The East Side aristocrat was leaning against a saloon doorpost reading a two-weeks-old daily, unconscious of the throbbing, surging Bowery life about him, unconscious even that the news he read was two weeks behind time, conscious of nothing save that a cruel staring paragraph was burning its way into his very soul - for Bowery aristocrats have souls - and laying open anew an old wound, a mangled bit in his life history, which he had hoped Father Times all-healling salve would cure and leave unscarred.
A Bowery comrade jostled against him, looked over his shoulder, and read the first paragraph his eye fell upon. It chanced to be a personal: "Doctor Florence Vaughan, daughter of General William Vaughan, late of this city, will begin immediately her work among the submerged part of our population, desiring to study social science from real life," etc., etc.
"Shosial Shience," muttered the comrade; "'nother of them darn fools comin' down to study shosial shience. Could n't git along 'thout us poor worms to dissect, them swells! Come on, pard, less go in to Harrity's and talk up that game on the boss."
Pard made no move; his own particular paragraph still held him.
"Wake up, old man!" A vigorous punch intensitified this injunction.
"Curse you! Let me alone. I'm not in for that snide game of yours. Go to Harrity's if you like. I'm going to - Hades," he muttered under his breath as, stuffing the old daily into his antique Prince Albert, the famous garment that had won him the name of "Parson" in Bowery-land, he meandered down toward Doyers Street.
The comrade only shrugged his gaunt shoulders, and with a "Parson's on his high horse to-day," turned in at Harrity's.
Parson stalked on past the saloons, the cafes, the gaudy notion stores, past the pawn shops dangling their pathetic trophies before unseeing eyes.
October had set her sun to work drying up the streets her clouds sprinkled yesterday, ambitious to finish her fall cleaning before blustering, untidy November moved in. It wwas afternoon, just between the rush of noon and night; down a side alley the children were playing. One of them spied the Parson as he turned the corner; instantly he set up a shout: "Hi dere, Pars, a story, a yarn, a howlin' good un now!"
The rest joined in, Hebrew, German, French, Polish, crying out in the native tongue or that of their foster mother for that which alone appeases the hunger of the child mind the world over.
The face of the East Side aristocrat relaxed as he looked at the restless, eager little bundles of highly differentiated protoplasm.
"Come on, then, kids." He led the way to one of their usual haunts.
"Tell us again 'bout Ulys an' the one-eyed feller," piped up one.
"Naw, the feller that sailed for the gol' wool," yelled another.
"Tell about the gods' feast an' all the jolly things to eat," screeched a hungry lad just under his elbow.
Hustling, jostling, screaming, they tumbled over the story-teller and each other; brief impromptu duels ensued, chaos reigned.
Then Parson spoke. His voice was low, but it was heard even in the midst of the tumult. It was a musical tone that claimed the individual attention of each grimy little ear. There was silence, sudden, deep. With scarcely a rustle each tiny human atom settled into its own particular space and the story began.
He told the story of Orpheus and the Eurydice he loved and lost. A strange story for the East Side children, but the lyre which led the triumphant march of trees and rocks over Grecian soil was managed with no divinter skill than that from which the storyteller drew words, expressions, tones, gestures, that he might sway the rough little audience of Bowery babies.
There was a long, deep breath when he finished.
"I tell you, kids," he concluded, "There's Orpheuses and Eurydices livin' now, but it's mostly the Orpheuses that go to Hades."
"My! wa'n't he a gump to lose her!" said a lank nine-year-old, shifting her sleeping brother to her other shoulder.
"Huh! he wus'n a gump to go after her, when she once lef' him," said crippled Neddie, aged eleven, who was wont to give sage discourses on matrimonial affairs.
The audience began to scatter.
"Hi! Parson, see them swells! Shall I paste um?"
A beautiful woman was moving toward them; very tall, very graceful, she swept forward buoyantly; a little light-haired curate tripped along beside her.
Parson looked at the woman. Did her beauty waken some dormant chivalry in his nature, hypnotizing for an instant all the low within him; or was it the memory of Eurydice that made him seize the small boy with the handful of street filth already aimed?
For a time of confusion of dirt, loose jointed hands and feet, frowzled hair, and fluttering rags disturbed the equanimity of the crowd. There was a cat chorus of "My! Parson's mashed!" "Himmels!" "She ain't your style!"
Parson dropped the breathless boy in a limp, bony heap and blazed out: "Don't you fellers know how to treat a lady? If yer don't, yer need n't come to any more of my matinees till yer find out. I want gents in my audience, gents an' ladies."
He won them as he always did when he was in earnest. The shaken lad gathered himself together and slowly fished a nickel out of his ragged pocket, saying winningly, "It did n't get shook out. Come on, Pars, I'll stand treat."
"All right, old feller, shake."
The irrepressibles shouted out, "We'll be pinks of perliteness at your next show, daddy."
The two "swells" had crossed the street to avoid the disturbance.
"The center of that group," twittered the young curate, "is a hard case; none of our workers can reach him; rather noted as a story-teller, for that reason has unbounded influence over the youth. All his stories are very deteriorating, of course."
"That must be stopped," and the woman's eyes flashed; she tapped the ground a little harder than her usual grace permitted.
Doctor Florence Vaughan was resting that night; resting from her first trip as a professional woman to the poorer quarters of her native city. As she lived the day over beside the glowing coals, among her luxurious pillows, she was shocked to find herself almost gloating over the utter wretchedness she had just left behind her, because of the boundless opportunity it gave her to live out the strong altruistic side of her nature. "Ah! Herbert Spencer, you never spoke more truly than when you said our intense altruism was intense selfishness, our intense selfishness intense altruism. Oh! this day means so much, so much to me, the day I have dreamed of so long. While I dreamed I injured no one. Will the working-out of my dreams, of the theories that are my very life, bring evil rather than good? How may I know? What if all my life should amount to worse than nothing?"
Then gentle Reverie put her hand softly on the rippling hair that fell over the forehead, aching with so many puzzling thoughts. And Reverie called her back to those halycon [sic] days, when all life was misty, delightful dreaming and planning for days to come, mingled with more practical preparation for the attainment of her purpose.
"Come," sighed Reverie, softly; "come back with me to that night when -"
"Oh, no, no! I will not think of that! I cannot!"
"Just to-night," pleaded Reverie, "just as you leave behind you the days when I have been so dear to you, give this one evening to me. You remember that night? It was late in June, you were just graduated from college, you had been reading till I crept into the library, then you sat very quiet in your rocker by the window, very quiet - till - Ralph came."
"Oh, please leave me, you are cruel. I will forget."
"Ralph came, he had just received another magazine containing a criticism of his poem, the one that made such a hit, you remember; and he told what it said. Together you joked and laughed and schemed. You talked of the friendship that had begun in babyhood, of the Greek roots you had tussled over together, of the college days, of the confidential talks.
"'I always had to tell you everything, Floss; there was no one else, you know, with father so busy and mother -' He paused there, and a little choke came into your own throat as you thought of his devotion to the queer, half insane stepmother who had made a strange impress on the boy's fanciful nature.
"'A fellow has to spout to somebody or he'll explode, you know; and you've always been so understandingly sympathetic, Floss.'
"'Rather awkward words for you to use, poet,' you had laughed back at him; but, as he sat there on the floor eside you, you smoothed the crisp black lock on top of his head, that always would stick out, and he lifted his hand high, clapping it down on top of his head as if a fly were there, but, grasping the hand instead, he held it tightly, and, looking at it half quizzically, said: "I have caught it, now I shall keep it. I may, may n't I?'
"Then you laughed back your 'no' and tried to pull it away. He grew earnest, your 'no' grew more earnest, he pleaded, you grew haughty, he grew proud, the white moonlight made his black eyes blacker, his queer, earnest, homely face more ghost-like, he dropped your hand, and said solemnly, slowly, bitterly: "[sic] 'Curse you [sic] college training! Curse your insane theories! Curse your unnatural friendliness!'
"Then he went, and with him the friendship of a happy boyhood and girlhood vanished.
"You remember the news that came next day. His father's suicide, his mother's insanity, his loss of everything through his father's dishonorable venture. The letter that came, with the little package of foolish, childish trinkets that none but a poet would have treasured. Can't you read that letter even now? 'Miss Vaughan,' it began (he had never called you that in his life) 'everything I can find in my possession that ever belonged to you I return herewith. Everything but that letter you wrote since that night, and since the crash, that I consider myself entitled to keep; I have not read it and probably never shall; your cursed sympathy sticks out all over it, and that is the bitterest thing the fates have sent me yet.' That was all, and you have not heard from him since. He was unreasonable, wrong, foolish."
With a start Reverie brought her back to the present.
"I suppose the young curate will be up to-night with that altruist friend of his. I am anxious to meet him. What an enthusiastic little specimen the curate is! His self-conceit is so unconscious that it is quite refreshing; he would seem affected without it."
Doctor Florence Vaughan was very successful in her professional work. many doors were open to her which no philanthropic worker had been able to enter before; her plans met with unparalleled response from the people themselves; she was seldom repulsed. Her friends attributed her success to her wonderful personality; she, herself, to her theories; her fearful mother to a kind Providence. She would have been much amazed had she known that throughout all slumdom she was known as "Parson's gal," and that there was a tacit understanding throughout the East Side that to insult the lady doctor was to incur the eternal hatred of Parson, one of their own gang.
Doctor Florence did no [sic] know that she was shadowed, shielded, guarded by the Bowery tough whose influence over the youth was so deteriorating.
Social science was striding forward these days. One of the leading magazines was issuing a series of articles that depicted slum life so truly, so powerfully, with such a sympathetic, impartial treatment, that it seemed a voice from the very depths of slum life itself.
"Oh, if I only might know the author!" sighed the doctor, one day. "Does n't any one know?"
None knew.
The doctor was lecturing to the Mothers' Club; her subject was the old one of home keeping.
It was late in the fall; the dark came early, and carousals began sooner; the doctor was bold, she was full of her subject, and had only half finished. Parson sat outside the room on the stairs; the door was open and he could hear the lecturer. He looked more dissipated than ever; his head was splitting, he took off his battered old derby, and tried to smooth down a crisp, black lock that stuck out straight from the back of his head.
The lecturer's voice rang out clear and full: "Oh if I could only make you feel as strongly as I feel it, that really to make a home and keep it nice, is the finest thing in the world! Whatever you may do, mothers, don't despise housekeeping, but thank God that you have a home to keep."
The East-Side aristocrat started up. "She lies! she lies!" he hissed, half under his breath. He reeled down the stairs and out into the night. On, on he went; he tried to get where he could look up into the stars, but the electric lights madly, laughingly danced in his way. At last he found a quiet, dark place.
"Ralph Williams," he said, shaking himself vigorously, "you're the biggest fool on God's earth; here you've let a woman, a dishonored name, a suicide father, an insane mother, drive you to the dogs.. What right have you to live the life you do? Hypocrisy clean through. Here you enter into the life of these people as though you belonged to them; go into their saloons, their robberies, their murders, - never to share the plunder, never to thrust the knife - heavens, no! - not even to drink their beastly rum, but to betray their trust, to make 'copy' of them, to base on their sacred life secrets a series of brilliant articles for the press. But you have your reward, Ralph Williams; you are growing like your surroundings; it is not all acting; you are letting their brutish habits creep into your very nature; and now your Eurydice has come to Hades, and you dare not even tell her you are Orpheus. Oh, but you forget, she would not let you be her Orpheus! How I hated her that day she came down with the little blond curate hopping along like a poodle beside her! But it has been heaven itself to keep her from harm. I have helped her in her work, after all, though she forbade it.
"To-morrow, Ralph, old boy, you shall throw away your useless life or else go back like a man to the world from which you vanished five years ago. But you cannot go back. It will have to be the other. Only one more in the Bowery; it will make no stir! To-morrow! why not to-night?"
He shoved his hand into the inside pocket of the old Prince Albert, and drew out a soiled, blank envelope; inside this was an envelope addressed to himself, a dainty note, that looked like Fifth Avenue stationery. The letter was sealed. He broke the seal. A deep oath escaped him. The date was written along the top, and the hour was given. He moved a little nearer the light. "Ralph, dear boy," he read, "I do love you. I want you. Let me help you in your work. Forgive me and come back." In the morning she had added a postscript: "Ralph, I have just heard about it; let me come to you."
Ralph Williams fell back into the dark corner. "O God, be merciful to a consummate fool!"
Half dazed, he roused himself and rushed back to the place where he had left her, not to make himself known, but just to see that she reached home in safety. There was a disturbance in front of the building where she had been lecturing; he hurried nearer; a drunken brawl! women - they have knives! good God! Florence sees them! She has rushed in!
Florence Vaughan had been pushed against the doorpost; a policeman had scattered the crowd; the first intelligible words she heard were: "Guess Parson's killed hisself fur ye, Miss."
There at her feet, a gaping wound in his shoulder, lay the dreaded tough, the man whom she had despised, whenever she thought how he thwarted her influence over the children. He had saved her life.
She knelt beside him giving quick, forcible directions and working the while as only doctors know how to work. He was living. The bandage on, she had him turned over and, for the first time since her work in the slums began, she saw his face and knew him.