Free Ghost Town by Patrick McGrath Page B

chattered less, and plied their needles as they never had before. Julius barely noticed. In fact Julius, obsessed as he was with Annie Kelly, contributed significantly to the subdued atmosphere, and without Charlotte he wandered about, a lovesick youth, absorbed in the eruption of a volcanic passion but with nobody to talk to about it.
    But what exactly had passed between him and the girl? It seems that without Charlotte to confide in, Julius became secretive, and later no one could be sure how much contact he had actually had with her. But the next time the girl worked in the West Tenth studio I feel sure that this lanky, grinning art student actually attempted to shake her hand as she took her place on the platform. To general amusement Jerome Brook Franklin at once came stamping across the floor, clapping his hands and crying out that that was enough, there was to be no nonsense, they were here to
work
!
    When the class was over and the other students had dispersed he waited for her outside the building. Her hair was pinned up now in a large heap at the back of her neck, and she wore a straw bonnet with a broad brim. About her shoulders was thrown a lace shawl and her skirt was unencumbered by hoops or petticoats or any of the other clutter that respectable girls wore in those days. She was shod in scuffed black boots with buttons up the side and on her arm she carried a basket. She was a tall, jaunty, handsome girl and Julius fell in beside her as she strode east on Tenth Street. She affected to ignore him buthe was so persistent that she at last relented and told him her name.
    She then climbed aboard a horse-car going south on Broadway. But having seated herself she saw that he was hanging on the platform at the back of the carriage and she rolled her eyes to heaven, for she was no stranger to importunate youths like this. Then he was pushing through the standing passengers with copious apologies until he stood in front of her, clinging to the pole and grinning at her. She knew he was a rich boy and she was wary of him, but all the same he did amuse her a little. With every lurch of the carriage he was flung this way and that, but still he hung over her, and she consented to talk to him.
    I see them descend from the horse-car somewhere in the vicinity of City Hall, where she sat with him on a bench in the park. She told him a little about herself, that her mother had a boarding-house on Nassau Street, and then they spoke about Jerome Brook Franklin. After a few minutes the bells of St. Paul’s reminded the girl that she had duties at home, and away she went. She paused at the gate of the park. Julius stood by the bench with his hand outstretched and a blissful smile on his foolish face.
    Then see the love-struck youth make his slow way back up Broadway! He had, yes, properly fallen in love. He had not however fallen in love wisely, but why should he? Who falls in love wisely? He could not guess that the thing would end in tragedy. I almost think his feet were a few inches above the sidewalk, and as the crowds swept by him he barely heard the tumult of voices, the wagons and carriages, the fruit-sellers and cigar-sellers and the newsboys with their penny papers crying out the latest murder—none of it touched Julius. He walked home in a kind of sanctified silence.
    In those days—this would be the summer of 1859—all over New York buildings were going up, others coming down, some no more than ten years old, but in this impatient town where nothing ever has a chance to decay, ten years was practically an eternity. Up beyond Harlem Heights surveyed lots which were no more than granite outcrops with perhaps a few trees, some stagnant swampland, here and there a squatter’s shack and a dirt road running through it would soon be leveled, the swamps drained, the site turned into prime building land in a city whose expansion was limited only by its riverbanks.
    “Man marks the earth with ruin; his control
    Stops with the