suddenly the electric light whitewashed the pavement, and his unexpected
shadow lay black and sprawling under his feet. He looked up, startled,
and he saw the infinite arch of the sky curving over him--clear,
cloudless, and illimitable. The faint sickle of the new moon hung low on
the horizon. A towering building thrust its thin height into the air,
and the yellow lights in its upper windows seemed like square panels
inlaid in the deep blue of the sky. The beauty of the moment lifted him
out of his present misery, and he was glad to be alive. The plash of the
fountain fell on his ears and charmed them. The broad leaves of the
aquatic plants swayed languidly as a gentle breeze blew across the
surface of the water.
With a sigh of relief, McDowell Sutro dropped upon one of the park
benches. Until he sat down he did not know how tired he was. His feet
ached, and his stomach cried for food. And yet he was stout of heart.
"If I've got to spend a night _a la belle etoile_," he said to himself,
"I could have no better luck. There are beautiful stars a-plenty this
evening. It's like that night in Venice when Tom Pixley and I took the
two Morton girls out in our gondolas, and their aunt couldn't find us. I
remember we had had a good dinner at Florian's, with an immense dish of
_risotto milanese_--so big we had to leave some. I wish I had the chance
again. I could finish it now if it was twice as much."
Over on Fourth Avenue, behind the equestrian statue of George
Washington, there was a Hungarian restaurant, and from his bench at the
edge of the grass McDowell Sutro could see the table right in the window
at which an old man and a young woman were having dinner. He could
follow every movement of their hands; he could count every mouthful they
ate. At last he could bear it no longer, and he changed his seat to a
bench nearer Broadway. Here he found himself facing another eating-room,
in the broad windows of which many kinds of food were alluringly
displayed. Men came out and lingered in the door-way long enough to
light a cigarette.
When McDowell Sutro noted this, the craving for tobacco seized him. A
smoke would not stay his stomach, but it would be a solace none the
less. He rose to his feet and felt in all his pockets, in the vain hope
that his fingers might touch some overlooked fragment of a cigar. There
was something at the bottom of one of the pockets of his coat, but it
mocked him by revealing itself as a match. He sank down on the bench and
turned his eyes away from the restaurant, for he could not bear to gaze
on the cakes and pies piled up behind the plate-glass, or to observe the
smoke curling up from the lips of men who had eaten and drunk
abundantly.
There was a bar-room under the hotel on the corner of Broadway, and
every now and then two or three men pushed inside the swinging doors, to
reappear five or ten minutes later. Farther down Broadway stood a
theatre, and there was now a throng about its broad door-way. Another
theatre faced the square, gay with prismatic signs and besprinkled with
electric lights. McDowell Sutro watched men and women step up to the
box-office of this place of amusement and buy their tickets and
disappear within. He wondered why these men and women should have money
to spare on a show, when he had not enough to pay for a meal and a
night's lodging.
Perhaps it was the fatigue of his useless day, and perhaps it was the
hypnotic influence of the revolving lights before the variety theatre,
which caused the lonely young man to fall asleep. How long he slept he
did not know, nor what waked him at last. But he had a doubtful memory
of a human touch upon his body, and three of his pockets were turned
inside out. When he discovered this, he laughed outright. The attempt to
rob him then struck him as the funniest thing that had ever happened.
He must have slept for two or three hours at least, for the appearance
of the square had changed. It was no longer evening; it was now night.
While he looked about him he saw the doors of the theatre in Broadway
pushed open, and the audience began to pour forth. A few moments later
little knots of the play-goers passed him, still laughing with
remembrance of the farce they had been witnessing. In another quarter of
an hour the people began to come out of the other theatre, the variety
show on the square, and the lights that flared above the door-way went
out, all at once.
It was nearly midnight when two men sat down on the bench of which
McDowell Sutro had been the sole occupant hitherto. They were tall and
thin, both of them; they were clean-shaven; their clothes were shabby;
and yet they carried themselves with an indescribable air, as though
they were accustomed to brave the gaze of the world.
"No," said the elder of the two, continuing their conversation, "she's
no good. She has a figure like a flat-iron and a voice like a fog-horn,
hasn't she? Well, there's no draft in that, is there? She's a Jonah,
that's what she is, and she'd hoo-doo any show. Why, the last time I was
on the road she tried to queer my act. I called her down right there and
then, and when the star backed her up, I was going to give my two weeks'
notice; and I'd have done it, too, but I was playing cases then, and I
didn't want to come back here walking on my uppers. But if I had quit,
they'd have closed in a month, I tell you! They didn't know who was
drawing the money to their old show; but I did! You ought to have been
in the one-night towns on the oil circuit and heard me do Shamus
O'Brien. That used to fetch 'em every night--I tell you it did! And it
used to make her tired!"
"Did you ever see me play Laertes?" asked the younger. "I did it first
in 'Frisco in '72, when Larry Barrett came out there. Well, while I was
on the stage with him, Hamlet didn't get a hand. I've got a notice here
now that said I was the Greatest Living Laertes."
"I played Iago once with Larry Barrett," said the first speaker, "and I
gave them such a realistic impersonation they used to hiss me off the
stage almost."
"Have a cigarette?" asked the other, holding out a package.
"Don't care if I do," was the answer. "I've got a match."
"That's lucky, for I haven't," said the owner of the cigarettes.
"Well, I haven't, after all," the elder actor had to confess, after a
vain search in his pockets.
"Let me provide the match," broke in McDowell Sutro. "I've only one, but
it's at your service."
"Thank you," was the response. "Can I not offer you a cigarette?"
"I don't care if I do," the young man answered, involuntarily repeating
the phrase he had just heard, as he thrust out his hand eagerly.
The first whiff of the smoke was like meat and drink to him; and in the
sensuous enjoyment of the luxury he almost neglected to respond to the
remark addressed to him. But in a minute he found himself chatting with
the two actors pleasantly. Although they had been to California more
than once, they knew none of his friends; but it cheered merely to hear
again the names of familiar landmarks. There was more than a suggestion
of haughtiness in the way they both condescended to him; but he did not
resent this, even if he remarked it. Human companionship was sweet to
him; and to drop into a chat with casual strangers on a bench in Union
Square at midnight, even this diminished the desolation of his
loneliness.
The talk lasted perhaps a quarter of an hour, and then the two other
men rose to go. McDowell Sutro stood up also, as though he were at home
and they were his guests.
"Come over and have a drink," said the elder of the two.
And again the young man answered, "I don't care if I do."
He would rather have had food than drink, but he could not tell two
strangers that he was hungry.
As they passed before the statue of Lafayette and crossed the car
tracks, he wondered whether the saloon where they were going to was one
of those which set out a free lunch.
When they entered the bar-room his eyes swept it wolfishly, and then
fixed themselves at the end of the counter, where there were broad
dishes with cheese and crackers and sandwiches. He could hardly control
himself; he wanted to rush there and snatch the food and devour it. But
shame kept him standing near the door with the two actors, though his
gaze was fastened on the dishes only a few feet from him.
The barkeeper set the bottle before them, and they poured out the
liquor. Then they looked at each other and said, "How!"
The elder actor half finished his drink at a single gulp. As he set down
his glass he caught McDowell Sutro staring at the free lunch.
"That's not a bad idea," he said, moving along the bar--"not half bad.
I'll take a sandwich myself. I feel a bit hollow to-night. I got three
encores after I gave them the 'Pride of Battery B,' and I need something
to build me up. Have a sandwich?"
"I don't care if I do," responded the hungry man, as his fingers closed
on the bread. Yet when he took the first mouthful it almost choked him.
Five minutes later he had said good-night to his two chance
acquaintances and he was again back in the square. The scant food he had
been able to take lay hard in his stomach, and the liquor he had drunk,
little as that was also, was yet enough to make his head whirl. He did
not walk unsteadily, although he was conscious that it took an effort
for him to carry himself without swerving.
The bench on which he had been sitting was now occupied by four very
young men in evening dress, who were gravely smoking pipes, as though
they were trying to acquire a taste for this novel pastime. So he went
to the centre of the square, where he stood for a while looking at the
aquatic plants and listening to the spurtle of the fountain.
All the seats around the fountain were occupied by men and women, most
of whom seemed to have settled themselves for the night, as though they
were used to sleeping there. McDowell Sutro found himself speculating
whether he, too, would soon be accustomed to spending his nights in the
open air, without a roof over him.
One solid German had fallen into a slumber so heavy that his snore
became a loud snort. Then a gray-coated policeman waked the sleeper by
smiting the soles of his feet with the club.
"This park ain't no bedroom," said the policeman, "and I ain't goin' to
have you fellows goin' to sleep here either! See?"
After walking three or four times around on the outer circle of the
little park, the young man found a vacant seat on a bench near the
corner of Broadway and Seventeenth Street. The brilliantly lighted
cable-cars still glided swiftly up and down Broadway with their
insistent gongs, but they were now fewer and fewer; and the cross-town
horse-cars passed only two or three an hour. The long day of the city
was nearly over at last, and for the two or three hours before dawn
there would be peace and a cessation of the struggle.
As he sat back on the bench, sick with weariness, the occupant of the
seat next to him aroused herself. She was an elderly woman, with
grizzled hair.
"I beg your pardon--if I waked you up?" said the young man.
"You did wake me up," she answered, "but I forgive you. It's only
cat-naps I get anyway nowadays. I haven't stretched my legs out between
the sheets and had my fill of sleep for a month of Sundays. And I'm a
glutton for sleeping if I've the chance. But I'm getting used to
sitting up late," and she laughed without bitterness. "What time is it
now?" she asked.
McDowell Sutro involuntarily lifted his hand to the pocket of his
waistcoat, and then he dropped it quickly. Blushing, he answered, "I
don't know--I--"
"Time's up, isn't it?" she returned, with a laugh of understanding. "I
haven't got my watch with me either; I left it in my other clothes at my
uncle's. But Mr. Tiffany is a kind-hearted man, and he keeps a clock all
lighted up for us to see. Your eyes are younger than mine--what time is
it now?"
McDowell Sutro looked intently for half a minute before he could make
out the hour. At last he answered, "It's almost half-past one, I think."
"Then I've a couple of hours for another nap before the sparrows wake us
all up," she returned. "Is it the first night you have come to this
hotel of ours?"
"Yes," he replied.
"I thought so," she continued, "by your feeling for your watch. You'll
get out of the way of doing that soon."
His face blanched with fear that she might be predicting the truth.
Would the time ever come when he should be used to sleeping in the open
air?
The old woman turned a little, so that she could look at him.
"It's a handsome young fellow you are," she went on; "there's more than
one house in town where they'd take you in on your looks--and tuck you
up in bed, too, and keep you warm."
"Perhaps I'm better off here," he remarked, feeling that he was expected
to say something.
"This isn't a bad hotel of ours, this isn't," she returned; "it's well
ventilated, for one thing. Of course you can go to the station-house if
you want. I don't. I've tried it, and I'd sooner sleep in the snow than
in the station-house, with the creatures you meet there. This hotel of
ours here keeps open all night; and it's on the European plan, I'm
thinking--leastwise you can have anything you can pay for. When the
owl-wagon is here, you can get a late supper--if you have the price of
it. I haven't."
"Neither have I," he answered.
"Then there's two of us ready for an invite to breakfast," she
responded, cheerily. "If any one asks us, it's no previous engagement
will make us decline, I'm thinking."
He made no answer, for his heart sank as he looked into the future.
"Are you hungry now?" she asked.
"Yes," he answered, simply.
"So am I," she replied, "and I can't get used to it. Hunger is like
pain, isn't it? It don't let go of you; it don't get tired and let up on
you. It's a stayer, that's what it is, and it keeps right on attending
strictly to business. Sometimes, when I'm very hungry, I feel like
committing suicide, don't you?"
"No," he responded--"at least, not yet; I haven't had enough of life to
be tired of it so soon."
"Neither have I," was her answer. "Sometimes I'm ready to quit, but
somehow I don't do it. But it would be so easy; you throw yourself in
front of one of those cable-cars coming down Broadway now--and you'll
get rapid transit to kingdom come. But they don't sell excursion
tickets. Besides, being crunched by a cable-car is a dreadful mussy way
of dying, don't you think? And to-day's Friday, too--and I don't believe
I'd ever have any luck in the next world if I was to commit suicide on a
Friday."
"This isn't Friday any longer," he suggested; "it's Saturday morning."
"So it is now," she rejoined; "then we'd better be getting our
beauty-sleep as soon as we can, for the flower-market here will wake us
up soon enough, seeing it's Saturday. And so, good-night to you!"
"Good-night!" he responded.
"And may you dream you've found a million dollars in gold, and then wake
up and find it true!" she continued.
"Thank you," he replied, wondering what manner of woman his neighbor
might be.
She said nothing more, but settled herself again and closed her eyes.
She was dressed in rusty black, and she had a thin black shawl over her
head. She had been a very handsome woman--so she impressed the young man
by her side--and he was wholly at a loss to guess how she came to be
here, in the street, at night, without money and alone. She seemed out
of place there; for her manner, though independent, was not defiant.
There was no rasping harshness in her tones; indeed, her talk was dashed
with joviality. Her speech even puzzled him, although he thought that
showed her to be Irish.
Turning these things over in his mind, he fell asleep. He dreamed the
same dream again and again--a dream of a barbaric banquet, where huge
outlandish dishes were placed on the table before him. The savor of them
was strange to his nostrils, but it brought the water to his mouth.
Then, when he made as though to help himself and stay his appetite, the
whole feast slid away beyond his reach, and finally faded into nothing.
The dream differed in detail every time he dreamed it; and the last time
the only dish on the board before him was a gigantic pasty, which he
succeeded in cutting open, only to behold four-and-twenty blackbirds fly
forth. The birds circled about his head, and then returned to the empty
shell of the pasty, and perched there, and sang derisively.
So loudly did they sing that McDowell Sutro awoke, and he heard in the
trees above him and behind him the chirping and twittering of countless
sparrows.
He recalled what the old woman had said--that the birds would wake them
up. Probably they had aroused her first, for the place on the bench next
to him was empty.
He rose to his feet and looked about him. It was almost daybreak, and
already there were rosy streaks in the eastern sky. A squirrel was
running up and down a large tree in the middle of the grass-plot behind
the bench on which he had been sleeping. In the open space at the
northern end of the square there were a dozen or more gardeners' wagons,
thick with growing flowers in pots, and men were arranging these plants
in rows upon the pavement. Another heavy wagon, loaded with roses only,
rolled across the car track and disturbed a flock of pigeons that
swirled aloft for a moment and then settled down again. A moist breeze
blew up from the bay, and brought a warning of rain to come later in the
day.
The sleepers on the other benches here and there throughout the square
were waking, one by one. McDowell Sutro saw one of them go to the
drinking-fountain and wash his hands and face. He followed this example
as best he could. When he had made an end of this his eye fell on
Tiffany's clock, which told the hour of half-past four. A few minutes
later the first rays of the sun began to gild the cornices of the tall
buildings which towered above the Lincoln statue.
Within the next hour and a half the cable-cars began to pass down-town
more frequently, and the cross-town cars from the ferries also came
closer together. The gardeners' wagons and the plants taken from them
filled the broad space at the upper end of the square. Milk-carts
rattled across the car tracks that bounded the square on all four sides.
The signs of the coming day multiplied, and McDowell Sutro noted them
all, one after another, with unfailing interest, despite the gnawing
pain in his stomach. It was the first time he had ever seen the
awakening of a great city.
He walked away from Union Square as far as Fifth Avenue and Twenty-third
Street, and again as far as Third Avenue and Fourteenth Street; but he
found himself always returning to the flower-market. At last a hope
sprang up within him. Among the purchasers were ladies not strong enough
to carry home the heavy pots, and perhaps he might pick up a job. This
was not the way he wanted to earn his daily bread, but never before had
he felt the want of the daily bread so keenly.
When he came back to the line of gardeners' wagons he found other men
out of work also hanging about in the hope of making an honest penny;
and more than once he saw one or another of these others sent away,
burdened with tall plants.
At last he took his courage in his hand, and went up to a little old
lady whom he had seen going from row to row. She had bright eyes and a
gentle manner and a kindly smile. He asked her, if she bought anything,
to let him carry it home for her. She looked at the handsome young
fellow, and her glance was as shrewd as it seemed to him sympathetic.
"Yes," she answered, "I think I can trust you."
A minute or two later she bargained with a Scotch gardener for two
azaleas in full bloom. Then she turned to McDowell Sutro:
"Will you take those to the Post-Graduate Hospital, corner of Second
Avenue and Twentieth Street, for half a dollar?"
"Yes," he answered, eagerly.
"Very well," she responded. "They are for the Babies' Wards. Say that
they are from Miss Van Dyne. The Babies' Wards, you understand? And here
is your money. I've got to trust you; but you have an honest face, and I
don't believe that you would rob sick children of the sight and smell of
the flowers they love."
"No," said McDowell Sutro, "I wouldn't." He picked up the heavy pots,
and held one in the hollow of each arm. "The Babies' Wards of the
Post-Graduate Hospital, from Miss Van Dyne? Is that it?"
"That's it," she answered, with her illuminating smile.
He walked off with the plants. Having the money in his pocket to break
his fast, it seemed as though he could not get to the hospital swiftly
enough. But when he had handed in the flowers, and was on his way back
again to the square, he remembered suddenly the woman who had sat by him
on the bench, and who had been hungry also. He had fifty cents in his
pocket now, and in the window of an eating-house on Fourth Avenue he saw
the sign, "Regular Breakfast, 25 cts." He had money enough to buy two
regular breakfasts, one for himself and one for her.
He made the circle of the little park three times, besides traversing it
in every direction, and then he had to confess that she was beyond his
reach.
So he went to the restaurant alone, and had a regular breakfast all to
himself.
When he came forth he felt refreshed, and the people who were now
hurrying along the streets struck him as happier than those he had seen
in the gray dawn. The long sunbeams were lighting the side streets. The
workmen with their dinner-pails were giving place to the shop-girls with
their luncheons tied up in paper.
The roar of the great city arose once more as the mighty tide of
humanity again swept through its thoroughfares.
He went back to the gardeners' wagons, believing that he might earn
another half-dollar. But when he saw other men waiting there hungrily,
he turned away, thinking it only fair to give them a chance too.
He found a seat in the sun, and looked on while the flower-market was
stripped by later purchasers. He wondered where the plants were all
going, and then he remembered that the same flowers serve for the
funeral and for the wedding. For the first time it struck him as strange
that the plant which dresses a dinner-table to-day may gladden a
sick-room to-morrow, and be bedded on a grave the day after.
At last he thought the hour had come when the post-office would be open
again, and he set off for Fifth Avenue and Thirteenth Street.
When he reached the station he checked his walk. He did not dare go in,
although the doors were open, and he could see other men and women
asking questions at the little square windows. What if his questions
should meet with the same answer as yesterday? What if he should have to
spend another night in Union Square?
He nerved himself at last and entered. As he approached the window the
clerk looked at him with a glance of recognition.
"McDowell Sutro, isn't it? Yes--there is a letter for you. Overweight,
too--there's four cents extra postage to pay."
The young man's hand trembled as he put down the quarter left after
paying for his regular breakfast. He seized the envelope swiftly, and
almost forgot to pick up his change, till the clerk reminded him of it.
He tore the letter open. It was from Tom Pixley; it contained a
post-office order for fifty dollars; and it began:
"MY DEAR MAC,--Go and see Sam Sargent, 78 Broadway, and he will get
you a place on the surveyor's staff for the new line of the
Barataria Central. I'm writing to him by this mail, and--"
But for a minute McDowell Sutro could read no further. His eyes had
filled with tears.
(1895.)
AN IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT
The summer sun had blazed down all day on the low wooden roof of the old
shed lately used as an ice-cream saloon, and now hastily altered to
accommodate a post of the Salvation Army. Placards at the wide doorway
proclaimed that All were Welcome, and besought the stranger to Come in
and be Saved. The tall tenements that lined the side-streets east and
west had emptied their hundreds of inhabitants out into the avenue that
evening, and the sidewalks were thronged with men and women languid from
the heat of the day, and longing for the lazy breeze that sometimes
creeps into the city with nightfall; but few of them cared to enter the
stifling hall where the song-service was about to begin, and that night
especially there were many counter-attractions out-doors. Already were
the rockets beginning to burst far above the square where the fireworks
were to be displayed; and now and again a boy (who had more than boyish
self-control) produced a reserve pack of fire-crackers, and dropped them
into a barrel, and capered away with delight as the owner of the barrel
was called to his door by the rattle of their explosion.