II
I passed into the Park by the Fifth Avenue and 59th Street
gate; I could never bring myself to enter it through the gate that is guarded
by the hideous pigmy statue of Thorwaldsen.
The afternoon sun poured into the windows of the New Netherlands
Hotel, setting every orange-curtained pane a-glitter, and tipping the wings
of the bronze dragons with flame.
Gorgeous masses of flowers blazed in the sunshine from
the grey terraces of the Savoy, from the high grilled court of the Vanderbilt
palace, and from the balconies of the Plaza opposite.
The white marble façade of the Metropolitan Club
was a grateful relief in the universal glare, and I kept my eyes on it
until I had crossed the dusty street and entered the shade of the trees.
Before I came to the Zoo I smelled it. Next week it was
to be removed to the fresh cool woods and meadows in Bronx Park, far from
the stifling air of the city, far from the infernal noise of the Fifth
Avenue omnibuses.
A noble stag stared at me from his enclosure among the
trees as I passed down the winding asphalt walk. "Never mind, old fellow,"
said I, you will be splashing about in the Bronx River next week and cropping
maple shoots to your heart's content.
On I went, past herds of staring deer, past great lumbering
elk, and moose, and long-faced African antelopes, until I came to the dens
of the great carnivora.
The tigers sprawled in the sunshine, blinking and licking
their paws; the lions slept in the shade or squatted on their haunches,
yawning gravely. A slim panther travelled to and fro behind her barred
cage, pausing at times to peer wistfully out into the free sunny world.
My heart ached for caged wild things, and I walked on, glancing up now
and then to encounter the blank stare of a tiger or the mean shifty eyes
of some ill-smelling hyena.
Across the meadow I could see the elephants swaying and
swinging their great heads, the sober bison solemnly slobbering over their
cuds, the sarcastic countenances of camels, the wicked little zebras, and
a lot more animals of the camel and llama tribe, all resembling each other,
all equally ridiculous, stupid, deadly uninteresting.
Somewhere behind the old arsenal an eagle was screaming,
probably a Yankee eagle; I heard the "rchug! rchug!" of a blowing hippopotamus,
the squeal of a falcon, and the snarling yap! of quarrelling wolves.
"A pleasant place for a hot day!" I pondered bitterly,
and I thought some things about Jamison that I shall not insert in this
volume. But I lighted a cigarette to deaden the aroma from the hyenas,
unclasped my sketching block, sharpened my pencil, and fell to work on
a family group of hippopotami.
They may have taken me for a photographer, for they all
wore smiles as if "welcoming a friend," and my sketch block presented a
series of wide open jaws, behind which shapeless bulky bodies vanished
in alarming perspective.
The alligators were easy; they looked to me as though
they had not moved since the founding of the Zoo, but I had a bad time
with the big bison, who persistently turned his tail to me, looking stolidly
around his flank to see how I stood it. So I pretended to be absorbed in
the antics of two bear cubs, and the dreary old bison fell into the trap,
for I made some good sketches of him and laughed in his face as I closed
the book.
There was a bench by the abode of the eagles, and I sat
down on it to draw the vultures and condors, motionless as mummies among
the piled rocks. Gradually I enlarged the sketch, bringing in the gravel
plaza, the steps leading up to Fifth Avenue, the sleepy park policeman
in front of the arsenal—and a slim, white-browed girl, dressed in shabby
black, who stood silently in the shade of the willow trees.
After a while I found that the sketch, instead of being
a study of the eagles, was in reality a composition in which the girl in
black occupied the principal point of interest. Unwittingly I had subordinated
everything else to her, the brooding vultures, the trees and walks, and
the half indicated groups of sun-warmed loungers.
She stood very still, her pallid face bent, her thin white
hands loosely clasped before her.
"Rather dejected reverie," I thought, "probably she's
out of work." Then I caught a glimpse of a sparkling diamond ring on the
slender third finger of her left hand.
"She'll not starve with such a stone as that about her,"
I said to myself, looking curiously at her dark eyes and sensitive mouth.
They were both beautiful, eyes and mouth—beautiful, but touched with pain.
After a while I rose and walked back to make a sketch
or two of the lions and tigers. I avoided the monkeys—I can't stand them,
and they never seem funny to me, poor dwarfish, degraded caricatures of
all that is ignoble in ourselves.
"I've enough now," I thought; "I'll go home and manufacture
a full page that will probably please Jamison." So I strapped the elastic
band around my sketching block, replaced pencil and rubber in my waistcoat
pocket, and strolled off toward the Mall to smoke a cigarette in the evening
glow before going back to my studio to work until midnight, up to the chin
in charcoal grey and Chinese white.
Across the long meadow I could see the roofs of the city
faintly looming above the trees. A mist of amethyst, ever deepening, hung
low on the horizon, and through it, steeple and dome, roof and tower, and
the tall chimneys where thin fillets of smoke curled idly, were transformed
into pinnacles of beryl and flaming minarets, swimming in filmy haze. Slowly
the enchantment deepened; all that was ugly and shabby and mean had fallen
away from the distant city, and now it towered into the evening sky, splendid,
gilded, magnificent, purified in the fierce furnace of the setting sun.
The red disk was half hidden now; the tracery of trees,
feathery willow and budding birch, darkened against the glow; the fiery
rays shot far across the meadow, gilding the dead leaves, staining with
soft crimson the dark moist tree trunks around me.
Far across the meadow a shepherd passed in the wake of
a huddling flock, his dog at his heels, faint moving blots of grey.
A squirrel sat up on the gravel walk in front of me, ran
a few feet, and sat up again, so close that I could see the palpitation
of his sleek flanks.
Somewhere in the grass a hidden field insect was rehearsing
last summer's solos; I heard the tap! tap! tat-tat-t-t-tat! of a woodpecker
among the branches overhead and the querulous note of a sleepy robin.
The twilight deepened; out of the city the music of bells
floated over wood and meadow; faint mellow whistles sounded from the river
craft along the north shore, and the distant thunder of a gun announced
the close of a June day.
The end of my cigarette began to glimmer with a redder
light; shepherd and flock were blotted out in the dusk, and I only knew
they were still moving when the sheep bells tinkled faintly.
Then suddenly that strange uneasiness that all have known—that
half-awakened sense of having seen it all before, of having been through
it all, came over me, and I raised my head and slowly turned.
A figure was seated at my side. My mind was struggling
with the instinct to remember.
Something so vague and yet so familiar—something that
eluded thought yet challenged it, something—God knows what! troubled me.
And now, as I looked, without interest, at the dark figure beside me, an
apprehension, totally involuntary, an impatience to understand, came upon
me, and I sighed and turned restlessly again to the fading west.
I thought I heard my sigh re-echoed—I scarcely heeded;
and in a moment I sighed again, dropping my burned-out cigarette on the
gravel beneath my feet.
"Did you speak to me?" said some one in a low voice, so
close that I swung around rather sharply.
"No," I said after a moment's silence.
It was a woman. I could not see her face clearly, but
I saw on her clasped hands, which lay listlessly in her lap, the sparkle
of a great diamond. I knew her at once. It did not need a glance at the
shabby dress of black, the white face, a pallid spot in the twilight, to
tell me that I had her picture in my sketch-book.
"Do—do you mind if I speak to you?" she asked timidly.
The hopeless sadness in her voice touched me, and I said: "Why, no, of
course not. Can I do anything for you?"
"Yes," she said, brightening a little, "if you—you only
would."
"I will if I can," said I, cheerfully; "what is it? Out
of ready cash?"
"No, not that," she said, shrinking back.
I begged her pardon, a little surprised, and withdrew
my hand from my change pocket.
"It is only—only that I wish you to take these,"—she drew
a thin packet from her breasr,— "these two letters."
"I?" I asked astonished.
"Yes, if you will."
"But what am I to do with them?" I demanded.
"I can't tell you; I only know that I must give them to
you. Will you take them?"
"Oh, yes, I'll take them," I laughed, "am I to read them?"
I added to myself, "It's some clever begging trick."
"No," she answered slowly, "you are not to read them;
you are to give them to somebody."
"To whom? Anybody?"
"No, not to anybody. You will know whom to give them to
when the time comes.
"Then I am to keep them until further instructions?"
"Your own heart will instruct you," she said, in a scarcely
audible voice. She held the thin packet toward me, and to humor her I took
it. It was wet.
"The letters fell into the sea," she said; "there was
a photograph which should have gone with them but the salt water washed
it blank. Will you care if I ask you something else?"
"I? Oh, no."
"Then give me the picture that you made of me to-day."
I laughed again, and demanded how she knew I had drawn her.
"Is it like me?" she said.
"I think it is very like you," I answered truthfully.
'Will you not give it to me?"
Now it was on the tip of my tongue to refuse, but I reflected
that I had enough sketches for a full page without that one, so I handed
it to her, nodded that she was welcome, and stood up. She rose also, the
diamond flashing on her finger.
"You are sure that you are not in want?" I asked, with
a tinge of good-natured sarcasm.
"Hark!" she whispered; "listen!—do you hear the bells
of the convent!" I looked out into the misty night.
"There are no bells sounding," I said, "and anyway there
are no convent bells here. We are in New York, mademoiselle—I had noticed
her French accent—we are in Protestant Yankee-land, and the bells that
ring are much less mellow than the bells of France."
I turned pleasantly to say good-night. She was gone.
