The dark mother

by Waldo David Frank

“Hard on the horses? Maybe. Maybe it will. That’s the rule of civilization. It is hard on us all. Hard on the workers and hard on the bosses. It’s worth it. Progress must have her dividends. When Captains of Industry die of overwork, should we spare horses? We’ll do without them!”

Mr. Deane made a long strip of his napkin and ran it horizontally, methodically over his mouth. “You see,” he went on, “you’ll have to change your outlook on life, now that you are to become a part of the great City—a part of the great Machine. You’ll be proud of it, soon enough. The New Yorker is a man of service. He serves Business. He serves Country. He don’t think of himself. Look at me. Your Aunt Lauretta is away vacationing. I stay here and work. I don’t think of myself. I’ve not taken three weeks off in twenty years’ time. I stick to my guns. They can trust me in the City. They know I am faithful: I am always on the spot. The easy jolly ways of the country don’t go far in the Metropolis. We’re a beehive, we are. Work! Service! And the ambition of each man is to die in harness. Of course, I mean the men who succeed. That is the one way to earn real money in New York. To think of absolutely nothing else: to give time to absolutely nothing else. There’s the American Ideal of Service for you.” He paused and glowed upon his nephew who sat, stiffly erect, trying to believe, in order that he might like this talk.... “And, my boy, what’s the result? Don’t you know?... America is the result!” He flourished his white hands. “The great Democracy. The land of three and a half million square miles. We’ve made it. The American Ideal made it. I’ve been out West. I’ve seen our country. The Rockies that you could drop the Alps into—lose them. The Grand Canyon that’s a mile from top to bottom. The geysers in Yellowstone Park. The greatest, most populous, the biggest country on Earth! And we’ve made it. We’re making it, my boy. American Ideals.”

Mr. Deane stopped again. He reached for his climax. He found it. “I presume,” he said, “I presume no sane man will deny that William McKinley is the greatest statesman to-day in the world.”

He said this with a new impressive quiet. He had heard a speech of Senator Black: he had shaken hands with him. He recalled his gesture.

David nodded. He felt he must do something. He felt a strange discomfort. Why should he resent these patriotic words? why want to doubt them? Should he not have found glory in believing? His mind dropped back to Thomas Rennard and he knew that Rennard would have contrived to scout these boasts. He found himself relieved. He wanted Rennard as a companion in the guilt of his mood. He was quite sure it was guilt to doubt a word of his uncle’s. No question of that.

He sat beside him in the car: his uncle was reading his third morning paper. They spurted and clanked, they swayed down the great iron street. David was swung in the wonders of this clanging cable that tossed them headlong, while the wheels groaned to be free of their rails, that dropped them rocking and sighing to a halt. What he saw was himself surrounded by mournful men—clottings of men under straps—and all devoured by the news they sucked from their papers, all immersed by the same strange shadows—angular shadows—he felt in his own veins. Beyond the maze of men ran out the mazes of traffic. Capering strides of horses with yearnful nostrils; interminable houses, motley, jagged, restless, broken off into squares and corners like herded wild things before the assault of other wild things more volatile than they. So it seemed to David: these buildings grouped in panic were of one stuff and soul with the scurrying, arrogant throngs that pressed about them and clambered through them.

In its startled rhythm David’s mind wandered aimlessly. He forgot about the car: when it moved with any respite it loped like a weary and whipped horse. The broken rhythm made openings for his mind: patches of his past came through the interstices of moving, came torn and poignant. He saw himself in his easy greasy clothes at work at home: he felt the shoulders of plain men beside his shoulders: eyes of brothers looked into his eyes and his hands, black with oil, clasped other hands that were warm. His hands and theirs were near each other—far, equally far from himself now moving through a city. He saw not patches of his past but of himself, as if he had been looking through this clot of men at a man beyond them. He had a vision, harried by the car’s toss, of a young man alive with many others. They marched along a hooded way into a shadowy house. Their loose clothes, the grease of their hands, the smile of their eyes was going to be cleansed away. He saw his hands clasping, so far from his hands now, hands of men who were brothers and who were losing hold of a warmth held in the clasp of hands.... His drifting mind touched a book he had loved: The Tale of Two Cities. He saw a tumbril with its sodden burden moving through the Terror of Paris. He saw the death-claimed gaze of men moving through crowded streets. He heard the groan of wheels. Seeing these far things, when his uncle jerked his sleeve—“Here we are”—he was not far away....

“That’s the East River yonder.”

David’s mood changed.... They walked down a narrow street whose name was a legend. David was walking on Wall Street. Glass casements fronting heavy buildings, huge masonry pillared by slender stone—the grace and loom, the hypocrisy of Power. Spawn of the buildings: men with naked singing nerves like wires in storm, and women with dead eyes, women with soft breasts against a hard tiding world. Furious streets. A street wide and delirious with men shouting and waving their straw-hats like banners. Streets narrow and somber that curled like smoke across his feet. Streets eaten with secret moods. Streets cluttered and twisting with pent power. Streets pulsant like hose. Streets slumberous like pythons. Streets writhing and locked.

A wide gash of sky. The sun was a stranger. The blue was a burn.