poverty, when the bride of need, is in truth a skeleton in ragged raiment. those folk who prate of the beauties of indigence and of the divine unselfishness of so saintly a state should test the superstition with some leaning towards truth. god help those who are born both proud and poor. god help those who have fallen from the car of opulence into the slough of hunger and of need.
joan and gabriel had discovered the many curses of that cultured poverty which is the most piteous product of a diseased civilization. they found the old quip true, that greed, not god, rules the hearts of the many. penury had encompassed them. children of an ungenerous shame, they braved the hundred ignominies that poverty creates. economy was with them, as with thousands of their fellows, a juggling with coins, a plotting with pence, a combat with trifles. their very existence was a contorted and twisted struggle to escape the coils of annihilation. they had become as drift-wood on the billows of the great city. alone in the vast solitudes of that human sea, they struggled for life, unknown, abandoned to their own fate, acknowledged of none.
it was such a trial as sours the soul and fills the heart with malice towards those careless of the miseries of their fellows. like twin shoots cut from a green and luxuriant tree, they had been thrust into sand and left to suck sustenance from brine. they were together, and their love sustained them. it strengthened the man’s heart like wine, touched him with a lustre of heroism, chastened his whole soul.
gabriel began to comprehend in those troublous days the strange, rich beauty of a woman’s love. joan’s tenderness, her transcendent courage, kept him mellowed against the gall of care. she was as sunshine and the perfume of roses amid rotting ruins, a shaft of joy gleaming amid gloom. self seemed never with her. there was never a frown upon her face, an unworthy word upon her lips. she moved through the sordid realism of life unconsciously divine, spontaneously beautiful.
though hope still trimmed her lamp, the hand of tragedy beckoned through the hangings of the future. spring had spread her nets of gold and sapphire in the woods; tree called unto tree under the wakening moon; the sap of youth stirred in the earth’s red heart. in the great city the sky alone shone clear and generous, hanging like a blue pall above the pit of labor and disease.
with joan and gabriel their store of gold had dwindled like sand in an upturned hour-glass. no harvest had fallen to their lot; no cup had brimmed with the coming of the year. effort had brought no echo of hope, and the man’s pen seemed to have labored through the nights for naught. many a package had gone out from the little room; none had returned with the kiss of peace.
it was a spring evening, clear and bright. a swift sunset had brandished the crimson banners of romance above the gray and grinding tide of toil. a film of green had spread over the few pools of nature in the living desert. the restless fires of barter were startling the thin gloom. a last quaver of joy seemed to fall from the ensanguined clouds.
from the door of a pawnshop in a hurrying highway a man stepped out with his hat drawn down over his brows. he glanced half furtively hither and thither, as one new to the ignominies of defeat. a girl in a green cloak, with red roses in her hat, came to him gray-eyed from the dusk of the streets. the man colored as she drew near, and held out a hand with a scanty store of gold glistening in its palm.
“all this?” she asked him, with an eager increase of color.
“three pounds.”
“riches.”
he smiled, sadly enough, as she took a faded purse and engulfed the gold.
“it was judith’s gift to me,” he said, “a marriage present. poor little judith, if she but knew its fate! to what ends love falls.”
“i should have loved your sister.”
“ah, she is soul of your soul, little wife.”
they passed on together into a more populous highway, where the flood of life ran strong and eager. white faces flickered by them, gay, heavy, or morose. the tide of toil gushed past on every hand, bearing the galleys of misery or greed. the painted moths of passion fluttered from darkened byways to jig and glitter in the glow of the many lamps. opulence rolled on in sable and white. from many a street penury and despair rushed like noisome water from some thundering mill.
the man and the woman passed from the highway into a quiet square where bare trees and the turrets of an antique inn rose against the colorless sky. a garden lay shadowy under the bleak and arid walls. there was even a suggestion of solemnity in the silence of the place, with the muffled roar of toil flooding from the distance. joan’s arm rested in gabriel’s. the warm dusk of the great square was welcome after the turmoil of the streets.
“what a city is this,” said the girl, looking up into the man’s face. “at first i thought that it would stifle me with its dust and din. think of domremy and its woods and waters. i often say to myself, ‘how can these people have souls?’ from my heart i pity the poor.”
“are we not among them?”
“struggling against fate.”
“and starvation.”
the man sighed, glanced at the stars in the vault above, and at the great silver rim of the moon doming the house-tops.
“often this city,” he said, “this maelstrom of misery, makes me think there is no god.”
joan’s arm tightened on his.
“much is dark and strange to us,” she said.
“dark indeed.”
“you are cast down, dear, to-night.”
“i am heavy of heart.”
she drew very close to him, still gazing in his face.
“is it so ill with us?”
“in a month,” he answered her, “unless fortune pities us, we must starve. god knows, i have pride. i cannot whine. the world seems deaf to the children of shame.”
they passed on awhile in silence, threading dark streets and lurid highways where the torch of passion flickered by. many men stared in joan’s fair face as she moved like truth at the side of love. the unclean air was webbed with gold. the dance of death went merrily on. to the stars many a church held an iron cross, and the dead moon climbed in the heavy sky.
down a dusky street they saw the gleam of water under the moon. turning, they came to where the river swept with its black bosom under the stars. like a great scimitar it seemed to cleave the city’s heart.
the man and the woman leaned on the parapet and watched the restless tide swirl by. many lights flashed on the dusky water, symbolic of hope on the stream of years. the ebb and flow was as the life of the city, dark and unceasing under the stars.
joan’s face was turned to the heavens; her hand, clasped by gabriel’s, rested on the cold stone. she stood so close to him that he felt her take her breath.
“you cannot write to your father,” she said to him, as though suggesting his own thoughts.
“it would be useless.”
“no, you could not beg of him. what of your sister?”
“judith?”
“yes; she loves you.”
“i could not beg from a girl.”
she looked out over the river. the moon now shone upon it, spreading a glittering track of light. a myriad clocks seemed chiming the hour.
“i have less pride,” she said.
“joan.”
“it is i who have brought this shame and poverty upon you. i can plead with my own father.”
he looked at her in silence and his hand tightened upon hers. the river glittered, a black band streaked with silver; roof and spire glimmered under the moon. the lessening roar of the great loom of life rose upon the night breeze. as for joan, she was dreaming of the mallan water, the green woods, and the roses that would crimson her old home. the trees would be flowering in the orchard; the almond had waved its pink pennons athwart the blue. there would be a thousand violets purpling the grass.
“i will go to rilchester,” she said. “i will see my father; there were mellow seasons in him when the sun shone warm. there may be justice left within his heart.”
“i doubt it,” gabriel answered her, watching the moonlight on the river.
“nevertheless, i will try,” she said. “i will go to him alone.”
