and springing lightly out of the path of a clanging cable-car. He
crossed Fifth Avenue, threading his way through the carriages and the
carts piled high with paper-covered packages. The white walls of the
hotel on the opposite side of Twenty-third Street were dingy under the
leaden sky as the haze of the swift twilight settled down. The wind died
away altogether, and yet the atmosphere was raw and dank. Suydam bought
an evening paper from the crippled newsboy who sat in his
rolling-chair, warmly wrapped against the weather, and seemingly
cheerful and contented with his takings.
A few steps farther the young man passed an old French sailor standing
on the curb-stone, and using his single hand to wind the machinery of a
glazed box, wherein a ship was to be seen tossing on the regular waves
while a train of cars kept crossing a bridge which spanned an estuary.
Almost under the sailor's feet there was an old woman huddled in a dirty
heap over a tiny hand-organ, from which she was slowly grinding a
doubtful and dolorous tune. By her side, but a little beyond, two boys
were offering for sale green wreaths and stars and ropes of greenery, to
be used in festooning. Close to the broad windows of a dry-goods store,
whence a yellow light streamed forth, a tall, thin man had a board on a
trestle, and on this portable table he was showing off the antics of a
toy clown who tumbled artlessly down a steep flight of steps. The people
who hurried past, with parcels under their arms, rarely stopped to look
at the ship tossing on the waves, or to listen to the hesitating tune of
the wheezy organ, or to buy a bit of green or a performing clown. Yet
the open-air bazaar, as it might plainly be called, the out-door fair,
extended all the way along the street, and on both edges of the sidewalk
the fakirs were trying to gather in their scanty Christmas harvest.
Before John Suydam came to the corner of Sixth Avenue the snow began at
last to fall; the first flakes descended hesitatingly, scurried by a
brief wind that sprang up for a minute or two, and then died away
absolutely. After a while the snow thickened and fell faster, sifting
down softly and silently, but filling the air under the electric-lights
which were clustered at the corner, and reddening under the glare of the
engines on the elevated railroad overhead, as the cars rushed along girt
with swirling clouds of steam. The snow clustered upon the boughs of the
unsold Christmas-trees which stood irregularly along the sidewalk before
a florist's a few doors down Sixth Avenue, and by the time Suydam had
turned the corner, they looked like the shrouded ghosts of balsam pines.
All along the avenue he had to make his way through the same crowds of
belated Christmas shoppers, hurrying in and out of the overgrown stores,
availing themselves of their last chance to buy gifts for the morrow;
but as he advanced, the throng thinned a little, driven home perhaps by
the snow-storm. Yet though the purchasers were fewer, the peddlers
persisted. Suydam noted one old man, bent and shrivelled, and with a
long gray beard, who had a tray before him hung on a strap over his
shoulders, and on the narrow board were plaster figures of Santa Claus
carrying aloft a branching Christmas-tree besprinkled with glittering
crystalline flakes. Under the hood of the staircase of the station of
the elevated railroad he saw a little blind woman wrapped in a scant
shawl, silently proffering half a dozen lead-pencils. And high over the
centre of the roadway the snow-clad trains thundered up and down, with
white plumes of steam trailing from the engines.
As Suydam neared Fourteenth Street he found the crowds compacting again;
and at the corner there was a chaos of carriages, carts, and
street-cars. The flights of stairs leading to the elevated railroad
station were packed with people bearing bundles and boxes, most of them,
ascending and descending with difficulty, jostling one another
good-naturedly. Long lines of children of all ages spread along the wide
plate-glass windows at the corner of one huge store, gazing wonderingly
at a caravan of toy animals in gorgeous trappings, with chariots and
palanquins, which kept circling around in front of painted palm-trees
and gayly-decorated tents. The snow was now falling fast, but still the
young ones looked admiringly and waited willingly, though their hats
were whitened, and though the soft flakes melted on their capes and on
their coats.
The mass of humanity clustering about these windows forced Suydam almost
to the edge of the sidewalk; but this was the last crowd he had to make
his way through. Lower down there were no solid groups, although the
avenue was still thronged. He was able to quicken his pace. So he sped
along, passing the butchers', where carcasses of sheep and of beeves
hung in line garlanded with ropes of evergreen; passing the grocers',
where the shelves were battlemented with cans of food; passing the
bakers', where bread and cakes, pies and crullers, were displayed in
trays and in baskets. He glanced into the yellow windows of
candy-stores, and saw the parti-colored sweetmeats temptingly spread
out. He caught a glimpse of more than one dealer in _delicatessen_ whose
display of silver-clad sausage and heavy pasty and wicker-work flask was
enough to stimulate the appetite of a jaded epicure. He saw the signs of
a time of plenty, but no one knew better than John Suydam that just then
there was truly a season of want.
Night had fallen before he reached the court-house, with its high roof
and its lofty turret, before he came to the market, with its yawning
baskets of vegetables and its long rows of pendent turkeys beneath the
flaring jets of gas. He crossed the avenue and turned into a small
street--not here at right angles to the thoroughfare, as are the most of
the side streets of New York. At last he stopped before a little house,
an old two-story building, worn with long use, and yet dignified in its
decay. The tiny dwelling had a Dutch roof, with two dormer-windows; and
it had been built when the Dutch traditions of New Amsterdam were
stronger than they are to-day.
The young man mounted the high stoop, on which the snow was now nearly
half an inch thick. He rang the bell twice with a measured interval
between. The flying step of a girl was heard, and then the door was
thrown open, and Suydam disappeared within the little old house.
As the door closed, the young man took the young woman in his arms and
kissed her.
"Oh, John," she said, "it is so good of you to come on Christmas Eve.
How did you manage to get away?"
"I've only two hours," he answered, "and I had to get something to eat,
so I thought that perhaps you--"
"Of course we can," the girl interrupted. "And mother will be delighted.
She has made one of her old-fashioned chicken pies, and it's ever so
much too much for us two. It will be ready at six."
"Then I know where I'm going to get my dinner," her lover returned, as
he followed her into the little parlor. "But I shall have to go back as
soon as I've had it. I've told them that I think the office ought to be
kept open till midnight, and I said I'd stay. It would be a sorrowful
thing, wouldn't it, if any one who wants help couldn't get it on
Christmas Eve?"
"And there must be many who want help this hard winter," said the girl.
"I went as far as Broadway this afternoon, on an errand for mother, and
I passed six beggars--"
"Oh, beggars--" he began.
"Yes, I know," she interrupted again. "I did not give them anything,
though it seemed so cruel not to. I knew what you thought about
indiscriminate charity, and so I steeled my heart. And I suffered for
it, too. I know I should have felt happier if I had given something to
one or two of them."
"I suppose you did deprive yourself of the virtuous glow of
self-satisfaction," Suydam admitted. "But that virtuous glow is too
cheap to be valuable. If we want to help our neighbor really, we must
practise self-sacrifice, and not purchase an inexpensive
self-gratification at the cost of his self-respect."
"I should feel as though I wasn't spending Christmas if I didn't give
away something," she protested.
"Exactly," he returned. "You haven't yet freed yourself from the
pestilent influence of Dickens, though you have much more sense, too,
than nine women out of ten. You have blindly followed the belief that
you ought to give for your own sake, without thinking whether it was
best for the beggar to receive. Dickens's Christmas stories are now
breeding their third generation of paupers; and I doubt if we can
convince the broad public of the absurdity of his sociology in another
half-century. It takes science to solve problems; hysteric emotionalism
won't do it."
"You don't think all the beggars I saw to-day were humbugs, do you?" she
asked.
"There isn't one chance in ten that any one of the half-dozen is really
in need," he answered; "and probably five out of the six have taken to
begging partly out of laziness, and partly because they can beg larger
wages than they can earn honestly."
"But there was one old man; he must have been forty, at least," urged
the girl, "who was positively starving. Why, just as I turned out of
Broadway, I saw him spring down to the gutter and pick up a crust of
bread and begin to eat it greedily. I felt in my pocket for my purse, of
course, but a gentleman had seen it, too, and he went up to the man and
talked to him and gave him a five-dollar bill. Now, there was a real
case of distress, wasn't it?"
Suydam smiled, sadly. "The starving man was about forty, you say? Tall
and thin, wasn't he, with a thin, pointed beard, and a mark on his right
cheek?"
The girl looked at him in wonder. "Why, how did you know?" she cried.
"That's Scar-faced Charley," he answered.
"And is he a humbug, too?" she asked.
"I followed him for two hours one afternoon last week," he explained,
"and I saw him pick up that bit of bread and pretend to eat it at least
twenty times. When I had him arrested he had more than ten dollars in
his pockets."
"Well," the young woman declared, "I shall never believe in anybody
again."
"But I don't see how it is Scar-faced Charley is out to-day," Suydam
went on. "We had him sent up for a month only, for the judge was easy
with him. If he's out again so soon, I suppose he must have a pull of
some sort. Those fellows often have more influence than you would
think."
"He took me in completely," the girl admitted. "If Scar-faced Charley,
as you call him, can act so well, why doesn't he go on the stage and
earn an honest living?"
"That's the first thing that astonished me when I went to live in the
University Settlement last spring, and began to study out these things
for myself. I found beggars who were fond of their profession, and who
prided themselves on their skill. What are you to do with them? And if
you let them ply their trade, how are you going to distinguish them from
those who are really in need?"
"It is all very puzzling to me," the girl confessed. "Since I've heard
you talk, charity doesn't seem half as simple as it used to."
"No," said Suydam, "it isn't simple. In fact, it is about as complicated
and complex a problem as the twentieth century will have to solve. But
I'm coming to one conclusion fast, and that is that the way to tell
those who need help from those who don't need it is, that the latter ask
for it, and the former won't. New York is rich and generous, and there's
never any difficulty about getting money enough to relieve every case of
distress in the city limits--none whatever. The real difficulty is in
getting the money to the people who really need it, and in keeping it
from the people who ought not to have it. You see that those who ask for
assistance don't deserve it--not once in fifty times; and those who
deserve it won't ask for it. There are men and women--women
especially--who will starve before they will face the pity of their
fellows. Every day I hear of cases of suffering borne silently, and
discovered only by accident."
"I've been wondering for a week if we haven't one of those cases in this
house now," said the girl.
"In this house?" the young man repeated.
"I've been meaning to tell you all about it every day," she went on,
"but I've seen so little of you, and when you do come we have so many
things to talk about, you know."
"I know," Suydam repeated. He was seated by her side on the sofa, and
his arm was around her waist. He drew her closer to him and kissed her.
"Now tell me about your case of distress," he said.
"Well," the girl began, "this house is too big for mother and me alone,
so we let one room on the top floor to two old ladies. They have been
here since before Thanksgiving. They are foreigners--Cubans, I think.
The mother must be seventy, and I can see she has been very handsome.
The daughter is nearly fifty, I'm sure; and a more devoted daughter you
never saw. She waits on her mother hand and foot. They didn't bring any
baggage to speak of--no trunk, only just a little bag--and we saw at
once that they were very, very poor. They paid two weeks' rent in
advance, and since then they've paid two weeks' more. A fortnight ago
the daughter told mother that they would be obliged if she would let
them defer paying the rent for a little while, as a letter they were
expecting had not come. And I suppose that was so, for the postman never
whistled but the daughter came running down stairs to see if there
wasn't something for them. But it hasn't come yet, and I don't believe
they've got enough money to get things to eat, hardly. The daughter used
to go out every morning, and come back with a tiny little parcel. You
see, there's a gas-stove in their room, and they do their own cooking.
But she hasn't been out of the house for two days, and we haven't seen
either of them since the day before yesterday, when the daughter came to
the head of the stairs and asked if there was a letter for her mother.
We can hear them moving about overhead gently, but we haven't seen them.
And now we don't really know what to do. I'm so glad you've come, for I
told mother I was going to ask you about them."
"Do you think they have no money?" Suydam asked.
"I'm afraid it's all gone," she answered. "And they have no friends at
all so far as we know."
"You say they are Cubans?"
"I think they are. Their name is De los Rios--Senora de los Rios, I
heard the daughter call her mother when she asked the postman about a
letter."
"If it wasn't so late," said the young man, looking at his watch, "I
would go to the Spanish Consulate. But it's nearly six now, and the
consulate is certain to be closed. If there is any reason to think that
they are actually suffering for want of food, can't you find some
feminine reason for intruding on them."
"I'm afraid we can't," she answered. "We did try yesterday morning. When
we found that the daughter didn't go out for something to cook, we
misdoubted they might be hungry, and so we talked it over and over, and
did our best to hit on some way of helping them. At last mother had an
idea, and she made a sort of Spanish stew--what they call an _olla
podrida_, you know. She got the receipt out of the cook-book, and she
took it up and knocked at the door. They asked who it was, and they
didn't open the door but a little. Mother told the daughter that she had
been trying to make a Spanish dish, and she didn't know as she'd got it
right, and so she'd come up to ask them as a favor if they wouldn't
taste it, and tell her if it was all right. You see that was mother's
idea. She thought she might get them to eat it that way, and save their
pride. But it wouldn't do. The daughter said that she was sorry, but she
couldn't taste it then, she couldn't, nor her mother either. They had no
appetite then, and so they couldn't judge of the _olla podrida_. She
said they had just been cooking some chops and steaks."
"Chops and steaks?" echoed Suydam.
"That's what she said," the girl continued. "But of course that was only
her excuse for refusing. That was her way of impressing on mother that
they didn't need anything. So mother had to give it up, and bring the
stew down-stairs again. Mother doesn't feel so badly about them,
however, because they had been cooking something yesterday. She smelt
fish--yesterday was Friday, you know."
"I know," repeated the young man; "but still I--"
Just then the shrill whistle of the postman was heard, and a sharp ring
at the bell.
The girl jumped up, and went to the door. As she opened it there came in
the faint melody of distant sleigh-bells, and the roar of the street
already muffled by the snow.
She returned to the parlor with a long blue envelope in her hand.
"Here is the letter at last," she said.
"What letter?" asked Suydam.
"The letter the old ladies are waiting for," she answered, handing it to
him.
He held it up nearer the single gas-jet of the parlor and read the
address aloud, "'Marquisa de los Rios,' and it's registered."
"Yes," the girl returned, "and the postman is waiting to have the
receipt signed. He said he guessed it was money or a Christmas present
of some sort, since it had so many seals on it. I wanted you to know
about it; but I'll take it right up now."
She tripped lightly up-stairs, and John Suydam heard her knocking at the
door of the room the two old ladies occupied. After an interval she
rapped again, apparently without response. Then he heard her try the
door gently.
Two seconds later her voice rang out in a cry of alarm: "Mother! mother!
Oh, John!"
Suydam sprang up-stairs, and found her just outside of the door of the
old ladies' room. She was trembling, and she gripped his hand.
"Oh, John," she said, "something terrible has happened! It was even
worse than I thought! They really were starving!"
Then she led him silently into the room, where her mother joined them
almost immediately.
After waiting five minutes the postman at the front door below became
impatient. He rang the bell sharply and whistled again. He was kicking
the snow off his boots and swinging his arms to keep warm, when at last
the door opened and John Suydam appeared, with the long blue envelope in
his hand.
"I'm afraid that you will have to take this letter away again," Suydam
said to the postman. "There is no one here now to sign for it. The
Marquisa de los Rios is dead!"
OUTLINES IN LOCAL COLOR
AN INTERVIEW WITH MISS MARLENSPUYK
It was a chill day early in January, and at four in the afternoon a gray
sky shut in the city, like the cylindrical background of a cyclorama.
Now and then a wreath of steam chalked itself on the slate-colored
horizon; and across the river, far over to the westward, there was a
splash of pink, sole evidence of the existence of the sun, which no one
had seen for twenty-four hours.
As Miss Marlenspuyk turned the corner of the side street she stood still
for a moment, looking down on the long Riverside Drive and on the mighty
Hudson below, flowing sluggishly beneath its shield of ice. She had long
passed the limit of threescore years and ten, and she had been an
indefatigable traveller; and as she gazed, absorbing the noble beauty of
the splendid scene, unsurpassable in any other city she had ever
visited, she was glad that she was a New-Yorker born and bred, and that
it was her privilege to dwell where a vision like this was to be had for
the asking. But while she looked lovingly up and down the solemn stream
the wind sprang up again, and fluttered her gray curls and blew her
wrappings about her.
Two doors above the corner where Miss Marlenspuyk was standing a striped
awning stretched its convolutions across the sidewalk and up the
irregular stone steps, and thrust itself into the door-way at the top of
the stoop. A pretty young girl, with a pleasantly plump figure and with
a dash of gold in her fair hair, passed through this twisting canvas
tunnel just ahead of Miss Marlenspuyk; and when the door of the house
was opened to admit them they entered together, the old maid and the
young girl.
The house was illuminated as though it were already night; the curtains
were drawn, and the lamps, with their fantastically extravagant shades
of fringed silk, were all alight. The atmosphere was heavy with the
perfume of flowers, which were banked up high on the mantel-pieces and
the tables, while thick festoons of smilax were pendent from all the
gas-fixtures and over all the mirrors. Palms stood in the corners and in
the fireplaces; and at one end of the hall they were massed as a screen,
through which glimpses could be caught of the bright uniforms of the
Hungarian band.
In the front parlor, before a broad table on which there were a dozen or
more beautiful bouquets tied with bows of ribbon, and under a bower of
solid ropes of smilax, stood the lady of the house with the daughter she
was that afternoon introducing to society. The hostess was a handsome,
kindly woman, with scarce a gray hair in her thick dark braids. The
daughter was, like her mother, kindly also, and also handsome; she was
better looking, really, than any of the six or seven pretty girls she
had asked to aid her in receiving her mother's friends and
acquaintances.
The young woman who had preceded Miss Marlenspuyk into the house
happened also to precede her in entering the parlor. The hostess,
holding her bunch of orchids in the left hand, greeted the girl
pleasantly, but perhaps with a vague hint of condescension.
"Miss Peters, isn't it?" said the lady of the house, pitching her voice
low, but with an effort, as though the habit had been acquired late in
life. "So good of you to come on such a nasty day. Mildred, you know
Miss Peters?"
Then the daughter stepped forward and smiled and shook hands with Miss
Peters, thus leaving the mother at liberty to greet Miss Marlenspuyk;
and this time there was no trace of condescension in her manner, but
rather a faint suggestion of satisfaction.
"Oh, Miss Marlenspuyk," she said, cordially, "this is a pleasure. So
good of you to come on such a nasty day."
"It did blow as I came to the top of your hill here," Miss Marlenspuyk
returned, "and I'm not as strong as I was once upon a time. I suppose
that few of us are as frisky at seventy-five as we were at seventeen."
"I protest," said the hostess; "you don't look a day older now than
when I first met you."
"That's not so very long ago," the old maid answered. "I don't think
I've known you more than five or ten years, have I? And five or ten
years are nothing to me now. I don't feel any older than I did half a
century ago; but as for my looks--well, the least said about them is
soonest mended. I never was a good-looker, you know."
"How can you say so?" responded the hostess, absently noting a group of
new-comers gathering in the door-way. "Mildred, you know Miss
Marlenspuyk?"
"Oh yes, indeed I do," the girl said, heartily, shaking hands with the
vivacious old maid.
The young woman with the touch of gold in her light hair was still
standing by Mildred's side. Noting this, and seeing the group of
new-comers breaking from the door-way and coming towards her, the
hostess spoke hastily again.
"Do you know Miss Peters, Miss Marlenspuyk?" she asked. "Well, at all
events, Miss Peters ought to know you."
Then she had just time to greet the group of new-comers and to lower her
voice again, and to tell them it was so good of them to come on such a
nasty day.
The daughter was left talking to Miss Marlenspuyk and Miss Peters, but
within a minute her mother called her--"Mildred, you know Mrs.
Hitchcock?"
As the group of new-comers pressed forward the old maid with the bright
blue eyes, and the young woman with the pleasantly plump figure, fell
back a little.
"I've heard so much of you, Miss Marlenspuyk, from my grandfather,"
began the younger woman.
"Your grandfather!" echoed the elder lady. "Then your father must be a
son of Bishop Peters?"
Little Miss Peters nodded.
"Then your grandfather was a great friend of my younger brother's," Miss
Marlenspuyk continued. "They went to school together. I remember the
first time I saw the Bishop--it must be sixty years ago--it was the day
he was put into trousers for the first time! And wasn't he proud of
them!"
Miss Peters joined Miss Marlenspuyk in laughing at this amusing memory.
Then the old maid asked, "Your father married in the South after the
war, didn't he? Wasn't your mother from Atlanta?"
"He lived there till mother died; I was bo'n there," said the girl.
"I've been No'th only two years now this Christmas."
"I don't suppose you found many of your grandfather's friends left.
Nowadays people die so absurdly young," the old maid remarked. "Is your
father here this afternoon?"