous. "I should think you _would_ be glad to get rid of me after that. Ha, ha, ha! Poor Mr. Flitcroft, you know you are!"

It was the deadly truth, and the fat one, saying, "Well, if you'll excuse me now," hurried away with a step which grew lighter as the distance from her increased. Arrived at the haven of a far doorway, he mopped his brow and shook his head grimly in response to frequent rallyings.

Ariel sat through more dances, interminable dances and intermissions, in that same chair, in which it began to seem she was to live out the rest of her life. Now and then, if she thought people were looking at her as they pa.s.sed, she broke into a laugh and nodded slightly, as if still amused over her mishap.

After a long time she rose, and laughing cheerfully to Mr. Flitcroft, who was standing in the doorway and replied with a wan smile, stepped out quickly into the hall, where she almost ran into her great-uncle, Jonas Tabor. He was going toward the big front doors with Judge Pike, having just come out of the latter's library, down the hall.

Jonas was breathing heavily and was shockingly pale, though his eyes were very bright. He turned his back upon his grandniece sharply and went out of the door. Ariel reentered the room whence she had come. She laughed again to her fat friend as she pa.s.sed him, went to the window and looked out. The porch seemed deserted and was faintly illuminated by a few j.a.panese lanterns. She sprang out, dropped upon the divan, and burying her face in her hands, cried heart-brokenly.

Presently she felt something alive touch her foot, and, her breath catching with alarm, she started to rise. A thin hand, issuing from a shabby sleeve, had stolen out between two of the green tubs and was pressing upon one of her shoes.

"Sh!" warned a voice. "Don't make a noise!"

The warning was not needed; she had recognized the hand and sleeve instantly. It was her playmate and lifelong friend, Joe Louden.

"What were you going on about?" he asked angrily.

"Nothing," she answered. "I wasn't. You must go away; you know the Judge doesn't like you."

"What were you crying about?" interrupted the uninvited guest.

"Nothing, I tell you!" she repeated, the tears not ceasing to gather in her eyes. "I wasn't."

"I want to know what it was," he insisted. "Didn't the fools ask you to dance! Ah! You needn't tell me. That's it. I've been here, watching, for the last three dances and you weren't in sight till you came to the window. Well, what do you care about that for!"

"I don't," she answered. "I don't!" Then suddenly, without being able to prevent it, she sobbed.