Some Light With a Few Side-lights
The real spring in New York comes when blundering nature has painted
the outer wilderness for autumn. What is called "spring" in the city by
unreflecting users of the word is a tame, insipid season yawning into
not more than half-wakefulness at best. The trees in the gas-poisoned
soil are slow in their greening, the grass has but a pallid city
vitality, and the rows of gaudy tulips set out primly about the
fountains in the squares are palpably forced and alien.
For the sumptuous blending and flaunt of colour, the spontaneous
awakening of warm, throbbing new life, and all those inspiring miracles
of regeneration which are performed elsewhere in April and May, the
city-pent must wait until mid-October.
This is the spring of the city's year. There be those to hint
captiously that they find it an affair of false seeming; that the
gorgeous colouring is a mere trick of shop-window cunning; that the
time is juiceless and devoid of all but the specious delights of
surface. Yet these, perhaps, are unduly imaginative for a world where
any satisfaction is held by a tenure precarious at best. And even these
carpers, be they never so analytical, can at least find no lack of
springtime fervour in the eager throngs that pass entranced before the
window show. They, the free-swinging, quick-moving men and women--the
best dressed of all throngs in this young world--sun-browned,
sun-enlivened, recreated to a fine mettle for enjoyment by their months
of mountain or ocean sport--these are, indeed, the ones for whom this
afterspring is made to bloom. And, since they find it to be a shifting
miracle of perfections, how are they to be quarrelled with?
In the big polished windows waxen effigies of fine ladies, gracefully
patient, display the latest dinner-gown from Paris, or the creamiest of
be-ribboned tea-gowns. Or they pose in attitudes of polite adieux and
greeting, all but smothered in a king's ransom of sable and ermine. Or,
to the other extreme, they complacently permit themselves to be
observed in the intimate revelations of Parisian lingerie, with its
misty froth of embroideries, its fine-spun webs of foamy lace.
In another window, behold a sprightly and enlivening ballet of shapely
silken hosiery, fitting its sculptured models to perfection, ranging in
tints from the first tender green of spring foliage to the rose-pink of
the spring sun's after-glow.
A few steps beyond we may study a window where the waxen ladies have
been dismembered. Yet a second glance shows the retained portions to be
all that woman herself considers important when she tries on the
bird-toque or the picture hat, or the gauze confection for afternoons.
The satisfied smiles of these waxen counterfeits show them to have been
amply recompensed, with the headgear, for their physical
incompleteness.
But if these terraces of colour and grace that line the sides of this
narrow spring valley be said to contain only the dry husks of
adornment, surely there may be found others more technically
springlike.
Here in this broad window, foregathered in a congress of colours
designed to appetise, are the ripe fruits of every clime and every
season: the Southern pomegranate beside the hardy Northern apple,
scarlet and yellow; the early strawberry and the late ruddy peach; figs
from the Orient and pines from the Antilles; dates from Tunis and tawny
persimmons from Japan; misty sea-green grapes and those from the
hothouse--tasteless, it is true, but so lordly in their girth, and
royal purple; portly golden oranges and fat plums; pears of mellow
blondness and pink-skinned apricots. Here at least is the veritable
stuff and essence of spring with all its attending aromas--of more
integrity, perhaps, than the same colourings simulated by the
confectioner's craft, in the near-by window-display of impossible
sweets.
And still more of this belated spring will gladden the eye in the
florist's window. In June the florist's shop is a poor place,
sedulously to be shunned. Nothing of note blooms there then. The
florist himself is patently ashamed of himself. The burden of
sustaining his traditions he puts upon a few dejected shrubs called
"hardy perennials" that have to labour the year around. All summer it
is as if the place feared to compete with nature when colour and grace
flower so cheaply on every southern hillside. But now its glories bloom
anew, and its superiority over nature becomes again manifest. Now it
assembles the blossoms of a whole long year to bewilder and allure. Its
windows are shaded glens, vine-embowered, where spring, summer, and
autumn blend in all their regal and diverse abundance; and the closing
door of the shop fans out odours as from a thousand Persian gardens.
But spring is not all of life, nor what at once chiefly concerns us.
There are people to be noted: a little series of more or less related
phenomena to be observed.
One of the people, a young man, stands conveniently before this same
florist's window, at that hour when the sun briefly flushes this narrow
canyon of Broadway from wall to wall.
He had loitered along the lively highway an hour or more, his nerves
tingling responsively to all its stimuli. And now he mused as he stared
at the tangled tracery of ferns against the high bank of wine-red
autumn foliage, the royal cluster of white chrysanthemums and the big
jar of American Beauties.
He had looked forward to this moment, too--when he should enter that
same door and order at least an armful of those same haughty roses sent
to an address his memory cherished. Yet now, the time having come, the
zest for the feat was gone. It would be done; it were ungraceful not to
do it, after certain expressions; but it would be done with no heart
because of the certain knowledge that no one--at least no one to be
desired--could possibly care for him, or consider him even with
interest for anything but his money--the same kind of money Higbee made
by purveying hams--"and she wouldn't care in the least whether it was
mine or Higbee's, so there was a lot of it."
Yet he stepped in and ordered the roses, nor did the florist once
suspect that so lavish a buyer of flowers could be a prey to emotions
of corroding cynicism toward the person for whom they were meant.
From the florist's he returned directly to the hotel to find his mother
and Psyche making homelike the suite to which they had been assigned. A
maid was unpacking trunks under his sister's supervision. Mrs. Bines
was in converse with a person of authoritative manner regarding the
service to be supplied them. Two maids would be required, and madame
would of course wish a butler--
Mrs. Bines looked helplessly at her son who had just entered.
"I think--we've--we've always did our own buttling," she faltered.
The person was politely interested.
"I'll attend to these things, ma," said Percival, rather suddenly.
"Yes, we'll want a butler and the two maids, and see that the butler
knows his business, please, and--here--take this, and see that we're
properly looked after, will you?"
As the bill bore a large "C" on its face, and the person was rather a
gentleman anyway, this unfortunate essay at irregular conjugation never
fell into a certain class of anecdotes which Mrs. Bines's best friends
could now and then bring themselves to relate of her.
But other matters are forward. We may next overtake two people who
loiter on this bracing October day down a leaf-strewn aisle in Central
Park.
"You," said the girl of the pair, "least of all men can accuse me of
lacking heart."
"You are cold to me now."
"But look, think--what did I offer--you've had my trust,--everything I
could bring myself to give you. Look what I would have sacrificed at
your call. Think how I waited and longed for that call."
"You know how helpless I was."
"Yes, if you wanted more than my bare self. I should have been
helpless, too, if I had wanted more than--than you."
"It would have been folly--madness--that way."
"Folly--madness? Do you remember the 'Sonnet of Revolt' you sent me?
Sit on this bench; I wish to say it over to you, very slowly; I want
you to hear it while you keep your later attitude in mind.
"Life--what is life? To do without avail The decent ordered tasks of
every day: Talk with the sober: join the solemn play: Tell for the
hundredth time the self-same tale Told by our grandsires in the
self-same vale Where the sun sets with even, level ray, And nights,
eternally the same, make way For hueless dawns, intolerably pale--'"
"But I know the verse."
"No; hear it out;--hear what you sent me:
"'And this is life? Nay, I would rather see
The man who sells his soul in some wild cause:
The fool who spurns, for momentary bliss,
All that he was and all he thought to be:
The rebel stark against his country's laws:
God's own mad lover, dying on a kiss.'"
She had completed the verse with the hint of a sneer in her tones.
"Yes, truly, I remember it; but some day you'll thank me for saving
you; of course it would have been regular in a way, but people here
never really forget those things--and we'd have been helpless--some day
you'll thank me for thinking for you."
"Why do you believe I'm not thanking you already?"
"Hang it all! that's what you made me think yesterday when I met you."
"And so you called me heartless? Now tell me just what you expect a
woman in my position to do. I offered to go to you when you were ready.
Surely that showed my spirit--and you haven't known me these years
without knowing it would have to be that or nothing."
"Well, hang it, it wasn't like the last time, and you know it; you're
not kind any longer. You can be kind, can't you?"
Her lip showed faintly the curl of scorn.
"No, I can't be kind any longer. Oh, I see you've known your own mind
so little; there's been so little depth to it all; you couldn't dare.
It was foolish to think I could show you my mind."
"But you still care for me?"
"No; no, I don't. You should have no reason to think so if I did. When
I heard you'd made it up I hated you, and I think I hate you now. Let
us go back. No, no, please don't touch me--ever again."
Farther down-town in the cosy drawing-room of a house in a side street
east of the Avenue, two other persons were talking. A florid and
profusely freckled young Englishman spoke protestingly from the
hearth-rug to a woman who had the air of knowing emphatically better.
"But, my dear Mrs. Drelmer, you know, really, I can't take a curate
with me, you know, and send up word won't she be good enough to come
downstairs and marry me directly--not when I've not seen her, you
know!" "Nonsense!" replied the lady, unimpressed. "You can do it
nearly that way, if you'll listen to me. Those Westerners perform quite
in that manner, I assure you. They call it 'hustling.'"
"_Dear_ me!"
"Yes, indeed, 'dear you.' And another thing, I want you to forestall
that Milbrey youth, and you may be sure he's no farther away than
Tuxedo or Meadowbrook. Now, they arrived yesterday; they'll be
unpacking to-day and settling to-morrow; I'll call the day after, and
you shall be with me."
"And you forget that--that devil--suppose she's as good as her threat?"
"Absurd! how could she be?"
"You don't know her, you know, nor the old beggar either, by Jove!"
"All the more reason for haste. We'll call to-morrow. Wait. Better
still, perhaps I can enlist the Gwilt-Athelston; I'm to meet her
to-morrow. I'll let you know. Now I must get into my teaharness, so run
along."
We are next constrained to glance at a strong man bowed in the hurt of
a great grief. Horace Milbrey sits alone in his gloomy, high-ceilinged
library. His attire is immaculate. His slender, delicate hands are
beautifully white. The sensitive lines of his fine face tell of the
strain under which he labours. What dire tragedies are those we must
face wholly alone--where we must hide the wound, perforce, because no
comprehending sympathy flows out to us; because instinct warns that no
help may come save from the soul's own well of divine fortitude. Some
hope, tenderly, almost fearfully, held and guarded, had perished on the
day that should have seen its triumphant fruition. He raised his
handsome head from the antique, claw-footed desk, sat up in his chair,
and stared tensely before him. His emotion was not to be suppressed. Do
tears tremble in the eyes of the strong man? Let us not inquire too
curiously. If they tremble down the fine-skinned cheek, let us avert
our gaze. For grief in men is no thing to make a show of.
A servant passed the open door bearing an immense pasteboard box with
one end cut out to accommodate the long stems of many roses.
"Jarvis!"
"Yes, sir!"
"What is it?"
"Flowers, sir, for Miss Avice."
"Let me see--and the card?"
He took the card from the florist's envelope and glanced at the name.
"Take them away."
The stricken man was once more alone; yet now it was as if the tender
beauty of the flowers had balmed his hurt--taught him to hope anew. Let
us in all sympathy and hope retire.
For cheerfuller sights we might observe Launton Oldaker in a musty
curio-shop, delighted over a pair of silver candlesticks with square
bases and fluted columns, fabricated in the reign of that fortuitous
monarch, Charles the Second; or we might glance in upon the Higbees in
their section of a French chateau, reproduced up on the stately
Riverside Drive, where they complete the details of a dinner to be
given on the morrow.
Or perhaps it were better to be concerned with a matter more weighty
than dinners and antique candlesticks. The search need never be vain,
even in this world of persistent frivolity. As, for example:
"Tell Mrs. Van Geist if she can't come down, I'll run up to her."
"Yes, Miss Milbrey."
Mrs. Van Geist entered a moment later.
"Why, Avice, child, you're glowing, aren't you?"
"I must be, I suppose--I've just walked down from 59th Street, and
before that I walked in the Park. Feel how cold my cheeks
are,--Muetterchen."
"It's good for you. Now we shall have some tea, and talk."
"Yes--I'm hungry for both, and some of those funny little cakes."
"Come back where the fire is, dear; the tea has just been brought.
There, take the big chair."
"It always feels like you--like your arms, Muetterchen--and I am tired."
"And throw off that coat. There's the lemon, if you're afraid of
cream."
"I wish I weren't afraid of anything but cream."
"You told me you weren't afraid of that--that cad--any more."
"I'm not--I just told him so. But I'm afraid of it all; I'm tired
trying not to drift--tired trying not to try, and tired trying to
try--Oh, dear--sounds like a nonsense verse, doesn't it? Have you any
one to-night? No? I think I must stay with you till morning. Send some
one home to say I'll be here. I can always think so much better
here--and you, dear old thing, to mother me!"
"Do, child; I'll send Sandon directly."
"He will go to the house of mourning."
"What's the latest?"
"Papa was on the verge of collapse this morning, and yet he was
striving so bravely and nobly to bear up. No one knows what that man
suffers; it makes him gloomy all the time about everything. Just before
I left, he was saying that, when one considers the number of American
homes in which a green salad is never served, one must be appalled. Are
you appalled, auntie? But that isn't it."
"Nothing has happened?"
"Well, there'll be no sensation about it in the papers to-morrow, but a
very dreadful thing has happened. Papa has suffered one of the
cruellest blows of his life. I fancy he didn't sleep at all last night,
and he looked thoroughly bowled over this morning."
"But what is it?"
"Well--oh, it's awful!--first of all there were six dozen of
early-bottled, 1875 Chateau Lafitte--that was the bitterest--but he had
to see the rest go, too--Chateau Margeaux of '80--some terribly ancient
port and Madeira--the dryest kind of sherry--a lot of fine, full
clarets of '77 and '78--oh, you can't know how agonising it was to
him--I've heard them so often I know them all myself."
"But what on earth about them?"
"Nothing, only the Cosmopolitan Club's wine cellar--auctioned off, you
know. For over a year papa has looked forward to it. He knew every
bottle of wine in it. He could recite the list without looking at it.
Sometimes he sounded like a French lesson--and he's been under a
fearful strain ever since the announcement was made. Well, the great
day came yesterday, and poor pater simply couldn't bid in a single
drop. It needed ready money, you know. And he had hoped so cheerfully
all the time to do something. It broke his heart, I'm sure, to see that
Chateau Lafitte go--and only imagine, it was bid in by the butler of
that odious Higbee. You should have heard papa rail about the vulgar
_nouveaux riches_ when he came home--he talked quite like an anarchist.
But by to-night he'll be blaming me for his misfortunes. That's why I
chose to stay here with you."
"Poor Horace. Whatever are you going to do?"
"Well, dearie, as for me, it doesn't look as if I could do anything but
one thing. And here is my ardent young Croesus coming out of the West."
"You called him your 'athletic Bayard' once."
"The other's more to the point at present. And what else can I do? Oh,
if some one would just be brave enough to live the raw, quivering life
with me, I could do it, I give you my word. I could let everything go
by the board--but I am so alone and so helpless and no man is equal to
it, nowadays. All of us here seem to be content to order a 'half
portion' of life."
"Child, those dreams are beautiful, but they're like those
flying-machines that are constantly being tested by the credulous
inventors. A wheel or a pinion goes wrong and down the silly things
come tumbling."
"Very well; then I shall be wise--I suppose I shall be--and I'll do it
quickly. This fortune of good gold shall propose marriage to me at
once, and be accepted--so that I shall be able to look my dear old
father in the face again--and then, after I'm married--well, don't
blame me for anything that happens."
"I'm sure you'll be happy with him--it's only your silly notions. He's
in love with you."
"That makes me hesitate. He really is a man--I like him--see this
letter--a long review from the Arcady _Lyre_ of the 'poem' he wrote, a
poem consisting of 'Avice Milbrey.' The reviewer has been quite
enthusiastic over it, too,--written from some awful place in Montana."
"What more could you ask? He'll be kind."
"You don't understand, Muetterchen. He seems too decent to marry that
way--and yet it's the only way I could marry him. And after he found me
out--oh, think of what marriage _is_--he'd _have_ to find it out--I
couldn't _act_ long--doubtless he wouldn't even be kind to me then."
"You are morbid, child."
"But I will do it; I shall; I will be a credit to my training--and I
shall learn to hate him and he will have to learn--well, a great deal
that he doesn't know about women."
She stared into the fire and added, after a moment's silence:
"Oh, if a man only _could_ live up to the verses he cuts out of
magazines!"