The children had apparently forgotten all about the tragedy. The
newness of the train-ride, the fear of missing something, of being late
somewhere, of not being everywhere at once, kept their little minds so
avid that there was no thought of yesterday.
They entered the city as if they were wading into the boisterous surf
at Rockaway Beach. The crowds broke about them with a din of breakers
thundering shoreward. Yet they were not afraid.
When they descended from the train at the station, RoBards could hardly
keep them in leash long enough to get them into a hack. As it bounced
across the town to St. John’s Park, he had only their backs and heels
for company. Each child hung across a door and stared at the hurrying
mobs.
At length they reached the home and all their thoughts were forward.
Nothing that had ever happened in the country could pit itself against
the revelry of the city.
Their young and pretty mother looked never so New Yorkish as when
she ran down the front stoop to welcome them. When she cried the old
watchword, “How have you been?” they answered heedlessly, “All right!”
Immy, of all people, answered, “All right!”
Even RoBards forgot for the brief paradise of embracing his gracious
wife that everything was all wrong. She had to take him about the house
and show him the improvements she had made, especially the faucet in
the kitchen for the Croton water when it should come gurgling through
the pipes. From a parlor window she pointed with delicious snobbery to
the hydrant at the edge of the front porch. Most marvelous of all was a
shower-bath that she had had installed upstairs. It would be possible
to bathe every day! There was something irreligious and Persian about
the apparatus, but RoBards rejoiced for a moment in the thought of what
musical refreshment it would afford him on hot mornings after long
nights of work.
The children were so impatient to get them gone that they had hardly
a glance to spare at the new toys, the faucets and hydrants, the
municipal playthings which would prevent fires in the future or at
least make the life of a fireman a pastime instead of a vain slavery.
Patty’s mother had been caught in the new craze for “Temperance” and
she called the Croton water as much of a godsend as the floods that
gushed out from the rock that Moses smote. Since the city had removed
the old pumps there had been no place for a man to quench his thirst
except by going to a grocery store and asking for a cup of water as a
charity. Few people had the courage to beg for water, so they either
went dry or paid for a glass of brandy. This, she said, had kept up the
evil of drunkenness that was undermining the health and character of so
many men and women. Once the pure Croton water was accessible and free,
intoxication would cease.
But old man Jessamine, himself a child now, belittled the significance
of the Croton day. It would be nothing, he said, to the great day when
the Erie Canal was opened and the first boat from the lakes started
its voyage through the canal to the Hudson and down the river to the
sea. He held the frantic children fast while he talked ancient history:
described the marvelous speed of the news.
“The very identical moment the first drop of Erie water entered the
canal at Buffalo, a cannon was fired. Eight miles away stood another
cannon and the minute that cannoneer heard the first shot, he fired the
second cannon. Eight miles away was another, and so on all the way to
Sandy Hook. For more than five hundred miles the cannon were lined up
eight miles apart and it took only an hour and twenty minutes for the
news to reach New York, and then they sent the news back to Buffalo the
same way; and so it took less than three hours to send a message more
than a thousand miles. Wasn’t that wonderful?”
The children wriggled impatiently and said, “Please, grampa, the bands
are playing. We’d better hurry.”
The old man held them tighter and went on:
“When the canal boats reached New York there was a grand procession
of ships, and there were two elegant kegs of Erie water with gold
hoops and Governor Clinton emptied one of them into the ocean to marry
the sea to the lakes; and another man poured in phials of water from
the Elbe, the Rhine, the Rhone, and all the rivers and seas. And the
land parade, you should have seen that! All the societies had wagons:
the Hatters’ Society with men making hats before your very eyes;
the Rope-makers with a ropewalk in operation; the comb-makers, the
cordwainers, the printers printing an ode. To-day will be nothing to
what people did when I was young, for in those days——”
But the children had broken away from his sharp knees and his fat
stomach and his mildewed legends. The band outside was irresistible,
and their father was waiting to say good-by to them.
Keith was mighty proud of his father in his fireman’s uniform. But when
RoBards seized Immy, tossed her aloft and brought her down to the level
of his lips, she was as wildly afraid as Hector’s child had been of him
in his great helmet. Immy was easily frightened now. Her scream pierced
the air, and she almost had a fit, squirming in her father’s arms and
kicking him in the breast as he turned her over to Patty, who received
her, wondering like another Andromache.
“What’s the matter? what on earth?” Patty cried. And Immy sobbed:
“I thought Papa was Jud Lasher.”
“What a funny thought! Why should you——”
Patty’s father called to her opportunely, demanding with senile
querulousness, who had hidden his walking stick and where. RoBards
forgave the old man much for playing providence this once.
As Patty turned aside, Keith seized Immy’s foot and warned her to
“keep still for heavem’s sakes.” She understood; her eyes widened and
she pleaded with her father to forgive her. He was as afraid of her
penitence as of her terror; but somehow in the flurry of leaving the
house, Patty forgot her curiosity, and the incident passed over.
The loyalty of Keith and his quick rally to his father’s protection
from Immy’s indiscretion touched RoBards deeply. The boy had evidently
inherited the family love of secrecy for the family’s sake.
But RoBards was sick with fear, realizing on what slender threads the
secret hung. He dreaded to leave the children with their mother, lest
they let slip some new clue to the agony he loved Patty too well to
share with her. But he had to take his place with his fire company,
though the sky fell in his absence.