87. CHAPTER LXXXVII.
A LONG JOURNEY.
Abel Newt ran to the ferry and crossed. Then he gained
Broadway, and sauntered into one of the hells in Park Row.
It was bright and full, and he saw many an old friend. They
nodded to him, and said, “Ah! back again!” and he smiled,
and said a man must not be too virtuous all at once.
So he ventured a little, and won; ventured a little more, and
lost. Ventured a little more, and won again; and lost again.
Then came supper, and wine flowed freely. Old friends
must pledge in bumpers.
To work again, and the bells striking midnight. Win, lose;
lose, win; win, win, lose, lose, lose, lose, lose, lose.
Abel Newt smiled: his face was red, his eyes glaring.
“I've played enough,” he said; “the luck's against me!”
He passed his hands rapidly through his hair.
“Cash I can not pay,” he said; “but here is my I O U,
and a check of my Uncle Lawrence's in the morning; for I
have no account, you know.”
His voice was rough. It was two o'clock in the morning;
and the lonely woman he had left sat waiting and wondering:
stealing to the front door and straining her eyes into the night:
stealing softly back again to press her forehead against the
window: and the quiet hopelessness of her face began to be
pricked with terror.
“Good-night, gentlemen,” said Abel, huskily and savagely.
There was a laugh around the table at which he had been
playing.
“Takes it hardly, now that he's got money,” said one of his
old cronies. “He's made up with Uncle Lawrence, I hear.
Hope he'll come often, hey?” he said to the bank.
The bank smiled vaguely, but did not reply.
It was after two, and Abel burst into the street. He had
been drinking brandy, and the fires were lighted within him.
Pulling his hat heavily upon his head, he moved unsteadily
along the street toward the ferry. The night was starry and
still. There were few passers in the street; and no light but
that which shone at some of the corners, the bad, red eye that
lures to death. The night air struck cool upon his face and
into his lungs. His head was light. He reeled.
“Mus ha' some drink,” he said, thickly.
He stumbled, and staggered into the nearest shop. There
was a counter, with large yellow barrels behind it; and a high
blind, behind which two or three rough-looking men were
drinking. In the window there was a sign, “Liquors, pure
as imported.”
The place was dingy and cold. The floor was sanded. The
two or three guests were huddled about a stove—one asleep
upon a bench, the others smoking short pipes; and their hard,
cadaverous faces and sullen eyes turned no welcome upon
Abel when he entered, but they looked at him quickly, as if
they suspected him to be a policeman or magistrate, and as if
they had reason not to wish to see either. But in a moment
they saw it was not a sober man, whoever he was. Abel
tried to stand erect, to look dignified, to smooth himself into
apparent sobriety. He vaguely hoped to give the impression
that he was a gentleman belated upon his way home, and taking
a simple glass for comfort.
“Why, Dick, don't yer know him?” said one, in a low voice,
to his neighbor.
“No, d— him! and don't want to.”
“I do, though,” replied the first man, still watching the
new-comer curiously.
“Why, Jim, who in h— is it?” asked Dick.
“That air man's our representative. That ain't nobody
else but Abel Newt.”
“Well,” muttered Jim, sullenly, as he surveyed the general
appearance of Abel while he stood drinking a glass of brandy
—“pure as imported”—at the counter—“well, we've done lots
for him: what's he going to do for us? We've put that man
up tremendious high; d'ye think he's going to kick away the
ladder?”
He half grumbled to himself, half asked his neighbor Dick.
They were both a little drunk, and very surly.
“I dunno. But he's vastly high and mighty—that I know;
and, by —, I'll tell him so!” said Dick, energetically elasping
his hands, bringing one of them down upon the bench on
which he sat, and clenching every word with an oath.
“Hallo, Jim! let's make him give us somethin' to drink!”
The two constituents approached the representative whose
election they had so ardently supported.
“Well, Newt, how air ye?”
Abel Newt was confounded at being accosted in such a
place at such an hour. He raised his heavy eyes as he leaned
unsteadily against the counter, and saw two beetle-browed,
square-faced, disagreeable-looking men looking at him with
half-drunken, sullen insolence.
“Hallo, Newt! how air ye?” repeated Jim, as he confronted
the representative.
Abel looked at him with shaking head, indignant and scornful.
“Who the devil are you?” he asked, at length, blurring
the words as he spoke, and endeavoring to express supreme
contempt.
“We're the men that made yer!” retorted Dick, in a shrill,
tipsy voice.
The liquor-seller, who was leaning upon his counter, was instantly
alarmed. He knew the signs of impending danger.
He hurried round, and said,
“Come, come; I'm going to shut up! Time to go home;
time to go home!”
The three men at the counter did not move. As they stood
facing each other the brute fury kindled more and more fiercely
in each one of them.
“We're Jim and Dick, and Ned's asleep yonder on the
bench; and we're come to drink a glass with yer, Honorable
Abel Newt!” said Dick, in a sneering tone. “It's we what
did your business for ye. What'yer going to do for us?”
There was a menacing air in his eye as he glanced at Abel,
who felt himself quiver with impotent, blind rage.
“I dun—dun—no ye!” he said, with maudlin dignity.
The men pressed nearer.
“Time to go home! Time to go home!” quavered the
liquor-seller; and Ned opened his eyes, and slowly raised his
huge frame from the bench.
“What's the row?” asked he of his comrades.
“The Honorable Abel Newt's the row,” said Jim, pointing
at him.
There was something peculiarly irritating to Abel in the
pointing finger. Holding by the counter, he raised his hand
and struck at it.
Ned rolled his body off the bench in a moment.
“For God's sake!” gasped the little liquor-seller.
Jim and Dick stood hesitatingly, glaring at Abel. Jim
struck his teeth together. Ned joined them, and they surrounded
Abel.
“What in — do you mean by striking me, you drunken
pig?” growled Jim, but not yet striking. Conscious of his
strength, he had the instinctive forbearance of superiority, but
it was fast mastered by the maddening liquor.
“Time to go home! Time to go home!” cried the thin
piping voice of the liquor-seller.
“What the — do you mean by insulting my friend?”
half hiccuped Dick, shaking his head threateningly, and stiffening
his arm and fist at his side as he edged toward Abel.
The hard black eyes of Abel Newt shot sullen fire. His
rage half sobered him. He threw his head with the old defiant
air, tossing the hair back. The old beauty flashed for an
instant through the ruin that had been wrought in his face,
and, kindling into a wild, glittering look of wrath, his eye
swept them all as he struck heavily forward.
“Time to go home! Time to go home!” came the cry
again, unheeded, unheard.
There was a sudden, fierce, brutal struggle. The men's
faces were human no longer, but livid with bestial passion.
The liquor-seller rushed into the street, and shouted aloud for
help. The cry rang along the dark, still houses, and startled
the drowsy, reluctant watchmen on their rounds. They sprang
their rattles.
“Murder! murder!” was the cry, which did not disturb the
neighbors, who were heavy sleepers, and accustomed to noise
and fighting.
“Murder! murder!” It rang nearer and nearer as the
watchmen hastened toward the corner. They found the little
man standing at his door, bareheaded, and shouting,
“My God! my God! they've killed a man—they've killed
a man!”
“Stop your noise, and let us in. What is it?”
The little man pointed back into his dim shop. The watchmen
saw only the great yellow round tanks of the liquor pure
as imported, and pushed in behind the blind. There was no
one there; a bench was overturned, and there were glasses
upon the counter. No one there? One of the watchmen
struck something with his foot, and, stooping, touched a human
body. He started up.
“There's a man here.”
He did not say dead, or drunk; but his tone said every
thing.
One of them ran to the next doctor, and returned with him
after a little while. Meanwhile the others had raised the body.
It was yet warm. They laid it upon the bench.
“Warm still. Stunned, I reckon. I see no blood, except
about the face. Well dressed. What's he doing here?” The
doctor said so as he felt the pulse. He carefully turned the
body over, examined it every where, looked earnestly at the
face, around which the matted hair clustered heavily:
“He has gone upon his long journey!” said the young doctor,
in a low, solemn tone, still looking at the face with an
emotion of sad sympathy, for it was a face that had been very
handsome; and it was a young man, like himself. The city
bells clanged three.
“Who is it?” he asked.
Nobody knew.
“Look at his handkerchief.”
They found it, and handed it to the young doctor. He
unrolled it, holding it smooth in his hands; suddenly his face
turned pale; the tears burst into his eyes. A curious throng
of recollections and emotions overpowered him. His heart
ached as he leaned over the body; and laying the matted hair
away, he looked long and earnestly into the face. In that dim
moment in the liquor-shop, by that bruised body, how much
he saw! A play-ground loud with boys—wide-branching elms
—a country church—a placid pond. He heard voices, and
summer hymns, and evening echoes; and all the images and
sounds were soft, and pensive, and remote.
The doctor's name was Greenidge—James Greenidge, and
he had known Abel Newt at school.
