Upon a wet evening, several months after the last chapter, two
interminable rows of cars, pulled by slipping horses, jangled along a
prominent side-street. A dozen cabs, with coat-enshrouded drivers,
clattered to and fro. Electric lights, whirring softly, shed a blurred
radiance. A flower dealer, his feet tapping impatiently, his nose and
his wares glistening with rain-drops, stood behind an array of roses
and chrysanthemums. Two or three theatres emptied a crowd upon the
storm-swept pavements. Men pulled their hats over their eyebrows and
raised their collars to their ears. Women shrugged impatient shoulders
in their warm cloaks and stopped to arrange their skirts for a walk
through the storm. People having been comparatively silent for two
hours burst into a roar of conversation, their hearts still kindling
from the glowings of the stage.
The pavements became tossing seas of umbrellas. Men stepped forth to
hail cabs or cars, raising their fingers in varied forms of polite
request or imperative demand. An endless procession wended toward
elevated stations. An atmosphere of pleasure and prosperity seemed to
hang over the throng, born, perhaps, of good clothes and of having just
emerged from a place of forgetfulness.
In the mingled light and gloom of an adjacent park, a handful of wet
wanderers, in attitudes of chronic dejection, was scattered among the
benches.
A girl of the painted cohorts of the city went along the street. She
threw changing glances at men who passed her, giving smiling
invitations to men of rural or untaught pattern and usually seeming
sedately unconscious of the men with a metropolitan seal upon their
faces.
Crossing glittering avenues, she went into the throng emerging from the
places of forgetfulness. She hurried forward through the crowd as if
intent upon reaching a distant home, bending forward in her handsome
cloak, daintily lifting her skirts and picking for her well-shod feet
the dryer spots upon the pavements.
The restless doors of saloons, clashing to and fro, disclosed animated
rows of men before bars and hurrying barkeepers.
A concert hall gave to the street faint sounds of swift, machine-like
music, as if a group of phantom musicians were hastening.
A tall young man, smoking a cigarette with a sublime air, strolled near
the girl. He had on evening dress, a moustache, a chrysanthemum, and a
look of ennui, all of which he kept carefully under his eye. Seeing
the girl walk on as if such a young man as he was not in existence, he
looked back transfixed with interest. He stared glassily for a moment,
but gave a slight convulsive start when he discerned that she was
neither new, Parisian, nor theatrical. He wheeled about hastily and
turned his stare into the air, like a sailor with a search-light.
A stout gentleman, with pompous and philanthropic whiskers, went
stolidly by, the broad of his back sneering at the girl.
A belated man in business clothes, and in haste to catch a car, bounced
against her shoulder. "Hi, there, Mary, I beg your pardon! Brace up,
old girl." He grasped her arm to steady her, and then was away running
down the middle of the street.
The girl walked on out of the realm of restaurants and saloons. She
passed more glittering avenues and went into darker blocks than those
where the crowd travelled.
A young man in light overcoat and derby hat received a glance shot
keenly from the eyes of the girl. He stopped and looked at her,
thrusting his hands in his pockets and making a mocking smile curl his
lips. "Come, now, old lady," he said, "you don't mean to tel me that
you sized me up for a farmer?"
A labouring man marched along; with bundles under his arms. To her
remarks, he replied, "It's a fine evenin', ain't it?"
She smiled squarely into the face of a boy who was hurrying by with his
hands buried in his overcoat pockets, his blonde locks bobbing on his
youthful temples, and a cheery smile of unconcern upon his lips. He
turned his head and smiled back at her, waving his hands.
"Not this eve--some other eve!"
A drunken man, reeling in her pathway, began to roar at her. "I ain' ga
no money!" he shouted, in a dismal voice. He lurched on up the street,
wailing to himself: "I ain' ga no money. Ba' luck. Ain' ga no more
money."
The girl went into gloomy districts near the river, where the tall
black factories shut in the street and only occasional broad beams of
light fell across the pavements from saloons. In front of one of these
places, whence came the sound of a violin vigorously scraped, the
patter of feet on boards and the ring of loud laughter, there stood a
man with blotched features.
Further on in the darkness she met a ragged being with shifting,
bloodshot eyes and grimy hands.
She went into the blackness of the final block. The shutters of the
tall buildings were closed like grim lips. The structures seemed to
have eyes that looked over them, beyond them, at other things. Afar off
the lights of the avenues glittered as if from an impossible distance.
Street-car bells jingled with a sound of merriment.
At the feet of the tall buildings appeared the deathly black hue of the
river. Some hidden factory sent up a yellow glare, that lit for a
moment the waters lapping oilily against timbers. The varied sounds of
life, made joyous by distance and seeming unapproachableness, came
faintly and died away to a silence.