Wilfred turned North at last into a side street to find another way home. Dark streets had a different sort of attraction. No doubt the black houses were just as full of tenants as the others, but here, people were not drawn to the windows, nor down-stairs to the forbidding sidewalks. Only a group of men was to be seen here and there, on the steps, or loitering half-concealed in a vestibule. Night-birds, Wilfred thought with an intense thrill; cutthroats. How stirring to think of men who were restrained by nothing! Through each house there ran a narrow arched passage to a yard in the rear, where there was always, he knew, a second house hidden from the street. There would be a gaslight in the yard, and you would get a glimpse of greenish flagstones. By day or by night these passages teased Wilfred; but he had never dared to enter. In such dens Oliver Twist had been taught to steal; Nancy Sikes had been choked by the brutal Bill.
Wilfred soared like a bird. This was one of his “moments.” Why they came sometimes and not other times he did not know. His breast hummed like harpstrings. The seat of his intense feeling seemed to be somewhere at the back of his palate. It was almost the same as a pain, but it was rare! At such a moment nothing was changed; everything became more intensely itself. He was still Wilfred, but a Wilfred made universal. He entered into everything and became a part of it. At such a moment all tormenting questions were laid; it was sufficient that things were. Life was painted in such high colors that he was dazzled. The feeling of pain was due to the fact that he couldn’t take it all in. He had the actual sensations of soaring; he stretched his nostrils to get sufficient oxygen. Mixed with pure exaltation was the feeling: How wonderful of me to be feeling this way!
Impressions were bitten into his consciousness as with an acid. That frowning perspective of the confined street with its different planes of blacknesses; granite paving stones, flagged sidewalks, brick tenements; the whole was like a dead scale upon the living earth, which nevertheless one apprehended quivering underfoot. It was there, though it was not seen, the fertile earth capable of bringing forth forests. At either end of the block an arc light casting its unnatural beams horizontally through, picking out the ash cans and empty boxes grouped along the curb in fantastic disorder. Everywhere the bold shadows, black and sinister. Whether beautiful or ugly, it thrilled him through and through. Half way through the block, the door of a closely shuttered place was thrown open, letting out a startling shaft of light and a babel of voices; then sharply pulled to again. Oh, life, how marvellous!
At the approaching corner there was a saloon; and its side door, the “Family Entrance,” protected by the usual fancy porch of wood and glass, lay in Wilfred’s path. A discreet radiance came through the frosted glass. In the corner formed by this porch with the main building Wilfred beheld a group of six or eight boys standing with their shoulders pressed together in a circle, heads lowered. Their stillness, their uneasy looks over their shoulders, conveyed an intimation. He paused, all aghast inside as if he had been surprised by a wound. His spirit came diving down like a broken-winged bird. Little scorching flames were lighted in the pit of his stomach, and he tasted the bitterness of wormwood.
He walked on, trying to look unconscious. One of the boys was his own age, the others varying sizes smaller. As he came by, the big boy cast a wary look over his shoulder. Seeing Wilfred’s stricken face, the boy instantly knew how it was with him, and Wilfred knew that he knew. He felt as if he must die with shame. The boy’s face broke up in a horrid triumphant leer. Wilfred was never to forget any detail of the look of that boy. He wore ribbed cotton stockings faded to a greenish hue, and button shoes much too big for him with fancy cloth tops and run-over heels; around his neck was wound a white cotton cloth, hideously soiled, suggesting that he had had a sore throat weeks before. His face—close-set sharp black eyes; longish nose; lips suggesting the beak of a predatory bird; was all lighted up by that all-knowing, zestful leer. A wicked, dirty, comely face; it was the zest expressed there that dishonored Wilfred.
Without turning around, the boy with a slight derisive cock of his head conveyed an invitation to Wilfred to join the circle. Wilfred, gasping, hastened by with lowered head, a hot tide pouring up and scorching his cheeks and forehead. The boy’s mocking laughter pursued him.
“Hey, wait a minute, Kid!”
Wilfred darted around the corner.
He made his way home with head down, averting his sight from the sordid streets, and the disgusting beings that frequented them. He knew of course that the change was in himself. He had lost his talisman in the mud. He felt sodden. What’s the use? he asked himself in the last bitterness of spirit; I can’t climb a little way out of the muck, but my foul nature drags me back again. I am the same as that rotten boy. He saw it. . . . Oh God! if I could only forget the look of that boy!