Part 21 (1/2)
The new conditions with which I was confronted had a singular effect on me. I was accustomed to a life where every one knew me and I knew, if not every one, at least something good or bad about every one.
Here I might have committed anything short of murder or suicide without comment, and might have committed both without any one outside of the reporters and the police and Dix caring a straw about it.
I felt peculiarly lonely because I was inclined to be social and preferred to a.s.sociate with the first man I met on the street to being alone. In fact, I have always accounted it one of my chief blessings that I could find pleasure and entertainment for a half-hour in the company of any man in the world except a fool or a man of fas.h.i.+on, as the old writers used to speak of them, or as we call them now, members of the smart set.
The first things that struck me as I stepped out into the thronged streets of the city were the throngs that hurried, hurried, hurried along, like a torrent pouring through a defile, never stopping nor pausing--only flowing on, intent on but one thing--getting along. Their faces, undistinguished and indistinguishable in the crowd, were not eager, but anxious. There was no rest, and no room for rest, more than in the rapids of Niagara. It was the bourgeoisie at flood, strong, turgid, and in ma.s.s, ponderant; but inextinguishably common. As I stood among them, yet not of them, I could not but remark how like they were in ma.s.s and how not merely all distinction but all individuality perished in the mixing. I recalled a speech that my father had once made. ”I prefer countrymen,” he said, ”to city men. The latter are as like as their coats. The ready-made-clothing house is a great civilizer, but also a great leveler. Like the common school of which you boast, it may uplift the ma.s.s, but it levels--it destroys all distinction.”
This came home to me now.
I had a proof of its truth, and, I may add, of the effect of urban influences not long after I launched on the restless sea of city life. I was pa.s.sing one day along a street filled with houses, some much finer than others, when my way was blocked by a child's funeral in front of a small but neat house beside one much more pretentious. The white hea.r.s.e stood at the door and the little white coffin with a few flowers on it was just about to be borne out as I came up. A child's funeral has always appealed to me peculiarly. It seems so sad to have died on the threshold before even opening the door. It appeared to me suddenly to have brought me near to my kind. And I stopped in front of the adjoining house to wait till the sorrowing little cortege had entered the carriage which followed behind the hea.r.s.e. A number of other persons had done the same thing. At this moment, the door of the larger house next door opened, and a woman, youngish and well-dressed, appeared and stood on her steps waiting for her carriage which stood at some little distance.
As I was standing near her, I turned and asked her in an undertone:
”Can you tell me whose funeral this is?”
”No, I cannot,” she said, so sharply that I took a good look at her as she stood trying to b.u.t.ton a tight glove.
”Oh! I thought, perhaps, you knew as they are your next-door neighbors.”
”Well, I do not. It's no concern of mine,” she said shortly. She beckoned to her carriage across the way. The coachman who had been looking at the funeral caught sight of her and with a start wheeled his horses around to draw up. The number of persons, however, who had stopped like myself prevented his coming up to her door, which appeared to annoy the lady.
”Can't you move these people on?” she demanded angrily of a stout officer who stood like the rest of us, looking on.
”It's a funeral,” he said briefly.
”Well, I know it is. I don't expect you to interfere with that. It's these idlers and curiosity mongers who block the way that I want moved to clear a way for my carriage. And if you can't do it, I'll ask Mr.
McSheen to put a man on this beat who can. As it happens I am going there now.” Insolence could go no farther.
”Let that carriage come up here, will you?” said the officer without changing his expression. ”Drive up, lad,” he beckoned to the coachman who came as near as he could.
”To Mrs. McSheen's,” said the lady in a voice evidently intended for the officer to hear, ”and next time, don't stand across the street staring at what you have no business with, but keep your eyes open so that you won't keep me waiting half an hour beckoning to you.” She entered the carriage and drove off, making a new attack on her glove to close it over a pudgy wrist. I glanced at the coachman as she closed the door and I saw an angry gleam flash in his eye. And when I turned to the officer he was following the carriage with a look of hate. I suddenly felt drawn to them both, and the old fight between the People and the Bourgeoisie suddenly took shape before me, and I found where my sympathies lay. At this moment the officer turned and I caught his eye and held it. It was hard and angry at first, but as he gave me a keen second glance, he saw something in my face and his eye softened.
”Who is Mr. McSheen?” I asked.
”The next mayor,” he said briefly.
”Oh!” I took out my card under an impulse and scribbled my office address on it and handed it to him. ”If you have any trouble about this let me know.”
He took it and turning it slowly gazed at it, at first with a puzzled look. Then as he saw the address his expression changed.
He opened his coat and put it carefully in his pocket.
”Thank you, sir,” he said finally.
I turned away with the consciousness that I had had a new light thrown on life, and had found it more selfish than I had dreamed. I had begun with high hopes. It was, indeed, ever my nature to be hopeful, being healthy and strong and in the prime of vigorous youth. I was always rich when at my poorest, only my heavy freighted s.h.i.+p had not come in. I knew that though the larder was lean and storms were beating furiously off the coast, somewhere, beating her way against the contrary winds, the argosy was slowly making headway, and some day I should find her moored beside my pier and see her stores unladen at my feet. The stress and storm of the struggle were not unwelcome to me. I was always a good fighter when aroused; but I was lazy and too indolent to get aroused.
Now, however, I was wide awake. The greatness of the city stirred my pulses. Its blackness and its force aroused my sleeping powers, and as I stepped into the surf and felt the rush of the tides as they swept about and by me, I felt as a fair swimmer might who steps for the first time in a fierce current and feels it clutch his limbs and draw him in. I was not afraid, only awakened and alive to the struggle before me, and my senses thrilled as I plunged and rose to catch my breath and face the vast unknown. Later on I found that the chief danger I had not counted on: the benumbing of the senses, the slow process under which spirit, energy, courage, and even hope finally die.
One who has never had the experience of starting in a big city alone, without a connection of any kind, cannot conceive what it means: the loneliness--utter as in a desert--the waiting--the terrible waiting--being obliged to sit day after day and just wait for business to come, watching your small funds ooze out drop by drop, seeing men pa.s.s your door and enter others' offices and never one turn in at yours, till your spirit sinks lower and lower and your heart dies within you.
One who has not felt it does not know what it is to be out of work and not able to get it. The rich and fat and sleek--the safe and secure--what know they of want! Want, not of money, but of work: the only capital of the honest and industrious poor! It is the spectre that ever haunts the poor. It makes the world look as though the whole system of society were out of joint--as if all men were in conspiracy against you--as if G.o.d had forgotten you. I found men in a harder case than mine--men in mult.i.tude, with wives and children, the babe peris.h.i.+ng at the mother's withered breast, the children dying for food, staggering along the streets seeking work in vain, while wealth in a glittering flood poured through the streets in which they perished. This bitter knowledge I came to learn day after day till I grew almost to hate mankind. The next step is war against society. Not all who wage it hate the men they fight. It is the cause they hate. There I sat day after day, full of hope and eagerness and--now that my conceit was somewhat knocked out of me--with not only abundant ability, but the stern resolve to transact any business which might be entrusted to me, and just rotted to despair. No wonder men go to the devil, and enlist to fight the whole establishment of organized society. I almost went. When I look back at it now it seems like a miracle that I did not go wholly. Pride saved me. It survived long after hope died. Sometimes, I even thought of the pistol I had in my trunk. But I had made up my mind to live and win.