They waited for Dick, who alone of all of them had braved the high corporate authority at the gate, and gone with the travelers to their train. He came, and they went through the clamorous station to the street, where Dick’s automobile was waiting, shaking as if it would shake itself to pieces. They rode down town in solemn silence. Eades and Marriott, indeed, had had little to say; during the strain of the parting moments with Elizabeth they had been stiff and formal with each other.
"I hope to get away myself next week," said Eades, "The town will soon be empty."
The city day was drawing to a close. Forge fires were glowing in the foundries they passed. Through the gloom within they could see the workmen, stripped like gunners to the waist, their moist, polished skins glowing in the fierce glare. They passed noisy machine-shops whence machinists glanced out at them. In some of the factories bevies of girls were thronging the windows, calling now and then to the workmen, who, for some reason earlier released from toil, were already trooping by on the sidewalk. In the crowded streets great patient horses nodded as they easily drew the empty trucks that had borne such heavy loads all day; their drivers were smoking pipes, greeting one another, and whistling or singing; one of them in the camaraderie of toil had taken on a load of workmen, to haul them on their homeward way. The street-cars were filled with men whose faces showed the grime their hasty washing had not removed.
Suddenly whistles blew, then there was a strange silence. Something like a sigh went up from all that quarter of the town.
The automobile was tearing through the tenderloin with its gaudily-painted saloons and second-hand stores sandwiched between. Old clothes fluttered above the sidewalk, and violins, revolvers, boxing-gloves and bits of jewelry, the trash and rubbish of wasted, feverish lives showed in the windows. Fat Jewish women sat in the doorways of pawn-shops, their swarthy children playing on the dirty sidewalk. In the swinging green doors of saloons stood bartenders; and everywhere groups of men and women, laughing, joking, haggling, scuffling and quarreling. Now and then girls with their tawdry finery tripped down from upper rooms, stood a moment in the dark, narrow doorways, looked up and down the street, and then suddenly went forth. In some of the cheap theaters, the miserable tunes that never ended, day or night, were jingling from metallic pianos. They passed on into the business district. Shops were closing, the tall office buildings, each a city in itself, were pouring forth their human contents; the sidewalks were thronged--everywhere life, swarming, seething life, spawned out upon the world.