"It's always so in this city!" I said to myself while I walked rapidly
towards the hospital. "If I get a chance for a breath of fresh air, or
if I take a walk in the park, or have an outlook that, for a moment, is
free from all suggestions of crime and horror--then beware! For then I
have to shut my ears not to hear the fatal sounds of human brutishness;
or I hear a shot in the park, and a life goes out in some
thick-foliaged path; or I have to turn away my eyes from a sight in the
gutter that offends three of my senses--and so my day is ruined. It's
merciless, merciless--and I loathe it!" I cried within myself as I
passed the hospital.
I lifted my eyes to the massive purity of noble St. Luke's, the windows
rising tier upon tier above me. A light showed here and there. At the
sight my mood softened.
"Oh, I know it is merciful too--it is merciful," I murmured; then I
stopped short and turned back to the entrance. I entered the main
vestibule, mounted the marble steps that lead to the chapel, opened the
noiseless heavily-padded doors, and sat down near the entrance.
The air was close and hot after the outer freshness; the lights few.
The stained-glass window behind the altar was a meaningless confused
mass of leaded opacity. I knew that the daylight was needed to ensoul
it, to give to the dead unmeaning material its spiritual symbolism.
And because I knew this, I realized, as I sat there, what a long
distance in a certain direction I had travelled since that morning in
the Grand Central Station, seven years ago.
But the air was very close. I felt depressed, disappointed, that the
time and the place yielded me nothing. I was faint, too; I had taken
nothing but the cocoa since noon. Without realizing it, another
reaction from that strange elation of spirit was setting in. I knew I
ought to be in the attic room in Chelsea rather than where I was. It
was already nine, and an hour's ride before me on the surface car.
I went out to Amsterdam Avenue. No car was in sight. I walked on down
the hill, knowing that one would soon overtake me.
A man and woman were just behind me talking--at least, the woman was.
I recognized her voice as one of those I had heard on the winding path
by the poplars. A moment after, they passed me in a noticeably
peculiar fashion: the man sauntering by on my right, the woman hurrying
past on my left. At the same moment I heard the car coming down the
hill. I turned at once, but only to see the man, who had passed me,
running swiftly along the pavement and up the hill to meet it; the
woman was running after him.
I saw that the car was over full. The platform and steps were black
with human beings clinging to the guard rails like swarming bees
alight. I saw the man struggle madly to catch the guards and gain a
footing on the lower step, the woman still running beside him and
holding him by the coat. Then I was aware of a sudden sweeping
movement of the man's free arm, the roar of the car as it sped down the
incline, and of the woman lying, hatless from the force of the man's
blow, on the pavement beside the track. He had freed himself so!
Before I could reach her the woman was up and off again, running
hatless after the quickly receding car. Only one cry, no scream,
escaped her.
I shivered. There was nothing to be done with such as these, no rescue
possible. A sudden thought half paralyzed me; I stood motionless: Had
my own mother ever been cast off like this? Had such treatment been
the cause of her seeking the river? Had I, Marcia Farrell, been
fathered by such a brute?
For the second time in my life, I felt my hardness of heart towards the
mother I had never known soften with pity; a sob rose in my throat. I
shook my shoulders as if freeing them from some nightmare clutch, and
hurried to the next corner to meet the car that was following the other
closely.