UNDER THE AFTER AWNING
Sidewalks along Fifth Avenue were packed with persons of all
nationalities, representatives of every variety of industrial activity
in the life of the City. There was a reviewing stand erected in front of
the massive library that displayed its lines of architectural beauty in
place of the sloping, age-gray walls of the old reservoir at Bryant
Square. City officials and families of officers in the troops soon to
pass were assembled there to witness this march of soldiers on their way
to entrain for the Mexican border. They were filled with the zeal of
patriots, because their comrades had been foully killed on that same
border by a treacherous foe, and they were being sent to avenge that
insult against the life and dignity of their nation.
Came the rhythmic beat of feet on the pavement; came the blare of the
band. The two swung together into a harmony of marching. These boys,
ordered to the front, were going, steadfastly, as in duty bound. They
loved this "send-off." They marched with vigor in their steps, because
ten thousand handkerchiefs waved from the windows along the line of
march.
On the sidewalks was assembled a strange crowd. There were the
stenographers taking their noonday outing. Many were carefully
over-powdered and perfumed. They were dressed after the latest
fashion--a long way after it!
But the Midinettes were a very small proportion of those wild to see the
real soldiers.
All New York had heard the troops were to march that day. And all New
York turned out to see the regiments.
There are a myriad phases of metropolitan life. Those phases were
illustrated that day in the crowds along the line of march. The bulk of
those clustering at the curb were of a sort eager for a free show. In
the countless loft buildings bordering the avenue were hordes of men and
women too busy in earning a pitiful wage to think of anything so
frivolous as a procession, with banners waving and bands playing. But
while these had no thought of marching troops, there were innumerable
others. For New York is a city gigantic. Within it are hosts. Some of
these always are idle. Some, always eager for the free show of the
streets.
So, to-day, when the troops are to march by with shrill of fife and
blatant noise of band, the multitude comes scurrying, curious to see,
patriotic with the emotional patriotism of one just become a citizen of
a free country, where before he was the unrecognized and unhonored
subject of despotism, from which he fled in search of liberty.
New York is a city of millions. It is the biggest city on earth. It is
the melting pot of nations. The crowd that lines the curb is of one
sort. There is another sort marching the length of the avenue. And this
is a mixture to bewilder any beholder. A countryman from New Jersey,
with his wife and children comes to-day for this splendid free show of
the troops that are to march; the countrymen from the reaches of New
York along the Hudson, with the same purpose; his fellows from Long
Island, from Connecticut. With these alien figures, treading the
principal city street of the world, are others. Those who walk there
daily walk there again to-day. The clubman, coated, hatted, gloved to
perfection, takes his accustomed stroll on the avenue, and looks with
contemptuous disgust on the crowd that forces him to walk gingerly where
usually he struts as a master. He, too, is a patriot and he means to see
the march of the troops, and to applaud it--but from his club window, if
ever he is able to make his way there through the perspiring congestion
of the motley crowd.
There is a crew of money-makers, busy along the avenue on an occasion
such as this. These are hordes of itinerant merchants moving up and down
with things to sell to the crowd. They offer canes and instruments of
noise that by a twist of the wrist make a horrible din. Especially, they
offer American flags--bigger or smaller according to the purchaser's
taste and purse. These are bought with eagerness by the crowd, and the
fakers reap a harvest from the enthusiasm of those assembled to witness
the marching soldiers.
The boy with a box is dominant. Wherever a short, but eager watcher
stands to look, the boy comes, with his offer of a box to stand on, a
box to sit on, as the purchaser may please, for the nominal cost of ten
cents. Always, one finds at hand this boy, with the box that he offers
for your sitting or for your feet, as you will. One box bought, he shows
another, offering it for sale. Whence he comes with boxes so
multitudinous none may guess. But he goes away with nickles and dimes
enough perhaps to provide an income that will continue over until
another day of parade.
In the reviewing stand, there was seated a girl who watched the marching
troops with an intentness that had in it something of desperation,
something of despair. Yet, as the soldiers passed, she gave them little
heed. She was always looking toward those advancing, as if in search for
something that meant more to her than this moving mass of troops.
A band passed. Behind it, at the head of his men, rode Colonel Marion.
As he came opposite the reviewing stand, his eyes swept over the crowd
seated on the tiers of benches. They rested on the face of the girl, who
had been so anxiously watching. He smiled and saluted. The girl--his
daughter Ethel--waved her handkerchief eagerly in response. Then she
turned, and spoke to the young man who sat beside her. There was love,
touched with reverence, in her voice.
"Isn't Daddy splendid!"
Her companion, Roy Morton, answered with sincerity, in which was a
tincture of irrepressible bitterness.
"He's every inch a soldier."
The bitterness came from the fact that a broken tendon--received during
his last football fight for Yale--disqualified him for military service,
for which he longed more than ever in this hour when he saw the girl
beside him so thrilled by the pomp of war, when he saw her pride and
exultation in the military bearing of the father she revered. He felt
that he must seem a slacker in her eyes, even though she knew that no
fault of his own kept him at home, while others marched away to serve
their country.
For Roy loved Ethel and his chief desire always was to show perfect in
her eyes. For that matter, he was successful enough, since the girl
loved him. Their troth was plighted, and in due time they would be
married with the full approval of Colonel Marion, who both liked and
respected his prospective son-in-law. So, in preparation for his own
absence from home on military service, he strictly charged Roy to watch
over Ethel and guard her from any possible peril. It was only a father's
instinctive act in protection of his child. As a matter of fact, what
danger could by any possibility threaten the well-being of this Ethel,
who would remain living quietly in her father's New York house, along
with the elderly cousin who acted as chaperon to the motherless girl,
and the staff of old and faithful servants?
During the summer weeks that followed the departure of her father, Ethel
lived happily enough, content with a routine of life that included
entertainments of the usual social sort and especially the almost
constant company of her lover.
One of her favorite diversions was a visit to her father's yacht, which
lay at its moorings off Eighty-fourth Street in the North River. There
was only a caretaker left on board during the Colonel's absence, but
Ethel was fond of spending an afternoon in solitary enjoyment on the
yacht. Under the after awning she would sit at ease in the low wicker
chair, by turns reading, watching the ceaseless traffic of the river,
musing on love and happiness--which meant, always, Roy.
Came a day when Roy was summoned home by the illness of his mother.
Ethel went with him to the station and saw him off. It was long after
noon when she had given the last word of farewell and the last kiss of
tenderness to her lover. Ethel thought that she would like to seek the
repose of the yacht for a period of tranquil meditation in the luxurious
depths of her favorite chair under the after awning.
She rode to the dock in a taxicab, and the yacht's tender took her to
the vessel. It was just then that a great steamer passed, and as she
would have mounted the stairs to the yacht's deck an unexpected swell
from the passing steamer smote the stairs so violently that Ethel was
thrown back into the boat she had just left, with an ankle crushed under
her own weight.
The girl realized that it was badly sprained. She gave orders that she
should be carried on board the yacht forthwith. She decided then that
she would send home for whatever might be needed--and, too, for the
family physician.
With the assistance of the caretaker she managed to reach her cabin, and
then sent the fellow to bring the physician in all haste. She pulled off
her outer garments and donned a kimono, and crawled into her berth, to
await the Doctor's coming.
It was within the hour that the little tender came back toward the
yacht, carrying a passenger.
This was Doctor Gifford Garnet, the family physician. He hurried up the
companion way, and went at once to his patient's stateroom. A very short
examination sufficed. He saw the girl was suffering excruciating pain
from the injury to her ankle.
The physician himself was a victim of morphia. And, too, he was a man of
imagination--a most dangerous quality in one of his profession. Now, as
he regarded the girl, he realized the intense suffering caused to her by
the wrenched tendons in the ankle. That thought of suffering sickened
his sensitive nature, so that he felt an emotion almost of nausea from
the pain he knew her to be enduring.... And he was a coward. Pain had
come to him often. Because he was a coward, he had fled from
it--interposing morphia as a shield against its attack. So, now, in
sympathy for the anguish endured by the girl he turned to the drug to
give her relief from suffering. He made an injection into Ethel's
arm.... The girl watched his movement with listless eyes. Then she
sighed and smiled as she felt the gentle sting of the needle. At once
she sank into an untroubled sleep.
Dr. Garnet regarded her for a moment with a curiously contemplative
stare. Then he grinned grimly, pulled up his coat and shirt-sleeve, and
pressed the piston of the hypodermic, driving a heavier charge of the
drug into his own blood.
One minute he spent in deft examination of the injured ankle, then
bandaged it. Afterward, he left the girl, and went up on deck, where he
stood staring through long minutes toward the fleecy masses of cumulus
clouds that lay along the New Jersey horizon.