CHAPTER XVIII
Afteryears of waiting and wrangling, labor conflicts, lawsuits, political battles, technical wars, and unrelenting financial difficulties and desperate expedients, through years of universal bankruptcy, the homely name of the Croton River acquired an almost Messianic significance in the popular heart.
There was already a nymph “Crotona” added to the city’s mythology. The thirsty citizens prayed her to hasten to their rescue from the peril of another fire, another plague, the eternal nuisance of going for water or going without.
Other history seemed of less importance, though tremendous revolutions had been effected in the democracy. The property qualification had been at last removed and the terrible risk assumed of letting all men vote without regard to their bank accounts. The religious requirements for office holders had also been annulled in all the states. There had been fierce riots, of course, but the promised anarchy had not followed. This gave a new boldness to the annoying fanatics who asked for three downright impossibilities: the abolition of slavery and of liquor, and the granting of equal rights to women.
Numbers of shameless females broke into public life and some of them into breeches. Mobs of conservatives raided their meetings, and chased them hither and yon; but still they raved and several effeminate or half-crazed men openly preached against slavery in the South. The bulk of the clergy of all denominations was, of course, against them.
THE SUNLIGHT THAT MADE A SHIMMERING AUREOLE ABOUT HER FLASHED IN HER EYES, SHINING WITH THE TEARS OF RAPTURE
THE SUNLIGHT THAT MADE A SHIMMERING AUREOLE ABOUT HER FLASHED IN HER EYES, SHINING WITH THE TEARS OF RAPTURE
THE SUNLIGHT THAT MADE A SHIMMERING AUREOLE ABOUT HER FLASHED IN HER EYES, SHINING WITH THE TEARS OF RAPTURE
The Marquis of Waterford had made himself notorious with his riotous gayety and his clashes with the night watchmen, the Leatherheads. A fifty-year-old veteran of Waterloo had married a sixteen-year-old heiress in a boardingschool secretly and had received enormous attention from the newspapers.
Fanny Elssler had danced herself into the favor of the people and the horror of the pulpit. Daniel Webster had thundered for the Whigs. The streets had roared with the campaign cry of “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too.” Hard cider had become a slogan and log cabins a symbol. A log cabin had been built at Harrison’s, a few miles from Tuliptree Farm. It served later as a schoolhouse. Then President Harrison died of indigestion a month after his inauguration.
The hard times grew harder and harder. The inpour of foreign immigrants increased till New York became almost a foreign city. The Native-Americans anxiously formed a party and their nominee received all of seventy-seven votes; he was a painter named S. F. B. Morse who had invented a curious toy he called the telegraph. He wanted Congress to help him stretch a wire from Washington to Baltimore for him to play with.
The churches started an hegira uptown. One of them was set out as far as Tenth Street on Fifth Avenue, which had recently been opened through the farms beyond Washington Square. A mission had been established in the foreign world of the Five Points, where it amused the populace of the brothels and crime cellars.
Crime increased and flourished appallingly and the newspapers were unfit for the home. The murderer Colt, having cut up the body of his victim, salted it, and shipped it to New Orleans; was caught, tried, and convicted; then, having married a foolish woman in his cell, stabbed himself to death and died while the guards of the Tombs fought a fire of mysterious origin.
The “beautiful cigar girl” furnished another mystery and an excuse for revolting journalism. RoBards had bought tobacco of her during his exile in town and had watched with sardonic disdain the wily smiles she passed across the counter to her customers who came more for flirtation than for weeds. One day she vanished and after a time her body was found drifting in the river near the Sibyl’s Cave in thebeautiful Elysian Fields at Hoboken. She had evidently fought a desperate battle with her murderer, but had been flung bruised and beaten into the water. Her murderer was never discovered. People said he was a naval officer, but they could not prove it.
One of the cheap and popular newspaper men named Edgar Allan Poe made an ephemeral mystery story out of it. It was exciting but, of course, not literature. His name was never included in the list of dignified authors whom the defenders of American art compiled to prove to the English critics that good writing was possible on this side of the Atlantic.
Dr. Lardner came over from England and proved conclusively that steam was impracticable for crossing the ocean. Shortly afterward a steamer brought across the popular English serial writer, Charles Dickens, and the people lavished on him attentions which he rewarded with infuriating contempt. Captain Marryat and other Englishmen, and women like Mrs. Trollope, began a book bombardment against the pride of the new republic, and roused it to fury.
But all the while the city panted like a hart for its Croton water brooks, and the engineers redoubled their efforts. They decided not to wait for the High Bridge and improvised a temporary passage across and under the Harlem River. The hope was revived that water would come into the city on Independence Day.
Swarms of masons toiled at the two reservoirs until they stood at last waiting, like vast empty bowls held up to heaven for a new Deluge. The flood was to be received at the Yorkville reservoir, carried on by iron pipes to Murray’s Hill, and distributed thence by pipes about the city, with a special dispensation to the old well and tank that had been erected in 1829 at Thirteenth Street to feed the hydrants that replaced the foul old public cisterns.
Everywhere the streets and the houses were torn to pieces, pipes were laid in all directions and fountains built. The plumber was the hero of the hour.
The test of fashion was a faucet in the kitchen.
On a hot day in June the Water Commissioners and the engineers, including Harry Chalender, began a strange pilgrimage through the thirty-three miles of tunnel, for a last anxious inspection. It took them three days to make the patrol on foot.
The vents along the way for the escape of water from deep cuttings and leakages were closed once for all. And on the twenty-second of June the Croton River began its march upon New York. At five o’clock in the morning the head of the stream was admitted and on the primal tide, some eighteen inches deep, a boat was launched. TheCroton Maidweighed anchor to descend upon New York with the “navigable river” from the north.
Harry Chalender made one of the four passengers on that “singular voyage” through the great pipe at the rate of a little better than a mile an hour. The “Maid” came up for air at the Harlem River the next day, a Thursday, soon after the first ripple of the water laved the borders of Manhattan Island.
The Commissioners formally notified the Mayor and Common Council that the Croton River had arrived and would proceed after a brief rest to Yorkville Reservoir.
On Monday afternoon the Governor of the State, the Lieutenant Governor, the Mayor, and other distinguished guests drew up in solemn array and greeted the “extinguishing visitor,” while the artillery fired a salute of thirty-eight guns.
When theCroton Maidsailed into the reservoir she was made grandly welcome and then presented to the Fire Department, with appropriate remarks on the “important results pecuniary and moral which may be expected to flow from the abundance of the water with which our citizens are hereafter to be supplied.”
On the Fourth of July Queen Crotona resumed her royal progress and proceeded the necessary parasangs to Murray’s Hill, pausing to fire the salute of a beautiful jet of water fifty feet in air at Forty-seventh Street.
It was noted by one of the observers that when the waters of the Croton gushed up into the reservoir they “wandered about its bottom as if to examine the magnificent structure or to find a resting place in the temple toward which they had made a pilgrimage.” That river was as much of a god to the New Yorkers as old Tiber ever was to Rome, or Nilus to Egypt.
But thereafter the stream, like another conquered Andromache, became the servant of New York, pouring into its thirsty throat twelve million imperial gallons of pure water every day.
The people congratulated themselves upon this achievement of their city single-handed in a time of national financial prostration. In the memoir written by the chief engineer, J. B. Jervis, he proudly compared the new aqueduct with the great works of Rome, built under contracts with private speculators, paid for with the plunder of ruined peoples, and “cemented with the blood of slavery.” The Croton work was a triumph of a city of 280,000 inhabitants, who wrought a task, said Jervis, “on a scale greatly beyond their actual or any near future wants, but which, designed to endure for ages, would bear record to those ages, however distant, of a race of men who were content to incur present burdens for the benefit of a posterity they could not know. Magnificent as may be the works of conquerors and kings, they have not equaled in forecast of design, and beneficence of result, the noble aqueduct, constructed at their own cost, by the freemen of the single city of New York.”
Much eloquence, much of the bold and braggart Yankee eloquence so distasteful to foreigners and to foreign-hearted Americans, was squandered on that feat of theirs; but before they talked, they had toiled; they sweat before they boasted; they fought the epic before they chanted it; and their words were not so big as the stones they heaved into place. Their phrases were less ponderous than the majestic forty-six-mile sentence in stone they wrote across the green valley of the Westchester hills, through rock and air, over hills and ravines, through villages and streams, acrossthe Harlem River and down into the heart of Manhattan Island.
But the massive High Bridge was yet to build and the Croton had yet to reach the lower fountains and the homes of the citizens. They had waited long for it, and it meant miraculous relief to have the river from far away magically bubbling in the very houses at the wizard twist of a faucet handle, and sending up geysers of beauty in the hot parks. Many of the New Yorkers who marveled told how they had in their day paid a penny a gallon for water from the carts that peddled the product of the “Tea Water Pump.” Even David and Patty RoBards could remember when they fled the town and thought it doomed to die of drouth and pestilence.
The city felt that this immortal benison must be commemorated fittingly. When the New River had entered London the Lord Mayor had addressed it in his full splendor. When the waters of Lake Erie had come through the canal to New York they had been married to those of the ocean with grandiose ceremonial.
So now the Board of Aldermen appointed a committee, and the committee called upon General George P. Morris to write an original ode and the Sacred Music Society to sing it. “The Society’s vocal performers were rising two hundred, male and female.” The bells of the churches were bidden to ring; the artillery to fire salutes. All the distinguished personages on the continent were invited to attend and witness the most resplendent procession ever devised.
The date was set for the fourteenth of October and the citizens devoted themselves to the preparation of banners, uniforms, and maneuvers, and the polishing of fire-engines, swords, shoes, and phrases.
An invitation was addressed to the President of the United States, but Mr. Tyler was prevented by “circumstances”; and the ex-President John Adams by “indispensable engagements at home.” Ex-President Van Buren found it not in his power to avail himself of the polite invitation. Governor Seward had “a severe indisposition,” but accepted. TheBritish Consul accepted “with feelings of no ordinary kind,” and remarked that “tyrants have left monuments which call forth admiration, but no work of a free people for magnitude and utility equals this great enterprise.” The Consul of France presented his compliments and would be happy to join with them. The Consul of Prussia had much pleasure in accepting. The Consul of the Netherlands had the honor of joining. The Consul for Greece and Count Heckscher, the Consul for Mecklenburg, regretted, but the Consuls of the Two Sicilies, the Grand Duchy of Hesse, Frankfort, and Venezuela accepted. The Consul of Mexico was prevented by absence, and the Consul of Texas, the recent republic of Texas, feared that his “engagements of the day would deprive him of the pleasure.”
Officers of the navy, the army, the bench, governors, mayors, engineers, bankers, and others innumerable accepted or declined. The common people prepared to turn out in a body.
The enthusiasm was so pervasive, that even the children felt the thrill of the epochal day. The RoBards youngsters, little Keith and his sister Immy, were feverish. The very baby at Patty’s breast seemed to beat the air and crow like chanticleer at the mention of the Fourteenth of October.
The one sure bribe for good behavior was a promise to go to New York for the parade; the one effective punishment a threat of being left at home.
Hardly an account of the aqueduct or the festival omitted Chalender’s name, and RoBards grew so accustomed to it that he all but forgot the horror it had once involved.
He was himself infected by the glory of the hour. It was like seeing one of the Pyramids dedicated, or the Sphinx christened.
Time that makes us grateful for our defeats and turns our victories to chagrin dealt so with RoBards. Though he had hampered the work and denounced its trespass on the rights of the landholders, he felt glad now that he and they had been defeated. Chalender was gracious in his triumph,and felt all the more genial since the victory had been enhanced by the high mettle of the opponents.
So everybody was happy and proud, and the aqueduct itself took on something of the sanctity of a long, long temple, a source of health and security and of unbounded future growth.
RoBards spoke of this to Patty and said that the names of the men who had fought this long battle through would be immortal.
“Who are they?” she said with a disconcerting abruptness.
And to save him he could not think of them, though he knew the names of many picturesque criminals, and of persons whose only importance was some fashionable prestige. He knew the names of many who had pounded out a little poem or braided a piece of clever fiction. He knew the names of manufacturers of popular soaps and razor strops, but he could not recall the giants who had wrested the rocks from the hills and laid down the new channel for the river that would redeem the chief city of the continent.
He had to refer to the memoir of the Commissioners and to read aloud the passage: “Samuel Stevens, Esq., was the presiding officer of the Board of Commissioners in 1829, whose name and services will be recorded with those of Stephen Allen, and Douglas and Jervis, for the enduring gratitude of the distant generations, whose health, comfort, and safety will, ‘while grass grows and water runs,’ continue to be promoted by the great work to which these gentlemen devoted such faithful and intelligent care.”
Patty nodded: “Well, I’m sure I’m much obliged to them for making New York safe to live in. We can go back now, can’t we?”
“Isn’t it beautiful up here?” he sighed, without much enthusiasm.
“Yes, but the nights are bitter cold and the days are getting raw, and the leaves are nearly all gone. I’ve been here for years and the children have had all the diseasesthere are and got over them. They’re out of danger. Let’s go back, David.”
When she called him by his first name it was like taking his heart in her soft fingers. He had no will to resist. Besides, the house had lost its integrity. It had played him false. It had permitted evil to prosper, and he had sacrificed his dignity and his revenge to conceal its shame.
Nothing worse could happen in the big city than in the stealthy country. So he sighed again:
“All right! let’s go back!”
She sprang from her chair and kissed him and he took a poltroon delight in the syrup of her lips. She became amazingly a girl again and assailed with a frenzy the tasks of packing up for the removal to town, the closing of the country home, and reopening of the house in St. John’s Park.
She urged that she and Teen and Cuff should drive in and clean the house, air it out, get the new water pipes put in and—while they were at it, why not install gas? It was dangerous but so convenient! All you did was turn a key and set a match and there you were! And what about one of the new hot air furnaces to replace the odious stoves and fireplaces?
She laid plans for such fairy improvements with a spendthrift enthusiasm and proposed that her husband should stay comfortably at home in the country with the two older children while she made the house ready.
She was passionately domestic for the first time and when she offered as a final inducement to take her father and mother to town with her, RoBards could not deny her the toil or himself the repose. He wanted a few days of communion with the ideal he was resigning. He wanted to compose his soul anew for the new city life, the country good-by.
The children, Immy and Keith, made a great to-do about their mother’s knees, clinging to her and begging her not to go. And the babe-in-arms, the miniature David, howled in trio, vaguely understanding that something ominous wasafoot. Patty was the center of the battle. She held the infant under one arm while with her free hand she tried to clasp both Immy and Keith. Her voice was soft among the clamors, and she promised them everything if they would only be good for a few days while she made the home ready in the great city.
She looked up at her husband and he could see the weird pride in her eyes. She, the frail, the pretty, the soulful, had been as an apple-branch that bore these buds to flower and fruit from within herself somehow. And they hated to let go, as perhaps the apple is reluctant to be tossed into space by the wind that rends the twig.
RoBards had noted this cohesion in trees that were hard to fell and split. Some woods would almost welcome the teeth of the saw and the keen edge of the ax; they divided at a tap. But other trees fought the blade, twisted it and flung it off and made a strange noise of distress. And when the ax fell upon them they turned it aside, caught it in withes of fiber and tore it from the helve.
Families were like that: some broke apart at the first shock; others clung together as if they were all interlaced, soul and sinew. He hoped that his household would be of this infrangibility.
Patty diverted the children from their grief by loading them with tasks and warnings; the first was to take good care of Papa; the rest were to take care of themselves amid the infinite risks that make a jungle about children.
She murmured to her husband: “Watch out for those Lasher children. That boy Jud has grown to a big hulking brute. He hangs about the place—wants to steal something. I suppose. Drive him off if you see him. And don’t let the children play with the Lashers. They come by in the road, and they’re—not nice at all.”
She made the children promise to abstain from friendship with the Lashers and from numberless other adventures; and at last she broke from them and hurried to the carry-all. Cuff and Teen had gone ahead in the wagon with the luggage. RoBards helped Patty and the baby to the frontseat and took his place beside her. Her father and mother were already bestowed in the back of the carriage. RoBards drove away, calling to the children that he would soon be home.
He and Patty had little to say of either their secret prides or shames; old age had its eyes upon their shoulder blades, and was perhaps subtly understanding from the glum wisdom of experience that this young couple was gathering also much cargo that could never be thrown overboard and must always be hidden away in the deepest hold.
The length of the journey to New York was wonderfully shortened now. RoBards put Patty and her parents and the servants on the stage and she had only to ride as far as Harlem, where she would take the New York and Harlem Railroad train. It had a steam engine and a double track clear to City Hall, and some day it was going to be extended to White Plains, and eventually perhaps to Chatham.
When he had seen the stagecoach whirl off with Patty and had seen her handkerchief flaunt its last farewell through the dust, RoBards drove home.
Or was it home now? Home seemed to be a something cloudlike trailing after his wife. Home was the immediate neighborhood of his love.
His heart ached with anxiety for her. What if she should not arrive safely? The number of stagecoach accidents was astounding: drunken drivers, runaway horses, capsizings, collisions, kept up an endless succession of deaths and cripplings.
Thinking of Patty as perhaps doomed already he thought of her with overwhelming tenderness. The very road backward was denuded of the aureole she lent it. It stretched dour and stark in the harsh outlines of autumn. The trees were stripped of leaves; the lanes of their soft borders. Everything was naked and harsh. The wind was ugly, cynical; it tormented the flocks of fallen leaves, sent them into panics of flight with hoarse little cries and scurries.
This was no place for a rose like Patty.
He rode past the home of the Lashers. It was alwaysautumn there. However, the wild flowers of spring held picnics in the lanes and the weeds put on their Sunday calico; however the peach trees and the plums and cherries in their disordered companies broke forth into hosannas of bloom and pelted the yard and the house with petal confetti, this house and this fence always sagged and creaked; the shutters hung and flapped in the breeze; the family slumped, eternally exhausted from the sheer neglect of industry.
None of the men was to be seen to-day; though the mother of the family, as always, hung over the washtub, bobbing up and down like a Judy on a string. She alone toiled, while the good-for-naught men dawdled and leered. They were as vicious as the filthy dogs that ran from the yard now and hurled themselves yelping at RoBards’ horses, trying to nip them while dodging their hooves. RoBards drove them off with whip and yell and the horses bolted.
As he approached his own house at length, still fuming with anger at the Lashers and their dogs, he saw his boy running toward him along the road. He was shrieking: “Papa! papa! papa!”
When Keith came up alongside the carry-all, he was gulping for breath, in such pain of fear and suffocation that he had to lean against the wheel a moment before he could speak.
But his trembling hands pointed and his eyes were wild with fear as he gasped:
“Papa!—bad man!—Immy!”
“What? where? when?”
“Just now—me and Immy play in the Tarn—big man comes—says to Immy—‘Hello, little girl!’ She don’t say anything. He comes up closeter. He reaches out. She cries—runs—he runs—grabs Immy. I run and pound him with my fists and he won’t let go. He kicked me into the Tarn. Yes, he did so! Then he runs away with Immy.
“Who was it, do you know?”
“Jud Lasher.”
RoBards gave his horse a swift long slash with the whip and the carry-all went into the yard on two wheels. Heflung the lines on the horses’ backs and, leaping across the wheel, ran madly past the house and up the shaggy hillside toward the place that he and Patty called “the Mystic Tarn.”
The boy followed, stumbling, holding his hand to his side where the little heart thumped. His young eyes were aghast with the awe of a terror beyond his ken.