The Monster | ||
IV.
A Saturday evening was a sign always for a larger crowd to parade the thoroughfare. In summer the band played until ten o'clock in the little park. Most of the young men of the town affected to be superior to this band, even to despise it; but in the still and fragrant evenings they invariably turned out in force, because the girls were sure to attend this concert, strolling slowly over the grass, linked closely in pairs, or preferably in threes, in the curious public dependence upon one another which was their inheritance. There was no particular social aspect to this gathering, save that group regarded group with interest, but mainly in silence. Perhaps one girl would nudge another girl and suddenly say, "Look! there goes Gertie Hodgson and her sister!" And they would appear to regard this as an event of importance.
On a particular evening a rather large company of young men were gathered on the sidewalk that edged the park. They remained thus beyond the borders of the festivities because of their dignity, which would not exactly allow them to appear in anything which was so much fun for the younger lads. These latter were careering madly through the crowd, precipitating minor accidents from time to time, but usually fleeing like mist swept by the wind before retribution could lay its hands upon them.
The band played a waltz which involved a gift of prominence to the bass horn, and one of the young men on the sidewalk said that the music reminded
After the mails from New York and Rochester had been finally
distributed, the crowd from the post-office added to the mass
already in the park. The wind waved the leaves of the maples, and,
high in the air, the blue-burning globes of the arc lamps caused
the wonderful traceries of leaf shadows on the ground. When the
light fell upon the upturned face of a girl, it caused it to glow
with a wonderful pallor. A policeman came suddenly from the
darkness and chased a gang of obstreperous little boys. They
hooted him from a distance. The leader of the band had some of the
mannerisms of the great musicians, and during a period of silence
the crowd smiled when they saw him raise his hand to his brow,
stroke it sentimentally, and glance upward with a look of poetic
anguish. In the shivering light, which gave to the park an effect
like a great vaulted hall, the throng swarmed with a gentle murmur
of dresses switching the turf, and with a steady hum of voices.
"They bowed and smiled until a late hour."
[Description: Illustration by
Peter Newell. Three African-Americans, two women and a man, are
gathered in a sitting room. They are sitting on straight-backed
chairs, the women next to each other, and the man facing them. The
man, dressed in a tailcoat, bowtie, dress pants, and spats, is
turning to his right, away from the women, and is looking over his
shoulder at something outside of the frame. One of the women,
wearing a striped blouse and long, dark skirt, is looking at the man
and smiling. The other, wearing a floral blouse and long, grey skirt,
is looking at them both, and fanning herself with a large folding fan.
]
Suddenly, without preliminary bars, there arose from afar the great hoarse roar of a factory whistle. It raised and swelled to a sinister note, and then it sang on the night wind one long call that held the crowd in the park immovable, speechless. The band-master had been about to vehemently let fall his hand to start the band on a thundering career through a popular march, but, smitten by this giant voice from the night, his hand dropped slowly to his knee, and, his mouth agape, he looked at his men in silence. The cry died away to a wail, and then to stillness. It released the muscles of the company of young men on the sidewalk, who had been like statues, posed eagerly, lithely,
"The band played a waltz."
[Description: Illustration by Peter Newell. A brass band is playing in an outdoor pavillion. The conductor stands at the forefront of the illustration, facing the band, and conducting with outstretched arms. Several trumperters, a tuba player, a drummer, and a trombone player are sitting at the front of the band. All of the musicians, as well as the conductor, are wearing identical dark suits and military-style plumed caps. ]Again the sound swelled in the night and roared its long ominous cry, and as it died away the crowd of young men wheeled upon each other and, in chorus, yelled, "Two!"
There was a moment of breathless waiting. Then they bawled, "Second district!" In a flash the company of indolent and cynical young men had vanished like a snowball disrupted by dynamite.
The Monster | ||