The Cop and the Anthem

Soapy left his bench and strolled out of the square and across the level sea of asphalt, where Broadway and Fifth Avenue flow together. Up Broadway he turned, and stopped at a luxurious cafe.

Soapy had confidence in himself from the lowest button of his vest upward. He was shaven, and his coat was trim and his neat, black bow had been presented to him by a lady missionary on Thanksgiving Day. If only 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 roasted mallard duck, thought Soapy, would be about the thing with a bottle of wine and then some cheese, a cup of coffee and a cigar. One dollar for the cigar would be enough. The total would not be so high as to call forth any extreme of revenge from the cafe management; and yet the meat would leave him filled and happy for the journey to his winter island.

 But as Soapy set foot inside the restaurant door, the head-waiter’s eye fell upon his tattered trousers and decadent shoes. Strong and ready hands turned him about and conveyed him in silence and haste to the side-walk and averted the ignoble fate of the menaced mallard.

Soapy turned off Broadway. It seemed that his route to the coveted island was not to be an easy one. Some other way of entering the limbo must be devised.

At a corner of Sixth Avenue electric lights and cunningly displayed wares behind plateglass made a shop window attractive. Soapy took a stone and dashed it through the glass. People came running round the coner, a policeman in the lead. Soapy stood still with his hands in his pockets, and smiled at the sight of brass buttons.

 “Where’s the man that done that?” inquired the officer agitatedly.

“Don’t you think that I might have had something to do with it?” said Soapy, with a friendly voice, as one greets good fortune.

The policeman refused to accept Soapy even as a clue. Men who smash windows do not remain to chat with the police. They take to their heels. The policeman saw a man half-way down the block running to catch a car. With drawn club he joined in the pursuit. Soapy, with disgust in his heart, drifted along, twice unsuccessful.

On the opposite side of the street was a restaurant of no great pretensions. It catered to large appetites and modest purses. Its crockery and atmosphere were thick; its soup and napery thin. Into this place Soapy betook himself without challenge. At a table he sat and consumed beefsteak, flapjacks, doughnuts and pie. And then he told the waiter the fact that the minutest coin and himself were total strangers.

“Now, get busy and call a cop”, said Soapy. “And don’t keep a gentleman waiting.”

 “No cop for you,” said the waiter, with a voice like butter cakes and an eye like the cherry in the Manhattan cocktail. “Hey, Con!”

 Neatly upon his left ear on the callous pavement two waiters pitched Soapy. He arose, joint by joint, as a a carpenter’s rule opens, and dusted his clothes. Arrest seemed now but an elusive dream. The island seemed very far away. A policeman who stood before a drugstore two doors away laughed and walked down the street.

 Soapy was seized with a sudden fear that some dreadful enchantment had rendered him immune to arrest. He was in a state of panic, and, when he came upon another policeman lounging grandly in front of a glittering theatre, he caught at the immediate straw of ‘disorderly conduct’.

On the sidewalk Soapy began to yell drunken gibberish at the top of his harsh voice. He danced, howled, raved and otherwise disturbed the skies.

The policeman merely twirled his club, turned his back to Soapy and remarked to a citizen :

“Tis one of them Yale lads celebrating the goose egg they give to the Hartford College. Noisy; but no harm. We’ve instructions to let them be.”

Disconsolate, Soapy stopped his unavailing racket. Would never a policeman lay hands on him? In his fancy, the island seemed an unattainable Arcadia. He buttoned his thin coat against the chilling wind.

In a cigar store he saw a well-dressed man lighting a cigar at the swinging light. He had set his silk umbrella by the door on entering. Soapy stepped inside, grabbed the umbrella and sauntered off with it slowly. The man at the cigar light followed hastily.

 “My umbrella,” he said sternly.

“Oh, is it?” sneered Soapy, adding insult to petty larceny. “Well, why don’t you call a policeman? I took it. Your umbrella ! Why don’t you call a cop? There stands one on the corner.”

The umbrella owner slowed his steps. Soapy did likewise, with a premonition that luck would again run against him. The policeman eyed at the two curiously.

 “Of course,” said the umbrella man “Well, you know how these mistakes occur 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”.

“Of course it’s mine,” said Soapy savagely.

The ex-umbrella man retreated. The policeman hurried to assist a tall blonde in an opera cloak across the street in front of a street car that was approaching two blocks away.

Soapy walked eastward through a street damaged by improvements. He hurled the umbrella angrily into an excavation. 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 nothing wrong.

At length Soapy reached one of the avenues to the east where the glitter and turmoil was but faint. He dragged himself toward Madison Square, for the homing instinct survives even when the home is a park bench.

 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 transfixed against the convolutions of the iron fence.

The moon was above, full and radiant; vehicles and pedestrians were few; sparrows twittered sleepily in the eaves or 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 immaculate thoughts and collars.

The conjunction of Soapy’s receptive state of mind and the influences about the old church brought a sudden and wonderful change in his soul. He viewed with rising 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.

 And also in a moment his heart responded thrillingly to this strange mood. A strong impulse moved him to battle with his desperate fact. He would pull himself out of the mire and would make a man of himself again; he would conquer the evil that had enslaved him. There was time; he was young yet; he would resurrect his old eager ambitions and pursue them without faltering. Those solemn but sweet organ notes had set up a revolution in him. Tomorrow he would go into the roaring downtown district and find work. A fur importer had once offered him a place as driver. He would be somebody in the world. He would

Soapy felt a hand laid - on arm. He looked quickly around into the impassive face of a policeman.

 “What are you doin’ here?” asked the officer.

“Nothin’,”said Soapy.

“Then come along,”said the policeman.

 “Three months on the island,” said the Magistrate in the Police Court the next morning.

 O’Henry