CHAPTER XVII.
Fifth Avenue presented its customary animated and brilliant picture of refined cosmopolitan life. The sidewalks were crowded to the curb with stylishly dressed promenaders, the roadway blocked with smart automobiles and handsome equipages. The all New York of fashion and wealth was taking its afternoon sunning.
For the foreigner making a study of our national manners, the Avenue's five-o'clock parade any fine afternoon during the season presents a scene as typically American as he may expect to find. Here in this one narrow, splendid thoroughfare, stretching in a noble line, as the crow flies, from Twenty-third Street away up to the Nineties, is concentrated the fabulous, incalculable wealth of the United States. Here, side by side, dwell the Rockefellers, the Carnegies, the Vanderbilts, the Astors, the Goulds, the Harrimans, the Morgans, the Whitneys, and other giants of finance, whose fortunes aggregate thousands of millions of dollars! Lined on either side of the street with the marble palaces of its multi-millionaires, its roadway jammed with carriages and automobiles kept in order by picturesque mounted police, its sidewalks thronged with pretty, stylish girls, and men and women famous in art, music, politics, science and literature—New York's most exclusive thoroughfare is perhaps the one place where the American plutocracy is on exhibition in all its aggressive opulence. The show street of New York, it is not laid with rails for electric cars like other thoroughfares of the metropolis. Wagons and trucks not having special business there are forbidden to traverse it. The poor man understands that it is the exclusive domain of the very rich, that he has no place there, and that if he appears on its sacred pavements he is apt to be looked upon as an audacious intruder.
Armitage rested from his work and looked around him, dazed by the bustle and noise. The gay, busy city was such a contrast with the quiet, peaceful life he had led for the past few months that the sudden change was startling. It had all the attraction of novelty. The afternoon parade was at its height, and he was interested watching the promenaders. Never had he seen so many pretty girls. There were styles of beauty to suit every taste—blondes and brunettes. Tall, graceful, aristocratic girls; short, plump, vivacious girls. Some had the grace of stately lilies, others the charm and fragrance of the full-blown rose. Each rivaled the other in chic of costume, all were merry and full of the exuberance of youth. They passed in twos and threes and as Armitage watched them, he wondered where his girl was—the one girl in the world! He knew that she was in New York, and he also knew where her home was on Fifth Avenue. Perhaps if he stayed there long enough, he would see her go by.
He had not heard from Grace since they landed in Boston. He reviewed in his mind all that had occurred since the wreck of the Atlanta, that ever-memorable night when, swimming for his life in the raging seas, he had felt her limp body lying heavily on his left arm. Then came their long sojourn together on Hope Island, a blissful dream rudely interrupted by the untimely arrival of the Saucy Polly. Then their return to America. Even on the voyage home they were no longer the same to each other. In her new clothes, borrowed from the stewardess, she looked quite different. He thought he detected more reserve in her manner toward him. Then, when they arrived in Boston, her father was waiting for her, and they left at once for New York—on a special train. He couldn't follow. He had no money and refused to accept any from Mr. Harmon. He felt amply rewarded for all he had done when Grace smiled kindly at him as she shook hands and said good-by.
When they had gone he tried to find work. For some days he was unsuccessful. Times were hard. Instead of employing new men, old hands were everywhere being discharged by the hundreds. At first he thought of taking to his old occupation, the sea, but he thought better of it. He had had enough of seafaring to last him some time. Then, desperate, he tried to get anything. Men with nerve were needed in the iron construction work of a lofty sky-scraper. He didn't know much about the business, but he did not mind the danger, and he was soon high in the air, astride a swinging iron beam, riveting bolts at a dizzy height and with such frail support that the people in the street below turned pale for fear he would fall. What did he care if a girder fell and he was dashed to pieces below? He laughed at danger, and performed feats that made his fellow workmen gasp. This earned him good pay, and soon he had saved enough to come to New York.
Why had he come to New York? Why had he given up good wages to come here without the certainty of finding work? Only one thing had attracted him here—the same reason that attracts the moth to the flame. He knew it was hopeless, but he could not resist the temptation of coming to the same city where she was, breathing the same air she breathed and secretly, at night, coming up to Fifth Avenue and standing for hours, watching her windows until he was ordered to move on by a suspicious policeman. Luckily he had found employment—the same kind of work that he had done successfully in Boston. A sky-scraper was being erected on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street, and he was sent to rivet the iron beams. That was how he came to be there that sunny afternoon.
Curiously, he eyed the fashionably dressed promenaders as they passed by, chatting and laughing in polite conversation. There was no hostility in his attitude as he watched them. That feeling had died away. These men and women with their fine clothes and polished manners appeared to him to-day in a different light. There was a time when he would have cursed them as they haughtily brushed past him, but now the old animosity had died away. The class hatred which he had nourished so long in his heart had undergone a change. These were her people, perhaps they were her friends. Wistfully, he looked after them, wishing he could summon up courage to boldly approach some one and ask how Grace was. Eagerly he scanned the brilliant throng, hoping each instant to catch sight of her in the crowd, but he watched in vain. The beloved figure he would have recognized a mile away did not appear.
Disappointed, he turned once more to his task. It was already half-past four. In thirty minutes more the whistle would blow. The men would quit work and he would trudge over to the cheaper East Side, where he lived. He had picked up his sledge-hammer and was about to resume work when he happened to look up the Avenue. There she was at last, close at hand, coming toward him. Involuntarily, he stepped back, and the heavy hammer fell from his nerveless grasp.
Grace went by, dainty and chic, the cynosure of every eye on the Avenue. Men turned after her as she passed. Women stopped and pointed. But, unconscious of, or indifferent to, the admiration she excited, Miss Harmon continued on her way home.