Part 25 (1/2)
He could feel that she caught her breath, but she said nothing.
”I should never be successful in that way, though it wasn't for that reason that I left.”
”Do you think you can do more for people by putting yourself--away, holding off--”
Her voice sank.
”That is a subterfuge,” Sommers answered hotly, ”fit only for clergymen and beggars for charities. I am not sure, anyway, that I want 'to do for'
people. I think no fine theories about social service and all that settlement stuff. I want to be a man, and have a man's right to start with the crowd at the scratch, not given a handicap. There are too many handicaps in the crowd I have seen!”
Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k pressed her lips together, as if to restrain a hot reply.
She had grown white from the fatigue and excitement and heat. They were almost at her father's house, walking along the steaming asphalt of the quiet avenue. A few old trees had been allowed to remain on these blocks, and they drooped over the street, giving a pleasant shade to the broad houses and the little patches of sward. Just around the corner were some rickety wooden tenements, and a street so wretchedly paved that in the great holes where the blocks had rotted out stood pools of filthy, rankly smelling water.
”I have merely decided to move around the corner,” the young man remarked grimly.
Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k's lips trembled. She walked more slowly, and she tried to say something, to make some ill-defined appeal. As she had almost found the words, a carriage approached the Hitchc.o.c.k house and drew up. Out of it Colonel Hitchc.o.c.k stepped heavily. His silk hat was crushed, and his clothes were covered with dust.
”Papa!” his daughter exclaimed, running forward anxiously. ”What has happened? Where have you been? Are you hurt?”
”No, yes, I guess not,” the old man laughed good-naturedly. ”Howdy do, doctor! They stopped the train out by Grand Crossing, and some fellows began firing stones. It was pretty lively for a time. I thought you and your mother would worry, so I got out of it the best way I could and came in on the street cars.”
”Poor papa!” the girl exclaimed, seizing his arm. She glanced at Sommers defiantly. Here was her argument. Sommers looked on coolly, not accepting the challenge.
”Won't you come in, doctor?” Colonel Hitchc.o.c.k asked. ”Do come in and rest,” his daughter added.
But the young doctor shook his head.
”I think I will go home and brush up--around the corner,” he added with slight irony.
The girl turned to her father and took his arm, and they slowly walked up the path to the big darkened house.
CHAPTER XXI
Sommers did not go to his rooms, however. He could delay no longer reaching Mrs. Preston. From the quiet decorous boulevard, with its clean asphalt pavement and pleasant trees, he turned at once into the dirty cross street.
The oasis of the prosperous in the expanse of cheap houses and tawdry flat-buildings was so small! It was easy, indeed, to step at least physically from the one world to the other.
At a little shop near the cable line he bought a hat and tie, and bathed his face. Then he took the cable car, which connected with lines of electric cars that radiated far out into the distant prairie. Along the interminable avenue the cable train slowly jerked its way, grinding, jarring, lurching, grating, shrieking--an infernal public chariot. Sommers wondered what influence years of using this hideous machine would have upon the nerves of the people. This car-load seemed quiescent and dull enough--with the languor of unexpectant animals, who were accustomed to being hauled mile by mile through the dirty avenues of life. His attention was caught by the ever repeated phenomena of the squalid street. Block after block, mile after mile, it was the same thing. No other city on the globe could present quite this combination of tawdriness, slackness, dirt, vulgarity, which was Cottage Grove Avenue. India, the Spanish-American countries, might show something fouler as far as mere filth, but nothing so incomparably mean and long. The brick blocks, of many shades of grimy red and fawn color, thin as paper, cheap as dishonest contractor and bad labor could make them, were bulging and lopping at every angle. Built by the half mile for a day's smartness, they were going to pieces rapidly. Here was no uniformity of cheapness, however, for every now and then little squat cottages with mouldy earth plots broke the line of more pretentious ugliness. The saloons, the shops, the sidewalks, were coated with soot and ancient grime. From the cross streets savage gusts of the fierce west wind dashed down the avenue and swirled the acc.u.mulated refuse into the car, choking the pa.s.sengers, and covering every object with a cloud of filth.
Once and again the car jolted across intersecting boulevards that presented some relief in the way of green gra.s.s and large, heavy-fronted houses.
Except for these strips of parklike avenues, where the rich lived,--pieced into the cheaper stuff of the city, as it were,--all was alike, flat-building and house and store and wooden shanty,--a city of booths, of extemporized s.h.i.+fts.
Sommers picked up a newspaper that some pa.s.senger had thrown aside and endeavored to distract his mind from the forlorn sight. The sheets were gritty to the touch, and left a s.m.u.tch upon the fingers. His clothes were sifted over with dust and fine particles of manure. The seat grated beneath his legs. The great headlines in the newspaper announced that the troops were arriving. Columns of childish, reportorial prattle followed, describing the martial bearing of the officers, the fierceness of the ”bronzed Indian fighters.” The city was under martial law. He read also the bickering telegrams exchanged between the state authorities and the federal government, and interviews with leading citizens, praising the much-vilified President for his firm act in upholding law and order. The general managers were clever fellows! Sommers threw the grimy sheet aside.
It was right, this firm a.s.sertion of the law; but in what a cause, for what people!
He turned to the street once more.
This block, through which the car was grinding its way, had a freakish individuality in sidewalks. Each builder had had his own idea of what the proper street level should be, and had laid his sidewalk accordingly. There were at least six different levels in this one block. The same blunt expression of wilful individuality was evident in every line of every building. It was the apotheosis of democratic independence. This was not a squalid district, nor a tough one. Goose Island, the stock yards, the Bohemian district, the lumber yards, the factories,--all the aspects of the city monstrous by right, were miles away. But Halsted Street, with its picturesque mutations of poverty and its foreign air, was infinitely worthier than this. Sommers shuddered to think how many miles of Cottage Grove Avenue and its like Chicago contained,--not vicious, not squalid, merely desolate and unforgivably vulgar. If it were properly paved and cleaned, it would be bearable. But the selfish rich and the ignorant poor make bad housekeepers.