In front of the St. Nicholas Hotel a lank and shabby man had mounted a cracker box, and was evidently making a speech, but Berkley could distinguish nothing he said because of the wild cheering.
Everywhere, threading the throng, hurried boys and men selling miniature flags, red-white-and-blue rosettes, and tricoloured cockades; and everybody was purchasing the national colours — the passing crowd had already become bright with badges; the Union colours floated in streamers from the throats or sleeves of pretty girls, glinted in the lapels of dignified old gentlemen, decorated the hats of the stage-drivers and the blinders of their horses.
“Certainly,” said Berkley, buying a badge and pinning it in his button-hole. “Being a hero, I require the trade-mark. Kindly permit that I offer a suggestion—” a number of people waiting to buy badges; were now listening to him— “those gentlemen gathered there in front of the New York Hotel seem to be without these marks which distinguish heroes from citizens. No doubt they’ll be delighted to avail themselves of your offered cockades.”
A quick laugh broke out from those around, but there was an undertone of menace in it, because the undecorated gentlemen in front of the New York Hotel were probably Southerners, and Secessionists in principles; that hostelry being the rendezvous in New York of everything Southern.
So, having bestowed his mischievous advice, Berkley strolled on down Broadway, his destination being the offices of Craig and Son, City and Country Real Estate, where he had a desk to himself, a client or two in prospect, and considerable leisure to study the street, gas, and sewer maps of New York City.
Tiring of this distraction, he was always at liberty to twiddle his thumbs, twirl his pencil, yawn, blink, and look out of the window at the City Park across the way, where excited citizens maintained a steady yelling monotone before the neighbouring newspaper offices all day long.
He was also free to reflect upon his own personal shortcomings, a speculation perhaps less damaging than the recent one he had indulged in; and he thought about it sometimes; and sometimes about Ailsa Paige, whom he had not again seen since the unaccountable madness had driven him to trample and destroy the first real inclination he had ever had for a woman.
This inclination he occasionally found leisure to analyse, but, not understanding it, never got very far, except that, superficially, it had been more or less physical. From the moment he saw her he was conscious that she was different; insensibly the exquisitely volatile charm of her enveloped him, and he betrayed it, awaking her, first, to uneasy self-consciousness; then uneasy consciousness of him; then, imperceptibly, through distrust, alarm, and a thousand inexplicable psychological emotions, to a wistful interest that faintly responded to his. Ah! that response! — strange, childish, ignorant, restless — but still a response; and from obscure shallows unsuspected, uncomprehended — shallows that had never before warned her with the echo of an evanescent ripple.
For him to have reflected, reasoned, halted himself, had been useless from the beginning. The sister-in-law of this girl knew who and what he was and had been. There was no hope for him. To let himself drift; to evoke in her, sometimes by hazard, at times with intent, the delicate response — faint echo — pale shadow of the virile emotions she evoked in him, that, too, was useless. He knew it, yet curious to try, intent on developing communication through those exquisite and impalpable lines that threaded the mystery from him to her — from her to him.
And then, when the mystery all about them was aquiver, and her vague eyes met his through the magic, acquiescent under a sorcery for which she had no name — then, when all things occult breathed silence — then he had said too much!
It was perhaps as well that he had said it then as later — as well perhaps that, losing self-control, defeat had moved his tongue to boast, had fixed the empty eye and stamped the smile he wore with a confidence dead in him for ever.
He had said that he would come back. He knew that he would not.
It was the pitiful defiance of a boaster hopelessly hurt.
He no longer desired to see her again. Never again would he risk enduring what she had evoked in him, whatever it was of good or of evil, of the spiritual or the impure — he did not know he was aware only of what his eyes had beheld and his heart had begun to desire.
On his way back from the office that evening he met Camilla Lent and her uncle, the Captain, and would have passed with an amiable salute, but the girl evinced a decided desire to speak. So he turned and joined them.
“How do you do, Camilla? How are you, Captain Lent? This re-conversion of the nation’s ploughshares and pruning hooks is a noisy affair, isn’t it?”
“April 18th, 1861!” replied the Captain quickly. “What you hear, sir, is the attrition consequent upon the grinding together of certain millstones belonging to the gods.”
“I have no doubt of it, Captain Lent; they’ll probably make meal of us all. Are you offering your services, sir.”
Camilla said quickly, and with gayest confidence: “Uncle has been looking about casually. There are so many regiments forming, so many recruiting stations that we — we haven’t decided — have we, uncle?” And she gave Berkley a wistful, harrowing glance that enlightened him.
He said gravely: “I suppose the average age of these volunteers will be about eighteen. And if the militia go, too, it will be comforting for a defenceless city to know she has men of your experience to count on, Captain Lent.”
“I am going to the front,” observed the Captain.
“There may be much to be done in New York, sir.”
“Then let the police do it,” said Captain Lent calmly. “The Union must and shall be preserved. If any man attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him upon the spot. Et cetera, sir, et cetera.”
“Certainly. But it’s a question of niggers, too, I believe.”
“No, sir. It is not a question of niggers. It is a question of who’s at the wheel, Union or State. I myself never had any doubts any more than I ever doubted the Unitarian faith! So it is no question for me, sir. What bothers me is to pick out the regiment most likely to be sent first.”
“We’ve walked our legs off,” said Camilla, aside, “and we’ve been in all kinds of frightful places where men are drilling and smoking and swearing and yelling; and I was dreadfully afraid a gun would go off or somebody would be impudent to uncle. The dear old thing,” she whispered, “he is perfectly sure they want him and that he has only to choose a regiment and offer his sword. Oh, dear! I’m beginning to be terribly unhappy — I’m afraid they won’t let him go and I’m deadly afraid they might! And I’m sure that Jim means to go. Oh, dear! Have you seen Ailsa Paige lately?”
“No. . . . I hope she is quite well.”
“You are not very enthusiastic.”
“I have every reason to be. She is a very winsome girl.”
“She’s a dear. . . . She has spoken of you several times.”
“That is most amiable of her, and of you to say so.”
“Oh, very,” laughed Camilla, tossing her pretty head, “but it evidently does not interest you very much. In fact—” she glanced sidewise— “it is understood that no woman ever interests you for more than forty-eight consecutive hours.”
“Pure slander, Camilla. You do.”
“Oh — not in the way I mean.”
“Well, but you don’t expect me to be interested in Mrs. Paige — in the way you mean do you?”
“Why not?” she asked mischievously.
“Because, to begin properly, Mrs. Paige is not likely ever to become interested in me.”
“I am heartily glad of it,” retorted Camilla. “You’d forget her in a week,”
“That’s more than forty-eight hours,” he said, laughing. “You’re flattering me now.”
“Anyway,” said Camilla, “I don’t see why everybody that knows her isn’t mad about Ailsa Paige. She has such high principles, such ideals, such wonderful aspirations—” She clasped her hands sentimentally: �
�At times, Phil, she seems too ethereal, scarcely of earth — and yet I breakfasted with her and she ate twice as much as I did. How does she keep that glorious figure!”
Plumpness was the bane and terror of Camilla’s life. Her smooth, suave white skin was glossy and tight; distracting curves, entrancing contours characterised her now; but her full red lips fairly trembled as she gazed at her parents’ portraits in her bedroom, for they had both been of a florid texture and full habit; and she had now long refused sugar and the comforts of sweetmeats dear to the palate of her age and sex. And mostly was this self-denial practised for the sake of a young and unobservant friend, one Stephen Craig, who had so far evinced no unusual inclination for her, or for anything except cigars and masculine society of his own age and condition.
She managed to get Philip Berkley to talk about Stephen, which ingenuity soothed her. But Philip was becoming bored, and he presently escaped to retrace his steps up Broadway, up Fifth Avenue, and then west to the exceedingly modest lodgings whither fate and misfortune had wafted him.
On the way he passed Colonel Arran’s big double house with a sullen and sidelong scowl, and continued onward with a shrug. But he smiled no more to himself.
Burgess was in the room, cross-legged on the floor, ironing out his master’s best coat.
“What the devil are you about,” said Philip ungraciously. “Get up.
I need what floor I’ve got to stand on.”
Burgess obediently laid the board and the coat on a trunk and continued ironing; and Philip scowled at him askance.
“Why don’t you enlist?” he said. “Every car-driver, stage-driver, hackman, and racing-tout can become major-generals if they yell loud enough.”
Burgess continued ironing, then stole a glance at his master.
“Are you thinking of enlisting, sir?”
“No; I can’t pass the examination for lung power. By the way,” he added, laughing, “I overlooked the impudence of your question, too. But now is your time, Burgess. If I wanted you I’d have to put up with your insolence, I suppose.”
“But you don’t want me, sir.”
“Which restrains you,” said Philip, laughing. “Oh, go on, my friend. Don’t say ‘sir’ to me; it’s a badge of servitude pasted onto the vernacular. Say ‘Hi!’ if you like.”
“Sir?”
“Hell! I say don’t behave like a servant to me.”
“I am a servant, sir.”
“You’re not mine.”
“Yes, sir, I am. Will you wear this coat this evening, sir?”
“God knows,” said the young fellow, sitting down and gazing about at the melancholy poverty of the place. . . . “Is there any of that corn whisky?”
“No, sir.”
“Damn it, you said there was this morning!”
“No, sir, I didn’t.”
The man lied placidly; the master looked at him, then laughed.
“Poor old Burgess,” he said aloud as though to himself; “there wasn’t a skinful in that bottle. Well, I can’t get drunk, I can’t lie here and count from six to midnight and keep my sanity, I can’t smoke — you rascal, where’s my cigar? And I certainly can’t go out anywhere because I haven’t any money.”
“You might take the air on the avenue, sir. Your clothes are in order.”
“Poor Burgess! That was your amusement, wasn’t it? — to see me go out discreetly perfumed, in fine linen and purple, brave as the best of them in club and hall, in ballroom and supper room, and in every lesser hell from Crystal Palace cinders to Canal.
“Poor Burgess! Even the seventy-five pretty waitresses at the Gaities would turn up their seventy-five retrousse noses at a man with pockets as empty as mine.”
“Your clothes are fashionable. So is your figger, sir.”
“That settles it?” protested the young fellow, weak with laughter. “Burgess, don’t go! Don’t ever go! I do need you. Oh I do want you, Burgess. Because there never will be anybody exactly like you, and I’ve only one life in which to observe you, study you, and mentally digest you. You won’t go, will you?”
“No sir,” said Burgess with dignity.
CHAPTER VI
There was incipient demoralisation already in the offices of Craig & Son. Young gentlemen perched on high benches still searched city maps and explored high-way and by-way with compass and pencil-point, but their ears were alert to every shout from the streets, and their interest remained centred in the newspaper bulletins across the way, where excited crowds clamoured for details not forthcoming.
All day, just outside the glass doors of the office, Broadway streamed with people; and here, where the human counter currents running north and south encountered amid the racket of omnibuses, carts, carriages, and drays, a vast overflow spread turbulently, eddying out around the recruiting stations and newspaper offices which faced the City Park.
Sidewalks swarmed, the park was packed solid. Overhead flags flew from every flag pole, over every portal, across every alley and street and square — big nags, little flags, flags of silk, of cotton, of linen, of bunting, all waving wide in the spring sunshine, or hanging like great drenched flowers in the winnowing April rain.
And it was very hard for the young gentlemen in the offices of
Craig & Son to keep their minds on their business.
Berkley had a small room to himself, a chair, a desk, a city map suspended against the wall, and no clients. Such occasional commissions as Craig & Son were able to give him constituted his sole source of income.
He also had every variety of time on his hands — leisure to walk to the window and walk back again, and then walk all around the room — leisure to go out and solicit business in a city where already business was on the edge of chaos and still sliding — leisure to sit for hours in his chair and reflect upon anything he chose — leisure to be hungry and satisfy the inclination with philosophy. He was perfectly at liberty to choose any subject and think about it. But he spent most of his time in trying to prevent himself from thinking.
However, from his window, the street views now were usually interesting; he was an unconvinced spectator of the mob which started for the Daily News office, hissing, cat-calling, yelling: “Show your colours!” “Run up your colours!” He saw the mob visit the Journal of Commerce, and then turn on the Herald, yelling insult and bellowing threats which promptly inspired that journal to execute a political flip-flap that set the entire city smiling.
Stephen, who had conceived a younger man’s furtive admiration for Berkley and his rumoured misdemeanours, often came into his room when opportunity offered. That morning he chanced in for a moment and found Berkley at the window chewing the end of a pencil, perhaps in lieu of the cigar he could no longer afford.
“These are spectacular times,” observed the latter, with a gesture toward the street below. “Observe yonder ladylike warrior in brand-new regimentals. Apparently, Stephen, he’s a votary of Mars and pants for carnage; but in reality he continues to remain the sartorial artist whose pants are more politely emitted. He emitted these—” patting his trousers with a ruler. “On what goose has this my tailor fed that he hath grown so sightly!”
They stood watching the crowds, once brightened only by the red shirts of firemen or the blue and brass of a policeman, but now varied with weird uniforms, or parts of uniforms, constructed on every known and unknown pattern, military and unmilitary, foreign and domestic. The immortal army at Coventry was not more variegated.
“There’s a new poster across the street,” said Stephen. He indicated a big advertisement decorated with a flying eagle.
DOWN WITH SECESSION!
The Government Appeals to the
New York Fire Department for One Regiment of Zouaves!
Companies will select their own officers. The roll is
at Engine House 138, West Broadway.
ELSWORTH, COL: ZOUAVES.
“That’s a good, regiment to enlist in, isn’t it?” said the boy restlessly.
&
nbsp; “Cavalry for me,” replied Berkley, unsmiling; “they can run faster.”
“I’m serious,” said Stephen. “If I had a chance—” He turned on Berkley: “Why don’t you, enlist? There’s nothing to stop you, is there?”
“Nothing except constitutional timidity.”
“Then why don’t you?”
Berkley laughed. “Well, for one thing, I’m not sure how I’d behave in battle. I might be intelligent enough to run; I might be ass enough to fight. The enemy would have to take its chances.”
The boy laughed, too, turned to the window, and suddenly caught
Berkley by the arm:
“Look! There’s something going on down by the Astor House!”
“A Massachusetts regiment of embattled farmers arrived in this hamlet last night. I believe they are to pass by here on their way to Washington,” remarked Berkley, opening the window and leaning out.
Already dense crowds of people were pushing, fighting, forcing their way past the windows, driven before double lines of police; already distant volleys of cheers sounded; the throb of drums became audible; the cheering sounded shriller, nearer.
Past the windows, through Broadway, hordes of ragged street arabs came running, scattered into night before another heavy escort of police. And now the on-coming drums could be heard more distinctly; and now two dusty officers marched into view, a colonel of Massachusetts infantry attended by a quartermaster of New York militia.
Behind them tramped the regimental band of the 6th Massachusetts, instruments slung; behind these, filling the street from gutter to gutter, surged the sweating drummers, deafening every ear with their racket; then followed the field and staff, then the Yankee regiment, wave on wave of bayonets choking the thoroughfare far as the eye could see, until there seemed no end to their coming, and the cheering had become an unbroken howl.
Stephen turned to Berkley: “A fellow can’t see too much of this kind of thing and stand it very long. Those soldiers are no older than I am!”
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