The Day Resurgent
I can see the artist bite the end of his pencil and frown when it comesto drawing his Easter picture; for his legitimate pictorial conceptionsof figures pertinent to the festival are but four in number.
First comes Easter, pagan goddess of spring. Here his fancy may havefree play. A beautiful maiden with decorative hair and the proper numberof toes will fill the bill. Miss Clarice St. Vavasour, the well-knownmodel, will pose for it in the "Lethergogallagher," or whatever it wasthat Trilby called it.
Second--the melancholy lady with upturned eyes in a framework of lilies.This is magazine-covery, but reliable.
Third--Miss Manhattan in the Fifth Avenue Easter Sunday parade.
Fourth--Maggie Murphy with a new red feather in her old straw hat, happyand self-conscious, in the Grand Street turnout.
Of course, the rabbits do not count. Nor the Easter eggs, since thehigher criticism has hard-boiled them.
The limited field of its pictorial possibilities proves that Easter, ofall our festival days, is the most vague and shifting in our conception.It belongs to all religions, although the pagans invented it. Going backstill further to the first spring, we can see Eve choosing with pride anew green leaf from the tree _ficus carica_.
Now, the object of this critical and learned preamble is to set forththe theorem that Easter is neither a date, a season, a festival, aholiday nor an occasion. What it is you shall find out if you follow inthe footsteps of Danny McCree.
Easter Sunday dawned as it should, bright and early, in its place on thecalendar between Saturday and Monday. At 5.24 the sun rose, and at 10.30Danny followed its example. He went into the kitchen and washed hisface at the sink. His mother was frying bacon. She looked at his hard,smooth, knowing countenance as he juggled with the round cake of soap,and thought of his father when she first saw him stopping a hot grounderbetween second and third twenty-two years before on a vacant lot inHarlem, where the La Paloma apartment house now stands. In the frontroom of the flat Danny's father sat by an open window smoking his pipe,with his dishevelled gray hair tossed about by the breeze. He stillclung to his pipe, although his sight had been taken from him two yearsbefore by a precocious blast of giant powder that went off withoutpermission. Very few blind men care for smoking, for the reason thatthey cannot see the smoke. Now, could you enjoy having the news read toyou from an evening newspaper unless you could see the colors of theheadlines?
"'Tis Easter Day," said Mrs. McCree.
"Scramble mine," said Danny.
After breakfast he dressed himself in the Sabbath morning costume ofthe Canal Street importing house dray chauffeur--frock coat, stripedtrousers, patent leathers, gilded trace chain across front of vest,and wing collar, rolled-brim derby and butterfly bow from Schonstein's(between Fourteenth Street and Tony's fruit stand) Saturday night sale.
"You'll be goin' out this day, of course, Danny," said old man McCree,a little wistfully. "'Tis a kind of holiday, they say. Well, it's finespring weather. I can feel it in the air."
"Why should I not be going out?" demanded Danny in his grumpiest chesttones. "Should I stay in? Am I as good as a horse? One day of rest myteam has a week. Who earns the money for the rent and the breakfastyou've just eat, I'd like to know? Answer me that!"
"All right, lad," said the old man. "I'm not complainin'. While me twoeyes was good there was nothin' better to my mind than a Sunday out.There's a smell of turf and burnin' brush comin' in the windy. I have metobaccy. A good fine day and rist to ye, lad. Times I wish your motherhad larned to read, so I might hear the rest about the hippopotamus--butlet that be."
"Now, what is this foolishness he talks of hippopotamuses?" asked Dannyof his mother, as he passed through the kitchen. "Have you been takinghim to the Zoo? And for what?"
"I have not," said Mrs. McCree. "He sets by the windy all day. 'Tislittle recreation a blind man among the poor gets at all. I'm thinkin'they wander in their minds at times. One day he talks of grease withoutstoppin' for the most of an hour. I looks to see if there's lard burnin'in the fryin' pan. There is not. He says I do not understand. 'Tis wearydays, Sundays, and holidays and all, for a blind man, Danny. There wasno better nor stronger than him when he had his two eyes. 'Tis a fineday, son. Injoy yeself ag'inst the morning. There will be cold supper atsix."
"Have you heard any talk of a hippopotamus?" asked Danny of Mike, thejanitor, as he went out the door downstairs.
"I have not," said Mike, pulling his shirtsleeves higher. "But 'tis theonly subject in the animal, natural and illegal lists of outrages thatI've not been complained to about these two days. See the landlord. Orelse move out if ye like. Have ye hippopotamuses in the lease? No,then?"
"It was the old man who spoke of it," said Danny. "Likely there'snothing in it."
Danny walked up the street to the Avenue and then struck northward intothe heart of the district where Easter--modern Easter, in new, brightraiment--leads the pascal march. Out of towering brown churches came theblithe music of anthems from the choirs. The broad sidewalks were movingparterres of living flowers--so it seemed when your eye looked upon theEaster girl.
Gentlemen, frock-coated, silk-hatted, gardeniaed, sustained thebackground of the tradition. Children carried lilies in their hands. Thewindows of the brownstone mansions were packed with the most opulentcreations of Flora, the sister of the Lady of the Lilies.
Around a corner, white-gloved, pink-gilled and tightly buttoned, walkedCorrigan, the cop, shield to the curb. Danny knew him.
"Why, Corrigan," he asked, "is Easter? I know it comes the first timeyou're full after the moon rises on the seventeenth of March--but why?Is it a proper and religious ceremony, or does the Governor appoint itout of politics?"
"'Tis an annual celebration," said Corrigan, with the judicial air ofthe Third Deputy Police Commissioner, "peculiar to New York. It extendsup to Harlem. Sometimes they has the reserves out at One Hundred andTwenty-fifth Street. In my opinion 'tis not political."
"Thanks," said Danny. "And say--did you ever hear a man complain ofhippopotamuses? When not specially in drink, I mean."
"Nothing larger than sea turtles," said Corrigan, reflecting, "and therewas wood alcohol in that."
Danny wandered. The double, heavy incumbency of enjoying simultaneouslya Sunday and a festival day was his.
The sorrows of the hand-toiler fit him easily. They are worn so oftenthat they hang with the picturesque lines of the best tailor-madegarments. That is why well-fed artists of pencil and pen find in thegriefs of the common people their most striking models. But when thePhilistine would disport himself, the grimness of Melpomene, herself,attends upon his capers. Therefore, Danny set his jaw hard at Easter,and took his pleasure sadly.
The family entrance of Dugan's café was feasible; so Danny yielded tothe vernal season as far as a glass of bock. Seated in a dark,linoleumed, humid back room, his heart and mind still groped after themysterious meaning of the springtime jubilee.
"Say, Tim," he said to the waiter, "why do they have Easter?"
"Skiddoo!" said Tim, closing a sophisticated eye. "Is that a new one?All right. Tony Pastor's for you last night, I guess. I give it up.What's the answer--two apples or a yard and a half?"
From Dugan's Danny turned back eastward. The April sun seemed to stir inhim a vague feeling that he could not construe. He made a wrongdiagnosis and decided that it was Katy Conlon.
A block from her house on Avenue A he met her going to church. Theypumped hands on the corner.
"Gee! but you look dumpish and dressed up," said Katy. "What's wrong?Come away with me to church and be cheerful."
"What's doing at church?" asked Danny.
"Why, it's Easter Sunday. Silly! I waited till after eleven expectin'you might come around to go."
"What does this Easter stand for, Katy," asked Danny gloomily. "Nobodyseems to know."
"Nobody as blind as you," said Katy with spirit. "You haven't evenlooked at my new hat. And skirt. Why, it's when all the girls put on newspring clothes. Silly! Are you coming to church with me?"
"I will," said Danny. "If this Easter is pulled off there, they ought tobe able to give some excuse for it. Not that the hat ain't a beauty. Thegreen roses are great."
At church the preacher did some expounding with no pounding. He spokerapidly, for he was in a hurry to get home to his early Sabbath dinner;but he knew his business. There was one word that controlled histheme--resurrection. Not a new creation; but a new life arising out ofthe old. The congregation had heard it often before. But there was awonderful hat, a combination of sweet peas and lavender, in the sixthpew from the pulpit. It attracted much attention.
After church Danny lingered on a corner while Katy waited, with pique inher sky-blue eyes.
"Are you coming along to the house?" she asked. "But don't mind me. I'llget there all right. You seem to be studyin' a lot about something. Allright. Will I see you at any time specially, Mr. McCree?"
"I'll be around Wednesday night as usual," said Danny, turning andcrossing the street.
Katy walked away with the green roses dangling indignantly. Dannystopped two blocks away. He stood still with his hands in his pockets,at the curb on the corner. His face was that of a graven image. Deepin his soul something stirred so small, so fine, so keen and leaveningthat his hard fibres did not recognize it. It was something more tenderthan the April day, more subtle than the call of the senses, purer anddeeper-rooted than the love of woman--for had he not turned away fromgreen roses and eyes that had kept him chained for a year? And Dannydid not know what it was. The preacher, who was in a hurry to go to hisdinner, had told him, but Danny had had no libretto with which to followthe drowsy intonation. But the preacher spoke the truth.
Suddenly Danny slapped his leg and gave forth a hoarse yell of delight.
"Hippopotamus!" he shouted to an elevated road pillar. "Well, how isthat for a bum guess? Why, blast my skylights! I know what he wasdriving at now.
"Hippopotamus! Wouldn't that send you to the Bronx! It's been a yearsince he heard it; and he didn't miss it so very far. We quit at 469B. C., and this comes next. Well, a wooden man wouldn't have guessedwhat he was trying to get out of him."
Danny caught a crosstown car and went up to the rear flat that his laborsupported.
Old man McCree was still sitting by the window. His extinct pipe lay onthe sill.
"Will that be you, lad?" he asked.
Danny flared into the rage of a strong man who is surprised at theoutset of committing a good deed.
"Who pays the rent and buys the food that is eaten in this house?" hesnapped, viciously. "Have I no right to come in?"
"Ye're a faithful lad," said old man McCree, with a sigh. "Is it eveningyet?"
Danny reached up on a shelf and took down a thick book labeled in giltletters, "The History of Greece." Dust was on it half an inch thick. Helaid it on the table and found a place in it marked by a strip of paper.And then he gave a short roar at the top of his voice, and said:
"Was it the hippopotamus you wanted to be read to about then?"
"Did I hear ye open the book?" said old man McCree. "Many and weary bethe months since my lad has read it to me. I dinno; but I took a greatlikings to them Greeks. Ye left off at a place. 'Tis a fine day outside,lad. Be out and take rest from your work. I have gotten used to me chairby the windy and me pipe."
"Pel-Peloponnesus was the place where we left off, and nothippopotamus," said Danny. "The war began there. It kept something doingfor thirty years. The headlines says that a guy named Philip of Macedon,in 338 B. C., got to be boss of Greece by getting the decision at thebattle of Cher-Cheronoea. I'll read it."
With his hand to his ear, rapt in the Peloponnesian War, old man McCreesat for an hour, listening.
Then he got up and felt his way to the door of the kitchen. Mrs. McCreewas slicing cold meat. She looked up. Tears were running from old manMcCree's eyes.
"Do you hear our lad readin' to me?" he said. "There is none finer inthe land. My two eyes have come back to me again."
After supper he said to Danny: "'Tis a happy day, this Easter. And nowye will be off to see Katy in the evening. Well enough."
"Who pays the rent and buys the food that is eaten in this house?" saidDanny, angrily. "Have I no right to stay in it? After supper there isyet to come the reading of the battle of Corinth, 146 B. C., when thekingdom, as they say, became an in-integral portion of the Roman Empire.Am I nothing in this house?"
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