After years of waiting and wrangling, labor conflicts, lawsuits,
political battles, technical wars, and unrelenting financial
difficulties and desperate expedients, through years of universal
bankruptcy, the homely name of the Croton River acquired an almost
Messianic significance in the popular heart.
There was already a nymph “Crotona” added to the city’s mythology. The
thirsty citizens prayed her to hasten to their rescue from the peril of
another fire, another plague, the eternal nuisance of going for water
or going without.
Other history seemed of less importance, though tremendous revolutions
had been effected in the democracy. The property qualification had been
at last removed and the terrible risk assumed of letting all men vote
without regard to their bank accounts. The religious requirements for
office holders had also been annulled in all the states. There had been
fierce riots, of course, but the promised anarchy had not followed.
This gave a new boldness to the annoying fanatics who asked for three
downright impossibilities: the abolition of slavery and of liquor, and
the granting of equal rights to women.
Numbers of shameless females broke into public life and some of them
into breeches. Mobs of conservatives raided their meetings, and chased
them hither and yon; but still they raved and several effeminate or
half-crazed men openly preached against slavery in the South. The bulk
of the clergy of all denominations was, of course, against them.
[Illustration: THE SUNLIGHT THAT MADE A SHIMMERING AUREOLE ABOUT HER
FLASHED IN HER EYES, SHINING WITH THE TEARS OF RAPTURE]
The Marquis of Waterford had made himself notorious with his riotous
gayety and his clashes with the night watchmen, the Leatherheads. A
fifty-year-old veteran of Waterloo had married a sixteen-year-old
heiress in a boarding school secretly and had received enormous
attention from the newspapers.
Fanny Elssler had danced herself into the favor of the people and the
horror of the pulpit. Daniel Webster had thundered for the Whigs. The
streets had roared with the campaign cry of “Tippecanoe and Tyler,
too.” Hard cider had become a slogan and log cabins a symbol. A log
cabin had been built at Harrison’s, a few miles from Tuliptree Farm.
It served later as a schoolhouse. Then President Harrison died of
indigestion a month after his inauguration.
The hard times grew harder and harder. The inpour of foreign
immigrants increased till New York became almost a foreign city. The
Native-Americans anxiously formed a party and their nominee received
all of seventy-seven votes; he was a painter named S. F. B. Morse who
had invented a curious toy he called the telegraph. He wanted Congress
to help him stretch a wire from Washington to Baltimore for him to play
with.
The churches started an hegira uptown. One of them was set out as far
as Tenth Street on Fifth Avenue, which had recently been opened through
the farms beyond Washington Square. A mission had been established in
the foreign world of the Five Points, where it amused the populace of
the brothels and crime cellars.
Crime increased and flourished appallingly and the newspapers were
unfit for the home. The murderer Colt, having cut up the body of his
victim, salted it, and shipped it to New Orleans; was caught, tried,
and convicted; then, having married a foolish woman in his cell,
stabbed himself to death and died while the guards of the Tombs fought
a fire of mysterious origin.
The “beautiful cigar girl” furnished another mystery and an excuse for
revolting journalism. RoBards had bought tobacco of her during his
exile in town and had watched with sardonic disdain the wily smiles she
passed across the counter to her customers who came more for flirtation
than for weeds. One day she vanished and after a time her body was
found drifting in the river near the Sibyl’s Cave in the beautiful
Elysian Fields at Hoboken. She had evidently fought a desperate battle
with her murderer, but had been flung bruised and beaten into the
water. Her murderer was never discovered. People said he was a naval
officer, but they could not prove it.
One of the cheap and popular newspaper men named Edgar Allan Poe made
an ephemeral mystery story out of it. It was exciting but, of course,
not literature. His name was never included in the list of dignified
authors whom the defenders of American art compiled to prove to the
English critics that good writing was possible on this side of the
Atlantic.
Dr. Lardner came over from England and proved conclusively that steam
was impracticable for crossing the ocean. Shortly afterward a steamer
brought across the popular English serial writer, Charles Dickens,
and the people lavished on him attentions which he rewarded with
infuriating contempt. Captain Marryat and other Englishmen, and women
like Mrs. Trollope, began a book bombardment against the pride of the
new republic, and roused it to fury.
But all the while the city panted like a hart for its Croton water
brooks, and the engineers redoubled their efforts. They decided not to
wait for the High Bridge and improvised a temporary passage across and
under the Harlem River. The hope was revived that water would come into
the city on Independence Day.
Swarms of masons toiled at the two reservoirs until they stood at last
waiting, like vast empty bowls held up to heaven for a new Deluge. The
flood was to be received at the Yorkville reservoir, carried on by iron
pipes to Murray’s Hill, and distributed thence by pipes about the city,
with a special dispensation to the old well and tank that had been
erected in 1829 at Thirteenth Street to feed the hydrants that replaced
the foul old public cisterns.
Everywhere the streets and the houses were torn to pieces, pipes were
laid in all directions and fountains built. The plumber was the hero of
the hour.
The test of fashion was a faucet in the kitchen.
On a hot day in June the Water Commissioners and the engineers,
including Harry Chalender, began a strange pilgrimage through the
thirty-three miles of tunnel, for a last anxious inspection. It took
them three days to make the patrol on foot.
The vents along the way for the escape of water from deep cuttings
and leakages were closed once for all. And on the twenty-second of
June the Croton River began its march upon New York. At five o’clock
in the morning the head of the stream was admitted and on the primal
tide, some eighteen inches deep, a boat was launched. The _Croton Maid_
weighed anchor to descend upon New York with the “navigable river” from
the north.
Harry Chalender made one of the four passengers on that “singular
voyage” through the great pipe at the rate of a little better than a
mile an hour. The “Maid” came up for air at the Harlem River the next
day, a Thursday, soon after the first ripple of the water laved the
borders of Manhattan Island.
The Commissioners formally notified the Mayor and Common Council that
the Croton River had arrived and would proceed after a brief rest to
Yorkville Reservoir.
On Monday afternoon the Governor of the State, the Lieutenant Governor,
the Mayor, and other distinguished guests drew up in solemn array and
greeted the “extinguishing visitor,” while the artillery fired a salute
of thirty-eight guns.
When the _Croton Maid_ sailed into the reservoir she was made grandly
welcome and then presented to the Fire Department, with appropriate
remarks on the “important results pecuniary and moral which may be
expected to flow from the abundance of the water with which our
citizens are hereafter to be supplied.”
On the Fourth of July Queen Crotona resumed her royal progress and
proceeded the necessary parasangs to Murray’s Hill, pausing to fire the
salute of a beautiful jet of water fifty feet in air at Forty-seventh
Street.
It was noted by one of the observers that when the waters of the Croton
gushed up into the reservoir they “wandered about its bottom as if to
examine the magnificent structure or to find a resting place in the
temple toward which they had made a pilgrimage.” That river was as much
of a god to the New Yorkers as old Tiber ever was to Rome, or Nilus to
Egypt.
But thereafter the stream, like another conquered Andromache, became
the servant of New York, pouring into its thirsty throat twelve million
imperial gallons of pure water every day.
The people congratulated themselves upon this achievement of their
city single-handed in a time of national financial prostration. In the
memoir written by the chief engineer, J. B. Jervis, he proudly compared
the new aqueduct with the great works of Rome, built under contracts
with private speculators, paid for with the plunder of ruined peoples,
and “cemented with the blood of slavery.” The Croton work was a triumph
of a city of 280,000 inhabitants, who wrought a task, said Jervis,
“on a scale greatly beyond their actual or any near future wants, but
which, designed to endure for ages, would bear record to those ages,
however distant, of a race of men who were content to incur present
burdens for the benefit of a posterity they could not know. Magnificent
as may be the works of conquerors and kings, they have not equaled in
forecast of design, and beneficence of result, the noble aqueduct,
constructed at their own cost, by the freemen of the single city of New
York.”
Much eloquence, much of the bold and braggart Yankee eloquence so
distasteful to foreigners and to foreign-hearted Americans, was
squandered on that feat of theirs; but before they talked, they had
toiled; they sweat before they boasted; they fought the epic before
they chanted it; and their words were not so big as the stones they
heaved into place. Their phrases were less ponderous than the majestic
forty-six-mile sentence in stone they wrote across the green valley of
the Westchester hills, through rock and air, over hills and ravines,
through villages and streams, across the Harlem River and down into
the heart of Manhattan Island.
But the massive High Bridge was yet to build and the Croton had yet
to reach the lower fountains and the homes of the citizens. They had
waited long for it, and it meant miraculous relief to have the river
from far away magically bubbling in the very houses at the wizard twist
of a faucet handle, and sending up geysers of beauty in the hot parks.
Many of the New Yorkers who marveled told how they had in their day
paid a penny a gallon for water from the carts that peddled the product
of the “Tea Water Pump.” Even David and Patty RoBards could remember
when they fled the town and thought it doomed to die of drouth and
pestilence.
The city felt that this immortal benison must be commemorated
fittingly. When the New River had entered London the Lord Mayor had
addressed it in his full splendor. When the waters of Lake Erie had
come through the canal to New York they had been married to those of
the ocean with grandiose ceremonial.
So now the Board of Aldermen appointed a committee, and the committee
called upon General George P. Morris to write an original ode and the
Sacred Music Society to sing it. “The Society’s vocal performers were
rising two hundred, male and female.” The bells of the churches were
bidden to ring; the artillery to fire salutes. All the distinguished
personages on the continent were invited to attend and witness the most
resplendent procession ever devised.
The date was set for the fourteenth of October and the citizens devoted
themselves to the preparation of banners, uniforms, and maneuvers, and
the polishing of fire-engines, swords, shoes, and phrases.
An invitation was addressed to the President of the United States, but
Mr. Tyler was prevented by “circumstances”; and the ex-President John
Adams by “indispensable engagements at home.” Ex-President Van Buren
found it not in his power to avail himself of the polite invitation.
Governor Seward had “a severe indisposition,” but accepted. The
British Consul accepted “with feelings of no ordinary kind,” and
remarked that “tyrants have left monuments which call forth admiration,
but no work of a free people for magnitude and utility equals this
great enterprise.” The Consul of France presented his compliments
and would be happy to join with them. The Consul of Prussia had much
pleasure in accepting. The Consul of the Netherlands had the honor of
joining. The Consul for Greece and Count Heckscher, the Consul for
Mecklenburg, regretted, but the Consuls of the Two Sicilies, the Grand
Duchy of Hesse, Frankfort, and Venezuela accepted. The Consul of Mexico
was prevented by absence, and the Consul of Texas, the recent republic
of Texas, feared that his “engagements of the day would deprive him of
the pleasure.”
Officers of the navy, the army, the bench, governors, mayors,
engineers, bankers, and others innumerable accepted or declined. The
common people prepared to turn out in a body.
The enthusiasm was so pervasive, that even the children felt the thrill
of the epochal day. The RoBards youngsters, little Keith and his sister
Immy, were feverish. The very baby at Patty’s breast seemed to beat
the air and crow like chanticleer at the mention of the Fourteenth of
October.
The one sure bribe for good behavior was a promise to go to New York
for the parade; the one effective punishment a threat of being left at
home.
Hardly an account of the aqueduct or the festival omitted Chalender’s
name, and RoBards grew so accustomed to it that he all but forgot the
horror it had once involved.
He was himself infected by the glory of the hour. It was like seeing
one of the Pyramids dedicated, or the Sphinx christened.
Time that makes us grateful for our defeats and turns our victories
to chagrin dealt so with RoBards. Though he had hampered the work and
denounced its trespass on the rights of the landholders, he felt glad
now that he and they had been defeated. Chalender was gracious in his
triumph, and felt all the more genial since the victory had been
enhanced by the high mettle of the opponents.
So everybody was happy and proud, and the aqueduct itself took on
something of the sanctity of a long, long temple, a source of health
and security and of unbounded future growth.
RoBards spoke of this to Patty and said that the names of the men who
had fought this long battle through would be immortal.
“Who are they?” she said with a disconcerting abruptness.
And to save him he could not think of them, though he knew the names of
many picturesque criminals, and of persons whose only importance was
some fashionable prestige. He knew the names of many who had pounded
out a little poem or braided a piece of clever fiction. He knew the
names of manufacturers of popular soaps and razor strops, but he could
not recall the giants who had wrested the rocks from the hills and laid
down the new channel for the river that would redeem the chief city of
the continent.
He had to refer to the memoir of the Commissioners and to read aloud
the passage: “Samuel Stevens, Esq., was the presiding officer of
the Board of Commissioners in 1829, whose name and services will be
recorded with those of Stephen Allen, and Douglas and Jervis, for the
enduring gratitude of the distant generations, whose health, comfort,
and safety will, ‘while grass grows and water runs,’ continue to be
promoted by the great work to which these gentlemen devoted such
faithful and intelligent care.”
Patty nodded: “Well, I’m sure I’m much obliged to them for making New
York safe to live in. We can go back now, can’t we?”
“Isn’t it beautiful up here?” he sighed, without much enthusiasm.
“Yes, but the nights are bitter cold and the days are getting raw,
and the leaves are nearly all gone. I’ve been here for years and the
children have had all the diseases there are and got over them.
They’re out of danger. Let’s go back, David.”
When she called him by his first name it was like taking his heart in
her soft fingers. He had no will to resist. Besides, the house had
lost its integrity. It had played him false. It had permitted evil to
prosper, and he had sacrificed his dignity and his revenge to conceal
its shame.
Nothing worse could happen in the big city than in the stealthy
country. So he sighed again:
“All right! let’s go back!”
She sprang from her chair and kissed him and he took a poltroon delight
in the syrup of her lips. She became amazingly a girl again and
assailed with a frenzy the tasks of packing up for the removal to town,
the closing of the country home, and reopening of the house in St.
John’s Park.
She urged that she and Teen and Cuff should drive in and clean the
house, air it out, get the new water pipes put in and—while they were
at it, why not install gas? It was dangerous but so convenient! All
you did was turn a key and set a match and there you were! And what
about one of the new hot air furnaces to replace the odious stoves and
fireplaces?
She laid plans for such fairy improvements with a spendthrift
enthusiasm and proposed that her husband should stay comfortably at
home in the country with the two older children while she made the
house ready.
She was passionately domestic for the first time and when she offered
as a final inducement to take her father and mother to town with her,
RoBards could not deny her the toil or himself the repose. He wanted
a few days of communion with the ideal he was resigning. He wanted to
compose his soul anew for the new city life, the country good-by.
The children, Immy and Keith, made a great to-do about their mother’s
knees, clinging to her and begging her not to go. And the babe-in-arms,
the miniature David, howled in trio, vaguely understanding that
something ominous was afoot. Patty was the center of the battle. She
held the infant under one arm while with her free hand she tried to
clasp both Immy and Keith. Her voice was soft among the clamors, and
she promised them everything if they would only be good for a few days
while she made the home ready in the great city.
She looked up at her husband and he could see the weird pride in
her eyes. She, the frail, the pretty, the soulful, had been as an
apple-branch that bore these buds to flower and fruit from within
herself somehow. And they hated to let go, as perhaps the apple is
reluctant to be tossed into space by the wind that rends the twig.
RoBards had noted this cohesion in trees that were hard to fell and
split. Some woods would almost welcome the teeth of the saw and the
keen edge of the ax; they divided at a tap. But other trees fought
the blade, twisted it and flung it off and made a strange noise of
distress. And when the ax fell upon them they turned it aside, caught
it in withes of fiber and tore it from the helve.
Families were like that: some broke apart at the first shock; others
clung together as if they were all interlaced, soul and sinew. He hoped
that his household would be of this infrangibility.
Patty diverted the children from their grief by loading them with tasks
and warnings; the first was to take good care of Papa; the rest were
to take care of themselves amid the infinite risks that make a jungle
about children.
She murmured to her husband: “Watch out for those Lasher children.
That boy Jud has grown to a big hulking brute. He hangs about the
place—wants to steal something. I suppose. Drive him off if you see
him. And don’t let the children play with the Lashers. They come by in
the road, and they’re—not nice at all.”
She made the children promise to abstain from friendship with the
Lashers and from numberless other adventures; and at last she broke
from them and hurried to the carry-all. Cuff and Teen had gone ahead
in the wagon with the luggage. RoBards helped Patty and the baby to
the front seat and took his place beside her. Her father and mother
were already bestowed in the back of the carriage. RoBards drove away,
calling to the children that he would soon be home.
He and Patty had little to say of either their secret prides or shames;
old age had its eyes upon their shoulder blades, and was perhaps subtly
understanding from the glum wisdom of experience that this young couple
was gathering also much cargo that could never be thrown overboard and
must always be hidden away in the deepest hold.
The length of the journey to New York was wonderfully shortened now.
RoBards put Patty and her parents and the servants on the stage and she
had only to ride as far as Harlem, where she would take the New York
and Harlem Railroad train. It had a steam engine and a double track
clear to City Hall, and some day it was going to be extended to White
Plains, and eventually perhaps to Chatham.
When he had seen the stagecoach whirl off with Patty and had seen her
handkerchief flaunt its last farewell through the dust, RoBards drove
home.
Or was it home now? Home seemed to be a something cloudlike trailing
after his wife. Home was the immediate neighborhood of his love.
His heart ached with anxiety for her. What if she should not arrive
safely? The number of stagecoach accidents was astounding: drunken
drivers, runaway horses, capsizings, collisions, kept up an endless
succession of deaths and cripplings.
Thinking of Patty as perhaps doomed already he thought of her with
overwhelming tenderness. The very road backward was denuded of the
aureole she lent it. It stretched dour and stark in the harsh outlines
of autumn. The trees were stripped of leaves; the lanes of their soft
borders. Everything was naked and harsh. The wind was ugly, cynical; it
tormented the flocks of fallen leaves, sent them into panics of flight
with hoarse little cries and scurries.
This was no place for a rose like Patty.
He rode past the home of the Lashers. It was always autumn there.
However, the wild flowers of spring held picnics in the lanes and the
weeds put on their Sunday calico; however the peach trees and the plums
and cherries in their disordered companies broke forth into hosannas of
bloom and pelted the yard and the house with petal confetti, this house
and this fence always sagged and creaked; the shutters hung and flapped
in the breeze; the family slumped, eternally exhausted from the sheer
neglect of industry.
None of the men was to be seen to-day; though the mother of the family,
as always, hung over the washtub, bobbing up and down like a Judy on
a string. She alone toiled, while the good-for-naught men dawdled and
leered. They were as vicious as the filthy dogs that ran from the yard
now and hurled themselves yelping at RoBards’ horses, trying to nip
them while dodging their hooves. RoBards drove them off with whip and
yell and the horses bolted.
As he approached his own house at length, still fuming with anger at
the Lashers and their dogs, he saw his boy running toward him along the
road. He was shrieking: “Papa! papa! papa!”
When Keith came up alongside the carry-all, he was gulping for breath,
in such pain of fear and suffocation that he had to lean against the
wheel a moment before he could speak.
But his trembling hands pointed and his eyes were wild with fear as he
gasped:
“Papa!—bad man!—Immy!”
“What? where? when?”
“Just now—me and Immy play in the Tarn—big man comes—says to
Immy—‘Hello, little girl!’ She don’t say anything. He comes up
closeter. He reaches out. She cries—runs—he runs—grabs Immy. I run and
pound him with my fists and he won’t let go. He kicked me into the
Tarn. Yes, he did so! Then he runs away with Immy.
“Who was it, do you know?”
“Jud Lasher.”
RoBards gave his horse a swift long slash with the whip and the
carry-all went into the yard on two wheels. He flung the lines on the
horses’ backs and, leaping across the wheel, ran madly past the house
and up the shaggy hillside toward the place that he and Patty called
“the Mystic Tarn.”
The boy followed, stumbling, holding his hand to his side where the
little heart thumped. His young eyes were aghast with the awe of a
terror beyond his ken.