IXHORATIO
I saw him first selling papers by a subway entrance. The day was cold, and he had that peculiarly pinched look of those who are both ill-nourished and ill-clad; and yet you could not without presumption have called him pitiful. There was a kind of simple grandeur about him which I am at a loss adequately to describe: a thing rather to be embodied in myth and legend.
The "envy of the gods" has been variously set out in tale and story. Prometheus defying divinity is a moving enough figure, hurling curses back at his superior, and visited by Asia, Panthea, and the nymphs and Oceanides. But it would need a new legend, it seems tome, to embody that loftiness which, in a similar bondage, hurls no curses, breathes no complaint, nor asks even to be spared, if that be possible; a gentleness which, without the least leaning to humility, preserves a generous outlook, triumphant in its persistent kindliness as Prometheus in his unconquered might; unbroken, unlowered; bound, yet attaining somehow to a continued generosity and bestowal.
It might seem, by the look of this man, that Fate had come to hate one she could so little bend; for not only was he ragged and pinched, but there was about his delicate face and the great slenderness of the body, only too certainly, the mark of some physical ravage, and of an overborne endurance. To the casual observer, he was but a man selling newspapers at the entrance to the subway; to those of thoughtful and speculative observation, he was a man standing within a few feet of his grave, and likely at almost any moment to feel on his shoulder, or dimly on his chilly hand, the summoning touch of Hermes, Leader of Souls.
There was about him a most amiable patience and courtesy which had not at all thecolor of resignation. Indeed, to speak of resignation in his case would have been to impute to him riches and hopes he had not. I can give you no idea how much more courteous he seemed than his destiny. The only Asia who ever visited him, I am sure, was a woman, fat and comfortable looking, who sold papers also, at the other end of the subway entrance, behind the shelter of its glass. She used to come over sometimes while I was buying my paper of him, to ask him to make change, blowing on her hands in a wholesome manner, or beating her arms like a cabby. That she never sympathized with him, I felt sure, not alone because of the general look and contour of her, but because—as I have tried to show you—he was not the man to whom one would presume to tender sympathy.
As I came to know him better, I began to take the keenest pleasure in his smile, which was always ready. He never let the salutation go at a mere "good-morning." To my banal "Pretty cold to-day!" he would reply smiling, and even while turning his shoulder to receive the cut of the wind less directly, "Yes, but bracing"; or, while his blue fingers fumbledfor change, "Not quite so cold as yesterday"; or it was, "Well, the children like snow for Christmas"; or, "This snow will give work to the poor, cleaning the streets"; or, if the white flakes turned to threads of rain, "This will save the city a great deal."
There never was any bravado in this, only the incomparable gentleness and the winning smile. If Fate lingered about, malicious, hoping to hear him at last complain, she might as well have given over her eavesdropping. I, going to him for the daily "Times," and not infrequently with a tired spirit and a heavy heart, would find that, in return for my penny, he had given me, not only the morning paper, but a new courage, or a heartening and precious shame of my own discouragement, or, oftener still, a new faith in the world. So it was that he stood there, day after day, in the freezing weather, dispensing these benefits, a peculiar and moving royalty legible in his person.
If those who read of him here pity him, it can only be because my words give but such a poor idea of his great dignity. Those who saw him with a clear eye, could they pity him, doyou think? And I—I who had cried out more than once, under how much less provocation, against the duress of fortune—was it my right to give him commiseration? Marry, heaven forbid! Again and again, as I went from him, my mind suggested, rather, noble likenesses, and sought to find some simile to match him. Once it was, "The gods go in low disguises"; again, "Great spirits now on earth are sojourning"; and once the words of Amiens, addressed to the Duke, seemed to me to blend in with his behaviors:—
"Happy is your Grace,That can translate the stubbornness of fortuneInto so quiet and so sweet a style."
And again, I thought once that the royal Dane, addressing Horatio, offered me words befitting:—
"For thou hast beenAs one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing;A man that fortune's buffets and rewardsHas ta'en with equal thanks; and blest are thoseWhose blood and judgment are so well commingledThat they are not a pipe for fortune's fingerTo sound what stop she please."
One day I bought him a pair of woolen gloves, and all the way to his corner I kept rehearsing an absurd speech of presentation,designed to relieve both him and me of embarrassment. He must not know that I had bought them for him! I wanted to spare myself that! So I concocted what is currently known as a "cock-and-bull" story; but, as I look back on it and its results, I lean to believing that I never perpetrated a finer bit of fiction. I give it now without shame.
"My husband," said I, fumbling for my penny, "has been very ill—a long while."
"Well, now, I'm sorry!" said Horatio gravely, and without the least wonder, apparently, why this should have been proffered.
"And the doctors think," I stumbled on, digging in my purse, "there's no likelihood in the world at all he will be out of his bed before the summer."
"Ah, that's very hard for a man if he's active," said Horatio, speaking with full sympathy, as of one who knew.
"Andso," said I, putting my penny in his hand, taking the "Times," and mentally beshrewing me the clumsiness of language, "andso, you see,"—here I brought them forth,—"there's a pair of gloves of his he won't have even the chance to wear; and they'realmostas good as new, and—I just thought—may be—"
Here words deserted me. I appealed directly to his eyes. These were fixed, kind and gray, on the gloves. He was already taking them.
"Indeed, I'd like very much to wear them," he said, "but I'm sorry he can't be wearing them himself. May be he'll be well sooner than you think, though. Sickness is a bad thing. These are very warm,"—this with his delightful smile, and he began drawing one of them on,—"I'm very much obliged. But may be he'll be well sooner than you think. I'm sure I hope so."
It was a busy morning. The early subway was pouring forth its crowds as an early chimney, just started, its smoke. I was glad to mingle and fade among them.
The next morning, he was ready, may be even a little eager, as I approached. He had my paper doubled and waiting for me, and waiting too, his gentle inquiry, "Is he better?"
"Yes," said I, "I think so—a little."
Some one else wanted a paper and we said no more. But each day after that he asked me, and I gave him a cautious, not too enthusiasticreport, for my patient must remain indoors till sharp weather and all possible need of gloves were past. So, he was only alittlebetter. I took pains once to add, "A long illness is very discouraging."
"That it is," Horatio assented. "But you'll forget that when he's well."
So we continued in our courtesies and our sympathies; I very pleased and hardly conscience-stricken, to have been able to give him what I knew he must have cherished a good deal more than the gloves, something, indeed, for the warming of his heart—the chance, say rather the right, to extend his so experienced sympathy, and the opportunity to give, to one in need of them, some of the stored-up riches of his spirit. So, his own days growing short, and the shadow of his own cares lengthening, he yet smiled daily, as he gave me of these riches, and wished me a happy sunrise of my hopes and a good-morrow.
One day he was not there. His fine spirit had fared forth. I can still feel the shock and sudden loss it was to me. I went over to Asia, or Panthea, selling her papers, and questioned her. Was he ill?
"He went very sudden, ma'am, I believe. His wife came to say so. I'm selling his papers now. What will you have? The 'Times'?"
Hermes, the kindly, had beckoned him from his "undefeated, undishonored field," and he had gone, eager and gentle there, too, I have no doubt.
It was but a little while that I knew him, but the influence of him abides. He has lent something to life which even the least noble cannot take from it. The sorry old derelict, his poor old red lantern eyes looking out of his dark face, when I give him a dole, receives it, not from me, I think, after all, but from some gentleness which Horatio lends me as a legacy.
He was, of course, supreme of his class; but by that very supremacy he made plain to me many things concerning those less than himself, but of his same lineage. It is by no means unlikely, I think, that Musgrove, Mamie, Margaret, Margharetta, and the rest, so much less worthy than Horatio, yet glimpsed their heritage also, though in some dim adumbrated manner of their own, and were unconsciously affected and aggrandized by it.
Although I have spoken of them throughout with lightness, and have laughed at their amazing follies, yet I know well that there is a solemnity forever attendant upon the poor. There is without doubt some unexpected endowment in suffering and privation, some surprising enrichment in the common lot. Have it as you will, there is no honor so high, or distinction so covetable, as to be a sharer of human joys and sorrows, and an intimate, even though it be in misery and solitude, of the hearts of men; and to this brotherhood, sharing the common lot, the poor undeniably contribute by far the greater numbers.
There is, to the very end, something tinsel and tawdry in the trappings of special privilege. The splendors of the wealthy are but a brief pageant—stage properties, donned for a little while to lend some height and dignity to those of but human stature after all. The beggar who looks on, as did Horatio, at this pageant, without envy, and who, looking on, gives a gentle patronage to the rich, does so not without warrant. The greater splendors and possessions are his own. Let them decorate their stately halls; let them transport, as Ihave known them to do, entire ceilings from Venetian palaces, tapestries from chambers of those who also, long ago, once were great—the glory of the sun will not be subsidized, the halls of the morning are lit with unmatchable splendors, and the palace chambers of the night are hung by mightier ministrants with tapestries of a finer weave, and ceiled with stars for the mere vagrant and the vagabond who shall sleep some day beneath them, without monument and unremembered.
Do not these know life more nearly? Who has flattered them? Who has shielded them from infancy, from the great powers? Who has defended them? Have not these, like Œdipus and other kings' sons, been exposed upon the very rocks of time; and have they not survived that circumstance? Have these not dealt more intimately with the elements? Who had enabled them to avoid the cut of the winter, or to evade the stroke of the summer? to elude the arrows of sickness that fly by night, or the pestilence that walks in the noonday? Sorrow and Death have dealt with them more nearly, and without ambassadors. They have had audience with reality; theyhave talked with Life without interpreters.
He who loves this world, and has found it good on such terms, may be allowed his reasonable preference; he who speaks fondly still of life, who has had such communings, may speak with some authority. Horatio's smile was worth the pleasantness and optimism of a thousand who have never made change with blue fingers, or shrunk from the cut of the cold.
There are those who would patronize and pity such as Horatio. It can only be, then, that they know this world but little, and still childishly count riches to be but money, and poverty to be but lack of it.
And if you tell me that none but a sentimentalist would call poverty an enrichment, then I can only assume that you have never been poor; and if you tell me that the high behavior of Horatio is at the best but endurance, even then, could I grant you so much, the argument still would hold. Even so, Horatio endured life with a noble grace, and helped others to do so; even so, he was able still to find pleasure in a fate from which the wealthy would shrink in horror, and lovable traits in one they would have called his bitterest enemy. Hehad blessed the life which had cursed him, and had loved it though it had despitefully used him.
So he triumphed—yet without pride; nor did one hear in his spirit's victory any hint of animosity, or talk of reprisals, or bitterness, or demand for indemnities, or hidden hate. Rather, he was to be found each day undefeated in his impregnable gentleness, that still unfallen province in which he dwelt. His were some incalculable riches of the spirit which Poverty had heaped up and amassed for him through those years when his fingers handled without complaint the miserable pennies; his was some towering strength under the disguise of the weak and broken body; like that Olympian glory fabled inevitably to appear some time, under the mortal humility of gods in exile. There was about him, for all his slenderness, something grand, something epic, and allegorical. He might have stood as a symbol of a downtrodden people, such nations as the world (be it said to our shame) sees still, and that not in small numbers—crushed, oppressed by the arrogant, the strong, yet still surviving and giving to the other nations their gifts of gay song or heroic endurance, andout of an incredible bounty still bestowing love and kindness and beauty on the world which has behaved toward them without mercy.
Look, if you will, at the beggar nations of the world, and search the heart of the poor among peoples, and I am convinced that you will find in these also corroborative evidence of truths I have tried here to touch upon but lightly. Let be their follies and their mistakes and all their incredible assumptions: who shall declare that poverty has not enriched them likewise? And among them, shall you not find high and royal and single spirits, who, like Horatio, have both known and loved the world and triumphed over it without animosity? To have known and yet to have loved the world! Is not this the real heart of the matter? Is not this the true test after all, and the indisputable mark of a king's son? And shall you not find it oftener among the poor than elsewhere? For he cannot be said to know the world who has never been at its mercy; even as only he can be said to have triumphed over it, who, having suffered all things at its hands, yet loves it with unconquerable fidelity.