Part 8

Claire would not speak. She was very frightened, as before has been recorded: she seemed to see, between the gloomy interspaces of the lamps, a phantasmal semblance of her father, looking untold rebuke at her, and then vanishing only to reappear. She walked onward with fleet energy. An idea shot through her mind that she might call a policeman to rid her of this incubus. But she dismissed the idea at once. It was too savagely desperate even for the confronting dilemma.

By this time Slocumb had begun to see plainly that Claire was proof against all his known methods of conquest. But she was unprotected, and he had a dogged dislike of giving up the siege. The silence continued for nearly five blocks. During this time his eyes scarcely once left her face, gleaming distinct or dim as the lamplight waxed or waned.

"Say!" he at length re-addressed her. "Ain't ye hungry? I was thinkin' a stew would go putty good, just now, or a dish o' ice-cream. P'r'aps ye'd rather tackle sumpn sweet. Hey?"

She made no answer. He peered closer into her face, and repeated the last odious little interrogative monosyllable a good many times. But Claire remained as mute and irresponsive as though it had fallen on stone-deaf ears.

This lure suddenly held out to appetite was his last persuasive stroke. It sprang naturally enough from the man who dealt it. It expressed in the most exhaustive terms just how narrow and barren his conception was of Claire's reasons for shunning him. He stood as the hideous result of a hideous phase of society; and he could no more divine or imagine higher and richer levels of life than if to know of these had meant to be familiar with the soil and climates of a remote star.

He was disappointed and chagrined, but not angry. Anger could not consort with his present state; another kind of heat already filled his veins; one flush kept the other aloof. He had now decided that Claire was not to be conciliated, and yet the perfect lawlessness of his past made him in a manner unable to snap the bond of attraction and leave her. Self-control was a sealed book to him; he had not even opened its cover, apart from learning its rudimentary lessons.

When they had gone five or six blocks further, and the street at which Claire would take the cross-town car was by no means far away, he abruptly caught her arm and drew it close to his side, so holding it with an exertion of purely muscular strength, beside which her own resistance counted for little more than the flutter of a bird.

Even at this most trying juncture she still moved on. He continued to walk, as well. She veered her face toward his, however, forced out of all her previous pitiful disdain, and he saw that she had grown pale as death.

"Let me go," she said. "Don't dare to hold me like this!"

"Look here!" he returned, his tones taking a nasal whisper, and his breath sweeping so close to her nostrils that she caught in it a stale taint, as of liquor drank some time ago. "I wouldn't harm a hair o' your head; you can jus' bet on that. I've took a likin' to you, an' I'll treat ye good. If you wus a lady livin' up t' Fifth Avenyer, ye wouldn't git more respectfuller behaved to nur I'll do."

"If you don't let me go," said Claire, gasping a little as she got out the words, "I'll complain to the first policeman we meet."

He dropped her arm at once, stopping short. "D' ye mean it?" he asked, with great show of reproach. "Say! d' ye mean it?"

But Claire hurried on. She had a wild momentary hope that she had hit at random upon a blessed source of deliverance. Here, however, she had quite miscalculated. Slocumb's outburst had merely formed a bit of the cheap sentimentality which one of his race and stamp would select as the lame makeshift in a forlorn cause.

It chanced that when Claire reached the desired corner a car was opportunely passing. She signaled to it; the driver saw her; it stopped, and she entered it. Meanwhile Slocumb had kept at her side, though with the distance between them materially widened. She paid no heed to the question of whether or not he entered with her. The car was entirely empty as she took her seat. A little later she slipped a five-cent piece into the small glass repository for passengers' fares--that touching proof of the confidence reposed in drivers by those who employ them. Shortly afterward she saw Slocumb standing on the outer platform. Her heart and courage almost failed her, then. He presently walked inside the car, and paid his fare, as she had done. She expected him to sit down and resume his persecutions, but he did neither. He went out again and stood on the platform.

The little car jingled along Eighth Street. It passed the grim, bastard architecture of the Mercantile Library, once, long ago, an opera house, in which Steffenone sang to assemblages where a gentleman in evening-dress or a lady without her bonnet was a rare enough incident, and nothing prophesied the horse-shoe of resplendent boxes before which Patti and Nilsson have since revealed their vocal charms. Soon afterward it came to Third Avenue, easily betrayed by the flare of gaslight in beer-saloon or liquor-shop, and a thoroughfare in which night revelry seems to have claimed especial stronghold. Near at hand, that hideous monument of philanthropy, the Cooper Union, frowns its unavailing displeasure upon the malt of Schneider and the alcohol of Moriarty, both of which project their noxious forces southward through the Bowery to the City Hall, and northward across many reputable side streets on to the shabby vulgarity of Harlem.

But Claire was naturally unprepared, just now, either to recognize or ponder the importance of this great popular boulevard which we call Third Avenue; how it blends our ruling Irish and German elements in one huge strand of commercial interests, each petty by itself, yet all, when massed together, of enormous metropolitan note; how its very name is pronounced with a mild sneer by our so-called better classes; how it is held common and of ill repute; how one must not speak of it in a Fifth Avenue drawing-room, lest he shall be suspected of having trodden its tainted pavements; and yet how there pulses through its big, tough artery nearly all the hot, impure political blood that feeds the venality of our elective systems, making it for this reason a fact to be always deplored but never lightly dismissed. Should the sombre growl against that sin of over-possession which we term monopoly ever grow into a revolutionary roar, it is very thinkable that the Robespierre of such an event would be born in Third Avenue; but if not, he might safely be depended on for having near relations there. The little car presently crossed Second Avenue, at its most quiet portion. All the garish brilliance had now quite vanished. Once beloved of respectability, this broad street, here in what we designate its lower portion, has preserved abundant souvenirs of perished fame. Many of the roomy old mansions that line it may be dispeopled of their pristine Knickerbockers, but even these retain much of their old stately repose. Up beyond, the tenement-house thrives, and the tavern flaunts a bottle-decked casement; but here, within generous limits, it remains a quarter full of decent though not dismal gloom, and touched with an occasional solid grandeur.

The car soon advanced into a very different region. It had reached one of the two long if not deep river-edges which skirt the central domain of our wealth and thrift. That squalor which dogs the heel of poverty was everywhere manifest. The very street-lamps seemed to burn with a dejected flicker. Night, however, was kind, and spared from view much unsightly soilure. The high brick houses, thronged with inmates whom all degrees of want and all modes of toil oppressed, lost themselves in shadow; but now and then you caught glimpses of the liquid filth clogging the gutters, and perhaps of a half-submerged cabbage-leaf or a more buoyant egg-shell, to fleck its slime with baleful color. Here spoke a crying municipal disgrace. The prosperous part of our city has its streets kept cleanly throughout the year, but dread injustice is wreaked upon these that are skirted by abodes of penury and need. Fat appropriations are of no avail; the tax-money slips into fingers that are deft in legerdemain; fraud and mismanagement meet as friends; it is not enough that our beautiful island must crowd her shores with all the disfeaturing accompaniments of commerce; she is forced, as well, to see them polluted, far inland, by the foulness born of bad legislation. This is one of the too frequent cases where, in our enlightened polity, democracy plays wantonly into the hands of monarchism.

A little later the car came into a wide, airy expanse, along two of whose sides it journeyed for a considerable distance. Here was Tompkins Square, now lighted with innumerable lamps, but only a few years ago a dark horror to all decent citizens living near it. By day set aside as a parade-ground for the city militia, which paraded there scarcely twice a year, its lampless lapse of earth was by night at least four good acres of brooding gloom, which he who ventured to cross stood the risk of thievish assault, if nothing more harmful. What added to the unique repulsiveness of the place for peace-loving denizens of its near streets, was an occasional concourse of growling and saturnine German socialists, held with stormy harangues and blood-thirsty diatribes under moon or star, and amid the congenial environing shadow, which was relieved, on these lurid occasions, by torches whose fitful flames typified the feverish theories disclosed.

But the car now passed a very different Tompkins Square from that of old. The grim blank has become, since then, a bright-lit realm where the tramp may fall prone on some of its many neat-built benches, but where the highwayman will find slim chance to ply his fell trade. When this region had been passed there remained only a brief space to be traversed before the ferry was reached. The avenues by this time had ceased to be numerically named; they had become alphabetical. But Avenues A, B, C, and D are all quite homogeneous as regards dolorous discomfort. The city here hides some of its worst lairs, and many a desperado infests them. After a little journey, such as Claire now took, you gain the small, dull-looking ferry.

Meanwhile seven or eight new passengers had entered the car. They were mostly Germans, and of both sexes. Claire felt a sense of protection. One stout woman, of truly colossal build, with a sleeping baby in her arms and an evident husband so hollow-cheeked and slight that it seemed wrong for him even to assume the responsibility of paying their double fare, especially reassured her. The rest were commonplace people enough. One was a weary work-girl; one was a collier, grimy with his trade and drowsy from drink; one was a dapper, bejeweled Hebrew, with oily amber whiskers and large, loose red lips; still another was a handsome young woman, smartly geared, who had said good-night, on entering, to a male escort, and who now glanced uneasily about her at intervals, as though fearful of being known. All this while Slocumb remained on the outer platform.

Presently the car stopped. Everybody alighted. The Tenth Street Ferry was close at hand. Claire knew that her hateful adherent was close at hand also. She paid her toll to the ferryman and glided through the narrow bit of passage-way forth upon the long dark dock beyond. She expected, at every new step, to be re-accosted by Slocumb. A boat had landed, and was soon to disembark again. From the opposite dimness came an ominous clank of chains, made by the men at either of the two wheels, and a sudden "All aboard!" flung out in gruff tones as a stimulating monition. The other passengers all hastened forward. Claire was among them, though in the rear of the hurry. The foremost had gained the boat, when she felt a strong clutch upon her arm. Compelled by sheer force to pause, now, she turned, meeting Slocumb's face quite near her own. He at once spoke, in the same intimate sort of whisper that she had before found so distressing.

"Say! 'T ain't right t' shake me like this. I ain't goin' t' stand it, either. Come, change your mind. Treat me square. Will ye?"

Claire, driven to bay, did what her sex is sometimes held by a few renowned cynics as having a special talent for doing; she employed stratagem.

Her voice shook as she said: "Very well. What is it you wish me to do?"

She could feel the tense grasp upon her arm relax a little. This was just the kind of result she had aimed for.

"I want ye t' stay this side the river a spell yet, an' we'll eat somepn somewhere. Hey?"

The fingers about her arm had acquired a fondling laxity that half sickened her. But she waited a little. They were a good ten yards from the boat. It was possible that both their figures were too shadowed for the men at the chains to see them. Perhaps, on the other hand, these wardens did not care to shout a final notice that the boat was now unmoored.

Claire still chose to temporize. Her heart beat so that it seemed about to burst through her side; but she nevertheless kept her brain clear enough to maintain a subtlety of intent in strange contrast to her deep fear.

She had determined to get free if she could, and find refuge among the passengers on the boat. Here, in the lonely dusk of the dock, she was at a sad disadvantage; but once within the lighted cabin of the boat, she could find the same silent protection of mere surrounding that the car had afforded. She had a latent resolve, also, of future appeal to some of those whom she knew had preceded her, though this formed no real part of her present quick-formed scheme.

"Suppose that I do go with you," she said. "At what time would I be able to get home?"

Slocumb's grasp materially loosened. "Why, any time at all!" he exclaimed. "The boats run till 'bout two o'clock or so, an'"--

His sentence was cut short in its valuable explanation by a sudden disengaging spring on the part of Claire. She ran with her best speed toward the boat. She now perceived that it was just leaving the pier. By the time that she had gained almost the extreme edge of the latter, a voice from the receding boat itself cried out to her, "Don't jump!"

She saw, then, that a long, curved crevice was widening in a very rapid way at a slight space beyond the spot where she had abruptly halted. A few more seconds would make the leap a mere madness; now it needed nerve, agility, and was indeed a venture. But Slocumb stood behind her. The risk was worth the prize. Claire waited perhaps ten seconds; the crevice had grown a fissure; she saw the murky water give a dull flash or two, far below it. Then she jumped.

The space had not been more than three feet. She cleared it well. But _what she had cleared_ sent a sharp terror through her the instant after both feet had touched the firm bourne of the deck. For a little while she stood quite still, shivering, with her back to the dock thus boldly quitted. Her mind was wholly in a whirl. She did not hear the half-growled words of one of the men who had lately unloosed the boat, chiding her upon her folly, in gruff contempt of syntax.

But very soon this access of intense alarm lessened. She partly ceased to fix her thought upon what she had done, recalling instead, why she had done it. She turned, giving two flurried looks to right and left, doubtless from a sense that the abhorred one might have breasted the same peril as herself--in his case far lighter, of course.

Her gaze swept the opposite pier. It gleamed drowsy and obscure, with the effect of some grave marine monster just risen from the muddy tides below it. Strangely, also, the lights at either side gave it the semblance of two malign blazing eyes. And in the glimmer thus made Claire saw Slocumb.

He had not taken the leap. At first amazement had wrought in him its brief yet telling effect. Then he had dashed to the end of the pier, momentarily furious at thus being balked. But in a second his fury had cooled. And something had cooled it, very new to him, though very forcible. This was pity. He might easily have cleared the interspace. But he forbore to do so. He thrust both hands into his pockets, and with lowered head moved away. In an instant more it was too late for him to have changed his novel resolve, even had he so wished.

By the time that Claire's look lighted upon the pier he was nowhere visible. He had disappeared from her sight forever, as also from her life. He had been a dread though brief experience--a glimpse given her into the melancholy darkness of human wrong. The shadows had seemed to take him back among themselves, where he rightly belonged. Perhaps the episode of his insolence wrought some sort of effect upon her future acts; it is certain that she never quite forgot the miserable dismay he had roused; and when the struggle for worldly success afterward spurred her with so keen a goad, some vague remembrance of to-night may have quickened her aspiring impulses and made what we call the socially best gain fresh worth in her eyes by contrast with such foul deeps as lie below it.

Once confident that Slocumb had not followed her, she managed, with unsteady pace, to reach the outer rail of the deck and lean against it while the boat traversed the river. She was trembling a good deal, and felt an extreme weakness as well. But a glow of triumph upbore her. She had escaped at last!

The ugly boat, as it sped along, seemed a sentient accomplice of her final good fortune. She had a fancy that its thick wooden rail dumbly throbbed beneath her grasp. Her posture was a half-cowering one; the spell of her poignant fears had not yet passed. Her head leaned itself peeringly from stooped shoulders in such a way that its slim neck took the sort of curve we see in a frightened deer's.

A somewhat late moon had recently risen, whose advent had altered the whole face of the heavens, flooding it with a spectral, yellowish light. But borne rapidly across the moon's blurred disk, on some high, fleet rush of air, scudded volumes of rolling and mutable vapor. They constantly soared above the great dusky city, at first in dense black masses, then thinning and lengthening as they came midway between zenith and horizon. While Claire watched these strange and volatile clouds, so incessant in their motion and so swift in their continual upward stream, they took, for her confused fancy, the semblance of pursuant phantom shapes. They formed themselves into visages and bodies; they stretched forth uncouth yet life-like arms; they clenched hands of misty gloom, and shook them far above her, with ghostly, imminent defiance. Her former transit across the river had been fraught with sweet, poetic mystery; her present voyage was one touched with a kind of allegoric terror.

But the boat soon found its second wharfage. Claire sped out through the two cabins in time to join the crowd of disembarking passengers. Once more back in Greenpoint, she hurried along certain familiar streets until she arrived at her own dwelling. It was now a little after ten o'clock. She had an instinct that it was about this time. Above the high piazza, both parlor-windows were dark, but below it the windows of the basement portion were brightly lit. She passed into the scant space of garden and sought the lower door; she pulled the bell, set in the woodwork at her right, and waited.

No answer came, and she rang again. One of the side-lights gave her a good view into the hall beyond. She presently saw her mother appear. Mrs. Twining opened the door. It was not till she and her daughter stood face to face that the latter made a certain sharp, abrupt discovery.

"Mother!" she said, "you're pale--you look very strange. Is it because I staid away so long?"

"No," replied Mrs. Twining.

Claire grasped her mother's arm with both hands. "Then what is it?" she questioned. "You don't mean that--that Father's sick? _Do_ you?"

Mrs. Twining was white as death, and had dark rings round her fine black eyes. She laughed with great bitterness as she closed the door.

"Oh, no," she said. "Your father ain't sick, Claire."

These few words teemed, somehow, with a frightful irony. Claire knew her mother's moods so well that she now staggered backward a little as the two faced each other in this narrow hallway.

"Mother," she said, with a gasp, "what do you mean? Has anything _happened_ to Father?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Twining with a cruelty that Claire never forgot and never forgave. "Your father's dead. He died at nine o'clock. The doctor's here now. He says it's heart-disease. You're a nice gadabout, to be off for hours, nobody knows where, and come home to find" ...

Mrs. Twining ended her sentence at just this point, for Claire had dropped in a swoon before the next word could be spoken, upon the oil-cloth of the little hall which her own hands had so often swept.

VII.

That night was one of anguish and horror. As soon as enough strength had come to her with the return of consciousness, Claire insisted upon being taken to where her father lay. Not a tear left her eyes as she knelt beside his body. She was very white, and seemed perfectly calm. She kissed the dead man, now and then, on forehead and cheek. Once she rose, went to the window, and set both arms lengthwise upon its sash, propping her chin against her clasped hands. In this attitude she stared forth at the heaven, still full of moony light and still alive with its black pageantry of hurrying clouds. But their motion was more quick, now; the wind had grown stronger and colder; all touch of mildness was rapidly vanishing from the atmosphere. Claire felt the panes shake, and heard them rattle, as she leaned thus. There seemed an awful sympathy between this wild phase of nature and her own tumultuous, distraught sensations.

Grief and alarm clashed within her soul. She could not simply and passionately regret her father's loss, for the thought of her own friendless and penurious state would thrust itself into her consciousness. Her feelings of pure bereavement, of standing face to face with a vast and stern solitude, of having had something torn from her heart by the roots, were terrible enough. But none the less, on this account, could she fail to think with inward thrills of fright on the subject of her merely material future. In an hour or two something solidly defensive had been shattered and swept away. Her father's protection had kept aloof, so to speak, the huge, merciless forces of society. Now these forces were rushing upon her like yonder stream of antic-shaped clouds.

"What is to become of me?" she murmured aloud, not knowing that she spoke at all. "Who will help me? Where shall I turn? I am so alone--so fearfully alone!"

Mrs. Twining had come into the room, as it chanced, a moment before the utterance of Claire's first words. It was now a little before midnight; she had entered this chamber of death twice before, and had looked at her daughter's kneeling figure, there beside the corpse, but had retired again in silence. Now she spoke, as Claire finished speaking. The girl turned instantly as she began.

"Yes," she said, in her most hard and curt way. "I s'pose you _are_ alone, now _he's_ gone! You ain't got any mother, of course not! She's a cipher; she always was. You're going to quit her, I dare say; you're going to leave her in the lurch. P'raps you'll find some of those you was with to-night that'll see you don't come to grief. Well, 't ain't for me to complain at this late day. I've had chance enough to take your measure, Miss, long ago!"

There was a look of dreary fatigue on Claire's white face as she slowly answered: "Mother, I will not leave you. I don't wish to leave you."

"Oh, you don't, eh? Then why did you say you was _alone_?"