always a little nervous about thunder now. I must look her up. I'll send
you Harry Brackett."
"You needn't mind about me," she answered, as he moved away. "I've taken
care of myself for a good many years now, and I think I'm still equal to
the task."
The hall was densely crowded by this time, and it was becoming more and
more difficult to make one's way in any given direction. The rain fell
heavily on the roof, and dominated the rising murmur of the throng, and
even the shrill voices now and again heard above it.
Miss Marlenspuyk drifted aimlessly with the crowd, looking at the
pictures occasionally, and listening with interest to the comments and
the fragmentary criticisms she could not help hearing on all sides of
her. She found herself standing before Mr. Charles Vaughn's "Judgment of
Paris," when she was accosted by Harry Brackett.
"I've been looking for you everywhere, Miss Marlenspuyk," he began.
"White said you were here or hereabouts, and I haven't seen you for many
moons."
They chatted for a few minutes about their last meeting, and the friends
at whose house they had dined.
Then Harry Brackett, looking up, saw the huge painting before them.
"So Charley Vaughn's 'Judgment of Paris' is a Salon picture, is it?" he
asked. "It looks to me better fitted for a saloon. It's one of those
nudes that Renwick Brashleigh says are offensive alike to the artist,
the moralist, and the voluptuary."
Miss Marlenspuyk smiled; and her smile was one of her greatest charms.
"Do you know Mr. Brashleigh?" she asked.
"I've known him ever since he came back from Paris," Brackett answered.
"And he's a painter, he is. He isn't one of those young dudes who teach
society girls how to foreshorten the moon. You don't catch him going
round to afternoon teas and talking about the Spontaneity of Art."
"Have you seen his portrait of this Mr. Poole?" she inquired.
"Not yet," he replied, "but they tell me it's a dandy. I've never met
Poole, but I used to know his wife. She was Eunice Cameron, and she's a
cousin of Brashleigh's. Come to think of it, his first hit was a
portrait of her at the Academy three years ago."
"What sort of a girl is she?" Miss Marlenspuyk asked.
"For one thing, she's a good-looker," he responded, "although they say
she's gone off a little lately; I haven't seen her this year. But when
Brashleigh introduced me to her she was a mighty pretty girl, I can tell
you."
The pressure of the crowd had carried them along, and now Miss
Marlenspuyk found herself once more in front of the "Portrait of a
Gentleman," and once more she was seized by the power and by the evil
which the artist had painted on the face of Cyrus Poole.
"They used to say," Harry Brackett went on, not looking at the picture,
"that Brashleigh was in love with her. I think somebody or other once
told me that they were engaged."
There was a sudden gleam of intelligence in Miss Marlenspuyk's eyes.
"But of course there wasn't any truth in it," he continued.
The smile came back to the old maid's mouth as she gazed steadily at the
portrait before her and answered, "Of course not."
(1893.)
SPRING IN A SIDE STREET
In the city the spring comes earlier than it does in the country, and
the horse-chestnuts in the sheltered squares sometimes break into
blossom a fortnight before their brethren in the open fields. That year
the spring came earlier than usual, both in the country and in the city,
for March, going out like a lion, made an April-fool of the following
month, and the huge banks of snow heaped high by the sidewalks vanished
in three or four days, leaving the gutters only a little thicker with
mud than they are accustomed to be. Very trying to the convalescent was
the uncertain weather, with its obvious inability to know its own mind,
with its dark fog one morning and its brisk wind in the afternoon, with
its mid-day as bright as June and its sudden chill descending before
nightfall.
Yet when the last week of April came, and the grass in the little square
around the corner was green again, and the shrubs were beginning to
flower out, the sick man also felt his vigor returning. His strength
came back with the spring, and restored health sent fresh blood coursing
through his veins as the sap was rising in the branches of the tree
before his window. He had had a hard struggle, he knew, although he did
not suspect that more than once he had wrestled with death itself. Now
his appetite had awakened again, and he had more force to withstand the
brooding sadness which sought to master him.
The tree before his window was but a shabby sycamore, and the window
belonged to a hall bedroom in a shabby boarding-house down a side
street. The young man himself lay back in the steamer chair lent him by
one of the few friends he had in town, and his overcoat was thrown over
his knees. His hands, shrunken yet sinewy, lay crossed upon a book in
his lap. His body was wasted by sickness, but the frame was well knit
and solid. His face was still white and thin, although the yellow pallor
of the sick-bed had gone already. His scanty boyish beard that curled
about his chin had not been trimmed for two months, and his uncut brown
hair fell thickly on the collar of his coat. His dark eyes bore the mark
of recent suffering, but they revealed also a steadfast soul, strong to
withstand misfortune.
His room was on the north side of the street, and the morning sun was
reflected into his window, as he lay back in the chair, grateful for the
warmth. A heavy cart lumbered along slowly over the worn and irregular
pavement; it came to a stand at the corner, and a gang of workmen
swiftly emptied it of the steel rails it contained, dropping them on
the sidewalk one by one with a loud clang which reverberated harshly far
down the street. From the little knot of men who were relaying the
horse-car track came cries of command, and then a rail would drop into
position, and be spiked swiftly to its place. Then the laborers would
draw aside while an arrested horse-car urged forward again, with the
regular footfall of its one horse, as audible above the mighty roar of
the metropolis as the jingle of the little bell on the horse's collar.
At last there came from over the house-tops a loud whistle of escaping
steam, followed shortly by a dozen similar signals, proclaiming the
mid-day rest. A rail or two more clanged down on the others, and then
the cart rumbled away. The workmen relaying the track had already seated
themselves on the curb to eat their dinner, while one of them had gone
to the saloon at the corner for a large can of the new beer advertised
in the window by the gaudy lithograph of a frisky young goat bearing a
plump young goddess on his back.
The invalid was glad of the respite from the more violent noises of
track-layers, for his head was not yet as clear as it might be, and his
nerves were strained by pain. He leaned forward and looked down at the
street below, catching the eye of a young man who was bawling
"Straw-b'rees! straw-b'rees!" at the top of an unmelodious voice. The
invalid smiled, for he knew that the street venders of strawberries were
an infallible sign of spring--an indication of its arrival as
indisputable as the small square labels announcing that three of the
houses opposite to him were "To Let." The first of May was at hand. He
wondered whether the flower-market in Union Square had already opened;
and he recalled the early mornings of the preceding spring, when the
girl he loved, the girl who had promised to marry him, had gone with him
to Union Square to pick out young roses and full-blown geraniums worthy
to bloom in the windows of her parlor looking out on Central Park.
He thought of her often that morning, and without bitterness, though
their engagement had been broken in the fall, three months or more
before he was taken sick. He had not seen her since Christmas, and he
found himself wondering how she would look that afternoon, and whether
she was happy. His revery was broken by the jangling notes of an
ill-tuned piano in the next house, separated from his little room only
by a thin party-wall. Some one was trying to pick out the simple tune of
"Wait till the Clouds roll by." Seemingly it was the practice hour for
one of the children next door, whose playful voices he had often heard.
Seemingly also the task was unpleasant, for the piano and the tune and
the hearer suffered from the ill-will of the childish performer.
A sudden hammering of a street rail in the street below notified him the
nooning was over, and that the workmen had gone back to their labors.
Somehow he had failed to hear the stroke of one from the steeple of the
church at the corner of the Avenue, a short block away. Now he became
conscious of a permeating odor, and he knew that the luncheon hour of
the boarding-house had arrived. He had waked early, and his breakfast
had been very light. He felt ready for food, and he was glad when the
servant brought him up a plate of cold beef and a saucer of prunes. His
appetite was excellent, and he ate with relish and enjoyment.
When he had made an end of his unpretending meal, he leaned back again
in his chair. A turbulent wind blew the dust of the street high in the
air and set swinging the budding branches of the sycamore before the
window. As he looked at the tender green of the young leaves dancing
before him in the sunlight he felt the spring-time stir his blood; he
was strong again with the strength of youth; he was able to cope with
all morbid fancies, and to cast away all repining. He wished himself in
the country--somewhere where there were brooks and groves and
grass--somewhere where there were quiet and rest and surcease of
noise--somewhere where there were time and space to think out the past
and to plan out the future resolutely--somewhere where there were not
two hand-organs at opposite ends of the block vying which should be the
more violent, one playing "Annie Laurie" and the other "Annie Rooney."
He winced as the struggle between the two organs attained its height,
while the child next door pounded the piano more viciously than before.
Then he smiled.
With returning health, why should he mind petty annoyances? In a week or
so he would be able to go back to the store and to begin again to earn
his own living. No doubt the work would be hard at first, but hard work
was what he needed now. For the sake of its results in the future, and
for its own sake also, he needed severe labor. Other young men there
were a plenty in the thick of the struggle, but he knew himself as stout
of heart as any in the whole city, and why might not fortune favor him
too? With money and power and position he could hold his own in New
York; and perhaps some of those who thought little of him now would then
be glad to know him.
While he lay back in the steamer chair in his hall room the shadows
began to lengthen a little, and the long day drew nearer to its end.
When next he roused himself the hand-organs had both gone away, and the
child next door had given over her practising, and the street was quiet
again, save for the high notes of a soprano voice singing a florid aria
by an open window in the Conservatory of Music in the next block, and
save also for an unusual rattle of vehicles drawing up almost in front
of the door of the boarding-house. With an effort he raised himself, and
saw a line of carriages on the other side of the way, moving slowly
towards the corner. A swirling sand-storm sprang up again in the street
below, and a simoom of dust almost hid from him the faces of those who
sat in the carriages--young girls dressed in light colors, and young men
with buttoned frock-coats. They were chatting easily; now and again a
gay laugh rang out.
He wondered if it were time for the wedding. With difficulty he twisted
himself in his chair and took from the bureau behind him an envelope
containing the wedding-cards. The ceremony was fixed for three. He
looked at his watch, and he saw that it lacked but a few minutes of that
hour. His hand trembled a little as he put the watch back in his pocket;
and he gazed steadily into space until the bell in the steeple of the
church at the corner of the Avenue struck three times. The hour
appointed for the wedding had arrived. There were still carriages
driving up swiftly to deposit belated guests.
The convalescent young man in the little hall bedroom of the shabby
boarding-house in the side street was not yet strong enough to venture
out in the spring sunshine and to be present at the ceremony. But as he
lay there in the rickety steamer chair with the old overcoat across his
knees, he had no difficulty in evoking the scene in the church. He saw
the middle-aged groom standing at the rail awaiting the bride. He heard
the solemn and yet joyous strains of the wedding-march. He saw the bride
pass slowly up the aisle on the arm of her father, with the lace veil
scarcely lighter or fairer than her own filmy hair. He wondered whether
she would be pale, and whether her conscience would reproach her as she
stood at the altar. He heard the clergyman ask the questions and
pronounce the benediction. He saw the new-made wife go down the aisle
again on the arm of her husband. He sighed wearily, and lay back in his
chair with his eyes closed, as though to keep out the unwelcome vision.
He did not move when the carriages again crowded past his door, and went
up to the church porch one after another in answer to hoarse calls from
conflicting voices.
He lay there for a long while motionless and silent. He was thinking
about himself, about his hopes, which had been as bright as the sunshine
of spring, about his bitter disappointment. He was pondering on the
mysteries of the universe, and asking himself whether he could be of any
use to the world--for he still had high ambitions. He was wondering what
might be the value of any one man's labor for his fellow-men, and he
thought harshly of the order of things. He said to himself that we all
slip out of sight when we die, and the waters close over us, for the
best of us are soon forgotten, and so are the worst, since it makes
little difference whether the coin you throw into the pool is gold or
copper--the rarer metal does not make the more ripples. Then, as he saw
the long shafts of almost level sunshine sifting through the tiny
leaves of the tree before his window, he took heart again as he recalled
the great things accomplished by one man. He gave over his mood of
self-pity; and he even smiled at the unconscious conceit of his attitude
towards himself.
He was recalled from his long revery by the thundering of a heavy
fire-engine, which crashed its way down the street, with its rattling
hose-reel tearing along after it. In the stillness that followed, broken
only by the warning whistles of the engine as it crossed avenue after
avenue farther and farther east, he found time to remember that every
man's struggle forward helps along the advance of mankind at large; the
humble fireman who does his duty and dies serves the cause of humanity.
The swift twilight of New York was almost upon him when he was next
distracted from his thoughts by the crossing shouts of loud-voiced men
bawling forth a catchpenny extra of a third-rate evening paper. The
cries arose from both sides of the street at once, and they ceased while
the fellows sold a paper here and there to the householders whose
curiosity called them to the door-step.
The sky was clear, and a single star shone out sharply. The air was
fresh, and yet balmy. The clanging of rails had ceased an hour before,
and the gang of men who were spiking the iron into place had dispersed
each to his own home. The day was drawing to an end. Again there was an
odor of cooking diffused through the house, heralding the dinner-hour.
But the young man who lay back in the steamer chair in the hall bedroom
of the boarding-house was unconscious of all except his own thoughts.
Before him was a picture of a train of cars speeding along moonlit
valleys, and casting a hurrying shadow. In this train, as he saw it, was
the bride of that afternoon, borne away by the side of her husband. But
it was the bride he saw, and not the husband. He saw her pale face and
her luminous eyes and her ashen-gold hair; and he wondered whether in
the years to come she would be as happy as if she had kept her promise
to marry him.
(1896.)
A DECORATION-DAY REVERY
There had been a late spring, set off by frequent rain; and when
Decoration Day dawned there was a fresh fairness of foliage, as though
Nature were making ready her garlands for our honored dead. When at
length the march began, the sunshine sifted through the timid verdure of
the trees in the square, and fell softly on the swaying ranks that
passed beneath. The golden beams glinted from the slanting bayonets, and
seemed to keep time with the valiant old war-tunes as they swelled up
from the frequent bands. There was a contagion of military ardor in the
air, and even the small boy who had climbed up into the safe eyry of a
dismantled lamp-post had within him inarticulate stirrings of warlike
ambition. In the pauses of the music fifes shrilled out, and the roll
and rattle of drums covered the rhythmic tramping of the soldiers. I
lingered for a while near the noble statue of the great admiral, who
stood there firm on his feet, with the sea-breeze blowing back the skirt
of his coat, and so presented by the art of the sculptor that the
motionless bronze seemed more alive than most of the ordinary men and
women who clustered about its base. Here, I thought, was the fit
memorial of the man who had done his duty in the long struggle, to the
heroes of which the day was sacred; and I was glad that the marching
thousands should pass in review before that mute image of the best and
bravest our country can bring forth. At that moment a detachment of
sailors swung into view, and cheers of hearty greeting broke forth on
all sides.
As I loitered, musing, a battalion of our little army strode by us in
turn, with soldierly bearing, clad in no gaudy garb, but ready for their
bloody work; ready with cold steel to give a cold welcome to the
invading foreigner, ready with a prompt volley to put an end to lawless
strife at home. After an interval came the first ranks of the citizen
soldiery, trim in their workmanlike uniforms, with stretchers, with
ambulances, with Gatling-guns. One after another advanced the regiments
of the city militia, and no man need doubt that they would be as swift
now to go forward to battle as were their former fellow-members whose
deeds gave them the right to bear flags emblazoned with more than one
battle as hard fought as Marathon or Philippi, Fontenoy or Waterloo. As
they swept on down the Avenue in the morning sunlight, with the strident
music veiled now and again by ringing cheers, my thoughts went back to
the many other thousands I had seen go down that Avenue, now more than
a quarter of a century ago, coming from the pine forests and the granite
hills of New England, and going to the silent swamps and the dark bayous
of the South. In those drear days of doubt I had watched the ceaseless
tramp of the troops down that Avenue, a thousand at a time--young,
earnest, ardent; and I remembered that I had seen them return but a
scant hundred or two, it may be, worn and ragged, foot-sore and
heart-sick, but resolute yet and full of grit. Death, like the maddened
peasants in the strife of the Jacquerie, fights with a scythe; and for
four long years Time held a slow glass and Death mowed a broad swath.
There is many a house now where an old woman cannot hear the trivial
notes of "Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching," without a sharp
pain in the throat and a sudden vision of the prison-pen at
Andersonville. No doubt there is many another woman south of that Mason
and Dixon's line which was washed out in the blood of the war where the
sentimental strains of "My Maryland" have an equal poignancy and an
equal tenderness. Shiloh and Malvern Hill and Gettysburg are names made
sacred forever by the deeds done there, and by the dead who lie there
side by side in a common grave, where the gray cloth and the blue have
faded into dust alike, and there is now naught to tell them apart. It is
well that a spring day, fresh after rain and fair with blossoms, should
help to keep their memory sweet.
Down the Avenue regiment after regiment went on briskly, with the easy
pace of health and enjoyment. After the young men of the militia came
the veterans, with flowers for their fallen comrades. Some of the older
men were in carriages, with here and there a crutch across the seat; but
for the most part they walked, keeping time, no doubt, though with a
shorter stride. As a handful of brave men filed before us, bearing aloft
the tattered remnant of a battle-flag, I raised my hat with instinctive
reverence. For a moment the gesture shielded my eyes from the rays of
the sun, and I caught sight of a group in the window of a house
opposite. A lady, tall and stately, wearing a widow's cap above her gray
hair as though it were a crown, stood in the centre with her hands on
the shoulders of two young men--her sons, beyond all question--stalwart
young fellows, with features at once fine and strong, bearing themselves
with manly grace. I looked, and I recognized. When I lowered my eyes
again to the procession I saw another set of faces that I knew by sight.
In a carriage sat a man of some fifty years, stout, vulgar, with a cigar
alight in the coarse hand which rested on the door of the vehicle. He
had a shock of hair, once reddish and now grizzling to an unclean white.
He wore in his button-hole the button of the Grand Army of the Republic.
In the open barouche with him were three youngish men, noisy in
laughter--apparently professional politicians of the baser sort.
[Illustration: "DISTRACTED BY THE CROSSING SHOUTS OF LOUD-VOICED MEN"]
The man bowed effusively, with a broad and unctuous smile, when he saw a
friend on the sidewalk; and the crowd about me recognized him, and
called him by name one to another; and a little knot of young fellows on
the corner raised a cheer.
I knew both groups, the unclean creature in the carriage and the noble
lady in the window above him. I knew that both were survivals of the
war.
As the procession passed on, I could hear an occasional cheer run along
the line of spectators when one or another recognized the politician. I
was not surprised, for the man's popularity with a portion of the people
is patent to all of us. He was a soldier who had never fired a shot, a
colonel who had never seen the enemy. His tactical skill had been shown
in the securing of a detail for himself where there was chance of profit
with no risk of danger. His strategy had been to secure the good word of
those who dispensed the good things of life.
While others were battling for the country he was looking out for
himself. When the war was over he presented his claims for recognition,
and he was sent as consul to the Orient. In due time there came across
the ocean rumors of scandals, and an investigation was ordered;
whereupon he resigned, and the matter was never probed. Then he went
into politics: he was ready of speech and loud-mouthed; he flattered the
mob, believing that in politics the blarney-stone is the stepping-stone
to success. He never paused to weigh his words when he assailed an
opponent, believing that in politics billingsgate is the gate of
success. He was prompt to set people by the ears that he might lead them
by the nose the more readily. As though to make up for his delinquencies
during the struggle, he was now untiring in his abuse of the Southern
people, and his denunciation of them was always violent and virulent. In
every election he besought his fellow-citizens to vote as they had shot.
He was unfailingly bitter in his abuse of those who had fought for the
cause of the South. He was, in short, a specimen of the scum which may
float on the surface whenever there is an upheaval of the deep.