A boy came through, crying the last new novels. Flossie shook her head. What were such insipid stories to the drama of her life? Mr. Wemyss carefully closed the door, and began to make himself agreeable, much as he might have done at a party, except that he talked more tenderly. Would the train never start? She yawned a little. For a moment, she half wished it had been Kill Van Kull.
At last a bell sounded, and the train rumbled slowly out of the station.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE NIGHT AT THE WORKS.
WHEN Jem Starbuck, that evening, had been thrust out by his friends, and the door he heard slammed and bolted behind him, he found himself upon Sixth Avenue, at midnight of a night so inclement that even that thoroughfare was almost deserted. The trains of the elevated railway went thundering over his head, but the floor of the street was checkered with the drifts of wet snow and the pools of water, in which the mirrored gaslights glimmered a warning to the unwary step.
The rain had at this time stopped; it was the hour’s lull before the downrush of the clearing northwester; and the flooded gutters still ran riotously and poured into the sewer-gates with a roaring that was audible a block or more away.
Starbuck walked some streets without conscious object. His heart beat violently with the struggle still, and he felt sick and faint with the passion of his anger. Remorse he had none; but he was ashamed at having gone so far; at having held himself in no better control. Yet why had Simpson dared to talk to him? “Damn the fool, I wish I’d killed him,” thought James.
He spoke the words aloud; and, as he did so, came to a street corner; the crossing was exceptionally deep with melted snow, and on the other corner stood a policeman. Starbuck became conscious that he still held the bloody knife; there was a sewer-opening below him, and he threw it in. The rush of water was so great that it was gulped down without a sound, disappearing instantly in the turbid vortex. James looked after it a moment, moodily; he had little fear that he was in any danger for his deed of that night; beyond doubt, the fellow was not mortally wounded; and he would not dare to complain on his own account, and none of their friends would ever peach.
He hesitated some moments; then, with the decisive step of a man who has made up his mind, he turned and crossed Sixth Avenue. There was a bar-room over the way, brilliant with a red electric light; he entered it, and called for a twenty-five cent cigar and a glass of whiskey. He was unused to drinking spirits; and the sharp liquor made him shudder as he swallowed it; but not with cold or fear. The intellectual predominated over the physical in his nature: such organisms are cowardly before immediate physical pain or contest, but shrink at nothing else. But one of his affectations had been to smoke cigars instead of pipes; his was a nature nervous as any scholar’s; and he lit the black havana and went out again, taking his way along Thirty-second Street.
Fifth Avenue was less deserted than Sixth; it was: full of carriages going to and from the ball. It was about the hour when Flossie broke off her reverie in her boudoir and, ringing for her carriage, walked to her window and looked out. James Starbuck may have seen the rose light that streamed from her window; in fact, he did, and marked the brilliancy of this and all the great houses on the Avenue, with an imprecation on them for it; but he did not know Flossie Gower’s house, nor much of her, save that she almost owned the oil works over at Williamsburgh. But he stopped a moment, and looked up and down the fine street; it was going to be colder, and he foresaw that the weather would be terrible before dawn, though the ladies, well cottoned in their carriages, would give no thought to it. But the business he was on was not so safe for him at any other time; and he buttoned his overcoat about him and walked rapidly down the side street, just as Mrs. Gower’s carriage drove up at her front door.