"And until we do, we must be economical."
"What a persistent lady it is," laughed he. "I wish I were like that."
In the evening"s gathering dusk the train steamed into Jersey City; and Spenser and Susan Lenox, with the adventurer"s mingling hope and dread, confidence and doubt, courage and fear, followed the crowd down the long platform under the vast train shed, went through the huge thronged waiting-room and aboard the giant ferryboat which filled both with astonishment because of its size and luxuriousness.
"I am a jay!" said she. "I can hardly keep my mouth from dropping open."
"You haven"t any the advantage of me," he a.s.sured her. "Are you trembling all over?"
"Yes," she admitted. "And my heart"s like lead. I suppose there are thousands on thousands like us, from all over the country--who come here every day--feeling as we do."
"Let"s go out on the front deck--where we can see it."
They went out on the upper front deck and, leaning against the forward gates, with their traveling bags at their feet, they stood dumb before the most astounding and most splendid scene in the civilized world. It was not quite dark yet; the air was almost July hot, as one of those prematurely warm days New York so often has in March. The sky, a soft and delicate blue shading into opal and crimson behind them, displayed a bright crescent moon as it arched over the fairyland in the dusk before them.
Straight ahead, across the broad, swift, sparkling river--the broadest water Susan had ever seen--rose the mighty, the majestic city. It rose direct from the water. Endless stretches of ethereal-looking structure, reaching higher and higher, in ma.s.ses like mountain ranges, in peaks, in towers and domes. And millions of lights, like fairy lamps, like resplendent jewels, gave the city a glory beyond that of the stars thronging the heavens on a clear summer night.
They looked toward the north; on and on, to the far horizon"s edge stretched the broad river and the lovely city that seemed the newborn offspring of the waves; on and on, the myriad lights, in ma.s.ses, in festoons, in great gleaming globes of fire from towers rising higher than Susan"s and Rod"s native hills.
They looked to the south. There, too, rose city, mile after mile, and then beyond it the expanse of the bay; and everywhere the lights, the beautiful, soft, starlike lights, shedding a radiance as of heaven itself over the whole scene. Majesty and strength and beauty.
"I love it!" murmured the girl. "Already I love it."
"I never dreamed it was like this," said Roderick, in an awed tone.
"The City of the Stars," said she, in the caressing tone in which a lover speaks the name of the beloved.
They moved closer together and clasped hands and gazed as if they feared the whole thing--river and magic city and their own selves--would fade away and vanish forever. Susan clutched Rod in terror as she saw the vision suddenly begin to move, to advance toward her, like apparitions in a dream before they vanish. Then she exclaimed, "Why, we are moving!" The big ferryboat, swift, steady as land, noiseless, had got under way.
Upon them from the direction of the distant and hidden sea blew a cool, fresh breeze. Never before had either smelled that perfume, strong and keen and clean, which comes straight from the unbreathed air of the ocean to bathe New York, to put life and hope and health into its people. Rod and Susan turned their faces southward toward this breeze, drank in great draughts of it. They saw a colossal statue, vivid as life in the dusk, in the hand at the end of the high-flung arm a torch which sent a blaze of light streaming out over land and water.
"That must be Liberty," said Roderick.
Susan slipped her arm through his. She was quivering with excitement and joy. "Rod--Rod!" she murmured. "It"s the isles of freedom. Kiss me."
And he bent and kissed her, and his cheek felt the tears upon hers. He reached for her hand, with an instinct to strengthen her. But when he had it within his its firm and vital grasp sent a thrill of strength through him.
A few minutes, and they paused at the exit from the ferry house.
They almost shrank back, so dazed and helpless did they feel before the staggering billows of noise that swept savagely down upon them--roar and crash, shriek and snort; the air was shuddering with it, the ground quaking. The beauty had vanished--the beauty that was not the city but a glamour to lure them into the city"s grasp; now that city stood revealed as a monster about to seize and devour them.
"G.o.d!" He shouted in her ear. "Isn"t this _frightful!_"
She was recovering more quickly than he. The faces she saw rea.s.sured her. They were human faces; and while they were eager and restless, as if the souls behind them sought that which never could be found, they were sane and kind faces, too. Where others of her own race lived, and lived without fear, she, too, could hope to survive. And already she, who had loved this mighty offspring of the sea and the sky at first glance, saw and felt another magic--the magic of the peopled solitude. In this vast, this endless solitude she and he would be free. They could do as they pleased, live as they pleased, without thought of the opinion of others. Here she could forget the b.e.s.t.i.a.l horrors of marriage; here she would fear no scornful pointing at her birth-brand of shame. She and Rod could be poor without shame; they could make their fight in the grateful darkness of obscurity.
"Scared?" he asked.
"Not a bit," was her prompt answer. "I love it more than ever."
"Well, it frightens me a little. I feel helpless--lost in the noise and the crowd. How can I do anything here!"
"Others have. Others do."
"Yes--yes! That"s so. We must take hold!" And he selected a cabman from the shouting swarm. "We want to go, with two trunks, to the Hotel St. Denis," said he.
"All right, sir! Gimme the checks, please."
Spenser was about to hand them over when Susan said in an undertone, "You haven"t asked the price."
Spenser hastened to repair this important omission. "Ten dollars," replied the cabman as if ten dollars were some such trifle as ten cents.
Spenser laughed at the first experience of the famous New York habit of talking in a faint careless way of large sums of money--other people"s money. "You did save us a swat," he said to Susan, and beckoned another man. The upshot of a long and arduous discussion, noisy and profane, was that they got the carriage for six dollars--a price which the policeman who had been drawn into the discussion vouched for as reasonable.
Spenser knew it was too high, knew the policeman would get a dollar or so of the profit, but he was weary of the wrangle; and he would not listen to Susan"s suggestion that they have the trunks sent by the express company and themselves go in a street car for ten cents. At the hotel they got a large comfortable room and a bath for four dollars a day. Spenser insisted it was cheap; Susan showed her alarm--less than an hour in New York and ten dollars gone, not to speak of she did not know how much change. For Roderick had been scattering tips with what is for some mysterious reason called "a princely hand," though princes know too well the value of money and have too many extravagant tastes ever to go far in sheer throwing away.
They had dinner in the restaurant of the hotel and set out to explore the land they purposed to subdue and to possess. They walked up Broadway to Fourteenth, missed their way in the dazzle and glare of south Union Square, discovered the wandering highway again after some searching. After the long, rather quiet stretch between Union Square and Thirty-fourth Street they found themselves at the very heart of the city"s night life. They gazed in wonder upon the elevated road with its trains thundering by high above them. They crossed Greeley Square and stood entranced before the spectacle--a street bright as day with electric signs of every color, shape and size; sidewalks jammed with people, most of them dressed with as much pretense to fashion as the few best in Cincinnati; one theater after another, and at Forty-second Street theaters in every direction.
Surely--surely--there would be small difficulty in placing his play when there were so many theaters, all eager for plays.
They debated going to the theater, decided against it, as they were tired from the journey and the excitement of crowding new sensations. "I"ve never been to a real theater in my life," said Susan. "I want to be fresh the first time I go."
"Yes," cried Rod. "That"s right. Tomorrow night. That _will_ be an experience!" And they read the illuminated signs, inspected the show windows, and slowly strolled back toward the hotel. As they were recrossing Union Square, Spenser said, "Have you noticed how many street girls there are? We must have pa.s.sed a thousand. Isn"t it frightful?"
"Yes," said Susan.
Rod made a gesture of disgust, and said with feeling, "How low a woman must have sunk before she could take to that life!"
"Yes," said Susan.
"So low that there couldn"t possibly be left any shred of feeling or decency anywhere in her." Susan did not reply.
"It"s not a question of morals, but of sensibility," pursued he.
"Some day I"m going to write a play or a story about it. A woman with anything to her, who had to choose between that life and death, wouldn"t hesitate an instant. She couldn"t. A streetwalker!" And again he made that gesture of disgust.
"Before you write," said Susan, in a queer, quiet voice, "you"ll find out all about it. Maybe some of these girls--most of them--all of them--are still human beings. It"s not fair to judge people unless you know. And it"s so easy to say that someone else ought to die rather than do this or that."
"You can"t imagine yourself doing such a thing," urged he.
Susan hesitated, then--"Yes," she said.
Her tone irritated him. "Oh, nonsense! You don"t know what you"re talking about."
"Yes," said Susan.
"Susie!" he exclaimed, looking reprovingly at her.
She met his eyes without flinching. "Yes," she said. "I have."
He stopped short and his expression set her bosom to heaving.
But her gaze was steady upon his. "Why did you tell me!" he cried. "Oh, it isn"t so--it can"t be. You don"t mean exactly that."
"Yes, I do," said she.
"Don"t tell me! I don"t want to know." And he strode on, she keeping beside him.