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Trumps: A Novel, a novel by George William Curtis |
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Chapter 19. Dog-Days |
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_ CHAPTER XIX. DOG-DAYS The great city roared, and steamed, and smoked. Along the hot, glaring streets by the river a few panting people hurried, clinging to the house wall for a thin strip of shade, too narrow even to cover their feet. All the windows of the stores were open, and within the offices, with a little thinking, a little turn of the pen, and a little tracing in ink, men were magically warding off impending disaster, or adding thousands to the thousands accumulated already--men, too, were writing without thinking, mechanically copying or posting, scribbling letters of form, with heads clear or heads aching, with hearts burning or cold; full of ambition and hope, or vaguely remembering country hill-sides and summer rambles--a day's fishing--a night's frolic--Sunday-school--singing-school, and the girl with the chip hat garlanded with sweet-brier; hearts longing and loving, regretting, hoping, and remembering, and all the while the faces above them calm and smooth, and the hands below them busily doing their part of the great work of the world. In Wall Street there was restless running about. Men in white clothes and straw-hats darted in at doors, darted out of doors--carrying little books, and boxes, and bundles in their hands, nodding to each other as they passed, but all infected with the same fever; with brows half-wrinkled or tied up in hopeless seams of perplexity; with muttering pale lips, or lips round and red, and clearly the lips of clerks who had no great stakes at issue--a general rushing and hurrying as if every body were haunted by the fear of arriving too late every where, and losing all possible chances in every direction. Within doors there were cool bank parlors and insurance offices, with long rows of comely clerks writing in those Russia red books which Thomas Tray loved--or wetting their fingers on little sponges in little glass dishes and counting whole fortunes in bank-notes--or perched high on office-stools eating apples--while Presidents and Directors, with shiny bald pates and bewigged heads, some heroically with permanent spectacles and others coyly and weakly with eye-glasses held in the hand, sat perusing the papers, telling the news, and gossiping about engagements, and marriages, and family rumors, and secrets with the air of practical men of the world, with no nonsense, no fanaticism, no fol-de-rol of any kind about them, but who profoundly believed the Burt theory that wives and daughters were a more sacred kind of property than sheep pastures, or even than the most satisfactory bond and mortgage. They talked politics, these banking and insurance gentlemen, with vigor and warmth. "What on earth does, this General Jackson mean, Sir? Is he going to lay the axe at the very roots of our national prosperity? What the deuce does a frontier soldier know about banking?" They talked about Morgan who had been found in Lake Ontario; and the younger clerks took their turn at it, and furiously denied among themselves that Washington was a Mason. The younger clerks held every Mason responsible for the reported murder. Then they turned pale lest their neighbors were Masons, and might cause them to be found drowned off the Battery. The older men shook their heads. Murders--did you speak of murders, Mr. Van Boozenberg? Why, this is a dreadful business in Salem! Old Mr. White murdered in his bed! The most awful thing on record. Terrible stories are told, Sir, about respectable people! It's getting to be dangerous to be rich. What are we coming to? What can you expect, Sir, with Fanny Wright disseminating her infidel sentiments, and the work-people buying The Friend of Equal Human Rights? Equal human fiddle-sticks, Mr. Van Boozenberg! To which remarks from the mouths of many Directors that eminent officer nodded his head, and looked so wise that it was very remarkable so many foolish transactions took place under his administration. And in all the streets of the great city, in all the lofty workshops and yards and factories, huge hammers smote and clashed, and men, naked to the waist, reeking in dingy interiors, bent like gnomes at their tasks, while saws creaked, wheels turned, planes and mallets, and chisels shoved and cut and struck; and down in damp cellars sallow ghastly men and women wove rag-carpets, and twisted baskets in the midst of litters of puny, pale children, with bleared eyes, and sore heads, and dirty faces, tumbling, playing, shouting, whimpering--scampering after the pigs that came rooting and nosing in the liquid filth that simmered and stank to heaven in the gutters at the top of the stairs; and the houses above the heads of the ghastly men and women were swarming rookeries, hot and close and bare, with window-panes broken, and hats, and coats, and rags stuffed in, and men with bloodshot eyes and desperate faces sitting dogged with their hats on, staring at nothing, or leaning on their ragged elbows on broken tables, scowling from between their dirty hands at the world and the future; while in higher rooms sat solitary girls in hard wooden chairs, a pile of straw covered with a rug in the corner, and a box to put a change of linen in, driving the needle silently and ceaselessly through shirts or coats or trowsers, stooping over in the foul air during the heat of the day, straining their eyes when the day darkened to save a candle, hearing the roar and the rush and the murmur far away, mingled in the distance, as if they were dead and buried in their graves, and dreaming a horrid dream until the resurrection. Only sometimes an acute withering pain, as if something or somebody were sewing the sewer and pierced her with a needle sharp and burning, made the room swim and the straw in the corner glimmer; and the girl dropped the work and closed her eyes--the cheeks were black and hollow beneath them--and she gasped and panted, and leaned back, while the roar went on, and the hot sun glared, and the neighboring church clock, striking the hour, seemed to beat on her heart as it smote relentlessly the girl's returning consciousness. Then she took up the work again, and the needle, with whose little point in pain and sickness and consuming solitude, in darkness, desolation, and flickering, fainting faith, she pricked back death and dishonor. At neighboring corners were the reefs upon which human health, hope, and happiness lay stranded, broken up and gone to pieces. Bloated faces glowered through the open doors--their humanity sunk away into mere bestiality. Human forms--men no longer--lay on benches, hung over chairs, babbled, maundered, shrieked or wept aloud; while women came in and took black bottles from under tattered shawls, and said nothing, but put down a piece of money; and the man behind the counter said nothing, but took the money and filled the bottles, which were hidden under the tattered shawl again, and the speechless phantoms glided out, guarding that little travesty of modesty even in that wild ruin. In shops beyond, yards of tape, and papers of pins, and boots and shoes and bread, and all the multitudinous things that are bought and sold every minute, were being done up in papers by complaisant, or surly, or conceited, or well-behaved clerks; and in all the large and little houses of the city, in all the spacious and narrow streets, there were women cooking, washing, sweeping, scouring, rubbing, lifting, carrying, sewing, reading, sleeping--tens and twenties and fifties and hundreds and thousands of men, women, and children. More than two hundred thousand of them were toiling, suffering, struggling, enjoying, dreaming, despairing on a summer day, doing their share of the world's work. The eye was full of the city's activity; the ear was tired with its noise; the heart was sick with the thought of it; the streets and houses swarmed with people, but the world was out of town. There was nobody at home. In the mighty stream, of which men and women are the waves, that poured ceaselessly along its channels, friends met surprised--touched each other's hands. "Came in this morning--off to-night--droll it looks--nobody in town--" And the tumultuous throng bore them apart. In the evening the Park Theatre is jammed to hear Mr. Forrest, who made his first appearance in Philadelphia nine or ten years ago, and is already a New York favorite. Contoit's garden flutters with the cool dresses of the promenaders, who move about between the arbors looking for friends and awaiting ices. The click of billiard balls is heard in the glittering cafe at the corner of Reade Street, and a gay company smokes and sips at the Washington Hotel. Life bursts from every door, from every window, but there is nobody in town. More than two hundred thousand men, women, and children go to their beds and wake up to the morrow, but there is nobody in town. Nobody in town, because Mrs. Boniface Newt & Co. have gone to Saratoga--no cathedral left, because some plastering has tumbled off an upper stone--no forest left, because a few leaves have whirled away. Nobody in town, because Mrs. Boniface Newt & Co. have gone to Saratoga, and are doing their part of the world's work there. Mr. Alfred Dinks, Mr. Zephyr Wetherley, and Mr. Bowdoin Beacon, were slowly sauntering down Broadway, when, they were overtaken and passed by a young woman walking rapidly for so warm a morning. There was an immense explosion of adjectives expressing surprise when the three young, gentlemen discovered that the young lady who was passing them was Miss Amy Waring. "Why, Miss Waring!" cried they, simultaneously. She bowed and smiled. They lifted their hats. "You in town!" said Mr. Beacon. "In town?" echoed Mr. Dinks. "Town?" murmured Mr. Wetherley. "Town," said Miss Waring, with her eyes sparkling. "Where did you come from? I thought you were all at Saratoga," she continued. "It's stupid there," said Mr. Beacon. "Quite stupid," echoed Mr. Dinks. "Stupid," murmured Mr. Wetherley. "Stupid?" asked the lady, this time making the interrogation in the antistrophe of the chant. "We wanted a little fun." "A little fun." "Fun," replied the gentlemen. "Well, I'm going about my business," said she. "Good-morning." "About your business?" "Your business?" "Business?" murmured the youths, in order. Zephyr concluding. "Business!" said Miss Amy, bursting into a little laugh, in which the listless, perfectly good-humored youths cheerfully joined. "It's dreadful hot," said Mr. Beacon. "Oh! horrid!" said Mr. Dinks. "Very," said Zephyr. And the gentlemen wiped their foreheads. "Coming to Saratoga, Miss Waring?" they asked. "Hardly, I think, but possibly," said she, and moved away, with her little basket; while the gentlemen, swearing at the heat, the dust, and the smells, sauntered on, asseverated that Amy Waring was an odd sort of girl; and finally went in to the Washington Hotel, where each lolled back in an armchair, with the white duck legs reposing in another--excepting Mr. Dinks, who poised his boots upon the window-sill that commanded Broadway; and so, comforted with a cigar in the mouth, and a glass of iced port-wine sangaree in the hand, the three young gentlemen labored through the hot hours until dinner. Amy Waring walked quite as rapidly as the heat would permit. She crossed the Park, and, striking into Fulton Street, continued toward the river, but turned into Water Street. The old peach-women at the corners, sitting under huge cotton umbrellas, and parching in the heat, saw the lovely face going by, and marked the peculiarly earnest step, which the sitters in the streets, and consequent sharp students of faces and feet, easily enough recognized as the step of one who was bound upon some especial errand. Clerks looked idly at her from open shop doors, and from windows above; and when she entered the marine region of Water Street, the heavy stores and large houses, which here and there were covered with a dull grime, as if the squalor within had exuded through the dingy red bricks, seemed to glare at her unkindly, and sullenly ask why youth, and beauty, and cleanly modesty should insult with sweet contrast that sordid gloom. The heat only made it worse. Half-naked children played in the foul gutters with the pigs, which roamed freely at large, and comfortably at home in the purlieus of the docks and the quarter of poverty. Carts jostled by with hogsheads, and boxes, and bales; the red-faced carmen, furious with their horses, or smoking pipes whose odor did not sweeten the air, staring, with rude, curious eyes, at the lady making her way among the casks and bales upon the sidewalks. There was nothing that could possibly cheer the eye or ear, or heart or imagination, in any part of the street--not even the haggard faces, thin with want, rusty with exposure, and dull with drink, that listlessly looked down upon her from the windows of lodging-houses. The door of one of these was open, and Amy Waring went in. She passed rapidly through the desolate entry and up the dirty stairs with the broken railing--stairs that creaked under her light step. At a room upon the back of the house, in the third story, she stopped and tapped at the door. A voice cried, "Who's there?" The girl answered, "Amy," and the door was immediately unlocked. _ |
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