The Adventures of a Widow: A Novel

VIII

Pauline now began in excellent earnest the preparations for embarking upon her somewhat quaint enterprise. During the next three or four days she saw a good deal of Kindelon. They visited together the little editorial sanctum in Spruce Street, where Mrs. Dares sat dictating some of her inexhaustible "copy" to a pale and rather jaded-looking female amanuensis. The lady received her visitors with a most courteous hospitality. Pauline had a sense of shocking idleness as she looked at the great cumbrous writing-desk covered with ink-stains, files or clippings of newspapers, and long ribbon-like rolls of "proof." Her own fine garments seemed to crackle ostentatiously beside the noiseless folds of Mrs. Dares's work-day cashmere.

"We shall not take up much of your valuable time," she said to the large-eyed, serious little lady. "We have called principally to ask a favor of you, and I hope you will not think it a presumptuous request."

"I hope it is presumptuous," said Mrs. Dares, "for that, provided I can grant it at all, will make it so much pleasanter to grant."

"You may be sure," cried Kindelon gayly to Pauline, "that you have made a complete conquest of Mrs. Dares. She is usually quite miserly with her compliments. She puts me on the wretched allowance of one a year."

"Perhaps you don't deserve a more liberal income," said Pauline. Then she re-addressed Mrs. Dares. "I want to ask you," she proceeded, with a shy kind of venture in her tone, "if you will kindly loan me your visiting-book for a little while."

"My visiting-book?" murmured Mrs. Dares. Then she slowly shook her head, while the pale girl at the desk knitted her brows perplexedly, as though she had encountered some tantalizing foreign word. "I would gladly lend it if I had one," Mrs. Dares went on; "but I possess no such article."

"Good gracious!" exclaimed Pauline, with an involuntary surprise that instantly afterward she regretted as uncivil. "You have none!"

But Mrs. Dares did not seem to detect the least incivility in Pauline's amazement.

"No, my dear Mrs. Varick, I have no need of a visiting-book, for I have no time to visit."

"But you surely have some sort of list, have you not?" now inquired Kindelon.

Mrs. Dares lightly touched her forehead. "Only here in my memory," she said, "and that is decidedly an imperfect list. My guests understand that to be invited to one of my evenings is to be invited to all. I suppose that in the fashionable world," she proceeded, fixing her great dark eyes on Pauline, "it is wholly different. There, matters of this sort are managed with much ceremony, no doubt."

"With much trivial ceremony," said Pauline. "A little scrap of pasteboard there represents an individuality – and in just as efficient manner as if it were truly the person represented. To be in society, as it is called, is to receive a perpetual shower of cards. I strongly doubt if many people ever care to meet in a truly social way those whose company they pretend to solicit. There are few more perfect mockeries in that most false and mocking life, than the ordinary visit of etiquette." Pauline here gave a little meaning smile as she briefly paused. "But I suppose you will understand, Mrs. Dares," she continued, "that I regret your having no regular list. I wanted to borrow it – and with what purpose I am sure you can readily imagine."

"Yes," was the reply. "My daughter Cora shall prepare you one, however. She has an admirable memory. If she fails in the matter of addresses, there is the directory as a help, you know. And so your idea about the salon is unchanged?"

"It is unalterable," said Pauline, with a laugh. "But I hate so to trouble your daughter."

"She will not think it any trouble," said Kindelon quickly.

Pauline looked at him with a slight elevation of the brows. "You speak confidently for Miss Cora," she said.

Kindelon lifted one hand, and waved it a trifle embarrassedly. "Oh, I have always found her so accommodating," he answered.

"Yes, Cora is always glad to please those whom she likes," said Mrs. Dares…

A little later Pauline and Kindelon took leave of their hostess. They had been driven to Spruce Street in the carriage of the former, and as they quitted the huge building in which Mrs. Dares's tiny sanctum was situated, Kindelon said to his companion: "You shall return home at once?"

Pauline gave a careless laugh. She looked about her at all the commercial hurry and bustle of the placarded, vehicle-thronged street. "I have nowhere else to go just at present," she said. "Not that I should not like to stay down town, as you call it, a little longer. The noise and activity please me… Oh, by the way," she added, "did you not say that you must repair to your office?"

"The 'Asteroid' imperatively claims me," said Kindelon, taking out his watch. "Only twelve o'clock," he proceeded; "I thought it later. Well, I have at least an hour at your service still. Have you any commands?"

"Where on earth could we pass your hour of leisure?" said Pauline. "It would probably not be proper if I accompanied you into the office of the 'Asteroid.'"

"It would be sadly dull."

"Then I will drive up town after I have left you there."

"Why not remain down town, since the change pleases you?"

"Driving aimlessly about for a whole hour?"

"By no means. I have an idea of what we might do. I think you might not find the idea at all disagreeable. If you will permit, I will give your footman an order, and plan for you a little surprise."

"Do so, by all means," said Pauline lightsomely, entering the carriage. "I throw myself upon your mercy and your protection."

Kindelon soon afterward seated himself at her side, and the carriage was immediately borne into the clamorous region of what we term lower Broadway.

"I hope I shall like your surprise," said Pauline, as she leaned back against the cushions, not knowing how pretty she looked in her patrician elegance of garb and person. "But we will not talk of it; I might guess what it is if we did, and that would spoil all. My faith in you shall be blind and unquestioning, and I shall expect a proportionately rich reward… What gulfs of difference lie between that interesting little Mrs. Dares and most of the women whom I have met! People tell us that we must travel to see life. I begin to think that one great city like New York can give us the most majestic experience, if only we know how to receive it. Take my Aunt Cynthia Poughkeepsie, for example, and compare her with Mrs. Dares! A whole continent seems to lie between them, and yet they are continually living at scarcely a stone's-throw apart."

Kindelon gave a brisk, acquiescent nod.

"True enough," he said. "Travel shows us only the outsides of men and women. We go abroad to discover better what profits of observation lie at home…"

The carriage at length stopped.

"Is my surprise all ready to burst upon me?" asked Pauline, at this point.

"Yes. Its explosion is now imminent," said Kindelon, with dry solemnity of accent.

Pauline, after she had alighted, surveyed her surroundings for a moment, and then said, —

"I knew we were approaching the Battery, but I did not suppose you meant to stop there. And why have you stopped, pray?"

Kindelon pointed toward a distant flash of water glimpsed between the nude black boughs of many high trees. "You can't think what a delightful stroll we could take over yonder," he said, "along the esplanade. The carriage could wait here for us, you know."

"Certainly," acceded Pauline.

They soon entered the noble park lying on their right. It was a day of unusual warmth for that wintry season, but the air freshened and sharpened as they drew further seaward. There are many New Yorkers to whom our beautiful Battery is but a name, and Pauline was one of them. As she neared the rotund wooden building of Castle Garden, a wholly novel and unexpected sight awaited her. Not long ago one of the great ocean-steamers had discharged here many German immigrants, and some of these had come forth from the big sea-fronting structure beyond, to meet the stares of that dingy, unkempt rabble which always collects, on such occasions, about its doorways. Pauline and Kindelon paused to watch the poor dazed-looking creatures, with their pinched, vacuous faces, their timid miens, their coarse, dirty bundles. The women mostly had blond braids of hair matted in close coils against the backs of their heads; they wore no bonnets, and one or two of them led a bewildered, dull-eyed child by the hand, while one or two more clasped infants to their breasts, wrapped in soiled shawls. The men had a spare, haggard, slavish demeanor; the liberal air and sun, the very amplitude and brilliancy of sky and water, seemed to cow and depress them; they slunk instead of walking; there was something in their visages of an animal suggestion; they did not appear entirely human, and made you recall the mythic combinations of man and beast.

"They are Germans, I suppose," said Kindelon to Pauline; "or perhaps they hail from some of the Austrian provinces. Many of my own country people, the Irish, are not much less shocking to behold when they first land here."

"These do not shock me," said Pauline; "they sadden me. They look as if they had not wit enough to understand whither they had come, but quite enough to feel alarmed and distrustful of their present environment."

"This drama of immigration is constantly unfolding itself here, day after day," answered Kindelon. "It surely has its mournful side, but you, as an American, ought by all means to discern its bright one. These poor souls are the social refuse of Europe; they are the pathetic fugitives from vile and time-honored abuses; they are the dreary consequences of kingdoms and empires. Their state is almost brutish, as you see; they don't think themselves half as far above the brute as you think them, depend upon it. They have had manhood and womanhood crushed into the dust for generations. It is as much their hereditary instinct to fawn and crawl as it is for a dog to bark or a cat to lap milk. They represent the enlightened and thrifty peasantry over-sea. Bah! how it sickens a man to consider that because a few insolent kings must have their hands kissed and their pride of rule glutted, millions of their people are degraded into such doltish satires upon humanity! But I mentioned the bright side of this question, from the American standpoint."

"Yes," said Pauline quickly, lifting her face to his. "I hope it is really a bright side."

"It is – very. America receives these pitiful wretches, and after a few short months they are regenerated, transformed. There has never, in the history of the world, been a nation of the same magnificent hospitality as this. Before such droves of deplorable beings any other nation would shut her ports or arm her barriers, in strong affright. But America (which I have always thought a much more terse and expressive name than the United States) does nothing of the sort. With a superb kindness, which has behind it a sense of unexampled power, she bids them all welcome. And in a little while they breathe her vitalizing air with a new and splendid result. They forget the soldiers who kicked them, the tyrants who made them shoulder muskets in defence of thrones, the taxes wrung from their scant wages that princes might dance and feast. They forget all this gross despotism; they begin to live; their very frames and features change; their miserable past is like a broken fetter flung gladly away. And America does all this for them – this, which no other country has done or can do!"

He spoke with a fine heat, an impressive enthusiasm. Pauline, standing beside him, had earnestly fixed her look upon his handsome, virile face, noting the spark that pierced his light-blue eyes, between the black gloss of their lashes, and the little sensitive tremor that disturbed his nostril. She had never felt more swayed by his force of personality than now. She had never felt more keenly than now that his manful countenance and shape were both fit accompaniments of an important and robust nature.

"And what does America really do with these poor, maltreated creatures, after having greeted and domesticated them?" came her next words, filled with an appealing sincerity of utterance.

Something appeared suddenly to have changed Kindelon's mood. He laughed shortly and half turned away.

"Oh," he said, in wholly altered voice, "if they are Irish she sometimes makes Tammany politicians of them, and if they are Germans she sometimes turns them into howling socialists."

"Do you mean what you say?" exclaimed Pauline almost indignantly.

He bent his head and looked at her intently, for a moment, with a covert play of mirth under the crisp, dark flow of his mustache.

"I am afraid that I do," he replied, with another laugh.

"Then you think this grand American hospitality of which you have just spoken to be a failure – a sham?"

"No, no – far from that," he said rapidly, and with recurring seriousness. "I was only going back to the dark side of the question – that is all. You know, I told you it had both its dark and its bright side… Come, let us leave this rabble. You have not really seen the Battery yet. Its true splendors lie just beyond…"

They were presently strolling along the stone-paved esplanade, with its granite posts connected by loops of one continuous iron chainwork. To the south they had a partial view of Brooklyn, that city which is a sort of reflective and imitative New York, with masts bristling from her distant wharves and more than a single remote church-spire telling of the large religious impulse which has given her a quaint ecclesiastical fame. But westward your eye could traverse the spacious bay until it met the dull-red semicircle of Fort Columbus, planted low and stout upon the shore of Governor's Island, and the soft, swelling, purplish hills of Staten Island, where they loomed still further beyond. Boats of all shapes and kinds were passing over the luminous waters, from the squat, ugly tug, with its hoarse whistle, to the huge black bulk of an Atlantic steamer, bound for transpontine shores and soon to move majestically oceanward through the fair sea-gate of the Narrows. A few loiterers leaned against the stone posts, and a few more lounged upon the seats ranged further inland along this salubrious marine promenade. Back among the turfy levels that stretched broadly between the flagged pathways, you saw the timorous green of hardy grass, where an occasional pale wreath of unmelted snow yet lingered. People were passing to and fro, with steps that rang hollow on the hard pavement. If you listened intently you could catch a kind of dreamy hum from the vast city, which might almost be said to begin its busy, tumultuous life here in this very spot, thence pushing through many a life-crowded street and avenue, sheer on to the rocky fields and goat-haunted gutters of dreary Harlem.

"What a glorious bay it is!" exclaimed Kindelon, while he and Pauline stood on the breezy esplanade. "There never was a city with more royal approaches than New York."

"That fort yonder," said Pauline, "will perhaps thunder broadsides, one day, at the fleet of an invading enemy. This is still such a young city compared with those of other lands… I suppose these waters, centuries later, will see grand sights, as civilization augments."

"Perhaps they may see very mournful ones," objected Kindelon.

"But you are an evolutionist," declared Pauline, with a priggish little pursing of the lips that he found secretly very amusing. "You believe that everything is working toward nobler conditions, though you laughed at Leander Prawle, the optimistic poet, the other evening, for his roseate prophecies about the human race."

"Oh, I'm an evolutionist," answered Kindelon. "I believe it will all come right by-and-by, like the gigantic unravelling of a gigantic skein… But such views don't prevent me from feeling the probability of New York being reduced to ashes more than once in the coming centuries."

"Oh, yes, I remember," said Pauline. "There are often the apparent retrogressions – rhythmic variations of movement which temporarily retard all progress in societies."

Kindelon burst into one of his mellowest and heartiest laughs. "You are delicious," he said, "when you try to recollect your Herbert Spencer. You make me think of a flower that has been dropped among the leaves of an Algebra."

"I am not at all sure that I like your simile," said Pauline, tossing her head somewhat. "It is pleasant to be likened to a flower, but in this case it is rather belittling. And if it comes to recollecting my Herbert Spencer, perhaps the process is not one of very violent effort, either."

"Oh," said Kindelon ruefully, "I have offended you."

A sunny smile broke from her lips the next moment. "I can't be offended," she replied, "when I think how you rebuked my absurd outburst of pedantry. Ah! truly a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and I am afraid I have very little… How lovely it all is, here," she proceeded, changing the subject, as they now began to move onward, while they still kept close to the edge of the smooth-paven terrace. "And what a pity that our dwelling-houses should all be away from the water! My grandparents – or my great-grandparents, I forget which – once lived close to the Battery. I recollect poor mamma telling me that I had an ancestress whom they used to call the belle of Bowling Green."