CHAPTER VII.

THROUGH THE SILENT CITY.

It was a strange march which Arthur and Barnhurst, arm in arm, took through the streets of the Empire City.

"I am ready to attend you wherever you go," whispered Arthur, as leaving the den of Madam Resimer, they went down the dark street.

"But, where shall I go?" was the question that troubled Barnhurst. "Home?" He shuddered at the thought. Any place but home! "Can I possibly get rid of him?" Doubtful, exceedingly doubtful; "his arm is too strong, and he has me in his power in every way. But that engagement which I have, to meet a person at the hour of four o'clock, at a peculiar place,--how shall I dispose of it? Shall I fail to keep it, or shall I make this man a witness of it?"

Barnhurst was troubled. He knew not what to do. And so arm in arm, they walked along in silence through a multitude of streets,--streets dark as grave-vaults, and laid out in old times, with a profound contempt of right angles--streets walled in with huge warehouses, above whose lofty roofs, you caught but a glimpse of the midnight stars.

And so passing along, they came at length upon the Battery, and caught the keen blast upon their cheeks, as they wandered among the leafless trees. They heard the roar of the waters, and saw the glorious bay,--dim and vast,--surging sullenly under the broad sky, dark with midnight, and yet, glittering with countless stars. A starlight view of Manhattan bay, from the Battery--it was a sight worth seeing. Herman and Arthur, standing there alone, looked forth in silence. They could not see each other's faces, but Arthur felt the incessant horror which agitated Barnhurst's arm and Barnhurst heard the groan which seemed wrung from Arthur's very heart.

For a long time there was silence. Flash on, old midnight, in your solemn drapery set with stars,--flash on,--you sparkled thus grandly ten thousand years ago, as you will ten thousand years hence,--what care you for the agony of these two men, who now with widely different feelings, stand awed by your sullen splendor!

"If you've seen enough of this, I guess we'd better go," said Arthur, mildly, "I am ready to follow you wherever you go."

Barnhurst silently moved away from the waters, and as they went among the leafless trees, Dermoyne looked back toward the sounding waves--looked back yearningly as though unwilling to leave the sight of them, something there was so tempting in that sight. One plunge and all is over!

They came upon Broadway. It was between two and three o'clock in the morning. I know of nothing in the world so productive of thought, as a walk along Broadway about three o'clock in the morning. The haunts of traffic are closed: the great artery of the city is silent as death: the mad current of life which whirled along it incessantly a few hours ago, has disappeared; or if there is life upon its broad flag-stones, it is life of a peculiar character, far different from the life of the day. And there it spreads before you, under the midnight stars, its vast extent defined by two lines of light, which, in the far distance melt into one vague mass of brightness. New York is the Empire City of the continent and Broadway is the Empire Street of the world.

If you don't believe it, just walk the length of Broadway on a sunny day, when it is mad with life and motion,--and then walk it, at night, and see the kind of life which creeps over its flag-stones under the light of the stars.

They took their silent march up Broadway.

What's this? A huge pile, surrounded by unsightly scaffolding--a huge Gothic pile, whose foundation is among graves, and whose unfinished spire already seems to touch the stars? Trinity Church--Trinity Church, fronting Wall street, as though to watch its worshipers, who scour Wall street, six days in the week in search of prey, and on the seventh, come to Trinity to say a rich man's prayer, from a prayer-book bound in gold.

And this, what's this? This creature in woman's attire, who glides along the pavement, now accosting the passer-by in language that sounds on woman's lips, like the accents of Hell,--and now, throwing her vail aside, clasps her hands and looks shudderingly around, as though conscious, that for her, not one heart in all the world, cared one throb! What's this? That is a woman, friend. A father used to hold her on his knees, just after the evening prayer was said--a mother used to bend over her as she slept, and kiss her smiling face, and breathe a mother's blessing over her sinless darling. But, what is she now? What does she here alone, out in the cold, dark night? * * * * She is a tenant of one of the houses owned by Trinity Church. She is out in the cold, dark night,--the poor blasted thing you see her,--seeking, out of the hire of her pollution, to swell the revenues of Trinity Church!

She came toward Arthur and Barnhurst, even as they passed before the portals of the unfinished church.

She laid her hand on Arthur's arm, and said to him, words that need not be written.

Arthur looked long and steadily into her face. It had been very beautiful once, but now there was fever in the flaming eyes, and death in the blue circles beneath them. She had fallen to the lowest deep.

"Look there!" whispered Arthur to Barnhurst, "she was as happy once as Alice, and as pure,--that is, as happy and as pure as Alice before you knew her. What is she now?"

Barnhurst did not reply.

Arthur took a silver dollar from his pocket and gave it to the girl. "Go home," he said, "and God pity you!"

"Home!" she echoed, and took the dollar with an incredulous look, and then uttering a strange mad laugh, she went to spend the dollar,--one-half of it for rum and the other half to pay the rent which she owed to Trinity Church.

(Here it occurs to us, to propose three cheers to good old Trinity Church,--and three more to the Patent Gospel which influences the actions of its venerable corporation. Hip--hip--hurrah! Hur--, but somehow the cheering dies away, when one thinks for a minute of the vast contrast between the Gospel of Trinity Church and the Gospel of the New Testament. I somehow think we won't cheer any more.)

Up Broadway they resumed their march, Herman and Arthur, arm in arm, and silent as the grave. To see them walk so lovingly together, you would have thought them the best friends in the world.

What's yonder light, flashing from the window of the fourth story? The light of a gambling hell, my friend. That light shines upon piles of gold and upon faces haggard with the tortures of the damned.

And these half naked forms, crouching in the doorway of yonder unfinished edifice,--huddling together in their rags, and vainly endeavoring to keep out the winter's cold. Children,--friendless, orphaned children. All day long they roam the streets in search of bread, and at night they sleep together in this luxurious style.

But we have arrived at the Astor and the Park stretches before us, the wind moaning among its leafless trees, and its lights glimmering in a sort of mournful radiance through the gloom. The Park, whose walks by day and night have been the theater of more tragedies of real life,--more harrowing agony, hopeless misery, starving despair,--than you could chronicle in the compass of a thousand volumes. Could these flag-stones speak, how many histories might they tell--histories of those, who, mad with the last anguish of despair, have paced these walks at dead of night, hesitating between crime and suicide, between the knife of the assassin and the last plunge of the self murderer!

But at this moment shouts of drunken mirth are heard, opposite the Astor. Some twenty gay young gentlemen, attired in opera uniform,--black dress-coat, white vest, white kid gloves,--and fragrant at once of champagne and cologne, have formed a circle around the ancient pump, which stands near the Park gate. These gay young gentlemen, after two hours painful endurance of that refinement of torture, known as the Italian Opera, have been making a tour of philosophical observation through the town; they have carried on a brisk crusade against the watchmen; have drank much champagne at a "crack" hotel; have tarried awhile in the aristocratic resort of Mr. Peter Williams, which, as you doubtless know, gives tone and character to the classic region of the Five Points; and now encircling the pump, they listen to the eloquent remarks of one of their number, who is interrupted now and then by rounds of enthusiastic applause. Very much inebriated, he is seated astride of the pump, which his vivid imagination transforms into a blooded racer--

"Gentlemen," he says, blandly and with a pardonable thickness of utterance, "if my remarks should seem confused, attribute it to my position; I am not accustomed to public speaking on horseback. But, as Congress is now in session, I deem it a duty which I owe to my constituents, to give my views on--on--on the great Bill for the Protection of--"

"Huckleberries!" suggested a voice.

"Thank the gentleman from Ann-street," continued the speaker, in true parliamentary style, as he swayed to and fro, on top of the pump; "of the great Bill for the Protection of Huckleberries! Now, gentlemen," he continued, suddenly forgetting his huckleberries, "you know they beat Henry Clay this time by their infernal cry of Texas and Oregon; you know it!"

There was a frightful chorus, "We do! we do!"

"You know how bad we felt when we crossed Cayuga bridge,--Polk on top, and Clay under,--but, gentlemen, I have a cry for 1848 that will knock their daylights out of 'em. They shouted Texas and Oregon, and licked us; but in 1848 we'll give 'em fits with _Clay_ and--JAPAN!"

"Clay and JAPAN!" was the chorus of the twenty young gentlemen.

"There's a platform for you, gentlemen! Clay and Japan! We'll give 'em annexation up to their eyes. Consider, gentlemen, the advantages of Japan! Separated from the continent by a trifling slip of water, known as the Pacific ocean. Japan may be considered in the light of a near neighbor. And then what a delicious campaign we can make, with Japan on our banner! Nobody I knows anything about her, and we can lie as we please, without the most remote danger of being found out. Isn't there something heart-stirring in the very word, JA-PAN? And then, gentlemen, we'll have 'em; for Japan ain't committed to any of the leading questions of the day, and we can make all sorts o' pledges to everybody, and--"

The orator, in his excitement, swayed too much to one side, and fell languidly from the pump into the arms of his enthusiastic friends; and, with three cheers for "Clay and Japan," the party of twenty young gentlemen went, in a staggering column, to a neighboring _restaurant_, where--it is presumable--a few bottles more put them, not only into the humor of annexing Japan, but all Asia in the bargain. Arthur and Barnhurst had observed this scene from the steps of the Astor.

"Do you know this is very absurd?" said Barnhurst, pettishly--"this walking about town all night?"

"Do you think so?" responded Dermoyne.

"Then why don't you go home?"

Home! Barnhurst shuddered at the thought. Home! Anything, anything but that!

There was something, too, in the singular gayety of Arthur's tone, which struck him with more terror than the most boisterous threat. Underneath this gayety, like floods of burning lava beneath a morning mist, there rolled and swelled a tide of unfathomable emotion.

"Let us walk on," said Barnhurst, faintly; and they walked on, arm in arm--the false clergyman with the very terror of death in his heart--the poor mechanic with a face immovably calm, but with the fire of an irrevocable resolution in his eyes. They walked on: up Broadway, and into the region where sits the sullen Tombs, and through the maze of streets, where vice and squalor, drunkenness and crime, hold their grotesque revel all night long. Through the Five Points they walked, confronted at every step by a desperate or abandoned wretch, their ears filled with the cries of blasphemy, starvation and mirth,--mirth, that was very much like the joy of nethermost hell. Into Chatham street they walked, and up the Bowery, and once more across into Broadway, where the delicate outlines of Grace Church, with its fairy-like sculpture work, were dimly visible in the night. Toward the North River, and through narrow alleys, where human beings were herded together in the last extreme of misery, they walked; and then into broad streets, whose splendid mansions, dark without from pavement to roof, were bright within with rich men's revels,--revels, drunken and foul beyond the blush of shame.

It was a strange, sad march, which they took in the silent night, through the vast Empire City.

And at every step Arthur gathered the Red Book closer to his side.

And behind them, in all their march, even from the moment when they left the Battery, two figures followed closely in their wake--unseen by Arthur or by Barnhurst,--two figures, tracking every step of their way with all a bloodhound's stealth and zeal.