A SLUM POST
"Sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal."
Despair fells; suspense tortures. The forty odd hours which lay
between the ending of the Grahams' dinner and the promised interview
with Winifred Anstice stretched out into an eternity to the impatience
of Flint. By turns he tried occupation and diversion; yet his ear
caught every tick of the clock, which seemed to his exaggerated fancy
to have retarded its movement. He found it so impossible to work at
his office that he packed up his papers and started for home.
"What! going so early?" called Brooke from his desk.
"Yes, a man cannot do any work here with this everlasting steam-drill
outside."
"You are growing too sensitive for this world, Flint. We shall have to
build you a padded room, like Carlyle's, on top of the building."
Flint vouchsafed no answer. He posted out and up Broadway as if he
were in mad haste. Then suddenly recollecting that his chief purpose
was to kill time, he moderated his stramming gait to a stroll. At a
jeweller's on Union Square he paused, and turned in, ostensibly to
order some cards; but passing out he stopped surreptitiously before
the case of jewels. The rubies interested him most. How well they
would look against a certain gray-silk gown! Should he ever dare-- He
caught a meaning smile on the face of the clerk, and bolted out of the
door.
He paused again at a fashionable florist's shop tucked deftly in among
the theatres of central Broadway. The men at the counter were busily
engaged over curiously incongruous tasks,--one binding up a cross of
lilies, another a wreath for a baby's coffin, and a third preparing a
beribboned basket, gay with chrysanthemums, for a dinner-table.
Heedless, like us all, of every one's experiences but his own, Flint
stood by, waiting impatiently for the clerk who was putting the last
lily in the cross. From the great heaps of roses which stood about he
selected an overflowing boxful of the longest-stemmed and most
fragrant. The clerk smiled as he watched his recklessness. "I've seen
'em like that," he said to himself, "and two or three years after
they'll come in and ask for carnations, and say it doesn't matter if
they _were_ brought in yesterday."
Unconscious of the florist's cynical reflections, Flint tossed him
his card, and emerged once more to add one to the moving mass of
humanity on the street. At Madison Square he dropped in at the club
and looked over the latest numbers of "Life" and "Punch."
Still time hung heavy on his hands. He looked at his watch; it was
just five o'clock,--exactly the time when that objectionable Blathwayt
was to call in Stuyvesant Square. Still two hours before dinner.
He left the club, crossed over to Broadway, and jumped onto the
platform of the moving cable-car at imminent peril to life and limb.
He rode on in a sort of daze, till he was roused by a sudden jerk and
the conductor's call of: "Central Park--all out here!" Moving with the
moving stream of passengers, he stepped out of the car, and refusing a
green transfer ticket he crossed the street and entered the park at
the Seventh Avenue gate, where the path makes a sudden dip from the
level of the street. The sun was near its setting, and the chilly wind
had swept the walks clear of tricycles and baby carriages. The
gray-coated guardian of the peace blinked at him from his sentry box.
Otherwise he had the park to himself, and found an intense pleasure in
the solitude, the keen air, and the sharp outlines of the dreary
autumn branches against the gorgeous sky.
The west had that peculiar brilliancy which the dwellers on Manhattan
would recognize as characteristic of their island in November, if
there were not so few who ever get a peep at the sky except
perpendicularly at noonday, as they emerge from rows of brownstone
houses or overshadowing buildings of fabulous height. Flint was in no
mood to sentimentalize over sunsets. The intensely human interests
before him drove Nature far away, as a cold abstraction akin to death;
yet half unconsciously the scene imprinted itself upon his senses, and
long afterward he recalled distinctly the pale grayish-blue of the
zenith shading into the rare, cold tint of green, and that again
barred over with light gossamer clouds, beneath which lay the glowing
bands of orange, red, and violet.
As the sun dropped, the temperature followed it. The wind whistled
more keenly through the bare branches. Flint turned up the collar of
his overcoat, thrust his hands into his pockets, and quickened his
pace.
The relief of rapid motion told upon his overstrained condition. By
the time he had rounded the lakes he was calmer. The ascent of the
steep, rock-hewn steps of the ramble rested his nerves as much as it
taxed his wind, and as he came stramming down the mall, his mind was
sufficiently detached from its own hopes and fears to be able to
realize that the overhanging elms recalled agreeably the long walk at
Oxford, and that the Cathedral spires were fine in the gathering dusk,
as one emerged from the Fifth Avenue entrance. The return to the world
of men stimulated him, and the long undulating waves of electric
lights seemed to beckon to him hopefully as he went on.
The afternoon was gone. That was one comfort, he said, as he reached
his own room. It would take half-an-hour to dress for dinner, and that
meal might be prolonged to cover another hour; but the evening still
stretched onward, seeming interminable to his restless fancy. It was a
relief when Brady came in and suggested that they drop in at a meeting
of the Salvation Army to be held at a slum post in a region of the
city known as Berry Hill.
"Will I go?" he said, echoing the question of his friend, who stood
looking out of the window with an appearance of indifference, which
deceived no one. "Yes, I will; but I want you to understand that I
don't go as you do, out of pure emotional piety, but only to see and
hear Nora Costello."
"Well, she is worth it, isn't she?" Brady responded.
"Worth a trip down-town? Without doubt; but that is not the question
that is lying down in the depths of the locality you are pleased to
call your heart. Come, now," he added, walking across to the window
and throwing his arm over Brady's shoulder with one of his rare
exhibitions of affection,--"come; make a clean breast of it, and let
us talk the thing out from A to Z. _Imprimis_, you are in love with
Nora Costello."
Brady started and moved away a trifle, but made no effort at denial
till after a minute, when he said rather weakly, "What makes you think
so?"
"_Think_ so! Why, man, I must be deaf, dumb, and blind not to _know_
it. Do you suppose I believed that a man at your time of life, brought
up as you have been, had suddenly gone daft on this Salvation Army
business?"
"It's a 'business', as you call it, that does more good than all the
churches put together," answered Brady, hotly.
"Hear him!" echoed Flint, mockingly.
"Hear this son of New England actually declaring that there may be a
way to heaven which does not lie between church-pews or start from a
pulpit!"
"Flint, you are a scoffer."
"What do I scoff at?"
"Religion."
"Pardon me, but I do not."
"Well, theology, anyway."
"Ah, that is a different matter."
"You call yourself an agnostic."
"No, I don't. 'Agnostic' is too long and too pretentious a word. I
prefer to translate it and call myself a know-nothing."
"Don't you believe in God and a future life--and--and all that sort of
thing?" Brady ended rather disjointedly.
"Don't you believe Mars is inhabited? and that the lines on its
surface are canals for irrigation?"
"I don't know," answered Brady, whose mental processes were simple.
"Neither do I," said Flint; "and what is more, neither does any man,
any more than he knows about God and a future life; and so why should
we go to making up creeds and breaking the heads of people who don't
agree with us when we are all just guessers, and probably all of us
wrong?"
"Then you would take away faith out of the world?"
"Not I,--at least not unless I could see something to take its place,
which at present I don't; and as for these poor devils who are
consoling themselves for their hard lot in this world by the
expectation of a soft thing in the next, I would not be such a brute
as to shake their confidence if I could, and I don't blame them much
if in addition to their heaven they set up a hell where, in
imagination at least, they can put the folks who have been having a
too good time here while they were grunting and sweating under their
weary load."
"Then I wonder you have not more sympathy with an organization like
the Salvation Army, which is doing its best to lighten the burden of
the grunters and sweaters."
"Ah," answered Flint, "I had forgotten the Salvation Army,--it seems
so small a branch of a big subject. I am glad you brought me back. But
let us go a little further back still, for you know it was not the
Army at all that we started to discuss, but only one of its officers,
with a slender little figure and a pale face and a big pair of rather
mournful dark eyes."
"Oh!" said Brady, taken somewhat off his guard, "but you should see
her when she is pleased! They light up just as if a torch had been
kindled in them."
"Oh, they do, do they?" said Flint, with genial raillery; "well, you
see I never saw her so pleased as that."
"Why, don't you remember on her birthday, when I gave her back the
locket?"
"I remember the occasion; but I had precious little chance to see how
her eyes looked, for you stood so close to her that nobody else could
catch a glimpse. I did see something, though."
"What?"
"I saw _you_, and any one more palpably sentimental I never did see."
"Well, what of it? It isn't a crime, I suppose--"
"That depends," Flint answered dryly.
Brady shook off his hand. "What do you mean by that?" he asked
angrily.
"I mean," said Flint, folding his arms and looking at his friend
steadily, "that you have come to the cross-roads. You cannot go on as
you are. You must either give up hanging about Nora Costello, or you
must make up your mind to marry her."
"And why not, pray, if I could induce her to accept me?"
"Great Heavens!" cried Flint; "has it gone so far as that?"
"Yes, it has," answered Brady, as defiantly as though Flint had
represented his whole family circle; "and if she will marry me I shall
be a proud and happy man."
"And your relatives,--the Bradfords and Standishes and all?"
"Plymouth Rock may fall on them for all I care," exclaimed Brady.
"And how about the tambourines and torches?"
Brady colored a little, but he stood his ground manfully.
"I shall never presume to dictate," he answered. "I will go my way and
she shall go hers; and if I can lend a helping hand to any of the poor
wretches she is trying to save, I shall do it, if I have to take off
my kid gloves and get down into the gutter, as many a better man has
done before me."
"Well," answered Flint, "if that is the way you take it I have nothing
more to say. But if you don't object I would like to be present when
you announce the engagement to Miss Standish."
"Miss Standish be hanged!" cried Brady. "It is a question of Miss
Costello, I tell you. My only anxiety lies right there. If you had
ever been in love you would know how it feels."
"I can imagine," Flint answered, taking up his pipe and looking
scrutinizingly into the bowl; "I have read about it in books. But
come! if we are going to the rally we must be about it. It is nearly
eight by my watch. How long is the confounded thing--excuse me--I mean
the gospel gathering?"
"If you are going to make fun of it, Flint, you would better stay at
home," said Brady, stiffly.
"No, no, forgive me, Brady! I meant nothing of the kind; it is my
accursed habit of joking when I am in earnest, and being so solemn
when I try to be funny that I am never in harmony with the occasion.
Go on; I will close the door. I ought not to go, for I half expect
Brooke of the Magazine. No matter; I will leave word for him."
As they passed the janitor, Flint said, "I shall be back by ten. If
any one comes to see me you have the key of my rooms, and let any
visitor come in and wait."
"All right, sir!"
"And see that the fire is kept up."
"Yes, sir."
Flint shivered as he passed out of the warm, heavily carpeted halls
into the chilly night of late November.
"To-morrow will be Thanksgiving, won't it?" Brady observed.
"Yes, and judging by the number of turkeys on this avenue there will
be no family without one. I heard last year of a poor widow who had
_six_ sent her by different charitable institutions. That is what I
call a pressure of subsistence on population."
Something in Flint's manner jarred upon his companion. It seemed like
a determined opposition to any undue influence of sentiment or
emotion. Brady could not have defined the attitude of his friend's
mind; but he felt it, and resented it to the extent of keeping
silence after they had taken their seats in the car of the elevated
road.
There were few other passengers, and the car smelled of lamp-oil. All
surrounding influences tended to depress Brady's ordinarily buoyant
spirits, and he wished he had stayed at home, or at any rate had left
Flint behind. Meanwhile his companion, apparently wholly oblivious of
the frigidity of his companion's manner, sat with his hat pulled over
his eyes, and his face as undecipherable as the riddle of the Sphinx.
As the cars stopped at a station half-way between the up-town
residences and the downtown offices, in the slum belt of the city,
Brady buttoned up his overcoat and rose, saying shortly, "We get out
here."
"He has been here more than once," was Flint's inward comment; but he
made no reply, only followed in Brady's footsteps down the iron
stairs, and under the shadow of the elevated track for a block or two,
when Brady made a sharp wheel to eastward.
"Is this our street?" asked Flint, speaking for the first time.
"Yes, this is our street. Turn to the right--there where you see the
red lantern hanging out from the second story."
"Ah, you know the neighborhood well, I see. Lead on, and I will
follow. How dark it is down here!"
"Yes, electric lights are reserved for the quarters where you rich
people live."
"_You_ rich people!" Flint smiled to himself. "Pretty soon," he
thought, "Brady will be classing me among the greedy capitalists who
are battening on the sorrows of the poor." He was almost conscious of
a feeling of guilt as he recalled the fresh, pure air of the park and
contrasted it with this atmosphere. The name of Berry Hill seemed
curiously inappropriate for the level streets lined with tumble-down
tenements; and its suggestion of the long-ago days when vine-clad
uplands swelled between the narrowing rivers, and little children
steeped their fingers in nothing more harmful than the blood of
berries, lent an added pathos to the gloom of the contrasting present.
The slum post was a forlorn wooden building which had quite forgotten,
if it had ever owned, a coat of paint. The windows of the lower story
were guarded by a wire netting, behind which reposed the treasures of
the poor under the temporary guardianship of the pawnbroker. On one
side lay bits of finery, tawdry rings of plate and silver set with
sham diamonds and pearls, which if the product of nature, would have
bankrupted a Rothschild. In among them were infants' rattles and
spoons marked for life with the impress of baby teeth. Behind the
smaller articles hung a row of musical instruments, fifes and fiddles
sadly silent, and hinting of moody, mirth-robbed homes. Behind these
again, by the dim light within, Flint caught a glimpse of
miscellaneous piles of household articles wrung from the reluctant
owners who had already parted with vanity and mirth, and now must
banish comfort too.
The door on one side of the window stood open, and a rather dim light
within showed a bare hall-way with a worn shabby staircase leading to
the room above. Flint and Brady toiled up two flights. "The path to
heaven is not to be made too easy, is it?" said Flint, pausing to take
breath.
"No; did you expect elevators?" his friend asked with some asperity.
Flint's good humor was not to be shaken, however.
"To heaven? Why, yes. Angels' wings I've always understood were to be
at our service. Here it seems not."
At the door Brady stopped to drop a quarter into the basket labelled
"Silver contribution," held by a buxom and not unpleasing young woman
in the Army uniform.
"They understand the first principles of the church, I see," Flint
whispered. "They have dropped the communion, but they keep the
contribution-box."
Brady did not attend to him. As the two men entered, several turned to
look at them. Clearly they were not of the class expected. Brady,
however, nodded to one or two, and he and his friend sat down on a
bench near the door, in the corner of the hall. Flint wished it were
in order to keep his hat on to shield his eyes from the unshaded gas,
which struck him full in the face. But he resigned himself to that, as
well as to the heat and the odor, and charged it off to the account of
a new experience.
The interior was bare and cheerless, colorless save for the torn red
shades above the high dormer windows, and the crudely painted mottoes
over the platform and around the wall. "_Berry Hill for God!_"
sprawled along one side, flanked by "_Remember Your Mother's
Prayers!_" and in front the sinner's trembling gaze was met by the
depressing suggestion, "_What if you Was to Die To-night?_"
The ceiling was low, and the air already over-heated and
over-breathed. Flint was an epicure in the matter of air. He looked
longingly at the door, which offered the only method of escape. But he
had come for the evening, and he made up his mind to endure to the
end.
A Hindoo was speaking as they came in, shaking his white turban with
much vehemence, and waving his small delicate hands in the air as he
told of "The General's" work in India, and how he had been drawn by
the gospel (which he pronounced go-spell) to give up his rank in the
Brahmin caste, to wander over the world as an evangel.
"Queer," muttered Flint, "that every converted Hindoo was a Brahmin.
Booth seems to have had great luck with the aristocracy."
For a few moments the strangeness of the Hindoo's speech amused Flint;
then he grew bored, and finally irritated. He took out his watch,
looked at it conspicuously, then closed it with an audible click. If
there is a depressing sound on earth it is the click of a watch to the
ear of an orator. The speaker felt it, and looked round deprecatingly,
reflecting perhaps that however superior in morals, Occidentals have
something to learn of the Orientals in manners.
When the high-caste Hindoo sat down, there was much clapping of hands
and shaking of tambourines, and then to the tune of Daisy Bell rose a
chorus of,--
"Sinner, Sinner, give me your answer, do!"
Flint felt a convulsive twitching at the corner of his mouth, but he
had sworn to himself that he would betray no levity. Brady looked so
uncomfortable that his friend pitied him. There is much which disturbs
us, chiefly through the sensibility of others. At the end of the
singing, a man rose to tell of what the Army had done for him in
rescuing him from the gutter; but his legs were so unsteady and his
speech so frequently interrupted by hiccoughs that an audible titter
ran around the room, and there was great propriety in the song
following his remarks.
"If at first you don't succeed,
Try, try again."
The room grew hotter, the lights more trying, the bench harder. The
humor of the situation began to die out in Flint's mind, and gave way
to a wave of repulsion and of pity for his friend who was about to
condemn himself to these associations for life. His mind, which had
wandered from the scene around him, was recalled by the sound of a
voice, so different from the preceeding ones that it fell like angelic
tones upon a world far beneath.
"My friends," said the voice, which was of course Nora Costello's,
"you have listened this night to stories of sin and suffering, of
struggle, of victory, and sometimes of defeat."
"Like the tipsy gent's," a man called out with a coarse laugh.
"Yes, like his. Would you jeer and gibe if you saw a man sinking in
the waves time after time in spite o' rafts and life-preservers thrown
out to him from the ship?"
A shamed silence showed that the question had struck; but the speaker
was not satisfied with silence. She went on driving the shaft home.
"Would you laugh if you saw a man trying to climb out of a burning
building and beaten back time after time by the flames?"
(Cries of "No, no.")
"Then why should you laugh over a poor wretch who is struggling with
worse flames and in danger of being dragged down to more terrible
fires of endless punishment?"
"Fire! Fire!" cried some one in the hall. For a moment Flint took this
to be like the "No, no" of a moment before,--only a running comment on
the speaker's words,--but at the same instant his eye caught the
curling of a thin blue line of smoke in the corner, and he remembered
the furniture and flimsy flummery stored on the lower floor. He
measured the distance to the door. There was no one between him and
it. He would have little difficulty in escaping if he started on the
instant--_but these others!_
"The place will go up like a rocket," he said to Brady, "but a panic
is worse. Hold the door with me!"
"Take me, meester; I'm stronger nor him!" said a broad-shouldered
coal-heaver, who had overheard their whisper.
With this the three men made a bolt for the door, and formed in line
in front of it, with their stout walking-sticks in hand.
"Keep your seats. We will knock down the first man who moves. There's
no danger!" Flint shouted. For an instant the crowd wavered. It would
have taken only one more impulse to turn it into a mob. Nora Costello
saw the danger, and seizing her tambourine she began on a ringing Army
chorus. The audience fell in with such energy that it drowned the
rattle of the fire engines.
"Don't be alarmed," said a fireman, sticking his head in at the door,
"the fire is out, and the danger over. Five minutes more, though," he
added in an undertone to Flint, "would have done the business, and
then, I reckon, we might have spent a week looking for bodies in the
ashes."
"Come, Brady, let us go; I want some fresh air," said Flint, when the
excitement had subsided and another convert had begun his sing-song
confession and adjuration.
"Go, then," answered his friend; "I shall wait to the end. I am going
to walk home with Miss Costello. Yes," he went on, in response to his
friend's questioning glance, "it's to-night or never."
"Then I won't wait," said Flint; "only come in to-morrow and tell me
how you fared."
It was with a feeling of exultation that Flint found himself again on
the street. "How grewsome it would have been," he thought, "to be
carried off in a job lot like that! I can imagine nothing worse,
except perhaps to be killed in a crush at a bargain-counter."