Half a dozen promising painters are standing in the doorway talking to a young woman who, beginning with newspaper work, has stepped suddenly into a niche of fiction. The tall, loose-jointed man at the left of the group, the editor of a conservative monthly, has for his vis-à-vis the artist who has had so much to do with the redemption of American architecture and decoration from the mongrel period of the middle century. Another night you may not see a single one of these faces, but another set, yet equally interesting.
Meanwhile Martin Cortright had discovered a man, a financier and also a book collector of prominence, who was reputed to have a complete set of some early records that he had long wished to consult; he had never found a suitable time for meeting him, as the man, owing to having been oftentime the prey of both unscrupulous dealers and parasitic friends, was esteemed difficult.
Infected by the freedom of his surroundings, Martin plucked up courage and spoke to him, the result being an interchange of cards, book talk, and an invitation to visit the library.
Then the music began, and lasted not above an hour, with breathing and chatting intervals, followed by claret cup and lemonade. A pleasant evening's recreation, with no opportunity of accumulating the material for either mental or physical headache.
The night air was very soft, but of that delusive quality that in February portends snow, and not the return of bluebirds, as the uninitiated might expect. Miss Lavinia was fascinated by the lights and motion of Herald Square, and at her suggestion, it being but a little past ten, we strolled homeward down Broadway instead of taking a car. Her delight at the crowd of promenaders, the picturesque florists' shops, and the general buzz of night life was almost pathetic. Her after-dark experience having been to get to and from specified places as quickly as possible with Lucy for escort, solicitous when in a street car lest they should pass their destination, and trembling even more when in a cab lest the driver should have committed the variable and expansive crime of "taking something." She bought a "ten o'clock edition" of the Telegram, some of "Match Mary's" wares, that perennially middle-aged woman who haunts the theatre region, and suggested that we have ice-cream soda at a particularly glittering drug store, but this desire was switched into hot bouillon by Evan, who retains the Englishman's dislike of chilling his internals.
New York is really a fine city by night, that is, in parts at least, and yet it is very strange how comparatively few of the rank and file of its inhabitants walk abroad to see the spectacle.
By lamplight the scars and wounds of subways appear less vivid, and the perpetual skeleton of the skyscraper merges in its background. The occasional good bit of architecture steps out boldly from the surrounding shadows of daylight discouragement. City life does not seem to be such an exhausting struggle, and even the "misery wagons," as I always call ambulances to myself, look less dreary with the blinking light fore and aft, for you cannot go far in New York without feeling the pitying thrill of their gongs.
After the brightness of Broadway the side streets seemed cavernous. As we turned westward and crossed Sixth Avenue a dark figure, outlined full length against the blazing window of a corner liquor saloon, lined with mirrors, in some way fixed my attention. It was a woman's figure, slight, and a little crouching. The hat was gay and set on puffy hair, the jacket brave with lace, but the skirt was frayed where it lapped the pavement, and the boot that was pushed from beneath it, as if to steady a swaying frame, was thin and broken. I do not know why I looked back after I had passed, but as I did so, I saw the girl, for she was little more, pull a scrap of chamois from a little bag she carried and quickly rub rouge upon her hollow cheeks, using the saloon mirror for a toilet glass. But when I saw the face itself I stopped short, giving Evan's arm such a tug that he also turned.
The woman was Jennie, the Oakland baker's only daughter, who had no lack of country beaus, but was flattered by the attentions of one of the Jenks-Smith's butlers, whose irreproachable manners of the count-in-disguise variety made the native youths appear indeed uncouth. She grew discontented, thought it beneath her social position to help her mother in the shop, and went to town to work in a store, it was said until her wedding, which was to be that autumn. Father worried over her and tried to advise, but to no purpose. This was more than two years ago. The butler left the Jenks-Smith's, and we heard that he was a married man, with a family who had come to look him up.
Jennie's mother said she had a fine place in a store, and showed us, from time to time, presents the girl had sent her, so thus to find the truth was a shock indeed. Not but what all women who are grown must bear upon them the weight of the general knowledge of evil, but it is none the less awful to come face to face on a street corner with one who was the pretty village girl, whom you last saw standing behind the neat counter with a pitcher of honeysuckles at her elbow as she filled a bag with sugar cookies for your clamouring babies.