Sylvie was going to New York too,—going to have singing lessons, for she had a very sweet voice, and every one agreed that it would be a mistake not to give it the best training. The problem of how to manage for Sylvie had received the following solution, and Mrs. LeGrand proffered it as a possible way to manage for Hagar also. There was Powhatan Maine's family in New York—Powhatan himself and Bessie and their widowed daughter, Mrs. Bolt, with her two children. They lived well, "in our quiet, homelike, Southern fashion, of course." Powhatan was a solid lawyer in a solid firm. Sylvie had paid them a visit once before, but of course this year it was a question of her being in New York for months and months. Now, ordinarily, the Maines would not have heard of such a thing, but this disastrous year, with everybody failing, Powhatan had lost heavily in stocks and apparently they were having to economize. At any rate, Bessie was willing, just for this year, to take Sylvie under her wing and to let her pay for her room and board. The Maines' house was a good, big one, and Mrs. LeGrand had very little doubt that, just as a family favour, Bessie would be willing to receive Hagar on similar terms. Bessie would certainly stipulate that the arrangement should be a quiet one, just between themselves, and that Hagar, no less than Sylvie, should be regarded merely as a young friend and connection, visiting her that winter. This understood, Bessie would look after the two as if they were her own. It was fortunate that neither Sylvie nor Hagar was "out," for the Maines were in mourning. But Powhatan and Bessie knew a great many people, and the two girls would probably see company enough. "You remember Bessie, don't you? Good-nature itself! Nothing pleases her so much as having people happy about her." Then, too, there would be Rachel Bolt. She could take Hagar to the theatre and to concerts and the picture galleries and where not. "The Maines are all members of St. Timothy's—the Bishop's nephew's church, you know."—In fine, Mrs. LeGrand advised that the Ashendynes write at once to Mrs. Maine. It was done and Hagar's winter soon arranged for.
New York!... She had dreamed of great cities, but she had never seen one. The night on the sleeping-car—her first night on any sleeping-car—she stayed awake and watched through the window the flying clouds and the moon and stars between, and, underneath, the fugitive landscape. There was a sense of exaltation, of rushing on with the rushing world. Now and again, as the train creaked and swung, and once, as another roared past, there came moments of fascinated terror. Rushing train and rushing world, all galloping wildly through the night, and in front, surely some bottomless precipice!... She and Sylvie had a section, and though Hagar had offered to take the upper berth, it had ended in their having it put back and sleeping together. Now Hagar sat up in bed, and looked at the sleeping Sylvie. There was a dim, blended light, coming from the lamp above and the moonlight night without. Sylvie lay, half-uncovered, fast asleep, her hair in glossy braids, her pretty face, shell-tinted, sunk in the pillow, her breast quietly rising and falling. Hagar had an intense, impersonal, abstract passion for beauty wherever and in whatever form it resided. Now, limbs beneath her, her arms nursing each other, she sat and regarded the sleeping Sylvie with a pure, detached admiration. The train roared into a station; she drew the window curtain until it roared out again, then bared the window, and sat and watched the flying dark woods and the silver surface of some wide water. New York—New York—New York....
Sylvie was a travelled lady. Sylvie had been to New York before. She had been to Florida and New Orleans and Niagara and Saratoga. She could play sweetly, not arrogantly,—Sylvie was not arrogant, except, perhaps, a little when it came to good looks,—the part of guide and mentor to Hagar. In the Jersey City station she kept a reassuring touch upon Hagar's arm down the long platform to the gate. "The New York Ferry has a sign over it. Even if they don't meet us, I know how to manage—Oh, there's Cousin Powhatan!"
It was a pearl-grey morning, going over, with a mist that was almost a fog hanging upon the water and making unearthly and like a mirage the strange sky-line before them. There were not so many huge, tall buildings as there would be in after years, but they were beginning. The mist drifted, opening and closing, and to the mist was added the fairy garlands and pennants of white steam. Out of the luminous haze grew white ferryboats and low barges, and here passed an opalescent shape like a vast moth wing. "A sailboat," said Hagar under her breath. The air was chill and clinging. Sylvie and Captain Powhatan Maine preferred to sit and talk within the cabin, but Hagar remained outside. She stood with her hands lightly touching the rail, her eyes wide. Another sailboat slipped past. She turned and looked along the widening water, oceanward, and in a rift of the grey pearl clouds she seemed to see, at a great distance, a looming woman shape. A salt odour filled her nostrils. "Oh, the sea! I smell the sea!"
The ferryboat glided into its slip, the bell rang, the chains rattled; out resonantly, from the lower deck, passed the great dray horses and heavy wagons; the passengers disembarked; a crowd hurried, in column, toward the Elevated. Half-bewildered, Hagar found herself mounting long flights of steps, passing through a gateway, entering a train, which at once, with a shriek, began to run upon a level with second-story windows. She saw dingy red-brick factory and tenement buildings close, close to her face; fire-escapes and staring windows with squalid or horribly tawdry rooms beyond; on the window-sills spindling, starved plants in ancient, battered tin cans, children's faces, women leaning out, children, children, children—"We have to go quite far uptown," said Captain Maine. "Well, and what do you girls want to see first?"
He was a short, stout, gallant gentleman with a fierce grey mustache. Sylvie talked for both. Hagar nodded her head or commanded a smile when manners seemed to indicate it, but her mind was dealing with a nightmare. "Was this—was this New York?" Once she turned her head toward their escort, but something told her that if, indeed, she asked the absurd question, he would say, "Why, yes! Don't you like it?"
Where were the domes and colonnades? Where the cleanness and fairness—where the order and beauty? Where was the noble, great city? Where were the happy people? She tried to tell herself, first, that all these were there, that this was but a chance ugly street the train was going through ... but they went through it for miles, and she caught glimpses of so many other streets that seemed no better! And then she tried to tell herself, that, after all, she must have known it would be something like this. She had seen before, on a small scale, in a small city, decrepit buildings and decrepit people of all ages. Poverty, dirt, and disease.... One city would be like another, only larger.... She must have known. But knowing did not seem to have helped—or perhaps she had never really seen, nor thought it out. She was tired and overstrained; a horror came upon her. She looked through a window into a room hung with a ghastly green, torn, and soiled paper. Men and women were working in it, bent over a long table, working haggardly and fast, the shirts of the men, the bodices of the women, open at the throat. Another window—a wretched, blowsy woman and a young man with a bloated, unwholesome face;—another, and an old, old woman with a crying child, whom she struck;—then mere blank windows or windows with starveling geraniums in broken pots; and beneath and around and everywhere voices and heavy wheels, and the train rushing on upon its trestle high in the air. Something black and cold and hopeless rolled over Hagar's soul. It was as though the train were droning, droning, a melancholy text.
"Hagar! What is the matter? You looked as though you were going to faint!"
But Hagar wasn't going to faint. She pulled herself together. "No, no! It isn't anything! I was tired, I suppose—"