Complete Story. A Marriage of Sympathy.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIV, Issue VII, 17 February 1900, Page 292

Complete Story. A Marriage of Sympathy.

(By

Gertrude F. Lynch.)

Night in Union Square. Not the night of (iod separated from the day by the curtain of blackness, but the night of man, hideous with noise, glaring with electric light, teeming with suggestions to unrest. On the hot pavements, baked by the merciless sun of noonday, still exhaling scorching breaths, still burning the thinly-clad feet of the passers-by, men and women strolled along, coming from the vaudevilles, from the restaurants, from the “gardens,’’ where a momentary refreshment of food and drink had palliated the misery of the stifling heat. A cosmopolitan crowd, even the enforced slowness of movement not disguising its excitability, with littleness of aim and motive written in face, clothing, gesture; a middle-elass crowd out for an airing, interspersed with women of the street, shop-lifters, pickpockets, disguised by placidity of motion, and now and then a blue-coated policeman, awe-inspiring, not by his individuality. but by the silent power of the institution which he represented; a loitering crowd, many of whom had left hot rooms for a breath of cooler air and now, tired with heat and noise, were returning to them again.

Swirling around curves the cablecars, stopping here and there to pick up and dislodge passengers, added their not inconsiderable tumult to the general turbulence and unrest.

In the centre of the square an oasis of silence and verdure left by grasping corporations; a plash of fountains, a subtle fragrance of foliage; a majestic outline, of bronze statues; on the asphalt walks which crossed the park; vignettes cut by the moonlike rays from towering arc lights and, overhead, interlacing branches of trees, forming arcades of restful splendour, suggesting solitude, the one beauty in an environment of hideous architecture, death-dealing mechanics, inharmonious humanity. At about eleven o’clock a young man, leaving the crowded pavements, entered the park at the corner of Broadway and Fourteenth street. lie was a young man who had never seen better days. His clothing hung about him, ill-fitting, ragged, and marked with travel stains. It was not a clothing which boasted the benefit of a fundamental note of harmony in its selection, but like those apartments furnished by the caprices of auction-mad inhabitants, had in its completeness a certain grotesqueness, a detail of which the wearer was as unhappily’ indifferent as he was to most of the unfortunate realities of existence —an amiability which .was nature’s compensation for generations of subtractions. It was a clothing which had come to him by beggary, by charity, by chance, a sartorial jest bringing a smile to many a face as he pursued his way, unconscious of the buffoon role he was called upon to enact.

He was as much at home in the Square, as the birds that fluttered among the trees, as the flowers outlining the fountain’s rim. The summer, so hateful to many with its heat and noise, meant to him the opportunity of resting on a park bench in the fresh air of night instead of the stuffy atmosphere of a lodging house, where, for ten or fifteen cents, he could se cure a “shake-down,” filthy with its odour of past sleepers, in a crowded loft, or a cot in a police station where, under the title of “vagrant.” in colder weather, he could obtain a housing at the city's expense. He ha'd'a shock of yellow hair, unkempt. with a tendency to curl; a stubble of beard of slow growth and light, which did not detract from the freshness of his youthful face and big blue eyes, infantile in colour and superficiality’ of expression, completing a physiognomy which helped him when necessary to establish relations of confidence with his fellowmen.

He was a waif of the streets. Born in a distant State, a foundling, 'he had been fanned out by the generosity of tnxpnvers when his age was such ns to render the generosity practicable. In the Shadow of eternal hills, in a barren' village where the anaemic in-

habitants forced by superhuman industry a meagre living from the unfruitful soil, he worked out the first years of his life. Scanty hours of teaching were given him, required by that law which was the only parent he would ever know. His was not the nature which produces a great man from such beginnings. He accepted the educational efforts as he accepted everything else that came to him; as he did everything required of 'him. without question, without protest, without curiosity. He learned to read, to add a little. He gained a few vague ideas of the world outside his limited horizon —that was all. His manual information was more exact and more abundant. He learned to hay, to sow, to reap, to saw and cut wood. He was a healthy animal, untainted by flie caprice of ambition. Occasionally in the warmer months he rested in the shadow of a wall whose stony crevices were benignant with running vines, or by the side of a redolent hayrick. In colder weather he sought a corner of Che barn loft where he reclined on the golden straw. There, wearied by physical activity, he would spell out painfully random paragraphs from newspapers, or, lured by some hideously inartistic nightmare on a yellow-covered, coarselyprinted book which had fallen into his hands, would piece out his scanty store of worldly knowledge by patchwork morsels of fact and fancy.

Tn the haying season tramps would come demanding work, attracted by the presentiment of food and roof. Then he would listen to their tales of that Southern district toward which, later, like migratory birds, they would start, eager to go as they had been to come.

One night he awoke in the darkness. In the distance he could hear a rumble coming nearer —nearer, nearer. He pictured the approaching monster as he had so often seen it, a long, sinuous trail tearing along Che earth, heralded by a luminous eye which fascinated, terrified, emboldened. It was the freight train. Two miles from this tiny attic loft it would wait a half hour on the switch. He knew this as he knew other details of 'his surroundings. He had never anticipated using the information, he had simply absorbed it as he did the air.

He had a few things in a corner of the loft for which he fought with the rats for possession. A rusty knife with two half blades, a tiny compass he had found in the woods, a pair of mittens, a bright scarf, red and yellow. given him by a Cuban refugee, with whom he had farmed Che year before. These he tied together in the remnant of an old bandanna handkerchief. He climbed down the steep ladder which led to the attic, opened the door and pursued his way in the direction of the moving train, controlled by an irresistible impulse to get away; Io go somewhere, he knew not where: to do somethng. he knew not what. He esconced himself in a corner of an empty freight train and. in this way, commenced his vagrant career.

He did not know the name of the town where he was finally ejected with a laugh and curse, nor the names of other towns and cities he visited in turn, and lie did not care. There were other things to engage his attention, novelties of buildings, of men and women, of parks, of shops, of slums. He slept in doorways, on benches. He ate when he could. He made transient friends; he did odd jobs of work when impulse or starvation prompted; he stole rides on trains; he got “lifts” on country roads. He walked and rested, then walked again. Sickness he did not know; sorrow and happiness alike were strangers. In time the meagre la-ginnings of his •■ducation were increased by strange additions. He could tell an honest from a dishonest man. He knew when to ask charity anil when to abstain. He saw the terrible chasms in the existing social system and wondered, not bitterly, not with any coherence of ideas or reasoning. as he wondered at the cosmic forces, as he wondered at the structure of railroads, sky-scrapers, or bridges. He learned something about laws, those of nature and those of man, and

separating the chaff from the wheat, retained only those which were essential to his own particular needs. In his blood, which had filtered like that of most ancestries, through knave and saint alike, there was a predominant trait of honesty, kept alive in its sickly infancy by his training in a New England village where watchdogs were unknown and doors left ungarded at night.

He respected the rights of property. Vagrant he might be, thief he never was. Except for the rides he stole on trains, denoting a mental inability to grasp the fact that corporations can be cheated, a belief shared by older and wiser men than himself, his honesty was almost phenomenal in its simplicity. Companioned often with thieves, he never partook of their bounty, never shared the excitement of search, never betrayed them. To steal one must have wants, and he had none. To betray one must have jealousy, discontent, and he knew them not.

In the ceaseless panorama of men and things which formed his daily life, in the constant and regular succession of irregularities, he saw and heard many wonderful things. Ignorant of the world’s necessities, he was unmoved by its achievements and discoveries. In him, the cyclone in Kansas aroused no greater feeling of wonder than the thunderstorm amid the hills of New Jersey; the palatial residences of fifth Avenue no greater interest than the hovels of Chinatown. One thing alone ever seemed to move him from the inertness of a regard, paralysed by the violent contrasts of an existence which was lived out in city and country, in the north and south, edging luxury, and squalour, the wandering existence of a nineteenth century’ Ishmaelite. One thing alone! Sometimes on country roads, sometimes on the city streets, attracted by a light from an unsheltered window, he would peer in to see an interior which suggested permanence. a man and woman with children about them, a happy household. There he would always stop and look a long time, his eyes enlarged in wonder, an indefinably- wistful expression on his unwrinkled face, symbol of something stirring within. Had his mother, outcast from such a home, stamped on his pre-natal existence a desire for that which she had forfeited? Or was the Divine spark, seemingly extinguished by materialism and indirected strength, seeking this means to establish its possession? In the streets or parks, in stores or lanes, this domestic tri-union ever attracted, ever drew from him longing looks, ever caused him to turn and watch it wend its way content in its triple completeness. His Rome was New York, and towards it all his roads led. Tn New York, Union Square, with its tiny park and its surroundings of constantly changing crowds, high buildings and turbulent movement, was the climax of his desires. To him it was the hub of the universe, the centre of irresistible attraction.

He nodded to the tall policeman as he entered. TBe latter did not deign to return the salute, but looked at

him not unkindly, remembering him as one who had never given him any trouble, never been drunk or disorderly, never refused to move on as an example to other loungers. There was a give-and-take comradeship between them, an unacknowledged bond of sympathy. In cold weather when the park was uninhabitable the tall policeman would take him to the station and enter him there as “John Smith, vagrant,” and he in turn would often keep guard, watchful of possible accidents, when the policeman, unmindful of duty, was attracted by the coyness of a pretty nursemaid. The benches were well filled. One or two fashionably dressed men. walking through from angle to angle, had stopped for a moment to untangle some mental problem or, perhaps, for a few seconds’ unthinking leisure to enjoy their cigars near the sound of the plashing fountains and the occasional frou-frou of green leaves overhead. A few sodden women with piercing eyes, whose dress and manner betokened a calling which was in its depths; the rest, like himself, vagrants, homeless, with rags for clothes, without ambitions of trained faculties, rousing from somnolence at the approach of the policeman to sink after his departure into the sleep of physical weariness; some under the influence of the night’s beer, their only luxury, gained by the thoughtless charity of well-fed philanthropists.

There was one empty seat lately occupied by a pick-pocket who had waited there the signal of a co-opera-tor. Toward it he wended his way, thankful for the unexpected vacancy. He sat down, lighted his short clay pipe, and ruminated. A noonday nap in an accommodating barn had satisfied his requirements for sleep, and he liked better to watch the people come and go, the illuminated cars, the tall spectral buildings, the shop windows, the gaily decorated entrance of a near-at-hand vaudeville. He liked the roar of the distant elevated roads, the tinkle of cable cars, the swirl of carriages, the occasional whiplash of hansom cabbies. The life of the pavements exhilirated him, excited him. He watched it a long time until the crowds thinned out, until the ears and pavements were almost deserted, until the ragged denizens of the benches slept and snored profoundly, or moved away to some questionable rendezvous. Suddenly he roused from growing drowsiness. He had heard no one approach, but felt the subtle presentiment of a presence at the other end of the bench. He turned his head slightly and surveyed the newcomer, the rays from a neighbouring lamp favouring the scrutiny. The intruder was a young woman, rather pleasing in feature, with a pallor of complexion which denoted a. shut-in life. Her hair was grotesque in its excrescence of crimpiness and puff; around her neck she wore a brightly-hued ribbon, and her dress combined an exceptional neatness, with a. love of decorative effect, dwarfed by incompetence. Even in his first stealthy glances he

recognised in her a being different from the women who had rested in the square when he first entered, and who had now mysteriously disappeared; different, too, from the women with whom he had occasionally companioned in his zig-zag career, whose presence had not interested him, whose absence had left no regret. She did not notice him. She sat leaning a little forward, her hands clasped over one knee, and her face turned toward the street with an expression on it of vexation and dissatisfaction. He watched her. furtively turning his head, and finally his whole body to obtain a better view, but his regard was unobtrusive, unfelt.

He had an overmastering desire to do something for her; some modest act of kindness, as he would have given half his apple to a crying child, or helped a blind man across the street.

Finally, stiffened, she relaxed her position and leaned back against the bench, but her eyes still sought the street with a fixed, unseeing stare, and the faint scowl still wrinkled the narrow line of forehead beneath the curled mass of brownish hair.

He slipped his arm out of his ragged coat and, leaning still farther forward, said: “You’d better take this, it’ll soften your back. She looker, at him doubtfully. She knew but two attitudes to assume to young men, one when she repelled their unwelcome advances, the other when ishe scoffed and Jested . with them in the hybrid language of the tenement districts.

His eyes met hers, fearlessly, frankly. Without defining her sensations, she felt a welcome easing of anxiety, an unexpected security. She had wondered what the tall policeman would say when he made his rounds, now, some way, she did not care. She took the coat and looked at it, as she had looked at him a second before. It was not inviting with its rags and odour of stale tobacco, but he was gazing at her wistfully, so she folded it, laid it against the iron bench and leaned back on it. “It’s grand. I didn’t know how rough them edges were.” His face was transfigured with gladness at her appreciation, and. half-embarrassed, he puffed vigorously at -he extinguished pipe. They were] silent a long time; a silence whiefi drew them together in a tie of mutual loneliness. Finally the burden of irritation and disaster broke through unaccustomed restraint. “It’s that Liz. I wish she was dead.” “Liz? “Yes. She’s the woman dad picked up on the street and married. Put ’er ahead of me an’ the kids.” He moved nearer, and a fallen sleeve offering the opportunity, re-arranged her improvised cushion, but without a word. His mute sympathy impelled confidence. "I hates ’er and she hates me. It’s alters the same thing, from mornin’ till night, and half the night through. I’m sick of it, an’ I get sicker all the time, an’ every time I see ’er. Fight, an’ fight, an’ fight.” Another pause. The tall ■policeman passed along; stopped a moment to look in the limpid depths of the fountain, glanced at them nonchalantly and went on. , “It used to 'be somethin’ like. The rooms were clean, an’ the kids allers had their faces washed, an’ minded me, and Sundays we went out in the Park together, an’ evenin’s talked; then she came an’ everything’s been at sixes. Yellow-haired ”

r he expletive was below her breath. The picture she drew was no strange one. Many a time in his wanderings he had been thrown in contact with a lawless unrestraint of speech and action, leading to recurrent conflicts of domestic unhappiness. He pitied her, and she felt his pity. The fierce anger died out of her voice, and the tears falling from her eyes trickled in slow drops down the face on which a childish uncertainty of expression was mingled with the faint lines that denoted a bitter experience of life.

He hated to see her cry. He wished he dared. He did dare, and drawing nearer put his arm about her tentatively, awkwardly She started to draw away, then stopped, still encircled. She knew intu-

itively that the embrace had in it no element at which she need cavil. The tears fell faster urged by his friendly nearness. She had taken off her blue-banded sailor hat and laid it on the grass at her feet. Thus denuded the act was simplified, and he drew her head to his shoulder with his roughened hand. Through the thin cotton shirt he could feel the warm tears on his muscular shoulder. In that twisted position, which he would not change for fear of disturbing her, he felt happier than he ever remembered feeling before as if something he had not known he lacked had come to him and an unconscious incompleteness had been rounded out. Finally the sobs came slower, less hysterically. Between them she said timidly, with no trace of the exaggerated passion of irritation which had marked her former confidence: “To-night she drove me out. Said there was jes’ one too many in that there place. The kids laughed. She sets ’em on me now, and they likes to hear us jaw. I didn’t know any place to go to, so I walked an’ walked, an’ walked till I got dead beat an’ then I saw the green an’ the fountain looked cool an" ” The sobs broke out again, and again he soothed her with mute touches of a calloused hand. “There, there; I’ve seen her kind. 1 know ’em. She sha’n’t fight yer again —never, no more.” In a few moments she was sound asleep, overcome by physical and mental exhaustion. He sat still enfolding her with his strong arm, her babyish face with its wavering expression, where the damp paths of past tears still showed, with its delicate pallor and its halo of tiny curls, against his willing shoulder. He touched her cheek now and then with his forefinger, it was so soft and warm, and he thought longer, more continuously than he had ever thought before, piecing together past experiences, recalling half forgotten scenes; trying to solve problems, which avoided when first presented, were now demanding a long delayed retribution. Realizing for the first time that life ir.xint something more than the day’s food and the night’s lodgings; that he was beginning all over again; that all the fooiish, unthinking days which he had hitherto lived had led but to that green spot of verdure in the midst of dusty streets, and from there dat ad a new. undreamed-of, intoxicating existence. She moved uneasily, cramped by the unnccustbomed ■position, and opened h«»r eyes. “I’ve been asleep. I was beat out,” and then apologizing: “Did I hurt yer?” “Hurt me? No; I liked it.” He rose from the bench and having moved his arms back and forth in a btisk effort to restore circulation, i »- seated himself and drew her to his side. She made no protest. “You didn’t tell me yer name.” “It’s Gracie.” She spoke proudly. She liked h«t»r name. It was significant of the hopes she had never realized, a little above the sordid details of her life. “What’s yours?” It was the first time he had ever wanted a particular name. He had been satisfied with the various cognomens bestowed on him from time to time; they had answered a temporary need, and had been thrown aside carelessly, lik# a coat or hat when a new one was required. Impermanence, the fundamental note of his life, was shown in no way more distinctly than in this transformation of n ames.

Memories of certain police-court experiences returning, he said awkwardlv:

“They call me John Smith, some times.”

The harsh monosyllables fitted in with the Unhalrmonious appearance, and she made no comment. Silence had reigned in the streets for a long time, only an occasional wanderer breaking the monotony of perspective, only an occasional clanging car recailling the nearness of inquiet lif».

There was a renewed freshness in ■the air, harbinger of the coming day. Tn a little while the rumbling carts laden with produce would be heard; in a few moments Sacks of daylight replace the vignettes of black lines on the asphalted walks of the Square and colour effects excite the far horizon. “Gracie?” “Yes.”

Their hands went locked together.

and the words were emphasized by friendly pressures. “Be you a good girl?” “Good?” She hesitated. “Well, tol’erable, I s’pose.” “Tol’erble.” Ilw repeated the qualifying adjective, disappointment plainly discernible. es. 'I can’t keep from saving things to Liz and about ’er an’ I don’t go to ehurch. I went to the Mission, but I go<t Fred. They don’t want such as me. I ain’t bad enough or good enough. I guess they got tiiwd, too.” “I didn’t mean -that ’’ He hesitated. “I meant ——” He wanted to put it delicately, but did not know how. “I mean ” He floundered again amid the betayal of speech, “do you know many—young feltore?” She drew away from him indignantly. “Oh. I see what yer mean. I dunno as I blame yer. It’s nateral. I s’pose you couldn’t help feelin’ so arter ternight. How’d yer know I want allers so?” She pushed away his seeking arm. “No; t’wan’t that, I swear,” and he brought his clasped hand against his knee. “I only thought I wouldn’t be surprised the way yer set on. I’d like yer jes’ the same, only, someway, I hoped yer hadn’t.” “Yer needn’t be afraid. I’ve had trouble enough without them.” And, after an impressive pause: “I’ve seen enough of it, too.” She referred thus enigmatically to some of her girlhood companions who had disappeared into the streets. “What’ll yer do now?” “Do?” “Yes; now she’s turn yer out?” “Oh, she’ll be ’round to the factory termorrow, I know ’er. It’s 1 wage day, an’ she’ll wheedle an’ coax till she gets it all away again. Oh. I’m sick of it. I wish I was dead' —or somethin*. There don’t seem to be nothin’ in life but work an’ fights.” “Grace e?” “What?” He stammered, then paused, then stammered again. “lou ain’t got nothin’ nor nobody that cares for yer. Neither hev I. Couldn’t we get ' married ?”

“Married!” “k es; an* live tergether by ourselves like others do. lou could stay there an’ not be druv out, and I’d stay still an’ not be movin’ round the way I hev. Ini tired of it, an’ you're tired of fightin’. Couldn’t we, Gracie?” She did not answer, and he continued: “I can work. I can do lots of things; but I never cared to afore--that is, for long.” “What things?” She asked the miestion to give herto thinK, to overcome the bewildering surprise engulfing her. “Oh, carpentering an’ sich like. I’m a good workman when I try. See!” He showed her some loose coins in his pocket. “We could begin on that." She was silent a long time, and he waited breathlessly, in tense excitement.

At length: “Won't yer. Gracie, please?” The tone was intense, wistful, sincere.

He held her eloser to him, and at length the normal expression of indecision on her babyish face weakened into consent.

With faces transfigured by a momentary happiness, unexpected, inexplicable, lips sought lips in a first kiss destitute of passion, replete with sentiment, the outward sign of an inward convocation of souls.

Like the traveller in the desert, terrified by the vastness of surrounding solitude who calls aloud for a companion, these two waifs, flung together by a chance encounter, drowning in the engulfing waves of life’s sea of troubles, were holding out to each other pitying hands; starving in the midst of plenty, they were seeking nothing from the overladen, but sharing freely with each other their miserable pittance of crumbs; lacking all the world holdsi dear, choked by the weeds of ignorance, of poverty, of hopelessness, they were giving that which neither riches, nor honour, nor power can bring its possessor, and so, Their Marriage of Sympathy!