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Passage Eleven
The Cop and the Anthem
1. On his bench in Madison Square Soapy moved uneasily. When wild goose honk
high of nights, and when women without sealskin coats grow kind to their husbands, and when Soapy moves uneasily on his bench in the park, you may know that winter is near at hand.
2. A dead leaf fell in Soapy’s lap. That was Jack Frost’s card. Jack is kind of the （访客、房客） of Madison Square, and gives fair warning of his annual call. At the comers of four streets he hands his the North Wind, footman of the mansion of All Outdoors, so that the Inhabitants thereof may make ready.
3. Soapy’s mind became of the fact that the time had come for him to
resolve himself into a singular Committee of Ways and Means to provide against the coming rigor. And therefore he moved uneasily on his bench.
4. of the highest. In them were no
considerations of Mediterranean cruises, of soporific Southern skies or drifting in the Vesuvian Bay. Three months on the Island was what his soul craved. Three months of assured board and bed and congenial company, safe from Boreas and bluecoats, seemed to Soapy the essence of things desirable.
5. For years the hospitable Blackwell’s had been his winter quarters. Just as his
more fortunate fellow New Yorkers had bought their tickets to Palm Beach and the Riviera each winter, so Soapy had made his humble arrangements for his three Sabbath newspapers, distributed beneath his coat, about his ankles and over fountain in the ancient square. So the Island loomed large and timely in Soapy’s mind. He scorned the provisions made in the name of charity for the city’s dependents. In Soapy’s opinion the Law was more benign than Philanthropy. There was an endless round of institutions, municipal and on which he might set out and receive lodging and food accordant with the simple life. But to one of Soapy’s proud spirit the gifts of charity are encumbered. If not in coin you must pay in humiliation of spirit for every benefit received at the hands of philanthropy. As Caesar had his Brutus, every bed of charity must have its toll of a bath, every loaf of bread its compensation of a private and personal inquisition. Wherefore it is better to be a guest of the law, which, though conducted by rules, does not meddle unduly with a gentleman’s private affairs.
6. Soapy, having decided to go to the Island, at once set about accomplishing his
desire. There were many easy ways of doing this. The pleasantest was to dine handed over quietly and without uproar to a policeman. An accommodating 7. Soapy left his bench and strolled out of the square and across the level sea of where Broadway and Fifth Avenue flow together. Up Broadway he 1
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turned, and halted at a glittering cafe, where are gathered together nightly the choicest products of the grape, the silkworm and the protoplasm.
8. Soapy had confidence in himself from the lowest button of his vest upward. He
was shaven, and his coat was decent and his neat black, ready-tied four-in-hand had been presented to him by a lady missionary on Thanksgiving Day. If he could reach a table in the restaurant unsuspected success would be his. The portion of him that would show above the table would raise no doubt in the waiter’s mind. A —with a bottle of would be enough. The total would not be so high as to call forth any supreme manifestation of revenge from the café management; and yet the meat would leave him filled and happy for the journey to his winter refuge.
9. But as Soapy set foot inside the restaurant door the head waiter’s eye fell upon his
flayed trousers and decadent shoes. Strong and ready hands turned him about and conveyed him in silence and haste to the sidewalk and averted the ignoble fate of 10. Soapy turned off Broadway. It seemed that his route to the coveted Island was not 11. At a corner of Sixth Avenue electric lights and cunningly displayed wares behind
plate-glass made a shop window conspicuous. Soapy took a cobblestone and dashed it through the glass. People came running round the corner, a policeman in the lead. Soapy stood still, with his hands in his pockets, and smiled at the sight 12. ‘Where’s the man that done that?’ inquired the officer excitedly.
13. ‘Don’t you figure out that I might have had something to do with it?’ said Soapy,
not without sarcasm, but friendly, as one greets good fortune.
14. The policeman’s mind refused to accept Soapy even as a clue. Men who smash
windows do not remain to parley with the law’s minions. They take to their heels. The policeman saw a man halfway down the block running to catch a car. With drawn club he joined in the pursuit. Soapy, with disgust in his heart, loafed along, twice unsuccessful.
15. On the opposite side of the street was a restaurant of no great It
catered to large appetites and modest purses. Its crockery and atmosphere were thick; its soup and napery thin. Into this place Soapy took his accusive shoes and tell-tale trousers without challenge. At a table he sat and consumed beefsteak, minutest coin and himself were strangers.
16. ‘Now, get busy and call a cop,’ said Soapy. ‘And don’t keep a gentleman
waiting.’
17. ‘No cop for youse,’ said the waiter, with a voice like butter cakes and an eye like
the cherry in a Manhattan cocktail. ‘Hey, Con!’
18. arose, joint by joint, as a carpenter’s rule opens, and beat the dust from his clothes. Arrest seemed but a rosy dream. The Island seemed very far away. A policeman 2
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who stood before a drug store two doors away laughed and walked down the street.
19. Five blocks Soapy traveled before his courage permitted him to woo capture ‘cinch.’ A young woman of a modest and pleasing guise was standing before a show window gazing with sprightly interest at its display of shaving mugs and leaned against a water-plug.
20. It was Soapy’s design to assume the role of ‘masher.’ The refined and elegant appearance of his victim and the contiguity of the conscientious cop encouraged him to believe that he would soon feel the pleasant official clutch upon his arm that would ensure his winter quarters on the right little, tight little isle.
21. Soapy straightened the lady missionary’s ready-made tie, dragged his shrinking
cuffs into the open, set his hat at and sidled toward the young woman. He made eyes at her, was taken with sudden coughs and ‘hems,’ smiled, ‘masher.’ With half an eye Soapy saw that the policeman was watching him fixedly. The young woman moved away a few steps, and again bestowed her absorbed attention upon the shaving mugs. Soapy followed, boldly stepping to her side, raised his hat and said:
22. ‘Ah there, Bedelia! Don’t you want to come and play in my yard?’
23. The policeman was still looking. The persecuted young woman had but to beckon imagined he could feel the cozy warmth of the station-house. The young woman faced him and, stretching out a hand, caught Soapy’s coat-sleeve.
24. ‘Sure, Mike,’ she said joyfully, ‘if you’ll blow me to a pail of suds. I’d have spoke
to you sooner, but the cop was watching.’
25. With the young woman playing the clinging ivy to his oak, Soapy walked past the
policeman, overcome with gloom. He seemed doomed to liberty.
26. At the next corner he shook off his companion and ran. He halted in the district
where by night are found the lightest streets, hearts, vows and librettos. Women in furs and men in greatcoats moved gaily in the wintry air. A sudden fear seized Soapy that some dreadful enchantment had rendered him immune to arrest. The thought brought a little of panic upon it, and when he came upon another policeman lounging grandly in front of a transplendent theatre he caught at the immediate straw of ‘disorderly conduct.’
27. On the sidewalk Soapy began to yell drunken gibberish at the top of his harsh 28. The policeman twirled his club, turned his back to Soapy and remarked to a
citizen:
29. ‘’Tis one of them Yale lads celebratin’ the goose egg they give to the Hartford
College. Noisy; but no harm. We’ve instructions to leave them be.’
30. Disconsolate, Soapy ceased his unavailing racket. Would never a policeman lay 3
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hands on him? In his fancy the Island seemed an unattainable Arcadia. He buttoned his thin coat against the chilling wind.
31. In a cigar store he saw a well-dressed man lighting a cigar at a swinging light. His
silk umbrella he had set by the door on entering. Soapy stepped inside, secured hastily.
32. ‘My umbrella,’ he said sternly.
33. ‘Oh, is it?’ sneered Soapy, adding insult to petit . ‘Well, why don’t you
call a policeman? I took it. Your umbrella! Why don’t you call a cop? There stands one at the comer.’
34. The umbrella owner slowed his steps. Soapy did likewise, with a that luck would again run against him. The policeman looked at the two curiously.
35. ‘Of course,’ said the umbrella man—‘that is—well, you know how these mistakes
occur—I—if it’s your umbrella I hope you’ll excuse me –I picked it up this morning in a restaurant—If you recognize it as yours, why—I hope you’ll—’
36. ‘Of course it’s mine,’ said Soapy viciously.
37. The ex-umbrella man retreated. The policeman hurried to assist a tall blonde in an
open cloak across the street in front of a street car that was approaching two blocks away.
38. Soapy walked eastward through a street damaged by improvements. He hurled
the umbrella wrathfully into an He muttered against the men who wear helmets and carry clubs. Because he wanted to fall into their clutches, they seemed to regard him as a king who could do no wrong.
39. At length Soapy reached one of the avenues to the east where the glitter and
turmoil was but faint. He set his face down this toward Madison Square, for the homing instinct survives even when the home is a park bench.
40. But on an unusually quiet corner Soapy came to a standstill. Here was an old
church, quaint and rambling and gabled. Through one violet-stained window a soft light glowed, where, no doubt, the organist loitered over the keys, making sure of his mastery of the coming Sabbath anthem. For there drifted out to Soapy’s ears sweet music that caught and held him against the 41. The moon was above, vehicles and pedestrians were few;
sparrows twittered sleepily in the eaves—for a little while the scene might have been a country churchyard. And the anthem that the organist played cemented Soapy to the iron fence, for he had known it well in the days when his life contained such things as mothers and roses and ambitions and friends and 42. The conjunction of Soapy’s receptive state of mind and the influences about the
old church wrought a sudden and wonderful change in his soul. He viewed with swift horror the pit into which he had tumbled, the degraded days, unworthy desires, dead hopes, wrecked faculties and base motives that made up his existence.
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43. And also in a moment, his heart responded thrillingly to this novel mood. An
instantaneous and strong impulse moved him to battle with his desperate fate. He would conquer the evil that had taken possession of him. There was time; he was them without faltering. Those solemn but sweet organ notes had set up a revolution in him. Tomorrow he would go into the roaring down-town district and find work. A fur importer had once offered him a place as driver. He would find him tomorrow and ask for the position. He would be somebody in the world.
44. He would—
45. Soapy felt a hand laid on his arm. He looked quickly around into the broad face
of a policeman.
46. ‘What are you doin’ here?’ asked the officer.
47. ‘Nothin’,’ said Soapy.
48. ‘Then come along,’ said the policeman.
49. ‘Three months on the Island,’ said the Magistrate in the Police Court the next
morning.
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