Fifth Avenue was in those days a favorite resort of mine. Every
morning I plunged into the rush downtown I dived from the elevated
railway station into the tatterdemalion life of Park Row, and when I
raised my head above that ragged human maelstrom and climbed to the
editorial room of _The Record_ it seemed as though I lifted my body out
of a little muddy stream and plunged my mind into a Charybdis which
embraced the whole world. Its centre was the same desk which I had so
often approached with trembling in the days when I was breaking spears
with the ancient office-boy and Mr. Hanks. I was fixed now in a chair
opposite Mr. Hanks. I had become an editor. But I was not hurling my
spears against the devils that possess poor man. My principal daily
task was to read the newspapers with a microscopic eye, to glean from
them every hint of news to come and to be covered, to present the
clippings to Mr. Hanks ready for his easy perusal, and though in our
province we had to do only with events of a local character, the life
of the city was so interwoven with that of the whole world that to me
our desk seemed a high lookout tower from which we kept an eye on the
very corners of the globe. Did I look from the smutted window at my
side, it was into the struggling throng on the pavement below or, over
the line of push-carts displaying tawdry wares, into the park where the
riff-raff seemed to reign, because the riffraff was always there,
dozing on the benches. Did I look to the other hand, it was through
the great murky room, through air charged with tobacco smoke and laden
heavily with the fumes of ink, molten lead, and paper which filtered
from the floors below through every open door. In a distant corner, a
gloomy figure in the light of a single lamp, I could see the keeper of
the "morgue" cutting his way through piles of papers, filing away his
printed references to Brown, or Jones, or Robinson, against that day
when Brown might die, Jones commit some crime, or Robinson, perchance,
do something virtuous. I could see, in nearer prospect, the rows of
little desks and the reporters at them, some writing, some reading,
some smoking wearily; some young men fresh from college and keyed high
with ambition; some old men shabbily dressed and carelessly groomed who
had spent their lives at those little desks and asked nothing more than
the privilege of ending them there; some of more corpulent minds, like
the great Bob Carmody, who were happy in the attainment of a life's
ambition to become authorities on base-ball, foot-ball, or rowing.
Wherever I looked I seemed to see nothing but the titanic tread-mill
and to hear the clatter of its cogs: within, where the presses rumbled
deep in the ground below me, where the telegraph clicked in the
adjoining room and overhead the typesetting-machines rattled
incessantly; without, in the medley of the street, the cries of the
hawkers, the clang of car gongs, and the never-ending shuffle of feet.
Uptown life seemed on its surface to be lighter, and the curse of Adam
to rest more easily on the shoulders of his children.
Of Fifth Avenue this was especially true. It was not a canyon of brick
and stone in those days. Trade had just begun its invasion and had
gained a foothold only in the few blocks above and below Twenty-third
Street, and for the rest it was still a street of homes, where people
moved in a more leisurely fashion than in the crowded thoroughfares
downtown. The very air was charged with a healthier life, and here
amid the opulence one could forget the near presence of the squalid
alley. So it had become a habit of mine always to begin my day with a
walk uptown, as a gentle tonic for my body and to give my mind a brief
but more cheerful outlook than through the smutted office windows. I
never tired of the life which I saw about me. And it was about me and
I not of it, for though I might pause at a tailor's to examine his
fabrics, it was always through his plate-glass window; beyond the
window I could afford to go only in the cheaper Nassau Street; and I
might stop in front of a picture-shop, but only to o select prints for
that dream-land house on the hill, set on the bit of green. Smart
carriages rolled by me, manned by immaculate, haughty servants, drawn
by horses stepping high in time with the jingle of their harness. At
one time I had planned an equipage such as these for myself; but now,
computing, from past experience, my future possibilities in finance, I
saw them fascinating as ever, yet as far from me as though they dashed
through some Martian city, and their occupants as removed from my ken
as the inhabitants of the farthest planets. Indeed, even in the
commoner throng about me I knew no one. It was seldom that I was
called on to doff my hat, and then to some of the queer old women who
were moulding away in the corners of Miss Minion's boarding-house or to
Miss Tucker hurrying to her school.
One morning in May, as was my custom, I set out for work by my
circuitous route, with the intention of walking to Fifty-eighth Street
and taking an elevated train downtown. The day was one of the
loveliest of spring. The brightest of suns swept the Avenue. In
Madison Square the fresh green had burst from the trees overnight, and
I should have liked to drop down on one of the benches there, to look
upward through the branches into the clouds and forget the enclosing
wall of buildings and the tumultuous streets. But I was late, and I
had no mind to hurry on such a day. The languor of the spring was in
my veins, and I strolled on, almost unconscious of the life about me.
Ahead, at the crest of Murray Hill, the city seemed to end, and I to
look through a great gate-way into the blue sky, and I fancied myself
standing there in that gate-way, with the valley lying at my feet, my
valley awakened from its winter's sleep, its hill-sides decked with
blossoming orchards, its mountains carpeted with the soft shadows of
the clouds. I saw the ridge, its green slope slashed by the white
winding road which crossed it. That was the same road up which I had
climbed on a May morning long ago, when I hurried to the Professor's
aid, and I followed it now to the clearing; I saw the clearing with the
Professor leaning on his hoe studying a fleck of cloud, and Penelope
watching him silently, fearing to disturb his important meditations.
In these busy years Penelope had been rarely in my thoughts; if at all,
it was as a little girl with a blue ribbon in her hair, the companion
of a few brief weeks of my boyhood. I dared not picture her as growing
up, for I had no faith in the influence of Rufus Blight, whom I had
always associated with packages of tea and prizes. Penelope grown, I
feared, might have become fat and florid, might speak with a twang and
wear gaudy hats and gowns. My life in New York, even though I was but
a quiet observer, had made me critical of women, and when I could brood
unhappily over Gladys Todd's stray wisps of hair I could have little
sympathy with the type of the imaginary Penelope Blight. But this
morning, when the far-borne freshness of the woods and fields was in
the air, and I longed to feel the soft earth beneath my feet, to break
from the enclosing walls and to stride over the open fields, I recalled
days like this when the wine of spring was in my veins and I had run
through the meadows in a wasteful riot of energy; and then a particular
day like this when Penelope and I had ridden out of the woods, had come
to the ridge-top and looked over the smiling valley. I seemed to feel
Penelope's arms drawn tightly around me as I pointed across the
friendly land and promised to take care of her. I had had no fear then
that she would ever grow corpulent and florid, and now I found myself
asking if my boyish intuition might not have been right, and she
fulfilled entirely the promise of her girlhood, defying the insidious
generosity of time and the vulgar influence of Rufus Blight. Should I
ever know? Should I ever see her?
I must have been looking at the clouds as I asked myself these
questions, for I walked right into an elderly woman, a tall, buxom
woman who carried in her arms a tiny Pomeranian. The force of our
collision made her drop her pet, and for an instant he hung suspended
by the leash and choking. I apologized humbly, bowing; but my
victim--for such she seemed to think herself--the victim of my
premeditated brutality, lifted the frightened dog back to the refuge of
her arms, glared at me, turned, and swept on to a modiste's door. Her
haughtiness angered me. I held the fault as much hers as mine, for the
pavement was not crowded and she seemed to have risen from it just to
obstruct my passage. I looked about me to discover whence she had come
so suddenly, and in a carriage standing at the curb I found an
explanation. I said to myself that if she had emerged from so smart an
equipage I had indeed committed _lèse-majesté_, for it was such a
turnout as I had dreamed of in my days of opulent dreaming; it was such
a turnout as a poor poet could have used without offending his sense of
the beauty of simplicity. The high-headed horses with their shining
harness, the smart brougham, so spotless that it was hard to imagine
its wheels ever touching the street, the men in their unobtrusive
livery, spoke of unostentation in its most perfect and most expensive
form. The woman of the Pomeranian, I said to myself, must be surely
some _grande-dame_, a leader in that mysterious circle which I knew
only by its name "society." My view of that circle in those days was
tinged with the cynicism of one who knew nothing of it; and though at
the boarding-house table I was prone to rail at it, secretly I had to
admit that my raillery was born of envy. So now it was with a mind
filled half with awe and half with envy that I turned to look after the
imposing woman with the dog.
For the first time I noticed that she had a companion. First, the
companion was but a slender figure in black, smartly clad. I could see
only her back, and yet as I carried my eye from the dainty boot which
rested on the lowest step to the small gloved hand on the railing, to
the small black hat with its blue wings airily poised, I found myself
making comparisons between this daintiness and the untidy loveliness of
Gladys Todd. I was almost angry with Gladys Todd because she did not
dress with such simplicity, not knowing that all her wardrobe cost
hardly as much as this unobtrusive gown, this masterpiece of a tailor's
art.
Gladys Todd was not long in my mind. It was as though the memory of
her was swept away by the turn of the blue wings on which my eyes
rested. They moved with a majesty that sent my thoughts hurling down
into the past to match them. I matched them with a bit of blue ribbon.
It had moved as majestically as they. I almost laughed outright. It
was absurd to compare the forlorn child of the clearing with this
smartly groomed young woman, and remembering Nathan, the white mule, I
looked again to the perfectly turned-out carriage at the curb. You
must suspect that there was in my mind, born of a wild hope, a
suspicion that I was seeing Penelope Blight. True. But from Nathan,
the white mule, to this perfect carriage with the haughty footman at
the door was so far a cry that I was about to go on. The girl had
turned also, and I found myself halted and staring at her. I was sure
that she had been studying my back at that moment when I was looking at
the carriage, but being discovered in such interest she gave a start,
recovered herself, and with an angry toss of her head sprang up the
steps and through the door.
In that moment when our eyes met I was sure that I was face to face
with Penelope Blight.
The old Florentine writer, Firenzuola, commends nut-brown as the
loveliest color for a woman's eyes, declaring that it gives to them a
soft, bright, clear and kindly gaze and lends to their movement a
mysteriously alluring charm. These eyes were blue, but in that
fraction of an instant when I looked into them, their light was soft
and bright, clear and kindly; I was sure that they were the same
mysteriously alluring eyes that I had first known years before when I
had crawled, wet and cold, from the depths of the mountain brook.
Knowing no more I should have spoken her name, my hand was rising to my
hat, but the soft and kindly light changed suddenly to hostility, and
she was gone.
I hesitated, not knowing what step to take next. With hesitation doubt
came. I began to argue. The hostile flash of her eyes angered me.
She had tacitly charged me with impertinence, with the manners of a
common Broadway lounger. Then I said, had this really been Penelope
she must have recognized me, for twelve years could not have
obliterated all outward traces of the boy whom she had once known as
her only friend. Remembering that time, remembering the forlorn cabin
in the mountains and the brown, barefooted girl, remembering the
promise of later days given by the sleek vulgarity of Rufus Blight, I
said that she could not have grown to this faultless picture of young
womanhood. Yet the forlorn hope that I might be mistaken would have
held me there awaiting her return had it not been for the haughty
footman by the carriage door. He had been a silent observer of what
had passed, and seeing me now loitering, staring at the modiste's shop,
he cast off his expressionless mask and assumed a very threatening and
scowling appearance. Evidently he, too, thought me a street lounger
who, not satisfied with nearly killing madam, was bent on thrusting his
impertinent attentions on the young mistress. I could not explain to
him that I had known the young mistress years ago when she lived in a
log hut in a mountain valley. His own perfection as a servant made
such an explanation the more incredible; and though loath to abandon
the opportunity to convince myself that I was mistaken, I saw nothing
left for me but to go my way downtown.
As I sat at my desk I was so distrait that Mr. Hanks accused me of
being in love, speaking as though I were the victim of a mental
derangement which unfitted me for serious labor. After the way of men,
I boldly denied his charge. He paid no attention to my protest, but
expressed himself freely on the unwisdom of a man allowing himself to
fall under the influence of delusions which cost him his mental poise
and might disarrange his whole life. Hearing Mr. Hanks, it was
difficult for me to believe that he had ever been in love himself.
Watching him at his work, with his sharp, restless eyes always alert,
and listening to his voice as incisive as his shears, he seemed a man
whose whole mind was possessed by the pursuit of news, a man whose
brain and body worked with such machine-like accuracy that he could
never fall into the puerile errors of his fellows. Now when he was
misusing his authority to browbeat me into what he termed sanity, I
found comfort in recalling that after all he had once in a moment of
forgetfulness confessed to having a home at Mentone Park, with a wife
and four daughters of whose accomplishments he spoke almost with
boasting. So I troubled no longer with denials, but sat listening to
him with a smiling face. Whereupon he brought his fist down on the
desk and called me a soft-brained idiot.
"Of course, Malcolm," he said, "I don't know who she is, but my advice
to you is, whoever she is and whatever she is, get her out of your
mind."
At that very moment Malcolm's mind was occupied with just these
questions: Who was she? What was she?
With a sense of duty to Gladys Todd I strove hard to put Penelope
Blight out of my thoughts, but I could not. Sometimes I would recall
the face of the girl whom I had seen in the morning, and every feature
would bring back the child of the mountains. Then I went to
directories and searched them for the name of Rufus Blight, but I could
get no trace of him. I evolved a theory that Penelope was the guest of
the woman with the Pomeranian. The carriage must belong to either the
elder or the younger woman. Granting that the younger was Penelope,
then the elder could not be her mother. As I had examined many
directories and found none that gave her uncle's name as living in the
city, I had to conclude that the owner of the Pomeranian was her
hostess and that I was the victim of a trick of fate which had allowed
her to flash across my path and disappear, which had allowed me to have
but this tantalizing glimpse. Then I found consolation in the thought
that after all a glimpse was enough for my peace of mind. Indeed, if
this really were Penelope, then it had been best that I had never seen
her at all, grown to such loveliness.
Considering myself as I sat in my shirt-sleeves amid grimy workaday
surroundings, remembering the frayed environment of my life uptown,
this Penelope, stepping, daintily booted and gloved, out of that
perfect equipage, was indeed a being who moved in higher airs than I.
Here was an insuperable difficulty. In the valley, David Malcolm, with
the blood of the McLaurins in his veins, might look with contempt on
the Blights and their kind. But we were no longer in the valley, and a
Blight driving down the Avenue in a brougham, drawn by high-headed
horses and manned by haughty servants, would see me not as the head of
a wealthy patrician house, but as a young man on his way from his
boarding-house to labor for a petty wage. Such a reversal of our
relative conditions was so incredible that I found myself arguing that
I could not have seen Penelope Blight, and I tried to return to loyal
devotion to Gladys Todd.
We were to be married in June. There was no reason why we should not
be married in June if we were content to begin our venture in a modest
five-room flat in Harlem, abandoning for a while the house on the bit
of green. Gladys was not only contented but was enthusiastic over the
prospect. In my pocket was her last night's letter asking if I had yet
rented the apartment. She had already planned it in her mind--here the
piano on which she would play soft accompaniments while I sang "The
Minute Guns at Sea"; there by the window her easel, and near it the
table where her brilliant husband was to sit at night writing novels
and plays and poems which would carry us not only to the green hill but
to the Parnassian heights. When in the quiet of my room I had first
read her letter, I had been lifted on the wave of her ardor, but now,
struggle though I might to look forward to June with contentment, down
in my heart I had to confess a strange uneasiness. It seemed to me
that we were rushing into matrimony. With my mind revolving such
problems over and over, was it a wonder that Mr. Hanks noticed my
distraction and pounded the desk and spoke cuttingly of the effect of
love on a man's mental balance! All that day I neglected my tasks for
the study of my own engrossing business, but when evening came and I
started home I was able to say to myself that I had reached a definite
and unchanging conclusion--I loved Gladys Todd; like all of us, she had
her peccadilloes, and yet I was not worthy of her, but I would try to
be; the girl with the blue wings bobbing so majestically in her hat was
not Penelope Blight.
Having reached this unchangeable decision, the very next morning, and
every morning after that, I walked up Fifth Avenue with but one thought
in my mind, and this was to see again a small black hat with blue
wings. I became argus-eyed. I peered boldly into passing carriages,
watched the foot traffic on both sides of the street, scanned the
windows of dwelling-houses, and even developed a habit of looking
behind me at fixed intervals that my vigilance might be still more
effective. One day I went boldly into the shop which I had seen the
stranger enter that day with the woman of the Pomeranian, and asked if
I could have Miss Blight's address. A saleswoman, a very blond and
very sinuous person who was standing by the door revolving a large hat
about on one hand while she caressed its plumes daintily, replied that
no Miss Blight was known there. I described her hat with the blue
wings, her companion with the Pomeranian, the very hour of her visit,
but my persistence brought only the information that hundreds of the
shop's patronesses wore blue wings and thousands carried Pomeranians.
The sinuous young woman became so cold and biting in her tone that I
was sure that she believed that I had been fascinated by her own charms
and was using a ruse for the pleasure of this brief interview, so I
made a hasty retreat. My only clew to the owner of the blue-winged hat
had failed me, and all that was left to me was to patrol the Avenue day
after day, forever hoping and forever being disappointed.
June came. The five-room flat was still unrented. My daily letter
from Harlansburg breathed devotion and happiness over the approach of a
day as yet unset--unset because I had been rather procrastinating about
arranging leave of absence from the office. Doctor and Mrs. Todd had
wanted a college wedding in the chapel. They had even gone so far as
to suggest appropriate music by the glee club and the seniors as
ushers, but when that proposal was made to me I had found to my
distress that I could not leave New York before the summer vacation had
begun. June brought me, too, the very last good fortune I should have
asked at that moment, an unexpected increase in my salary, and unless I
lowered myself by an act of despicable cunning I could not withhold
news of such good import from the future companion of my joys and
sorrows. So I went uptown one night struggling hard to imagine myself
supremely happy. I knew my duty--it was to be supremely happy. I
should write that night to Gladys Todd and announce my coming on the
29th; to-morrow I should find the flat; the next day I should order new
clothes and look at diamond pins.
I opened Miss Minion's front door with my pass-key, and as I climbed to
my room I seemed to emphasize with my feet the fact that I loved Gladys
Todd and was in an ecstasy of happiness. I slammed my hat down on the
bureau as I vowed again that I loved Gladys Todd. Then I drew back and
stared at my pin-cushion. The usual corpulent letter was not leaning
there; its place had been taken by an emaciated telegram.
"Do not rent flat. Have written explanation." Such was the message to
me that day.
At that moment I loved Gladys Todd, and I did not have to stamp the
floor to prove it. I was sure that I had lost her, and it was the
sense of my loss that made my love well up from unfathomable depths to
overwhelm me. I was angry. My pride was hurt. I counted over the
years of my untiring devotion to her, and they seemed to sum up the
best years of my life. That the telegram foreran a more explicit
statement there could be no doubt. After all she had written about the
flat, her instructions that the furniture which she had inherited from
her aunt must fit in, that my table must be near her easel--after all
these evidences of her thought--her command could mean only that our
romance was at an end and our dreams dissipated into air. There was
some other man, I thought--perhaps Boller of '89--and remembering him,
his picturesque garb and ridiculous pose, my own vanity was deeply cut.
Until late that night I sat smoking violently and turning over in my
mind the problem and all its dreadful possibilities. In bed, Sleep,
the friend of woe, was long coming with her kindly ministrations, and
yet held me so long under her beneficent influence that when I awoke I
found lying beside my bed, tossed there through a crack in the door,
the corpulent letter addressed in the tall, angular hand.
The first line reassured me. Strangely enough, being reassured,
knowing that all the night's fears were silly phantasies born of a
jealous mind, I fell back on my pillow and, holding the letter above my
eyes, read as I had read a hundred of its fellows. Strangely enough, I
said over and over to myself with grim determination that I loved
Gladys Todd. From what she had written it was evident that I need have
no fear that her love was not altogether mine. She believed that where
two persons loved as we did, two persons who possessed each other in
such perfect happiness, it was our duty to sacrifice ourselves a little
for those less blessed than we were. As we gave so we received, and in
giving up our summer of happiness for the happiness of others our
winter would be doubly bright. I must confess that while I agreed with
her as to the duty of self-sacrifice I was a little irritated when I
found that our happiness must be deferred for Judge Bundy's sake. He
was the last person in the world whom I had expected could have any
influence on a matter so personal as the date of my marriage. Now
Gladys called to my mind the recent death of his wife, and she spoke of
his being ill, inconsolable, and miserably lonely. His life was at
stake unless he could have a change of air and scene. His physicians
had ordered for him three months' travel abroad, and he simply would
not go unless Doctor and Mrs. Todd went with him. Unfortunately,
Doctor and Mrs. Todd could not go without their daughter. Surely
David, always self-denying, would understand. On one side was her own
happiness; on the other her duty to her parents to whom had come this
opportunity to see Europe, their life dream, as guests of this generous
friend. It was very hard for her to have to choose. David knew, of
course, what she would say were she really free to choose, but, after
all, it was only for four months, and all that time I should know that,
though she was far away, her eyes were turned over-sea.
I did not read the last five pages. They fluttered to the floor from
my listless fingers, and I turned again to my pillow and sought the
friend of woe, and again Sleep came to me with her kindly
ministrations. And again I walked the Avenue, and by a modiste's door
I saw a slender figure, a little, spotless, booted foot upon the step,
a little, spotless, gloved hand on the rail, and a small black hat with
long blue wings moving majestically.