The Bacillus of Beauty | Page 2

to stand. The Post Office, the City Hall, the restaurant where I ate breakfast, studying upon the wall the bible texts and signs bidding me watch my hat and overcoat; the Tribune building, just as it looks on the almanac cover--all these made an instant, deep impression. Not in the least like a dream.
By the statue of Horace Greeley I stood a moment irresolute. I knew that, before I could reach her, Helen would have left her rooms for Barnard College; breakfast had been a mistake. Then I noticed that Nassau Street was just opposite; and, in spite of my impatience to be at her door, I constrained myself to look up Judge Baker.
Between its Babel towers narrow Nassau Street was like a canyon. The pavements were wet, for folks had just finished washing windows, though it was eight o'clock in the forenoon. Bicycles zipped past and from somewhere north a freshet of people flooded the sidewalk and roadway.
Down a steep little hill and up another--both thronged past belief--and in a great marble maze of lawyers' offices I found the sign of Baker & Magoun.
The boy who alone represented the firm said that I might have to wait some minutes, and turned me loose to browse in the big, high-ceiled outer room or library of the place where I am to work. After the dim corridors it was a blaze of light. On all sides were massive bookshelves; the doorways gave glimpses of other rooms, fine with rugs and pictures and heavy desks, different enough from the plain fittings of the country lawyers' workshops I had known. The carpet sank under my feet as I went to the window.
I stood looking at the Jersey hills, blue and fair in the distance, and dreaming of Helen, who was to bless and crown my good fortune, when I heard a step at the door and a young man came in--a tall, blonde, supple fellow not much older than I. Then the Judge appeared, ponderous, slow of tread, immaculate of dress; the same, unless his iron-gray locks have retreated yet farther from his wall of a brow, that I have remembered him from boyhood.
"Burke!" he said, "I am glad to see you. Welcome to New York and to this office, my boy!"
The grasp of his big warm hand was as good as the words and the eyes beneath his heavy gray brows were full of kindness as, holding both my hands in his, he drew me toward the young man who had preceded him. With a winning smile the latter turned.
"Hynes," said the Judge, with a heartiness that made one forget his formal manner, "you have heard me speak of Burke's father, the boyhood companion with whom, when the finny tribes were eager, I sometimes strayed from the strait and narrow path that led to school. Burke, Hynes is the sportsman here--our tiger-slayer. He beards in their lairs those Tammany ornaments of the bench whom the flippant term 'necessity Judges,' because of their slender acquaintance with the law."
"Glad to see you, Burke," said Hynes, as dutifully we laughed together at the time-honoured jest.
I knew from the look of him that he was a good fellow, and he had an honest grip; though out where I come from we might call him a dude. All New Yorkers seem to dress pretty well.
Presently Managing Clerk Crosby came, and Mr. Magoun, as lean, brusque and mosquito-like as his partner is elephantine; and after a few words with them I was called into the Judge's private room, where a great lump rose in my throat when I tried, and miserably failed, to thank him for all his great kindness.
"Consider, if it pleases you," he said, to put me quite at my ease, "that I have proposed our arrangement, not so much on your own account as because I loved your father and must rely upon his son. It brings back my youth to speak his name--your name, Johnny Burke!"
Yes, I remember the words, I remember the tremour in the kind voice and the mist of unshed tears through which he looked at me. I'm not dreaming; sometimes I wish I were, almost.
When I left the Judge, of course I pasted right up to Union Square, though I felt sure that Helen would be at college. No. 2 proved to be a dingy brick building with wigs and armour and old uniforms and grimy pictures in the windows, and above them the signs of a "dental parlour" and a school for theatrical dancing.
It seemed an odd place in which to look for Nelly, but I pounded up the worn stairs--dressmakers' advertisements on every riser--until I reached the top floor, where a meal-bag of a woman whose head was tied up in a coloured handkerchief confronted me with dustpan