The Wayfarers. Mary Stewart Cutting
that he winced and caught his breath involuntarily while trying to keep her from falling with that strong grip. The confused impression of his suffering grew finally so intense upon her, and seemed in her weak condition such a terrible load to bear, that she wept helplessly.
He felt her shaking, and stopped short, looking back at her anxiously. “What’s the matter?”
“I’m hurting you.”
“Not more than I can stand. Don’t stop to talk about it; we mustn’t fall behind. Hold my hand fast.”
The railroad-ties stretched beyond the tunnel. The rain met the wayfarers full in the face. The dark, tramping, struggling forms were all ahead with the drowning lanterns. The walk had become an incessant, endless thing, dreadful as a journey through the inferno, but for the protecting, enfolding clasp of that guiding hand—a strong, clean touch, that subtly conveyed warmth to the blood and courage to the heart. With her palm pressed to that of this unseen friend, Dosia felt clearly that she could have walked blindfolded to the end of the world, sure that he knew the path and that it led to some unknown good. They seemed to grow as one in the unspoken comforting of trust.
Their feet were on a road now. There was a sudden clatter of horses’ hoofs through the rush of wind and rain. A wagon stopped beside them. Dosia found herself lifted in and laid on a pile of straw. There were others lifted in also; then the horses jogged on with their load, carrying her away from the friend whose face she had not seen, and with whom she had exchanged no word of farewell.
She heard nothing of him in that long day at the farmhouse, where she lay waiting in a half stupor for the cousin who had been sent for. But through her life long that hand-clasp stood to Theodosia Linden for all the high, protecting care, the strength and gentleness, the fine, unselfish thought that a woman looks for in a man, and the finding of which is her greatest good on earth.
CHAPTER FOUR
It was a bright, fresh morning in November, the day after Dosia had begun her journey, that Justin Alexander started out to take possession of the office and factory. The departure from his old place was a thing of the past, the preparations for entering into the new business were at an end. Every evening during the last month had been taken up in consultations with Leverich and Martin, and every other spare minute had been given to looking over the furnishings and mechanism of the factory and visiting or writing letters to people connected with the project. It was sheer joy to him to exercise a grasp of intellect hitherto perforce in abeyance, and he did not see the frequent glance of satisfaction which his two backers often gave each other across the table as he propounded his views. The people in the old place had been good to him; his leaving had been celebrated with a dinner and honest expressions of regret from his former companions. The only one he had been really sorry to leave was Callender; it would seem odd not to have him at his elbow any more.
But all the preliminaries were finished, and he was master now. For a man who has barely lived each month upon his earnings, to have fifty thousand dollars in the bank subject to his order is a fairly pleasurable sensation. Justin had always inveighed against the idea that character, like other products, is controlled by wealth, but he insensibly put on a bolder front as he buttoned himself into his overcoat and walked from the ferry to his office. The morning had certainly developed a larger manner in him. The ease of affluence is first assimilated in thought, which acts upon the muscles. Justin did not know that the buoyancy of a golden self-confidence had communicated itself to the very way in which he nodded to a friend or shouldered his closed umbrella, or that his step upon the sidewalk had a new ring in it. It is the transmutation of metal into the blood—the revivifying power which the seekers after the philosopher’s stone recognized so thoroughly.
He had come to town on an earlier train than he was accustomed to take, and the people whom he passed were not familiar to him. There was a newness to the bright day, even in that, that marked the novel undertaking; the air was cold, but the light was golden. Men went by with yellow chrysanthemums pinned to their coats and a fresh and eager look upon their faces. The clang of the cable-cars had an enlivening condensation of sound in distinction to the hard rumble and jar of the wagons, but all the noises were inspiriting as part of a great and concentrated movement in which the day awoke to an enormous energy—an energy so pervading that even inanimate objects seemed to reflect it, as a mirror reflects the expression of those who look upon it.
His way lay farther up-town than he had been wont to go, above the Wall Street line of work and into that great city of wholesale industries which stretches northward. The streets at this hour were new to him and filled with new sights and sounds: the apple-stands at the corners, being put in order for the day, the sidewalk venders with their small wares, were fewer and of a different order from those he had been used to seeing. The passers-by were different. There were a great many girls in bright hats and shabby jackets, who talked incessantly as they walked, and disappeared down side streets which looked dark and cold and damp in contrast to the bright glitter of Broadway. He turned into one of these streets himself, and walked eastward toward the river.
As it appeared to him to-day, so had it never appeared to him before, and never would again. He might have been in a foreign city, so keenly did he notice every detail. The street was filled at first with drays, loading up with huge boxes from the big warehouses on each side, at the entrances of which men in shirt-sleeves pulled and hauled at the ropes of freight-elevators; then he came to grimy buildings in which was heard the whir of machinery, and he caught a glimpse of men, half stripped, moving backward and forward with strange motions. From across the street came the busy rush of sewing-machines as some one threw up a window and looked out, and a row of girls passed into view with heads bent forward and bodies swaying shoulder to shoulder; beyond were men bending over, pressing, and the steam from the hot irons on the wet cloth poured out around them; and all these toilers seemed no beaten-down wage-earners, but the glad chorus in his own drama of work. Between the factories there began to show neglected narrow brick dwelling-houses, with iron railings and mean, compressed doorways, fronted by garbage-barrels; basement saloons; tiny groceries with bread in the windows and wilted vegetables on the sidewalk, where women with shawled heads were grouped; attenuated furnishing-stores for men, with an ingratiating proprietor in the doorway. In the midst of this district, taking up a salient corner, was the large and ornate building of a patent-medicine concern, towering high into the air, and seeming to preach with lofty benevolence to those below that to be truly respectable and happy you must be rich.
Beyond this the scene repeated itself with slight differences—the houses were not so many, and the factories gave place to warehouses again. The influence of those tall masts at the foot of the street began to be felt, although the signs as yet did not speak of oakum or ships’ stores. Among the warehouses, however, was one brick dwelling that attracted Justin’s particular attention, wedged in as it was between the taller buildings on either side. It varied from the others he had seen by the depths of its squalor. The stone steps were defaced and broken; the windows as well as the arched fan-light over the entrance—a relic of bygone days—had only a few jagged pieces of glass left; and a black hallway was revealed to view through the open door. The windows were so near the street that it was easy to see into the front room—an interior so sordid and forbidding that Justin involuntarily paused to view it.
The room was empty. The walls had been covered once with a brown-flowered paper which now hung from them in great patches, showing the green mold beneath. Under the black marble mantelpiece, thickly covered with white dust, was a grate piled high with ashes; ash-heaps stood also out on the floor, flanked with empty black bottles and broken remnants of furniture. In the background was a hideous black haircloth sofa. Heaven only knows with what past it had been associated to give that creeping feeling in the veins of the sober and practical man who gazed at it; it seemed the outward and visible sign of ruin. The unseen and abnormal still keeps its irrelevant and unexplained hold on the human intelligence, with no respect of persons. It gave Justin a momentary chill to think of passing this each day. Then he looked up, half turning as he felt that some one was observing him, and met the eye of a man who