When he went downstairs
Paul took a carriage and drove up Fifth Avenue toward the Park. The snow had
somewhat abated; carriages and tradesmen's wagons were hurrying soundlessly to
and fro in the winter twilight; boys in woolen mufflers were shoveling off the
doorsteps; the avenue stages made fine spots of color against the white street.
Here and there on the corners were stands, with whole flower gardens blooming
under glass cases, against the sides of which the snowflakes stuck and melted;
violets, roses, carnations, lilies of the valley--somehow vastly more lovely
and alluring that they blossomed thus unnaturally in the snow. The Park itself
was a wonderful stage winterpiece.
When he returned, the
pause of the twilight had ceased and the tune of the streets had changed. The
snow was falling faster, lights streamed from the hotels that reared their
dozen stories fearlessly up into the storm, defying the raging Atlantic winds.
A long, black stream of carriages poured down the avenue, intersected here and
there by other streams, tending horizontally. There were a score of cabs about
the entrance of his hotel, and his driver had to wait. Boys in livery were
running in and out of the awning stretched across the sidewalk, up and down the
red velvet carpet laid from the door to the street. Above, about, within it all
was the rumble and roar, the hurry and toss of thousands of human beings as hot
for pleasure as himself, and on every side of him towered the glaring
affirmation of the omnipotence of wealth.
The boy set his teeth
and drew his shoulders together in a spasm of realization; the plot of all
dramas, the text of all romances, the nerve-stuff of all sensations was
whirling about him like the snowflakes. He burnt like a faggot in a tempest.
When Paul went down to
dinner the music of the orchestra came floating up the elevator shaft to greet
him. His head whirled as he stepped into the thronged corridor, and he sank
back into one of the chairs against the wall to get his breath. The lights, the
chatter, the perfumes, the bewildering medley of color--he had, for a moment,
the feeling of not being able to stand it. But only for a moment; these were
his own people, he told himself. He went slowly about the corridors, through
the writing rooms, smoking rooms, reception rooms, as though he were exploring
the chambers of an enchanted palace, built and peopled for him alone.
When he reached the
dining room he sat down at a table near a window. The flowers, the white linen,
the many-colored wineglasses, the gay toilettes of the women, the low popping
of corks, the undulating repetitions of the Blue Danube from the orchestra, all
flooded Paul's dream with bewildering radiance. When the roseate tinge of his
champagne was added--that cold, precious, bubbling stuff that creamed and
foamed in his glass-- Paul wondered that there were honest men in the world at
all. This was what all the world was fighting for, he reflected; this was what
all the struggle was about. He doubted the reality of his past. Had he ever
known a place called Cordelia Street, a place where fagged-looking businessmen
got on the early car; mere rivets in a machine they seemed to Paul,--sickening
men, with combings of children's hair always hanging to their coats, and the
smell of cooking in their clothes. Cordelia Street--Ah, that belonged to
another time and country; had he not always been thus, had he not sat here
night after night, from as far back as he could remember, looking pensively
over just such shimmering textures and slowly twirling the stem of a glass like
this one between his thumb and middle finger? He rather thought he had.
The
“Cordelia Street” mentioned in the last paragraph is his home street back in
Pittsburg. Isn’t that just beautifully
set and detailed. The story is worth
reading.
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