“He was a little bright man down at de deepo.”
“Yes, that’s him. That’s Mr. Thomas. He’s always lookin’ out to send someone here, because he’s been here three years hisself an’ he kin recommend my house.”
It was a relief to the Hamiltons to find Mrs. Jones so gracious and homelike. So the matter was settled, and they took up their abode with her and sent for their baggage.
With the first pause in the rush that they had experienced since starting away from home, Mrs. Hamilton began to have time for reflection, and their condition seemed to her much better as it was. Of course, it was hard to be away from home and among strangers, but the arrangement had this advantage—that no one knew them or could taunt them with their past trouble. She was not sure that she was going to like New York. It had a great name and was really a great place, but the very bigness of it frightened her and made her feel alone, for she knew that there could not be so many people together without a deal of wickedness. She did not argue the complement of this, that the amount of good would also be increased, but this was because to her evil was the very present factor in her life.
Joe and Kit were differently affected by what they saw about them. The boy was wild with enthusiasm and with a desire to be a part of all that the metropolis meant. In the evening he saw the young fellows passing by dressed in their spruce clothes, and he wondered with a sort of envy where they could be going. Back home there had been no place much worth going to, except church and one or two people’s houses. But these young fellows seemed to show by their manners that they were neither going to church nor a family visiting. In the moment that he recognised this, a revelation came to him—the knowledge that his horizon had been very narrow, and he felt angry that it was so. Why should those fellows be different from him? Why should they walk the streets so knowingly, so independently, when he knew not whither to turn his steps? Well, he was in New York, and now he would learn. Someday some greenhorn from the South should stand at a window and look out envying him, as he passed, red-cravated, patent-leathered, intent on some goal. Was it not better, after all, that circumstances had forced them thither? Had it not been so, they might all have stayed home and stagnated. Well, thought he, it’s an ill wind that blows nobody good, and somehow, with a guilty underthought, he forgot to feel the natural pity for his father, toiling guiltless in the prison of his native State.
Whom the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad. The first sign of the demoralisation of the provincial who comes to New York is his pride at his insensibility to certain impressions which used to influence him at home. First, he begins to scoff, and there is no truth in his views nor depth in his laugh. But by and by, from mere pretending, it becomes real. He grows callous. After that he goes to the devil very cheerfully.
No such radical emotions, however, troubled Kit’s mind. She too stood at the windows and looked down into the street. There was a sort of complacent calm in the manner in which she viewed the girls’ hats and dresses. Many of them were really pretty, she told herself, but for the most part they were not better than what she had had down home. There was a sound quality in the girl’s makeup that helped her to see through the glamour of mere place and recognise worth for itself. Or it may have been the critical faculty, which is prominent in most women, that kept her from thinking a five-cent cheesecloth any better in New York than it was at home. She had a certain self-respect which made her value herself and her own traditions higher than her brother did his.
When later in the evening the porter who had been kind to them came in and was introduced as Mr. William Thomas, young as she was, she took his open admiration for her with more coolness than Joe exhibited when Thomas offered to show him something of the town some day or night.
Mr. Thomas was a loquacious little man with a confident air born of an intense admiration of himself. He was the idol of a number of servant-girls’ hearts, and altogether a decidedly dashing back-areaway Don Juan.
“I tell you, Miss Kitty,” he burst forth, a few minutes after being introduced, “they ain’t no use talkin’, N’Yawk’ll give you a shakin’ up ’at you won’t soon forget. It’s the only town on the face of the earth. You kin bet your life they ain’t no flies on N’Yawk. We git the best shows here, we git the best concerts—say, now, what’s the use o’ my callin’ it all out?—we simply git the best of everything.”
“Great place,” said Joe wisely, in what he thought was going to be quite a man-of-the-world manner. But he burned with shame the next minute because his voice sounded so weak and youthful. Then too the oracle only said “Yes” to him, and went on expatiating to Kitty on the glories of the metropolis.
“D’jever see the statue o’ Liberty? Great thing, the statue o’ Liberty. I’ll take you ’round someday. An’ Cooney Island—oh, my, now that’s the place; and talk about fun! That’s the place for me.”
“La, Thomas,” Mrs. Jones put in, “how you do run on! Why, the strangers’ll think they’ll be talked to death before they have time to breathe.”
“Oh, I guess the folks understan’ me. I’m one o’ them kin’ o’ men ’at believe in whooping things up right from the beginning. I’m never strange with anybody. I’m
