I
It was dusk of an April day, and Fifth Avenue was crowded. A young man,
who had emerged from a large hotel, stood in the stream of traffic and
gazed irresolutely up and down the thoroughfare. He wore a long, cheap
rain-coat, and his head was covered by a steamer-cap of an old design,
with two flaps tied in a knot across the top, behind which an
overabundant crop of dull black hair pushed forth.
His thin, sallow face was unshaven, and his eyes were rimmed by round
steel spectacles that gave him an almost owlish expression. An air of
dejection hung about him, as he loitered by the curb—not the imaginative
depression of youth, soon to float off like a cloud before the sun of
life, but rather the settled gloom of repeated failure, as if the
conviction of final doom had already begun to penetrate deeply into his
manhood.
He looked first up the avenue, then down, vacant of purpose, seeing
nothing in the moving pageant. Finally, as if aroused by certain curious
glances that the less hurried passers-by cast on him, he bestirred
himself and moved on down the avenue, his shoulders stooped, his legs
trailing wearily.
Thus he proceeded for several blocks, never raising his head, stopping
mechanically at the street crossings, resuming his discouraged pace as
the crowd moved on. Once he plunged his hand into his coat pocket, to
assure himself of some possession, and then withdrew it with a bitter
smile for his unconscious anxiety.
When in this vacant promenade he had reached the lower part of the
avenue, where the crowd was less dense, and less gay and rich in
appearance, he lifted his head and looked musingly into the misty space
before him.
“Well,” he muttered, with tightening lips, “it’s only one more
throw-down. I ought to be used to ’em by now!”
Nevertheless, his face relapsed into its melancholy expression as he
turned into one of the side streets with the unconscious precision of the
animal following a beaten path to its hole.
He crossed several of the shabbier commercial avenues, which were crowded
with traffic and blocked by men and women returning from the day’s work.
Compared with these tired laborers, he seemed to have a large leisure—the
freedom of absolute poverty. His thoughts had turned to supper. Should
he buy a roll and a piece of pie at the bakery on the next corner, or—mad
venture!—dissipate his last resources at the saloon opposite, where the
Italian wife of the Irish proprietor offered appetizing nourishment for a
quarter?
Meditating upon this important decision, the young man entered his own
block. At one end the elevated trains rattled; at the other, heavy drays
lumbered past in an unbroken file on their way to the ferries; but
between the two there was a strip of quiet, where the dingy old houses
were withdrawn from the street, and in front of them a few dusty shrubs
struggled for life in the bare plots of earth.
In the middle of this block there was an unusually animated scene. A
group of children had huddled together about some object of interest. A
horse must have fallen on the pavement, the young man thought dully, or
there was a fight, or a policeman had made a capture.
He hurried his lagging steps, moved by a boyish curiosity. As he drew
nearer, he perceived that the circle was too small to contain a horse or
a good scrap. The center of interest must be some unfortunate human
being. He shouldered his way through the crowd.
“What’s up?” he asked of a small boy.
“A drunk,” was the laconic reply.
Looking over the heads of the boys, the young man could see the figure of
a stoutish, well-dressed man lying prone on the pavement. His black coat
was spattered with mud, his gray hair rumpled. His eyes were closed, and
through the open lips his tongue protruded.
“Say, he’s bad!” the boy observed knowingly. “Just look at him!”
A convulsion shook the prostrate figure. The face began to twitch, and
one arm waved violently, beating the air. One or two more mature
passers-by who had been attracted by the disturbance drew off, with the
selfish city excuse that the proper authorities would come in time and
attend to the nuisance. Not so the idle young man.
“He isn’t drunk!” he exclaimed, pushing his way into the circle and
stooping over the figure. He had seen too many plain “drunks” in his
newspaper days to be deceived in the symptoms.
“There he goes again!” the boys shouted.
“He has some sort of fit. Here, one of you give me a hand, and we’ll get
him off the street!”
The boys readily helped the young man to drag the prostrate figure to the
nearest steps, and one of them ran to the corner after a policeman. When
the officer arrived, the young man, who had steadied the stranger through
another convulsion, said:
“You’ll have to call an ambulance. We’d better carry him somewhere—can’t
let him lie here in the street like a dog. We can take him to my room.”
He motioned toward the next house, and with the officer’s assistance
carried the sick man into the rear room on the first floor, which he
unlocked. Then the policeman drove the curious boys out of the house and
went off to summon the ambulance. Left alone, the young man dipped a
towel in his water-pitcher, wet the sick man’s brow, then wiped his face
and cleaned the foam and dirt from his beard and lips.
The stranger, lying with half-closed eyes, looked to be rather more than
sixty years of age. Judging from the quality of his clothes, and from
his smooth hands, he was a well-to-do business man. Presently his
eyelids began to twitch, then the whole face; the right leg shot out and
beat the air; then the right arm began to wave, and foam oozed from his
lips.
“I wish they’d hurry that ambulance!” the young man thought, as he wiped
the sick man’s face again with the damp towel. “He won’t last long, at
this rate!”
This convulsion gradually passed off as the others had, and the stranger
lay once more as if dead, his eyes almost wholly closed. The young man
went to the door and listened nervously, then returned to the prostrate
form, unbuttoned the coat, and felt for the heart. Immediately the sick
man opened his eyes, and, looking directly into the eyes of the man
bending over him, tried to raise his hand, as if he would protect himself
from a blow.
“It’s all right!” the young man said reassuringly. “I was just feeling
for your heart, friend.”
The sick man’s lips twitched desperately; and finally, in the faintest
whisper, he managed to stammer:
“Wh-who are you?”
“One Edgar Brainard,” the young man replied promptly. “Let me unfasten
this vest and make you more comfortable.”
“N-n-no!” the sick man gasped suspiciously.
He managed to clutch Brainard’s wrist with his wavering right hand; his
left lay quite powerless by his side. His eyes closed again, but the
lips moved silently, as if he were trying to frame sounds.
“He’s going this time, sure!”
The young man slipped his wrist from the feeble grasp, inserted a pillow
under the sick man’s head, and sat back to wait.