Vistas of New York

by Brander Matthews

At Thirty-fourth Street the hansom was halted to let a funeral cross the current of the Avenue. An open carriage came first, its seats covered with flowers, tortured into stiff set pieces; the white hearse followed, with a satin-covered coffin visible through its plate-glass sides; and then half a dozen carriages trailed after. The prisoner in the hansom noticed that the shades were drawn in the one that followed the hearse; it bore a grief too sacred for observation—a mother’s, no doubt. He was suddenly glad that his parents had both died when he was yet a boy. To be alone in the world, with no family to keep him warm with tolerant affection—this had often saddened him; now at last he rejoiced at it. When a man is on his way to prison to serve a term of years, the fewer those who cherish him, the luckier for them. That he loved a woman—that, indeed, he was going to jail because of his love for her—this might add poignancy to his pain; but he felt himself manly for once in trying to believe it was better now that she did not love him, that she did not even know of his love for her.

In time the hansom turned from Fifth Avenue into Broadway; it went on down-town past Union Square, with its broad trees, and past Grace Church, with its grateful greenery; but the younger of the two men was no longer taking note of what sped before his gaze. He was wondering what the woman he loved would think when she would hear of his going to prison—whether she would care very much—whether she would suspect that his crime was due to his passion for her. That, of course, she could not guess—that he had yielded to the temptation to lay hands on what was not his, solely because he wanted more money to place at her feet. For himself, he had been making enough; but for her he must have more. He could not have ventured to invite her to give up anything for his sake. He wanted to be able to offer her all she had been accustomed to have—and more too, were that possible. He was conceited enough ordinarily, he feared; and yet when he thought of her he felt so humble that he had never dared to dream of going to her empty-handed—of asking her to make any sacrifice in loving him. He had never told her of his love, and perhaps she did not even guess it; and yet women are swift to discover a thing like that. It might be that she had seen it; and that when others should speak of him as he knew he deserved to be spoken of, she might come to his defence and find some word of extenuation for his misdeed. This possibility, remote as it was, gave him pleasure; and he smiled at the suggestion as it came to him.

From this day-dream he was aroused as the driver of the hansom jerked the horse back on his haunches to avoid running down a little old woman who was trying to cross Broadway with a bundle of sticks balanced on her head. As the animal almost touched her she looked up, and her glance crossed that of the prisoner. He perceived instantly that she was an Italian, that she was not so old as she looked, and that she had been beautiful not so long ago. Then he wondered whether any man had done wrong for her sake—whether or not two of her lovers had fought in the soft Sicilian moonlight and one had done the other to death. Well, why not? There were worse things than death, after all.

As they went on farther and farther down-town, Broadway began to seem emptier. It was the first Saturday in June, and most of the stores were closed. When they drew near to the City Hall, the great street, although not so desolate as it is on a Sunday, lacked not a little of its week-day activity. It was as though a truce had been proclaimed in the battle of business; but the forts were guarded, and the fight would begin again on the Monday morning.

After the hansom passed the Post Office the buildings on the right and the left raised themselves higher and higher, until the cab was at last rolling along what might be the bottom of a canyon. And it seemed to him that the cliff-dwellers who inhabited the terraces of this man-made gorge, and who spent the best part of their lives a hundred feet above the level of the sidewalk, were no peaceable folk withdrawn from the strife of the plains; they were relentless savages ever on the war-path, and always eager to torture every chance captive. Wars may be less frequent than they were and less cruel, but the struggle for existence is bitterer than ever, and as meanly waged as any Apache raid.

The young man in the hansom felt his hatred hot within him for those with whom he had meant to match himself. He had been beaten in the first skirmish, and yet—but for the one thing—he could hold himself as good as the best of them. How many of the men under the shadow of Trinity were more honest than he? Some of them, no doubt—but how many? How many names now honorable would be disgraced if the truth were suddenly made known? How many of those who thought themselves honest, and who were honest now, had in the past yielded to a temptation once, as he had done, and having been luckier than he in escaping detection then, had never again risked it? That was what he had intended to do; he knew himself not to be dishonest, although the alluring opportunity had been too much for him. If only he could have held on for another day, all would have been well—no one would have had cause ever to suspect him; and never again would he have stepped aside from the narrow path of rectitude.

There was no use in repining. Luck had been against him, that was all. Some men had been guilty of what he had done, and they had been able to bluff it out. His bluff had been called, and he was now going to jail to pay his debt of honor. Perhaps the copy-book was right when it declared honesty to be the best policy. And yet he could not help feeling that fate had played him a mean trick. To put in his possession at the same moment a large sum of money and the information that the most powerful group of capitalists in America had determined to take hold of a certain railroad and re-establish it, and to have thus the possibility put before him at the very hour when he had discovered that perhaps he had a chance to win the woman he loved, if only he could approach her on an equality of fortune—this temptation just then was too great to withstand. He had yielded, and for a little while it had seemed as though he was about to succeed. Twenty-four hours more and he could have put back the money he had borrowed—for so he liked to look on his act. That money once restored, he would have waited patiently for the rest of his profit. Thereafter he could have afforded to be honest; he was resolved never to overstep the law again; he would have kept the letter of it vigorously—if only he had escaped detection that once.

But blind chance smote him down from behind. Suddenly, without an hour’s warning, the leader of the group of sustaining capitalists dropped dead; his heart had failed, worn out by the friction and the strain. The market broke; and all who had bought stocks on a margin were sold out instantly and inexorably. Then the supporting orders came in and prices were pushed up again; but it was too late. Two days before, or a day after, that capitalist might have died without having by his death unwittingly caused an arrest. And as the hansom rolled on toward the Battery the prisoner had again a resentment against the capitalist for choosing so unfortunate a day to die.

Now the end had come; of course, he had been unable to replace the money he had taken, and there was nothing for him to do but to fly. But instead of going to Canada, and hiding his trail, and then slipping across to Europe, he had been foolish enough to come here to New York to have another glimpse of the woman for the love of whom he had become a thief. Once more luck had been against him; as it happened, she had gone out of town for Decoration Day; and instead of taking ship to Europe, he had waited. Only that Saturday morning he had met her brother and had been told of her return to town. But when he was about to call on her that afternoon, the gray-eyed man had called on him; and here he was on his way to his trial, and he had not seen her, after all.

Then he went back to the last time he had had speech with her. It was during one of his frequent visits to New York, and he had dined at the club with her brother, who had told him that she was going to the play that night with her mother. So he had betaken himself to the theater also, and he had gazed at her across the house; and then he had put her and her mother into their carriage, and the old lady had asked him to dinner the next evening. He had supposed it was an eleventh-hour invitation and that he was to fill the seat of some man who had unexpectedly backed out; but none the less he had accepted with obvious pleasure. And it was from a few casual words of her father’s, after dinner, that he got the first inkling of the railroad deal; and then, before the time came for him to go, he had been fortunate enough to have her to himself for a quarter of an hour. She had been graciousness itself, and for the first time he had begun to have hope. He could not recall what he had said, but his memory was clear as to how she had looked. He could not remember whether he had allowed her even a glimpse of his deep passion. It might be that she had guessed it, although she had made no sign; he knew that women were as keen as they were inscrutable.