 | CHAPTER V.
It strikes Three; and the City takes his Comfort. Big Abel, and the little Manhattan |  |
5. CHAPTER V.
It strikes Three; and the City takes his Comfort.
Lankey! Big Abel! Awake! awake!
See! see! the Day creeps through the windows, and filling
all the chamber, gently tells you to arise.
They sleep; Lankey like a dark old wood, whose leaves are
still, and all at once! Big Abel, as a giant boat who takes in
slumber for a week to come, against the river-shore! There is
no sound astir; the silence walks about and wears his cloak of
Sabbath air, that no man knows or sees or feels he is abroad.
There's something moving through this house at least: entering
now where Lankey and Big Abel lie: not silence, but his
twin, a sleek, calm, white-coated man (civil as the dawn itself).
“Will the gentlemen be good enough to take breakfast?”
To be sure they will; in the little room, next. Breakfast
served. Each has a window to himself; and now the Battery
begins to rouse a little, slowly, and, clearly with a will against
it. But he hears some bells far up the city, and there enters
at his upper gate; first faint sign of coming life! a little man,
quite a little man, with a cane, and gaiters and small whiskers,
evidently out of health all round, who creeps along the railing
by the water; ah, how his constitution pines for salt! and gets
to a bench half way along, and there stops to smell the sea.
After him, a couple of stouter gentlemen, in gaiters too, and
checkered pantaloons, arm in arm, up and down with rapid
pace, taking in the fresh air, and using it as a delicate steam to
keep them in this good motion. Then an old gentleman, questionable
as to legs, wheeled in, in a red sulky, by a servant, and
the servant, with his face towards the water, looking quite comfortable,
but a little out of breath. Several other whiskered
gentlemen hurrying in, a drove of them, and getting under way
very promptly, and losing no time on the course.
That Battery; near as you may think it; was a great way
off to Big Abel and Lankey that day: and it was by slow degrees
alone they ever reached it. Beginning with a look out
taken at the windows, sleepily and at full length, by both; then,
after a long while, chairs in the little balcony (he was getting
nearer, clearly); then a descent to the ground, a long pause in
the door-way, taking minutes idly of the people going up and
down; with a very confused notion, however, of their number
and destination; an actual passage of the street, opening of the
gate, and inside they are! Not so fast, either. When the gate
is closed behind them, they stop to take in the Battery for himself;
all round, up and down. Well: that's quite to their
mind. Then a little way up the right walk, to see what comes
of that part (this is lazy work for you, Big Abel, with your iron
Safe at home; and Lankey—but Little Manhattan, I believe,
is in a dream or maze, and Big Abel has caught it of him);
a turn back again, over toward the water; against the rail,
looking into that element, after an idle sort, and not making
much out of it either. Then sitting on a bench, under a broad
tree, at about the Battery's heart, the better part of an hour;
perhaps two, or three; for time doesn't count with them to-day.
People pass quietly about them; there are more now; the fast
walkers have all gone away, and everybody takes the day for
what he finds him.
And a lazy summer's day was that (as you have found by
this time); so lazy and sleepy in his look, the wonder is that
he got abroad at all, and hadn't lain behind the clouds for ever.
There was the old fort, sitting as settled and solid on his base
as if he'd never speak a word again, though twenty thousand
far away other forts on Governor's Island, and Bedloe's, and
Gibbet's, quite as sleepy as he. And farther still, high in the
soft haze, Staten Island dozing as though he belonged to another
world, beyond the cares and tribulation of this; and the soft,
broad, slumbrous Bay, stretching like an idle Leviathan off
toward the Narrows. Nearer by, Jersey City, low-lying and
humbled under the rule of a single great chimney that peers
about, high up in the air, as if he were specially delegated to
stretch his neck for a view of New York. And on the other
hand, Gowanus, moving lazily along the road toward Bath and
Rockaway.
And how bore the old Battery this far-and-wide repose?
Settled in the midst of it like a smooth-backed duck in
the water! He held his breath and listened for the Bay
to speak, and the ships, and the islands. The great trees;
not a whisper from them! The grass; not the rustling of a
blade! And up and down the paths there moved stout old
gentlemen, and thin young gentlemen with canes under their
arms, and masters and 'prentices, and shop-keepers and shop-boys,
throngs of them; and, the very Spirit of the whole thing,
there went along, close to the railing, as near the water as he
could, an old sea-dog of a grizzled captain, who snuffed the salt
air and caught a flavor of the oakum and the tar that lingers
round about, and seemed to hush within himself the thousand
storms he knew of, off Bahamas and the Capes, and down the hot
Gulf Stream. There was a packet-captain for you! Not a word
of the sea, nor of fine company on ship-board, nor wrecks, nor
great north-westerners, nor strange appearances far from shore,
nor spouting whales, cutting voyages, men overboard. But all
about a little plot of ground, he mentioned, in Westchester: a
few acres only: the soil was good, the plough went always
twenty inches in the mould; sufficient for a horse and cow. So
much for land. The house (this was his vision of a house),
smokers in long summer afternoons); a grassy green; some
sea-thought there, no doubt! and then, roving there, as easy
and as kind and soft in glossy beauty for the eye to dwell on as
the summer's day itself, a smooth, snug, cobby horse. Not far
off, a gig; at rest now; but out upon the road once with that
cobby horse, they'll play the mischief all the country round!
And, as for drivers, where's to match that grizzled seaman
with his cunning hand! Climbing far away the winding roads;
there are such roads there; they get, a truth to tell, a look-out
to the sea. Ah, there it is again, old sea-dog; all the salt is in
you still, and keeps fresh that stormy heart, though beating in
the very bloom of silent fields!
The Packet-Captain took Big Abel by the hand as he passed,
and was asked to the old Banking-House. Nothing better for
him than a walk the city's length. He'd bring his telescope
along. Very good, Mr. Captain. You shall have a welcome,
with a jolly company!
Big Abel and Lankey had no thought of going in-doors to
dinner, but made their meal at a stand at the east gate. Quite
a number were doing the same thing. And about this time
there came a pause, when the Battery was clear of everybody
but Lankey and Big Abel, who loitered up and down the ways;
and getting towards the lower side, looked off into the great
business streets. How still they were! The stillness, too, of
mere idiots and fools, with no business in the world whatever:
you laughed at them they seemed so simple-witted and purposeless,
on this quiet Sabbath-day; and all their properties partook
of this. The boxes lying there, heaped on each other, sheer
absurdities! the hogsheads, great-bodied nothings! and as for
the coils of chain, they lay so heavy on the ground you would have
thought no soul nor circumstance nor chance could ever, by
possibility, put the breath of life in them again. And the great
stores stood there, long-sided gawkies, looking about as though
somebody to tell them what to do next. Idle boys without hats or
coats, going about there, gathering odds and ends of tarred rope,
and picking old nails, had them in contempt.
And now at the east gate there began to set in a heavy tide:
it had got past supper-time some how or other, in an idle way:
from Broadway, troops of young gentlemen and young ladies;
seamstresses, some; clerks; worthy small-tradesmen, with
their wives; and proceeding to certain eligible benches, ranged
themselves as if in presence of some pleasant show or other,
now exhibiting, or drawing on quite rapidly. It wasn't long
before the benches were full, when there came across the green
where the Little Manhattan and Big Abel stood under a low-branched
sycamore, two who seemed to have a heart with all these
in what was happening; and yet withdrawing, now again, into a
world of their own, of which they two had the key, and no
one could follow.
It was the Poor Scholar and his mistress.
“Well, now,” said Mary, turning towards him with both
hands stretched out, as now they paused, too, not far from Big
Abel and Lankey. “Where is it?”
“Why, Mary, you're beside yourself. What do you mean?”
“I know you've got it about you, somewhere?”
“Got what?”
“Why, a little bag of gold, to be sure!”
“A little bag of gold!” His voice grew ghostly at the very
mention of it.
“I am not paid yet; but it's all right.”
“They accept it?”
“Not that either. You have such a fancy!”
“They have read it?”
“How fast of thought you are! How could they, now?”
“Why nothing easier in the world; and nothing pleasanter.
I should think they'd be glad to spend their time in some snug
and paying the writers.”
“Mary! There's a great book just arrived from England!”
“Well!”
“Well! Why, don't you know what that means? It must
be printed; it must be published; it must be circulated; and
all for the benefit of the people of the United States, who'd
complain if they were neglected. Don't you see that?”
The book then; the book of William's brain and Mary's
hope, wasn't printed yet; not quite bought and paid for, come
to that. But it was in a fair way. There wouldn't be another
great book from England under a month, and there was a fine
time to lay his egg in the sun and have it hatched. It'll chirp
merrily, I warrant you, when it's once out!
Big Abel and Lankey were as well disposed for a little cheap
and cheerful entertainment as any one, and when several
excellent rockets went up from within the Garden (admission
twenty-five cents, United States currency), they gave immediate
attention to them. These were followed by several other
equally authentic and undoubted rockets; genuine to these
people outside, as well as to those within; which performed in
the air a vast number of feats in the way of going up and
coming down in straight lines; or throwing somersets in the
air, backwards; or breaking out all over in a wild inflammation;
or changing color; or coming to an end before their time,
in a most painful fashion. This put the people on the benches,
all along, in excellent spirits; they began to grow quite lively,
and to look on with a marked approval of the enterprise of the
lessees. Then there was a ghastly light over the Garden.
Great numbers made haste to the railing; some fell back, as
commanding a deeper view of the proceedings. It was the
general feeling that in less than two minutes Moscow would
be in blaze. The excitement outside, for so quiet a day, was
quite painful. The children in arms could scarcely contain
as his opinion (he had seen it burned to the ground nine-and-twenty
times during the season), that Moscow would not be
fired that night. He took occasion to remind them—they were
at a point of expectation where it was hard to bring it home to
them—that this was Sunday night. As for the rockets, they
saw how softly they went up: but as for Moscow that would
never do, and they'd better make up their minds to it. After a
time they came to the steady patron's view of the matter: the
twinkling haze of the Garden-lamps fell down: the Garden
grew dark and gloomy, taking his station for the night in a
settled melancholy way, and the crowd went off, without even a
cheer in behalf of the spirited proprietors.
A foolish crowd! For by the time they had got well away,
there crept over the water from down the Bay, a sound, with
music in it; faint at first, then rising, rising, and coming on
towards the green old Battery, that Lankey Fogle seemed to
hear the voices of another land, and deluded himself for a little
while with the belief that the islands, showing now like shadows
in the far-off water, had gone from this, and were the mansions,
in another world, of spirits akin to his. A boat moved through
the distance, not far from these, plashing with her wheel as
gently as she could; and in her breast she seemed to bear the
magic harmony that troubled Lankey so. A singing-school
made nest within her decks; and that it was that on this peaceful
evening blessed the waters with the shower of cheerful notes
they scattered as the wheel went round.
A pause now! And now again it springs afresh, that tuneful
tempest on the Bay, bearing into the heart of lonesome night
such sounds, that he must grow like day, and smile at thinking
that so sweet a comfort may be his! And now it has gone away
so far, no mortal ear from shore may follow it. Nothing comes
to fill this dreary blank, which seems to hold the very world.
What was the Little Manhattan claiming, that he sate so
perhaps? He kept his eye long fixed upon a spot toward the
point, and there sprung up after a while to his fancy, in its
visionary way, a red blaze; and, gathering round it, in its dusky
light, there sate a score of men who seemed to have come out
of the darkness, and brought a tinge of it upon their cheeks,
and in their soft black eyes and sombre brows. They inclined
their eyes upon the ground; or, lifting them, peered within the
blaze.
Big Abel felt how it was going with poor Lankey's heart.
“This is yours, of course!” he said. “And must be yours
for ever. No street shall cross: no shop shall sit upon this
ground. The trees are speaking for you, Lankey; and are
always telling Heaven of the council-fires that used to burnish
up their leaves. Yours, Lankey; yours for ever!”
The Little Manhattan smiled at that; the bay-girt Battery
thus made forever Lankey Fogle's Ground; and rising up, they
made for rest.
| CHAPTER V.
It strikes Three; and the City takes his Comfort. Big Abel, and the little Manhattan | |