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Title: The Van Dwellers
A Strenuous Quest for a Home
Author: Albert Bigelow Paine
Release Date: February 17, 2009 [eBook #28101]
Language: English
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THE VAN DWELLERS
by
ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE
[Illustration: "WELL, AND WHEN DID YEZ ORDER IT TURNED
ON?"--_Frontispiece_.]
THE VAN DWELLERS
A Strenuous Quest for a Home
by
ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE
Author of "The Bread Line"
[Illustration]
_"We were strangers and they took us in"_
New York
J. F. Taylor & Company
1901
Copyright, 1901
by
J. F. Taylor & Company
_TO THOSE_
WHO HAVE LIVED IN FLATS
_TO THOSE_
WHO ARE LIVING IN FLATS
_AND TO THOSE_
WHO ARE THINKING OF
LIVING IN FLATS
Contents.
PAGE
I. The First Home in the Metropolis. 1
II. Metropolitan Beginnings. 13
III. Learning by Experience. 28
IV. Our First Move. 45
V. A Boarding House for a Change. 60
VI. Pursuing the Ideal. 72
VII. Owed to the Moving Man. 86
VIII. Household Retainers. 88
IX. Ann 104
X. A "Flat" Failure. 114
XI. Inheritance and Mania. 133
XII. Gilded Affluence. 153
XIII. A Home at Last. 177
XIV. Closing Remarks. 183
I.
_The First Home in the Metropolis._
We had never lived in New York. This fact will develop anyway, as I
proceed, but somehow it seems fairer to everybody to state it in the
first sentence and have it over with.
Still, we had heard of flats in a vague way, and as we drew near the
Metropolis the Little Woman bought papers of the train boy and began to
read advertisements under the head of "Flats and Apartments to Let."
I remember that we wondered then what was the difference. Now, having
tried both, we are wiser. The difference ranges from three hundred
dollars a year up. There are also minor details, such as palms in the
vestibule, exposed plumbing, and uniformed hall service--perhaps an
elevator, but these things are immaterial. The price is the difference.
We bought papers, as I have said. It was the beginning of our downfall,
and the first step was easy--even alluring. We compared prices and
descriptions and put down addresses. The descriptions were all that
could be desired and the prices absurdly modest. We had heard that
living in the city was expensive; now we put down the street and number
of "four large light rooms and improvements, $18.00," and were properly
indignant at those who had libeled the landlords of Gotham.
Next morning we stumbled up four dim flights of stairs, groped through a
black passage-way and sidled out into a succession of gloomy closets,
wondering what they were for. Our conductor stopped and turned.
"This is it," he announced. "All nice light rooms, and improvements."
It was our first meeting with a flat. Also, with a janitor. The Little
Woman was first to speak.
"Ah, yes, would you mind telling us--we're from the West, you know--just
which are the--the improvements, and which the rooms?"
This was lost on the janitor. He merely thought us stupid and regarded
us with pitying disgust as he indicated a rusty little range, and
disheartening water arrangements in one corner. There may have been
stationary tubs, too, bells, and a dumb waiter, but without the
knowledge of these things which we acquired later they escaped notice.
What we _could_ see was that there was no provision for heat that we
could discover, and no sunshine.
We referred to these things, also to the fact that the only entrance to
our parlor would be through the kitchen, while the only entrance to our
kitchen would be almost certainly over either a coal-box, an ironing
board, or the rusty little stove, any method of which would require a
certain skill, as well as care in the matter of one's clothes.
But these objections seemed unreasonable, no doubt, for the janitor, who
was of Yorkshire extraction, became taciturn and remarked briefly that
the halls were warmed and that nobody before had ever required more heat
than they got from these and the range, while as for the sun, he
couldn't change that if he wanted to, leaving us to infer that if he
only wanted to he could remodel almost everything else about the
premises in short order.
We went away in the belief that he was a base pretender, "clad in a
little brief authority." We had not awakened as yet to the fulness of
janitorial tyranny and power.
We went farther uptown. We reasoned that rentals would be more
reasonable and apartments less contracted up there.
Ah, me! As I close my eyes now and recall, as in a kaleidoscope, the
perfect wilderness of flats we have passed through since then, it seems
strange that some dim foreboding of it all did not steal in to rob our
hearts of the careless joys of anticipation.
But I digress. We took the elevated and looked out the windows as we
sped along. The whirling streets, with their endless procession of front
steps, bewildered us.
By and by we were in a vast district, where all the houses were
five-storied, flat-roofed, and seemed built mainly to hold windows. This
was Flatland--the very heart of it--that boundless territory to the
northward of Central Park, where nightly the millions sleep.
Here and there were large signs on side walls and on boards along the
roof, with which we were now on a level as the train whirled us along.
These quoted the number of rooms, and prices, and some of them were
almost irresistible. "6 All Light Rooms, $22.00," caught us at length,
and we got off to investigate.
They were better than those downtown. There was a possibility of heat
and you did not get to the parlor by climbing over the kitchen
furniture. Still, the apartment as a whole lacked much that we had set
our hearts on, while it contained some things that we were willing to do
without.
It contained, also, certain novelties. Among these were the stationary
washtubs in the kitchen; the dumb-waiter, and a speaking-tube connection
with the basement.
The janitor at this place was a somber Teutonic female, soiled as to
dress, and of the common Dutch-slipper variety.
We were really attracted by the next apartment, where we discovered for
the first time the small button in the wall that, when pressed, opens
the street door below. This was quite jolly, and we played with it some
minutes, while the colored janitor grinned at our artlessness, and said
good things about the place. Our hearts went out to this person, and we
would gladly have cast our lot with him.
Then he told us the price, and we passed on.
I have a confused recollection of the other flats and apartments we
examined on that first day of our career, or "progress," as the recent
Mr. Hogarth would put it. Our minds had not then become trained to that
perfection of mentality which enables the skilled flat-hunter to carry
for days visual ground-plans, elevations, and improvements, of any
number of "desirable apartments," and be ready to transcribe the same
in black and white at a moment's notice.
I recall one tunnel and one roof garden. Also one first floor with
bake-shop attachment. The latter suggested a business enterprise for the
Little Woman, while the Precious Ones, who were with us at this stage,
seemed delighted at my proposition of "keeping store."
Many places we did not examine. Of these the janitors merely popped out
their heads--frowsy heads, most of them--and gave the number of rooms
and the price in a breath of defiance and mixed ale. At length I was the
only one able to continue the search.
I left the others at a friendly drug store, and wandered off alone.
Being quite untrammeled now I went as if by instinct two blocks west and
turned. A park was there--a park set up on edge, as it were, with steps
leading to a battlement at the top. This was attractive, and I followed
along opposite, looking at the houses. Presently I came to a new one.
They were just finishing it, and sweeping the shavings from the
ground-floor flat--a gaudy little place--the only one in the house
untaken.
It was not very light, and it was not very large, while the price was
more than we had expected to pay. But it was clean and new, and the
landlord, who was himself on the premises, offered a month's rent free
to the first tenant.
I ran all the way back to the Little Woman, and urged her to limp as
hastily as possible, fearing it might be gone before she could get
there. When I realized that the landlord had held it for me in the face
of several applicants (this was his own statement), I was ready to fall
on his neck, and paid a deposit hastily to secure the premises.
Then we wandered about looking at things, trying the dumb waiter, the
speaking tube, and the push-button, leading to what the Precious Ones
promptly named the "locker-locker" door, owing to a clicking sound in
the lock when the door sprang open.
We were in a generous frame of mind, and walked from room to room
praising the excellence of everything, including a little gingerbread
mantel in the dining-room, in which the fireplace had been set
crooked,--from being done in the dark, perhaps,--the concrete backyard,
with its clothesline pole, the decorated ceilings, the precipitous park
opposite that was presently to shut off each day at two P.M. our
western, and only, sunlight; even the air-shaft that came down to us
like a well from above, and the tiny kitchen, which in the gathering
evening was too dark to reveal all its attractions.
As for the Precious Ones, they fairly raced through our new possession,
shrieking their delight.
We had a home in the great city at last.
II.
_Metropolitan Beginnings._
We set out gaily and early, next morning, to buy our things.
We had brought nothing with us that could not be packed into our trunks,
except my fishing rod, some inherited bedding and pictures which the
Little Woman declined to part with, and two jaded and overworked dolls
belonging to the Precious Ones. Manifestly this was not enough to begin
housekeeping on, even in a flat of contracted floor-space and limitless
improvements.
In fact the dolls only had arrived. They had come as passengers. The
other things were still trundling along somewhere between Oshkosh and
Hoboken, by slow freight.
We had some idea of where we wanted to go when we set forth, but a
storehouse with varied and almost irresistible windows enticed us and we
went no farther. It was a mighty department store and we were informed
that we need not pass its doors again until we had selected everything
we needed from a can-opener to a grand piano. We didn't, and the
can-opener became ours.
Also other articles. We enjoyed buying things, and even to this day I
recall with pleasure our first great revel in a department store.
For the most part we united our judgments and acted jointly. But at
times we were enticed apart by fascinating novelties and selected
recklessly, without consultation.
As for the Precious Ones, they galloped about, demanding that we should
buy everything in sight, with a total disregard of our requirements or
resources.
It was wonderful though how cheap everything seemed, and how much we
seemed to need, even for a beginning. It was also wonderful how those
insidious figures told in the final settlement.
Let it be understood, I cherish no resentment toward the salesmen.
Reflecting now on the matter, I am, on the whole, grateful. They found
out where we were from, and where we were going to live, and they sold
us accordingly.
I think we interested them, and that they rather liked us. If not, I am
sure they would have sold us worse things and more of them. They could
have done so, easily. Hence my gratitude to the salesmen; but the man at
the transfer desk remains unforgiven.
I am satisfied, now, that he was an unscrupulous person, a perjured,
case-hardened creature whom it is every man's duty to destroy. But at
the time he seemed the very embodiment of good intentions.
He assured us heartily, as he gave us our change, that we should have
immediate delivery. We had explained at some length that this was
important, and why. He waved us off with the assurance that we need give
ourselves no uneasiness in the matter--that, in all probability, the
matting we had purchased as a floor basis would be there before we were.
He knew that this would start us post-haste for our apartment, which it
did. We even ran, waving and shouting, after a particular car when
another just like it was less than a half block behind.
We breathed more easily when we arrived at our new address and found
that we were in good season. When five minutes more had passed, however,
and still no signs of our matting, a vague uneasiness began to manifest
itself.
It was early and there was plenty of time, of course; but there was
something about the countless delivery wagons that passed and re-passed
without stopping which impressed us with the littleness of our
importance in this great whirl of traffic, and the ease with which a
transfer clerk's promise, easily and cheerfully made, might be as easily
and as cheerfully forgotten.
I said presently that I would go around the corner and order coal for
the range, ice for the refrigerator, and groceries for us all. I added
that the things from down town would surely be there on my return, and
that any way I wanted to learn where the nearest markets were. Had I
known it, I need not have taken this trouble. Our names in the mail-box
just outside the door would have summoned the numerous emissaries of
trade, as if by magic.
It did so, in fact, for the Little Woman put the name in while I was
gone, and on my return I found her besieged by no less than three
butchers and grocerymen, while two rival milkmen were explaining with
diagrams the comparative richness of their respective cans and bottles.
The articles I had but just purchased were even then being sent up on
the dumb waiter, but our furnishings from below were still unheard
from.
A horrible fear that I had given the wrong address began to grow upon
us. The Little Woman was calm, but regarded me accusingly. She said she
didn't see how it could have happened, when in every accent of her voice
I could detect memories of other things I had done in this line--things
which, at the time, had seemed equally impossible.
She said she hadn't been paying attention when I gave the number or she
would have known. Of course, she said, the transfer clerk couldn't make
a mistake putting it down--he was too accustomed to such things, and of
course I must have given it to him correctly--only, it did seem
strange----
We began debating feverishly as to the advisability of my setting out
at once on a trip down town to see about it. We concluded to telephone.
I hastened around to the drug store not far away and "helloed" and
repeated and fumed and swore in agony for half an hour, but I came back
in high spirits. The address was correct and the delivery wagons were
out. I expected to find them at the door when I got back, but found only
the Little Woman, sitting on the doorstep, still waiting.
We told each other that after all it must necessarily take some little
time to get up this far, but that the matting would certainly be along
presently, now, and that it would take but a short time to lay it.
Then we would have a good start, and even if everything didn't come
to-night it would be jolly to put the new mattresses down on the nice
clean matting, and to get dinner the best way we could--like camping
out. Then we walked back and forth in the semi-light of our empty little
place and said how nice it was, and where we should set the furniture
and hang the pictures: and stepped off the size of the rooms that all
put together were not so big as had been our one big sitting-room in the
West.
As for the Precious Ones, they were wildly happy. They had never had a
real playhouse before, big enough to live in, and this was quite in
accordance with their ideals. They were "visiting" and "keeping store"
and "cooking," and quarreling, and having a perfectly beautiful time
with their two disreputable dolls, utterly regardless of the shadow of
foreboding and desolation that grew ever thicker as the hours passed,
while the sun slipped down behind the steep stone-battlemented park
opposite, and brought no matting, no furniture, no anything that would
make our little nest habitable for the swiftly coming night.
But when it became too dark for them to see to play, they came
clamorously out to where we stood on the doorstep, still waiting, and
demanded in one breath that we tell them immediately when the things
were coming, where they were to get supper, how we were to sleep, and if
they couldn't have a light.
I was glad that I could give them something. I said that it was pretty
early for a light, but that they should have it. I went in and opened a
gas burner, and held a match to it. There was no result. I said there
was air in the pipes. I lit another match, and held it till it burned
my fingers. There was air in the pipes, I suppose, but there was no gas.
I hurried down to inform the janitor.
She was a stern-featured Hibernian, with a superior bearing. I learned
later that she had seen better days. In fact, I have yet to find the
janitor that _hasn't_ seen better days, or the tenant, either, for that
matter, but this is another digression. She regarded me with
indifference when I told her there was no gas. When I told her that we
_wanted_ gas, she inspected me as if this was something unusual and
interesting in a tenant's requirements. Finally she said:--
"Well, and when did yez order it turned on?"
"Why," I said, "I haven't ordered it at all. I thought----"
"Yez thought you could get it of me, did yez?"
I admitted that this seemed reasonable, but in view of the fact of the
water being turned on, I had really given the matter of gas no
deliberate consideration.
I think she rather pitied my stupendous ignorance. At least she became
more gentle than she had seemed at the start, or than she ever was
afterwards.
She explained at some length that I must go first to the gas office,
leave a deposit to secure them, in case of my sudden and absent-minded
departure from the neighborhood, and ask that a man be sent around to
put in a meter, and turn on the gas in our apartment. With good luck
some result might be obtained by the following evening.
I stumbled miserably up the dark stairs, and dismally explained, while
the Precious Ones became more clamorous for food and light, as the
shades of night gathered. I said I would go and get some candles, so in
case the things came--not necessarily the matting--we didn't really need
the matting first, anyway--it would get scuffed and injured if it were
put down first--it was the other things we needed--things to eat and go
to bed with!--
When I came back there was a wild excitement around our entrance. A
delivery wagon had driven up in great haste, and by the light of the
street lamp I recognized on it the sign of our department store. A
hunted-looking driver had leaped out and was hastily running over his
book. Yes, it was our name--our things had come at last--better late
than never! The driver was diving back into his wagon and presently
hauled out something long and round and wrapped up.
"Here you are," he said triumphantly. "Sign for it, please."
"But," we gasped, "where's the rest of the things? There's ever so much
more."
"Don't know, lady. This is all I've got. Sign please, it's getting
late."
"But----"
He was gone. We carried in our solitary package and opened it by the
feeble flickering of a paraffine dip.
It was a Japanese umbrella-holder!
The Precious Ones and their wretched dolls held a war dance around it
and admired the funny men on the sides. To us it was an Oriental
mockery.
Sadly we gathered up our bags, and each taking by the hand a hungry
little creature who clasped a forlorn doll to a weary little bosom, we
set forth to seek food and shelter in the thronging but pitiless city.
III.
_Learning by Experience._
Day by day, and piece by piece, our purchases appeared. Now and then a
delivery wagon would drive up in hot haste and deliver a stew-pan, or
perhaps a mouse trap. At last, and on the third day, a mattress.
Of course, I had been down and protested, ere this. The cheerful liar at
the transfer desk had been grieved, astonished, thunderstruck at my
tale. He would investigate, and somebody would be discharged, at once.
This thought soothed me. It was blood that I wanted. Just plain blood,
and plenty of it. I know now that it was the transfer-man's blood, that
I needed, but for the moment I was appeased and believed in him.
Our matting, promised within two hours from the moment of purchase, was
the last thing to arrive. This on the fourth day--or was it the fifth? I
was too mad by this time to remember dates. What I do recall is that we
laid it ourselves. We had not, as yet, paid for the laying, and we said
that rather than give that shameless firm another dollar we would lay
that matting if it killed us.
Morally it did. I have never been quite the same man since that terrible
experience. The Little Woman helped stretch, and held the lamp, while I
pounded my thumb and swore. She said she had never realized until that
night how well and satisfactorily I could swear. It seemed to comfort
her and she abetted it.
I know now that the stripes on matting never match. We didn't know it
then, and we tried to make them. We pulled and hauled, and I got down on
my stomach, with one ear against the wall, and burned the other one on
the lamp chimney which the Little Woman, in her anxiety to help, held
too close. When I criticised her inclination to overdo matters, she
observed that I would probably be able to pull the matting along more
easily if I wouldn't lie down on the piece I was trying to pull. Then we
both said some things that I suppose we shall regret to our dying day.
It was a terrible night. When morning came, grim and ghastly, life
seemed a failure, and I could feel that I had grown old.
But with breakfast and coffee and sunshine came renewed hope.
We were settled at last, and our little place looked clean and more like
a playhouse than ever.
Our acquaintance with the janitor was not, as yet, definite. I had met
her once or twice informally, it is true, but as yet we could not be
said to have reached any basis of understanding. As to her appearance,
she was brawny and Irish, with a forbidding countenance. She had a
husband whom we never saw--he being employed outside--but whose
personality, nevertheless, became a factor in our subsequent relations.
Somehow, we instinctively avoided the people below stairs, as cats do
canines, though we had no traditions concerning janitors, and we are
naturally the most friendly and democratic people in the world.
Matters went on very well for a time. We congratulated ourselves every
morning on how nice and handy everything was, now that we were once
settled, and laughed over our recent difficulties. The Precious Ones
were in their glory. They had appropriated the little four-by-six closet
back of the kitchen--it had been shown to us as a servant's room--and
presently we heard them playing "dumb waiter," "janitor," "locker-locker
door," "laying matting," and other new and entertaining games incidental
to a new life and conditions. The weather remained warm for a time, and
it was all novel and interesting. We added almost daily to our household
effects, and agreed that we had been lucky in securing so pleasant and
so snug a nest.
But one morning when we awoke it was cold. It was early October, but
there was a keen frosty feeling in the air that sent us shivering to the
kitchen range, wondering if steam would be coming along presently. It
did not come, and after breakfast I went down to interview our janitor
on the subject.
I could see that she was not surprised at my errand. The incident of the
gas supply had prepared her for any further eccentricity on my part. She
merely waited with mild interest to hear what I really could do when I
tried. Then she remarked tersely:--
"Yez get steam on the fifteenth."
"Quite so," I assented, "but it's cold to-day. We may not want it on the
fifteenth. We do want it now."
These facts did not seem to impress her.
"Yez get steam on the fifteenth," she repeated, with even more
decision, and I could tell from her manner that the interview was
closed.
I went back to where the Little Woman was getting breakfast (she had
laughed at the idea of a servant in our dainty little nest) and during
the morning she and the Precious Ones hugged the kitchen range. In the
afternoon the sun looked in at our parlor windows and made the room
cheerful for an hour. Then it went out behind the precipitous hillside
park opposite, and with the chill shadow that crept up over our windows
came a foreboding that was bad for the romance and humor of the
situation. It had been like a spiritless Arctic day.
In the evening we crept to the kitchen range; and we hibernated there,
more or less, while the cold spell lasted. It was warm by the
fifteenth, but on that day, in the hours of early dawn, we were awakened
by a Wagnerian overture in the steam radiators. It became an anvil
chorus ere long and there was no more sleep. By breakfast time we had
all the things open that we could get open to let in fresh air and we
were shouting to each other above the din and smell of the new pipes. We
made allowance, of course, for the fact that things _were_ new, and we
said we were glad there would be enough heat in cold weather, anyway, by
which you will see how really innocent we were in those days.
It grew cold in earnest by November first. And then, all at once, the
gold-painted radiators, as if they had shown what they could do and were
satisfied, seemed to lose enthusiasm. Now and then in the night, when
we didn't want it, they would remember and start a little movement Fromm
the Gotterdammerung, but by morning they seemed discouraged again and
during the day they were of fitful and unresponsive temperature.
At last I went once more to the janitor, though with some hesitation, I
confess. I don't know why. I am not naturally timid, and usually demand
and obtain the rights of ordinary citizenship. Besides, I was ignorant
then of janitorial tyranny as the accepted code. It must have been
instinct. I said:--
"What's the matter with our heat up-stairs?"
She answered:--
"An' it's what's the matter with yer heat, is it? Well, thin, an' what
_is_ the matter with yer heat up-stairs?"
She said this, and also looked at me, as if she thought our heat might
be afflicted with the mumps or measles or have a hare lip, and as if I
was to blame for it.
"The matter is that we haven't got any," I said, getting somewhat
awakened.
She looked at me fully a minute this time.
"Yez haven't got any! Yez haven't got any heat! An' here comes the madam
from the top floor yesterday, a bilin' over, an' sayin that they're sick
with _too much_ heat. What air yez, then, sallymandhers?"
"But yesterday isn't to-day," I urged, "and I'm not the woman on the top
floor. We're just the people on the first floor and we're cold. We want
heat, not comparisons."
I wonder now how I was ever bold enough to say these things. It was my
ignorance, of course. I would not dream of speaking thus disrespectfully
to a janitor to-day. I had a dim idea at the time that the landlord had
something to do with his own premises, and that if heat were not
forthcoming I could consult him and get action in the matter. I know
better than that, now, and my enlightenment on this point was not long
delayed.
It was about twelve o'clock that night, I think, that we were aroused by
a heart-breaking, furniture-smashing disturbance. At first I thought
murder was being done on our doorstep. Then I realized that it was below
us. I sat up in bed, my hair prickling. The Little Woman, in the next
room with the Precious Ones, called to me in a voice that was full of
emotion. I answered, "Sh!"
Then we both sat still in the dark while our veins grew icy. Somebody
below was begging and pleading for mercy, while somebody else was
commanding quiet in a voice that meant bloodshed as an alternative. At
intervals there was a fierce struggle, mingled with destruction and
hair-lifting language.
Was the janitor murdering her husband? Or could it be that it was the
other way, and that tardy justice had overtaken the janitor--that, at
the hands of her husband or some outraged tenant, she was meeting a
well-merited doom? Remembering her presence and muscular proportions I
could not hope that this was possible.
The Little Woman whispered tremblingly that we ought to do something. I
whispered back that I was quite willing she should, if she wanted to,
but that for my own part I had quit interfering in Hibernian domestic
difficulties some years since. In the morning I would complain to the
landlord of our service. I would stand it no longer.
Meantime, it was not yet morning, and the racket below went on. The very
quantity of it was reassuring. There was too much of it for real murder.
The Precious Ones presently woke up and cried. None of us got to sleep
again until well-nigh morning, even after the commotion below had
degenerated into occasional moans, and final silence.
Before breakfast I summoned up all my remaining courage and went down
there. The janitor herself came to the door. She was uninjured, so far
as I could discover. I was pretty mad, and the fact that I was afraid
of her made me madder.
"What do you mean?" I demanded, "by making such a horrible racket down
here in the middle of the night?"
She regarded me with an amazed look, as if I had been dreaming.
"I want to know," I repeated, "what was all that noise down here last
night?"
She smiled grimly.
"Oh, an' is _that_ it? Yez want to know what was the _ni'se_, do yez?
Well, thin, it was none o' yer business, _that's_ what it was. Now go on
wid yez, an' tend to yer _own_ business, if yez have any. D'y' mind?"
With the information that I was going at once to the landlord, I turned
and hurried up the stairs to avoid violence. She promptly followed me.
"So yez'll be after telling the landlord, will yez? Well, thin, yez can
just tell the landlord, an' yez can just sind him to me. You'll sind Tim
Reilly to me. Maybe yez don't know that Tim Reilly once carried bricks
fer my old daddy, an' many's the time I've given him a bite an' a sup at
our back door. Oh, yes, sind him to me. Sind Tim Reilly to me, an' I'll
see, when me ol' man comes home late wid a bit of liquor in his head, if
it's not for me to conthrol 'im after our own fashions, widout the
inquisitin' of people who better be mindin' of their own n'ise. Kep' yez
awake, eh? Well, thin, see that yez never keep anybody else awake, an'
sind Tim Reilly to me!"
She was gone. We realized then that she had seen better days. So had we.
Later, when I passed her on the front steps, she nodded in her usual
expressionless, uncompromising manner.
I did not go to the landlord. It would be useless, we said. The
helplessness of our position was becoming daily more evident.
And with the realization of this we began to discover other defects. We
found that the house faced really almost north instead of west, and that
the sun now went behind the precipice opposite nearly as soon as it
touched the tops of our windows, while the dining-room and kitchen were
wretchedly dark all day long.
Then, too, the crooked fireplace in the former was a disfigurement, the
rooms were closets, or cells, the paper abominable, the wardrobe damp,
the drawers swollen or exasperating muftis, the whole apartment the
flimsiest sort of a cheap, showy, contract structure, such as no
self-respecting people should occupy.
We said we would move. We recited our wrongs to each other in detail and
began consulting Sunday papers immediately.
IV.
_Our First Move._
It was the Little Woman who selected our next habitation. Education
accumulates rapidly in the Metropolis, and I could see that she already
possessed more definite views on "flats and apartments" than she had
acquired on many another subject familiar to her from childhood.
Politics, for instance, do not exist for the Little Woman. Presidents
come and go, torchlight processions bloom and fade and leave not so much
as a wind-riffle on the sands of memory. The stock market, too, was at
this time but a name to her. Both of us have acquired knowledge since
in this direction, but that is another story. Shares might rise and fall
in those early days, and men clutch at each other's throats as ruin
dragged them down. The Little Woman saw but a page of figures in the
evening paper and perhaps regarded them as a sort of necessary
form--somewhat in the nature of the congressional reports which nobody
ever reads. Yet all her life she had been amid these vital issues, and
now, behold, after two short months she had acquired more information on
New York apartment life than she would ever have on both the others put
together. She knew now what we needed and she would find it. I was
willing that this should be so. There were other demands on my time, and
besides, I had not then contracted the flat-disease in its subsequent
virulent form.
She said, and I agreed with her, that it was a mistake to be so far from
the business center. That the time, car fare, and nerve tissue wasted
between Park Place and Harlem were of more moment than a few dollars'
difference in the monthly rent.
We regarded this conclusion somewhat in the light of a discovery, and
wondered why people of experience had not made it before. Ah, me! we
have made many discoveries since that time. Discoveries as old as they
are always new. The first friendly ray of March sunlight; the first
green leaf in the park; the first summer glow of June; the first dead
leaf and keen blast of autumn; these, too, have wakened within us each
year a new understanding of our needs and of the ideal habitation;
these, too, have set us to discovering as often as they come around, as
men shall still discover so long as seasons of snow and blossom pass,
and the heart of youth seeks change. But here I am digressing again,
when I should be getting on with my story.
As I have said, the Little Woman selected our next home. The Little
Woman and the Precious Ones. They were gone each day for several hours
and returned each evening wearied to the bone but charged heavily with
information.
The Little Woman was no longer a novice. "Single and double flats,"
"open plumbing," "tiled vestibule," "uniformed hall service," and other
stock terms, came trippingly from her tongue.
Of some of the places she had diagrams. Of others she volunteered to
draw them from memory. I did not then realize that this was the first
symptom of flat-collecting in its acute form, or that in examining her
crude pencilings I was courting the infection. I could not foresee that
the slight yet definite and curious variation in the myriad city
apartments might become a fascination at last, and the desire for
possession a mania more enslaving than even the acquirement of rare rugs
or old china and bottles.
I examined the Little Woman's assortment with growing interest while the
Precious Ones chorused their experiences, which consisted mainly in the
things they had been allowed to eat and drink, and from the nature of
these I suspected occasional surrender and bribery on the part of the
Little Woman.
It was a place well down town that we chose. It was a second floor,
open in the rear, and there was sunlight most of the day. The rooms were
really better than the ones we had. They could not be worse, we
decided--a fallacy, for I have never seen a flat so bad that there could
not be a worse one--and the price was not much higher. Also, there was a
straight fireplace in the dining-room, which the Precious Ones described
as being "lovelly," and the janitress was a humble creature who had won
the Little Woman's heart by unburdening herself of numerous sad
experiences and bitter wrongs, besides a number of perfectly just
opinions concerning janitors, individually and at large.
Altogether the place seemed quite in accordance with our present views.
I paid a month's rent in advance the next morning, and during the day
the Little Woman engaged a moving man.
[Illustration: THE PRECIOUS ONES WERE RACING ABOUT AMONG BOXES AND
BARRELS IN UNALLOYED HAPPINESS.]
She was packing when I came home and the Precious Ones were racing about
among boxes and barrels in unalloyed happiness. It did not seem possible
that we had bought so much or that I could have put so many tacks in the
matting.
The moving men would be there with their van by daylight next morning,
she said. (It seems that the man at the office had told her that we
would have to get up early to get ahead of him, and she had construed
this statement literally.) So we toiled far into the night and then
crept wearily to bed in our dismantled nest, to toss wakefully through
the few remaining hours of darkness, fearful that the summons of the
forehanded and expeditious moving man would find us in slumber and
unprepared.
We were deeply grateful to him that he had not arrived before we had
finished our early and scrappy breakfast. Then presently, when we were
ready for him and he did not appear, we were still appreciative, for we
said to each other that he was giving us a little extra time so that we
would not feel upset and hurried. Still, it would be just as well if he
would come, now, so that we might get moved and settled before night.
It had been a bright, pleasant morning, but as the forenoon advanced the
sky darkened and it grew bitterly cold. Gloom settled down without and
the meager steam supply was scarcely noticeable in our bare apartment.
The Precious Ones ran every minute to the door to watch for the moving
van and came back to us with blue noses and icy hands. We began to
wonder if something had gone wrong. Perhaps a misunderstanding of the
address--illness or sudden death on the part of the man who had made the
engagement--perhaps--
I went around at last to make inquiries. A heavy, dusty person looked
into the soiled book and ran his finger down the page.
"That's right!" he announced. "Address all correct. Van on the way
around there now."
I hurried back comforted. I do not believe in strong language, but that
heavy individual with the soiled book was a dusty liar. There is no
other word to express it--if there was, and a stronger one, I would use
it. He was a liar by instinct and a prevaricator by trade. The van was
not at our door when I returned. Neither had it started in our
direction.
We had expected to get down to our new quarters by noon and enjoy a
little lunch at a near-by restaurant before putting things in order. At
lunch time the van had still not appeared, and there was no near-by
restaurant. The Precious Ones began to demand food and the Little Woman
laboriously dug down into several receptacles before she finally brought
forth part of a loaf of dry bread and a small, stony lump of butter. But
to the Precious Ones it meant life and renewed joy.
The moving man came at one o'clock and in a great hurry. He seemed
surprised that we were ready for him. There were so many reasons why he
had not come sooner that we presently wondered how he had been able to
get there at all. He was a merry, self-assured villain, and whistled as
he and his rusty assistant hustled our things out on the pavement,
leaving all the doors open.
We were not contented with his manner of loading. The pieces we were
proud of--our polished Louis-XIVth-Street furniture--he hurried into the
darkness of his mighty van, while those pieces which in every household
are regarded more as matters of use than ornament he left ranged along
the pavement for all the world to gape at. Now and then he paused to
recount incidents of his former varied experience and to try on such of
my old clothes as came within his reach. I realized now why most of the
things he wore did not fit him. His wardrobe was the accumulation of
many movings.
This contempt for our furniture was poorly concealed. He suggested,
kindly enough, however, that for living around in flats it was too
light, and after briefly watching his handling of it I quite agreed with
him. It was four o'clock when we were finally off, and the shades of
evening had fallen before we reached our new home.
The generous and sympathetic welcome of our new janitress was like balm.
One was low-voiced and her own sorrows had filled her with a broad
understanding of human trials. She looked weary herself, and suggested
_en passant_ that the doctor had prescribed a little stimulant as being
what she most needed, but that, of course, such things were not for the
poor.
I had a bottle of material, distilled over the peat fires of Scotland. I
knew where it was and I found it for her. Then the moving man came up
with a number of our belongings and we forgot her in the general
turmoil and misery that ensued. Bump--bump--up the narrow stairs came
our household goods and gods, and were planted at random about the
floor, in shapeless heaps and pyramids. All were up, at last, except a
few large pieces.
At this point in the proceedings the moving man and his assistant paused
in their labors and the former fished out of his misfit clothing a
greasy piece of paper which he handed me. I glanced at it under the jet
and saw that it was my bill.
"Oh, all right," I said, "I can't stop just now. Wait till you get
everything up, and then I can get at my purse and pay you."
He grinned at me.
"It's the boss's rule," he said, "to collect before the last things is
taken out of the van."
I understood now why the pieces of value had gone in first. I also
understood what the "boss" had meant in saying that we would have to get
up early to get ahead of him. While I was digging up the money they made
side remarks to each other on the lateness of the hour, the length of
the stairs, and the heaviness of the pieces still to come. I gave them
each a liberal tip in sheer desperation.
They were gone at last and we stood helplessly among our belongings that
lay like flotsam and jetsam tossed up on a forbidding shore. The
Precious Ones were whimpering with cold and hunger and want of sleep;
the hopelessness of life pressed heavily upon us. Wearily we dragged
something together for beds, and then crept out to find food. When we
returned there was a dark object in the dim hall against our door. I
struck a match to see what it was. It was a woman, and the sorrows of
living and the troubles of dying were as naught to her. Above and about
her hung the aroma of the peat fires of Scotland. It was our janitress,
and she had returned us the empty bottle.
V.
_A Boarding House for a Change._
Our new janitor was not altogether unworthy, but she drowned her sorrows
too deeply and too often, and her praiseworthy attributes were
incidentally submerged in the process. She was naturally kind-hearted,
and meant to be industrious, but the demon of the still had laid its
blight heavily upon her. We often found her grim and harsh, even to the
point of malevolence, and she did not sweep the stairs.
We attempted diplomacy at first, and affected a deep sympathy with her
wrongs. Then we tried bribery, and in this moral decline I descended to
things that I wish now neither to confess nor remember.
In desperation, at last, we complained to the agent, whereupon she
promptly inundated her griefs even more deeply than usual, and sat upon
the stairs outside our door to denounce us. She declared that a widow's
curse was upon us, and that we would never prosper. It sounded gruesome
at the time, but we have wondered since whether a grass widow's is as
effective, for we learned presently that her spouse, though absent, was
still in the flesh.
It was at the end of the second month that we agreed upon boarding. We
said that after all housekeeping on a small scale was less agreeable and
more expensive than one might suppose, viewing it at long range.
We looked over the papers again and found the inducements attractive. We
figured out that we could get two handsome rooms and board for no more,
and perhaps even a trifle less, than we had been expending on the
doubtful luxury of apartment life. Then, too, there would be a freedom
from the responsibility of marketing, and the preparation of food. We
looked forward to being able to come down to the dining-room without
knowing beforehand just what we were going to have.
It was well that we enjoyed this pleasure in anticipation. Viewed in the
retrospective it is wanting. We did know exactly what we were going to
have after the first week. We learned the combination perfectly in that
time, and solved the system of deductive boarding-house economy within
the month so correctly that given the Sunday bill of fare we could have
supplied in minute detail the daily program for the remainder of any
week in the year.
Of course there is a satisfaction in working out a problem like that,
and we did take a grim pleasure on Sunday afternoons in figuring just
what we were to have for each meal on the rest of the days, but after
the novelty of this wore off there began to be something really deadly
about the exactness of this household machinery and the certainty of our
calculations.
The prospect of Tuesday's stew, for instance, was not a thing to be
disregarded or lightly disposed of. It assumed a definite place in the
week's program as early as two o'clock on Sunday afternoon, and even
when Tuesday was lived down and had linked itself to the past, the
memory of its cuisine lingered and lay upon us until we even fancied
that the very walls of our two plush upholstered rooms were tinged and
tainted and permeated with the haunting sorrow of a million Tuesday
stews.
It is true that we were no longer subject to janitorial dictation, or to
the dumb-waiter complications which are often distressing to those who
live at the top of the house and get the last choice of the meat and ice
deliveries, but our landlady and the boarders we had always with us.
The former was a very stout person and otherwise afflicted with
Christian science and a weak chest. It did not seem altogether
consistent that she should have both, though we did not encourage a
discussion of the matter. We were willing that she should have as many
things as she could stand up under if she only wouldn't try to divide
them with us.
I am sure now that some of the other boarders must have been
discourteous and even harsh with this unfortunate female, and that by
contrast we appeared sympathetic and kind. At least, it seemed that she
drifted to us by some natural process, and evenings when I wanted to
read, or be read to by the Little Woman, she blew in to review the story
of her ailments and to expound the philosophy which holds that all the
ills of life are but vanity and imagination. Perhaps her ailments _may_
have been all imagination and vanity, but they did not seem so to us.
They seemed quite real. Indeed they became so deadly real in time that
more than once we locked our doors after the Precious Ones were asleep,
turned out the gas, and sat silent and trembling in darkness until the
destroying angel should pass by.
I have spoken of the boarders. They too laid their burdens upon us. For
what reason I can only conjecture. They brought us their whole stock of
complaints--complaints of the landlady, of the table and of each other.
Being from the great wide West we may have seemed a bit more broadly
human than most of those whose natures had been dwarfed and blighted in
the city's narrow soulless round of daily toil. Or it may be all of them
had fallen out among themselves before we came. I don't know. I know
that a good many of them had, for they told us about it--casually at
first, and then in detail.
As an example, we learned from the woman across the hall that another
woman, who occupied the top floor back and painted undesirable
water-colors, had been once an artist's model, and that she smoked. From
the top floor back, in turn, we discovered that the woman across the
way, now a writer of more or less impossible plays, had been formerly a
ballet girl and still did a turn now and then to aid in the support of a
dissolute and absent husband.
These things made it trying for us. We could not tell which was the more
deserving of sympathy. Both seemed to have drawn a pretty poor hand in
what was a hard enough game at best. And there were others.
Within the month we were conversant with all the existing feuds as well
as those of the past, and with the plots that were being hatched to
result in a new brood of scandals and counterplots, which were retailed
to the Little Woman and subsequently to me. We were a regular
clearing-house at last for the wrongs and shortcomings of the whole
establishment, and the responsibility of our position weighed us down.
We had never been concerned in intrigue before, and it did not agree
with our simple lives. I could feel myself deteriorating, morally and
intellectually. I had a desire to beat the Precious Ones (who were
certainly well behaved for children shut up in two stuffy rooms) or
better still to set the house afire, and run amuck killing and slaying
down four flights of stairs--to do something very terrible in
fact--something deadly and horrible and final that would put an end
forever to this melancholy haunt of Tuesday stews and ghoulish boarders
with the torturing tattle of their everlasting tongues. I shocked the
Little Woman daily with words and phrases, used heretofore only under
very trying conditions, that had insensibly become the decorations of my
ordinary speech.
Clearly something had to be done, and that very soon, if we were to save
even the remnants of respectability. We recalled with fondness some of
the very discomforts of apartment life and said we would go back to it
at any cost.
Our furniture was in storage. We would get it out, and we would begin
anew, profiting by our experience. We would go at once, and among other
things we would go farther up town. So far down was too noisy, besides
the air was not good for the Precious Ones.
It was coming on spring, too, and it would be pleasanter farther up.
Not so far as we had been before, but far enough to be out of the whirl
and clatter and jangle. It was possible, we believed, to strike the
happy medium, and this we regarded somewhat in the light of another
discovery.
Life now began to assume a new interest. In the few remaining days of
our stay in the boarding-house we grew tolerant and even fond of our
fellow-boarders, and admitted that an endless succession of Tuesday
stews and Wednesday hashes would make us even as they. We went so far as
to sympathize heartily with the landlady, who wept and embraced the
Little Woman when we went, and gave the Precious Ones some indigestible
candy.
We set forth then, happy in the belief that we had mastered, at last,
the problem of metropolitan living. We had tried boarding for a change,
and as such it had been a success, but we were altogether ready to take
up our stored furniture and find lodgment for it, some place, any place,
where the bill of fare was not wholly deductive, where our rooms would
not be made a confessional and a scandal bureau, and where we could, in
some measure, at least, feel that we had a "home, sweet home."
VI.
_Pursuing the Ideal._
I suppose it was our eagerness for a home that made us so easy to
please.
Looking back now after a period of years on the apartment we selected
for our ideal nest I am at a loss to recall our reasons for doing so.
Innocent though we were, it does not seem to me that we could have found
in the brief time devoted to the search so poor a street, so wretched a
place, and so disreputable a janitor (this time a man). I only wish to
recall that the place was damp and small, with the kitchen in front;
that some people across the air shaft were wont to raise Cain all night
long; that the two men below us frequently attempted to murder each
other at unseemly hours, and that some extra matting and furniture
stored in the basement were stolen, I suspect, by the janitor himself.
Once more we folded our tents, such of them as we had left, and went far
up town--very far, this time. We said that if we had to live up town at
all we would go far enough to get a whiff of air from fresh fields.
There was spring in the air when we moved, and far above the Harlem
River, where birds sang under blue skies and the south breeze swept into
our top-floor windows, we set up our household goods and gods once more.
They were getting a bit shaky now, and bruised. The mirrors on sideboard
and dresser had never been put on twice the same, and the middle leg of
the dining-room table wobbled from having been removed so often. But we
oiled out the mark and memory of the moving-man, bought new matting, and
went into the month of June fresh, clean, and hopeful, with no regret
for past errors.
And now at last we found really some degree of comfort. It is true our
neighbors were hardly congenial, but they were inoffensive and kindly
disposed. The piano on the floor beneath did not furnish pleasing
entertainment, but neither was it constant in its efforts to do so. The
stairs were long and difficult of ascent, but our distance from the
street was gratifying. The business center was far away, but I had
learned to improve the time consumed in transit, and our cool eyrie was
refreshing after the city heat.
As for the janitor, or janitress, for I do not know in which side of the
family the office was existent, he, she, or both were merely lazy,
indifferent, and usually invisible. Between them they managed to keep
the place fairly clean, and willingly promised anything we asked. It is
true they never fulfilled these obligations, but they were always eager
to renew them with interest, and on the whole the place was not at all
bad.
But the Precious Ones had, by this time, grown fond of change. We were
scarcely settled before they began to ask when we were going to move
again, and often requested as a favor that we take them out to look at
some flats. We overheard them playing "flat-hunting" almost every day,
in which game one of them would assume the part of janitor to "show
through" while the other would be a prospective tenant who surveyed
things critically and made characteristic remarks, such as, "How many
flights up?" "How much?" "Too small," "Oh, my, kitchen's too dark,"
"What awful paper," "You don't call that closet a room, I hope," and the
like. It seemed a harmless game, and we did not suspect that in a more
serious form its fascinations were insidiously rooting themselves in our
own lives. It is true we often found ourselves pausing in front of new
apartments and wondering what they were like inside, and urged by the
Precious Ones entered, now and then, to see and inquire. In fact the
Precious Ones really embarrassed us sometimes when, on warm Sunday
afternoons, where people were sitting out on the shady steps, they would
pause eagerly in front of the sign "To Let" with: "Oh, papa, look!
Seven rooms and bath! Oh, mamma, let's go in and see them! Oh, please,
mamma! Please, papa!"
At such times we hurried by, oblivious to their importunities, but when
the situation was less trying we only too frequently yielded, and each
time with less and less reluctance.
It was in the early fall that we moved again,--into a sunny corner flat
on a second floor that we strayed into during one of these rambles, and
became ensnared by its clean, new attractions. We said that it would be
better for winter, and that we were tired of four long flight of stairs.
But, alas, by spring every thing was out of order from the electric bell
at the entrance to the clothes-lines on the roof, while janitors came
and went like Punch and Judy figures. Most of the time we had none, and
some that we had were better dead. So we moved when the birds came back,
but it was a mistake, and on the Fourth of July we celebrated by moving
again.
We now called ourselves "van-dwellers," the term applied by landlord and
agent to those who move systematically and inhabit the moving-man's
great trundling house no less than four to six times a year. I am not
sure, however, that we ever really earned the title. The true
"van-dweller" makes money by moving and getting free rent, while I fear
the wear and tear on our chattels more than offset any advantage we ever
acquired in this particular direction.
I can think of no reason now for having taken our next flat except that
it was different from any of those preceding. Still, it was better than
the summer board we selected from sixty answers to our advertisement,
and after eighteen minutes' experience with a sweltering room and an
aged and apoplectic dog whose quarters we seemed to have usurped, we
came back to it like returning exiles.
It was a long time before we moved again--almost four months. Then the
Little Woman strayed into another new house, and was captivated by a
series of rooms that ran merrily around a little extension in a manner
that allowed the sun to shine into every window.
We had become connoisseurs by this time. We could tell almost the exact
shape and price of an apartment from its outside appearance. After one
glance inside we could carry the plan mentally for months and reproduce
it minutely on paper at will. We had learned, too, that it is only by
living in many houses in rotation that you can know the varied charms of
apartment life. No one flat can provide them all.
The new place had its attractions and we passed a merry Christmas there.
Altogether our stay in it was not unpleasant, in spite of the soiled and
soulless Teutonic lady below stairs. I think we might have remained
longer in this place but for the fact that when spring came once more we
were seized with the idea of becoming suburbanites.
We said that a city apartment after all was no place for children, and
that a yard of our own, and green fields, must be found. With the
numerous quick train services about New York it was altogether possible
to get out and in as readily as from almost any point of the upper
metropolis, and that, after all, in the country was the only place to
live.
We got nearly one hundred answers to our carefully-worded advertisement
for a house, or part of a house, within certain limits, and the one
selected was seemingly ideal. Green fields behind it, a railroad station
within easy walking distance, grasshoppers singing in the weeds across
the road. We strolled, hand in hand with the Precious Ones, over sweet
meadows, gathering dandelions and listening to the birds. We had a lawn,
too, and sunny windows, and we felt free to do as we chose in any part
of our domain, even in the basement, for here there was no janitor.
We rejoiced in our newly-acquired freedom, and praised everything from
the warm sunlight that lay in a square on the matting of every room to
the rain that splashed against the windows and trailed across the
waving fields. It is true we had a servant now--Rosa, of whom I shall
speak later--but even the responsibility (and it _was_ that) of this
acquirement did not altogether destroy our happiness. Summer and autumn
slipped away. The Precious Ones grew tall and brown, and the old cares
and annoyances of apartment life troubled us no more.
But with the rigors and gloom and wretchedness of winter the charms of
our suburban home were less apparent. The matter of heat became a
serious question, and the memory of steam radiators was a haunting one.
More than once the Little Woman was moved to refer to our "cosy little
apartment" of the winter before. Also, the railway station seemed
farther away through a dark night and a pouring rain, the fields were
gray and sodden, and the grasshoppers across the road were all dead.
We did not admit that we were dissatisfied. In fact, we said so often
that we would not go back to the city to live that no one could possibly
suspect our even considering such a thing.
However, we went in that direction one morning when we set out for a car
ride, and as we passed the new apartment houses of Washington Heights we
found ourselves regarding them with something of the old-time interest.
Of course there was nothing personal in this interest. It was purely
professional, so to speak, and we assured each other repeatedly that
even the best apartment (we had prospered somewhat in the world's goods
by this time and we no longer spoke of "flats")--that even the best
"apartment", then, was only an apartment after all, which is true, when
you come to think of it.
Still, there certainly were attractive new houses, and among them
appeared to be some of a different pattern from any in our "collection."
One in particular attracted us, and a blockade of cars ahead just then
gave us time to observe it more closely.
There were ornamental iron gates at the front entrance, and there was a
spot of shells and pebbles next the pavement--almost a touch of
seashore, and altogether different from the cheerless welcome of most
apartment houses. Then, of course, the street car passing right by the
door would be convenient----
The blockade ahead showed no sign of opening that we could see. By
silent but common consent we rose and left the car. Past the little
plot of sea beach, through the fancy iron gates, up to the scarcely
finished, daintily decorated, latest improved apartment we went,
conducted by a dignified, newly-uniformed colored janitor, who quoted
prices and inducements.
I looked at the Little Woman--she looked at me. Each saw that the other
was thinking of the long, hard walk from the station on dark, wet
nights, the dead grasshoppers, and the gray, gloomy fields. We were both
silent all the way home, remembering the iron gates, the clean janitor,
the spot of shells, and a beautiful palm that stood in the vestibule. We
were both silent and we were thinking, but we did not move until nearly
a week later.
VII.
_Owed to the Moving Man._
WRITTEN TO GET EVEN.
He pledged his solemn word for ten,
And lo, he cometh not till noon--
So ready his excuses then,
We wonder why he came so soon.
He whistles while our goods and gods
He storeth in his mighty van--
No lurking sting of conscience prods
The happy-hearted moving man.
Upon the pavement in a row,
Beneath the cruel noonday glare,
The things we do not wish to show
He places, and he leaves them there.
There hour by hour will they remain
For all the gaping world to scan,
The while we coax and chide in vain
The careless-hearted moving man.
When darkness finds our poor array
Like drift upon a barren shore,
Perchance we gaze on it and say
With vigor, "We will roam no more."
But when the year its course hath run,
And May completes the rhythmic span,
Again, I wot, we'll call upon
The happy-hearted moving man.
VIII.
_Household Retainers._
It is of Rosa that I would speak now, Rosa, the young and consuming; and
of Wilhelmine, the reformer.
Rosa came first in our affections. It was during our first period of
suburban residence that she became a part of our domestic economy,
though on second thought economy seems hardly the word. She was tall,
and, while you could never have guessed it to look into her winsome,
gentle face, I am sure that she was hollow all the way down.
When I first gazed upon her I wondered why one so young (she was barely
sixteen), and with such delicacy of feature, should have been given feet
so disproportionate in size. I know now that they were mere recesses,
and that it was my fate for the time being to fill, or to try to fill,
them.
She came in the afternoon, and when, after a portion of the roast had
been devoted to the Precious Ones and their forbears, and an allotment
of the pudding had been issued and dallied over, Rosa came on and
literally demolished on a dead run every hope of to-morrow's stew, or
hash, or a "between-meal" for the Precious Ones--licked not only the
platter, but the vegetable dishes, the gravy tureen, the bread board,
and the pudding pan, clean, so to speak.
At first we merely smiled indulgently and said: "Poor thing, she is
half starved, and it is a pleasure to have her enjoy a good meal. She
can't keep it up, of course."
[Illustration: Rosa.]
But this was simply bad judgment. At daybreak I hastened out for a new
invoice of bread stuff and market supplies in order to provide for
immediate wants. Rosa had rested well and was equal to the occasion.
When I returned in the evening I found that our larder had been
replenished and wrecked twice during my absence. The Little Woman had a
driven, hunted look in her face, while Rosa was as winsome and
gentle-featured, as sweet and placid in her consciousness of well being
and doing, as a cathedral saint. In fact, it always seemed to me that
she never looked so like a madonna as she did immediately after
destroying the better part of a two-dollar roast and such other trifles
as chanced to be within reach in the hour of her strong requirements.
And these things she could do seven days in the week and as many times
during each twenty-four hours as opportunity yielded to her purpose. We
were hopeful for days that it was only a temporary disaster, and that we
would eventually get her filled up, shoes and all.
But days became weeks and weeks gathered themselves into months. Each
morning Rosa came up winsome and glad to be alive--fresh as the dew on
the currant bushes and ravenous as a Mohammedan at the end of Ramadan.
It was no use. We gave it up at last, and merely concerned ourselves
with getting sufficient unto the day and moment.
But there was another side to Rosa. She was willing to take counsel, in
the matter of her labors, and profit by it. Also she had no particular
aversion to work, and she was beloved of the Precious Ones. It is true
she had no special regard for the fragility of queensware, but care in
these matters is not expected even of old retainers; while Rosa, as I
have said, was in the flower of youth.
It was not without regret, therefore, that we found she could not
accompany us to the city. Her people did not wish her to become a part
of the great metropolis in early youth, and were willing to do the best
they could with her appetite at home until another near-by source of
supplies could be found. So it was that Rosa passed out of our fortunes
when we gave up suburban life and became dwellers in the Monte Cristo
apartments.
It was then that Wilhelmine came. The Little Woman's brother Tom was to
abide with us for a season, and it seemed necessary to have somebody. I
suggested that any employment bureau could doubtless supply us with just
what we needed, and the Little Woman went down to see.
I have never known exactly what her experiences were there, though she
has done her best to tell me. Her account lacked lucidity and
connection, but from what I can gather piecemeal, she did not enjoy
herself.
However, the experiment resulted in something--a very old German
individual in a short dress, stout of person, and no English worth
mentioning. She came on us like a cyclone, and her speech was as a
spring torrent in volume. I happened to know one or two German words,
and when incautiously I chanced to let her have a look at them she
seized my hand and did a skirt dance. Then presently she ran out into
the kitchen, took everything from every shelf, and rearranged the
articles in a manner adapted to the uses of nothing human.
This was the beginning, and relentlessly she pursued her course, backed
up by a lifetime of experience, and the strong German traditions of
centuries.
The entire household was reorganized under her regime. The Little Woman
and the Precious Ones were firmly directed, and I was daily called to
account in a mixture of high-geared German and splintered English that
was fairly amazing in its quantity.
Nothing was so trivial as to escape Wilhelmine. Like all great
generals, she regarded even the minutest details as important, and I was
handled with no less severity for cutting an extra slice of bread than
for investing in a new rug for the front room. For, let it be said now,
Wilhelmine was economical and abhorred waste. Neither did she break the
crockery, and, unlike Rosa, she did not eat. She was no longer young and
growing, and the necessity of coaling-up every hour or two seemed to
have gone by.
But, alas! we would have preferred beautiful, young, careless,
larder-wrecking Rosa to Wilhelmine, the reformer. We would have welcomed
her with joy, and surreptitiously in whispers we hatched plots to rid
ourselves of the tyrant. Once I even went so far as to rebel and battle
with her in the very sanctity of the kitchen itself.
Not that Wilhelmine could not cook. In her own German cabbage-and-onion
way she was resourceful, and the house reeked with her combinations
until strong men shed tears, and even the janitor hurried by our door
with bowed head. I never questioned her ability to cook, but in the
matter of coffee she was hopeless. In the best German I could muster I
told her so. I told her so several times, so that it could sink in. I
said it over forward and backward and sideways, in order to get the
verbs right, and when she was through denouncing me I said that I would
give her an object lesson in making coffee in a French pot.
I am sure now that this was a mistake--that German blood could stand
almost anything in the world better than a French coffee-pot, but at the
time I did not recall the affairs and animosities of nations.
I had other things to think of. I was employed in the delicate operation
of extracting amber nectar by a tedious dripping process, and
simultaneously engaging with a rapid-fire German at short range. I
understood very little of what she said, and what I did gather was not
complimentary. I fired a volley or two at last myself, and then
retreated in good order bearing the coffee-pot.
The coffee was a success, but it was obtained at too great a risk. That
night we wrote to Rosa and to her mother. We got no reply, and, after
days of anxious waiting, the Little Woman went out to discuss the
situation in person. But the family had moved, and there had been a very
heavy snow. The Little Woman waded about nearly all day in pursuit of
the new address. She learned it at last, but it was too late then to go
any farther, so she came home and wrote again, only to get no reply.
Then I tried my hand in the matter as follows:--
LINES TO ROSA IN ABSENCE.
Lady Rosa Vere de Smith,
Leave your kin and leave your kith;
Life without you is a mockery;
Come once more and rend our crockery.
Lady Rosa Vere de Smith,
Life for us has lost its pith;
You taught us how to prize you thus,
And now you will not bide with us.
Lady Rosa Vere de Smith,
Have we no voice to reach you with?
Come once more and wreck our larder;
We will welcome you with ardor.
I could have written more of this, perhaps, and I still believe it would
have proved effective, but when I read aloud as far as written, the
Little Woman announced that she would rather do without Rosa forever
than to let a thing like that go through the mails. So it was
suppressed, and Rosa was lost to us, I fear, for all time.
But Providence had not entirely forgotten us, though its ways as usual
were inscrutable. Wilhelmine, it seems, locked herself nightly in her
room, and the locks being noiseless in the Monte Cristo apartments she
could not realize when the key turned that she was really safely barred
in. Hence it seems she continued to twist at the key which, being of a
slender pattern, was one night wrenched apart and Wilhelmine, alas! was
only too surely fortified in her stronghold. When she realized this she,
of course, became wildly vociferous.
I heard the outburst and hastening back found her declaring that she was
lost without a doubt. That the house would certainly catch fire before
she was released and that she would be burned like a rat in a trap.
I called to her reassuringly, but it did no good. Then I climbed up on a
chair set on top of a table, and observed her over the transom. She had
her wardrobe tied in a bundle all ready for the fire which she assured
me was certain to come, though how she hoped to get her wardrobe out
when she could not get herself out, or of what use it would be to her
afterwards was not clear.
It was useless to persuade her to go to bed and let me get a locksmith
in the morning. I was convinced that she would carry-on all night like a
forgotten _dachshund_, unless she was released. It was too late to find
a locksmith and I did not wish to take the janitor into the situation.
I got a screw-driver and handed it over to her telling her to unscrew
the lock. But by this time she had reached a state where she did not
know one end of the implement from another. She merely looked at it
helplessly and continued to leap about and bewail her fate loudly and in
mixed tongues.
I saw at last that I must climb over the transom. It was small, and I am
a large man. I looked at the size of it and then considered my height
and shoulder measure. Then I made the effort.
I could not go through feet first, and to go through a transom head
first is neither dignified or exhilarating. When I was something more
than half through I pawed about in the air head down in a vain effort
to reach a little chiffonier in Wilhelmine's room.
She watched me with interest to see how near I could come to it, and by
some mental process it dawned upon her at last that she could help
matters by pushing it toward me. Having reached this conclusion the rest
was easy, for she was as strong as an ox and swung the furniture toward
me like a toy.
Five minutes later I had unscrewed the lock and Wilhelmine was free. So
were we, for when I threw the lock into a drawer with a few choice
German remarks which I had been practising for just such an emergency,
Wilhelmine seized upon her bundles, already packed, and, vowing that she
would abide in no place where she could not lie down in the security of
strong and hard twisting keys, she disappeared, strewing the stairway
with German verbs and expletives in her departure.
We saw her no more, and in two weeks, by constant airing, we had our
culinary memories of her reduced to such a degree that the flat on the
floor above found a tenant, and carbolic acid was no longer needed in
the halls.
IX.
_Ann._
And now came Ann, Ann, the Hibernian and the minstrel. During the first
week of her abode with us she entertained us at dinner by singing a
weird Irish love ballad and so won our hearts that the Little Woman
decided to take the Precious Ones for a brief visit to homes and
firesides in the Far West, leaving her Brother Tom and myself in Ann's
charge.
When she went away she beamed upon Tom and me and said, reassuringly,
"Ann will take good care of you all right. We were fortunate to secure a
girl like Ann on such short notice. Get your lunches outside sometimes;
that will please her." Then she and the Precious Ones kissed us both,
the bell rang and they were gone.
My brother-in-law and I were doing what we referred to as "our book" at
this time, and were interested to the point of absorption. Ann the
Hibernian therefore had the household--at least, the back of the
household--pretty much to herself.
I do not know just when the falling off did begin. We were both very
much taken up with our work. But when, one morning, I happened to notice
that it was a quarter of twelve when we sat down to a breakfast of stale
bread and warmed-over coffee, it occurred to me that there was a hitch
somewhere in our system.
That evening, when it got too dark to work, I arose and drifted out to
the kitchen, perhaps with some idea of being hungry, and a mild
curiosity to know when dinner might be expected. There was an air of
desolation about the place that seemed strange, and an odor that seemed
familiar. Like a hound on the trail I followed the latter straight on
through the kitchen, to the servants' room at the back. The door was
ajar, and the mystery was solved. Our noble Ann had fallen prey to the
cup that yearly sweeps thousands into unhonored graves.
We went out for dinner, and the next morning we got our own eggs and
coffee. When our minion regained consciousness we reviled her and cast
her out.
We said we would get our own meals. We had camped out together and taken
turns at the cooking. We would camp out now in the flat. We were quite
elated with the idea, and out of the fulness of our freedom gave Ann a
dollar and a little bracer out of some "private stock." Ann declared we
were "pairfect gintlemen," and for the first time seemed sorry to go.
Both being eager to get back to our work after breakfast, neither of us
referred to the dirty dishes, and I did not remember them again until
dinner time. Tom got into a tangle with our heroine about one o'clock,
and said he would get the lunch by way of relaxation. I presume he
relaxed sufficiently without attending to the plates. At least, I found
them untouched when I went out to look after the dinner.
I discovered, also, that the lavish Tom had exhausted the commissary to
achieve the lunch. I was obliged, therefore, to go at once to the
grocery, and on the way made up a mental list of the things easiest to
prepare. I would get canned things, I said, as many of these were ready
for the table, and some of them could be eaten out of the can. This
would save dishes. I do not recall now just what I had planned as my
bill of fare, but I suppose I must have forgotten some of it when I
learned that our grocer was closing out his stock of wet goods very
cheap, for Tom looked at the stuff when it came and asked if I thought
of running a bar. I said I had bought with a view to saving dishes. Then
he hunted up the cork-screw and we dined.
In spite of my superior management, however, the dish pile in the
kitchen sink grew steadily.
On the morning of the third day the china closet was exhausted, and we
took down the Little Woman's Crown Derby and blue India plates from
their hangers in the parlor.
On the evening of the fourth day Tom got our work into an inextricable
tangle, and took a reflective stroll out into the kitchen. He came back
looking hopelessly discouraged. On the fifth morning we followed Ann's
example.
The atmosphere suddenly cleared now. We reached conclusions by amazingly
short cuts, and our troubles vanished like the dew of morning. The next
day would be Sunday. We would go into the country for recreation.
To-night we would put a line in the paper and on Monday morning we would
have another servant. It seemed hardly worth our while to attempt to
camp out permanently.
I will pass over Sunday without further comment. The recollection is
weird and extravagant. I remember being surprised at finding certain
stretches of pavement perpendicular, and of trying to climb them. Still
we must have got a line in the paper on Saturday night, for on Monday
the bell began ringing violently before we were up. Tom either did not
hear it, or was wilfully unconscious. Finally I got up wretchedly and
dragged on some garments. There was no ice, so I pressed my head for a
few minutes to a marble-topped center table.
I suppose it was because I did not feel very bright that the voices of
my guests were not restful to me. I was almost irritated by one
shrill-voiced creature who insisted on going through every room, even to
our study. Her tone was dictatorial and severe. Still I might have
retained her had she not commented disagreeably on the dishes in the
kitchen sink.
One after another they followed her example. Every woman of them began
to make excuses and back away when she looked at that unwashed china.
Most of them perjured themselves with the statement that they had come
to see about a place for another girl.
After the initial lot they scattered along through the forenoon. Tom had
got up, meantime, and was leaning on the front window-sill watching
hungrily for the ice-man.
In the midst of this anguish the bell rang once more, timidly and with
evident hesitation, and a moment later I feebly opened the door to
admit--Ann!
She was neatly dressed, as when she had first come to us, and there were
other gratifying indications of reform.
"Sure an' I saw your advertisement," she began, humbly, "an' I thought
two such gintlemen as yerselves moight not be too hard on a daycent
woman who only takes a drop or two now an' then----"
I led her back to the kitchen and pointed to the sink. As we passed
through the dining-room she noticed the empty bottles on the table and
crossed herself. When she looked at the kitchen sink she exclaimed,
"Holy Mary!" But she did not desert us. Her charity was greater than
ours.
I went in to tell Tom of the renovation and general reform that was
about to begin. He had just succeeded in hailing the ice-man and was
feeling better. When I went back into the kitchen there was a
wash-boiler of water heating on the range.
Just then the postman whistled and brought a letter from the Little
Woman.
"I have decided to stay a week longer than I intended," she wrote. "It
is so pleasant here, and Ann, I am sure, is taking good care of you."
We had a confidential understanding with Ann that night. She remained
with us a year afterward, and during that time the sacred trust formed
by the three of us was not betrayed.
X.
_A "Flat" Failure._
In the Monte Cristo apartments it would seem that we had found harbor at
last. Days ran into weeks, weeks to months, and these became a year, at
length--the first we had passed under any one roof. Then there came a
change. The house was not so well built as it had appeared, and with the
beginning of decay there came also a change of landlord and janitor. Our
spruce and not unworthy colored man was replaced by one Thomas, who was
no less spruce, indeed, but as much more severe in his discipline as his
good-natured employer was lax in the matter of needed repairs.
Every evening, at length, when we gathered about the dinner table, the
Little Woman recited to me the story of her day's wrongs. They were many
and various, but they may be summed up in the two words--janitor and
landlord. The arrogance of one and the negligence of the other were
rapidly making life in the Monte Cristo apartments insupportable. Of
course there were minor annoyances--the children across the hall, for
instance, and the maid in the kitchen--but these faded into
insignificance when contrasted with the leaky plumbing, sagging doors,
rattling windows and the like on the part of Mr. Griffin, the landlord,
and new arbitrary rulings concerning the supply of steam for the parlor,
coal for the kitchen range, the taking away of refuse, and the austere
stairway restrictions imposed upon our Precious Ones on the part of
Thomas, the janitor.
It is true the landlord was not over-exacting in the matter of rent, and
when he came about, which was not often, would promise anything and
everything with the greatest good-will in the world, while Thomas kept
the front steps and halls in a condition which was really better than we
had been used to, or than the rent schedule would ordinarily justify.
But the good-will of the landlord usually went no farther than his ready
promises, while the industry of Thomas was overshadowed by his gloomy
discipline and haughty severity, which presently made him, if not the
terror, certainly the awe, of Monte Cristo dwellers. We had not minded
this so much, however, until when one day the Precious Ones paused on
the stair a moment to rest, as was their wont, and were perhaps even
laughing in their childish and musical way, Thomas, who had now been
with us some three months or more, appeared suddenly from some concealed
lurking-place and ordered them to their own quarters, with a warning
against a repetition of the offense that seemed unduly somber. It
frightened the Precious Ones so thoroughly that they were almost afraid
to pass through the halls alone next day, and came and went quite on a
run, looking neither to the right nor to the left.
It was then that we said we would go. Of course, moving was not
pleasant; we had enough memories in that line already, though time had
robbed them of their bitterness, I suppose, for we grew quite cheerful
over the idea of seeking a new abiding-place, and it being Sunday,
began looking over the advertisement columns immediately after
breakfast. I would make a list, I said, and stop in here and there to
investigate on the way to and from business. We would get nearer to
business, for one thing, also nearer the car-line. We would have a
lighter flat, too, and we would pay less for it. We agreed upon these
things almost instantly. Then we began putting down addresses. It was
surprising how many good, cheap places there seemed to be now. So many
new houses had been built since our last move. We regretted openly to
each other that we had not gone before. Then we rested a little to find
fault with our quarters. We dug over all the old things, and unearthed a
lot of new and hitherto concealed wretchedness that was altogether
disheartening. We would move at once, we said. Now! This week!
Perhaps I seemed a trifle less cheerful when I returned next evening.
The Little Woman must have noticed it, I suppose, for she asked if I
wasn't well. I said that I was tired, which was true. I added that a
good many landlords were unscrupulous in the matter of advertising,
which I can take an oath is also true. I had left the office early and
investigated a number of the apartments on my list, at the expense of
some nerve-tissue and considerable car-fare. The advertisements had been
more or less misleading. The Little Woman said that in the morning she
would go.
The Little Woman herself looked tired the next evening--more tired and
several years older than I had ever seen her look. She had walked a
good many miles--steep stair miles which are trying. In the end she had
arrived only at the conclusion that the best apartments were not
advertised. She said it would be better to select the locality we
preferred and walk leisurely about the good streets until we spied
something attractive. She wished we might do so together.
I took a holiday and we pursued this programme. Like birds seeking a new
nesting-place we flitted hither and thither, alighting wheresoever the
perch seemed inviting. We alighted in many places, but in most of them
we tarried but briefly. It was not that the apartments were
inattractive--they were almost irresistible, some of them, but even
hasty reflection convinced me that it would be inadvisable to invest
ninety-five per cent of my salary each month in rent unless I could be
altogether certain that the Little Woman and the Precious Ones could
modify their appetites and remain quite well.
Being enthusiastic at first, we examined some of these apartments and
the Little Woman acquired credit in my eyes as we proceeded. I did not
realize until now the progress she had made since the day of our arrival
in Gotham nearly four years previous. Her education was complete--she
was a graduate in the great school of flat-life, and was contemplating a
post-graduate course. Figures that made me gasp and sustain myself by
the silver-mounted plumbing left her quite undisturbed. From her manner
you would suppose that it was only the desirability of the apartment
itself that was worth consideration. She criticised the arrangement of
the rooms and the various appointments with an air of real consequence,
while the janitor and I followed her about, humble and unimportant,
wondering how we could ever have imagined the place suitable to her
requirements.
In one place where the rent was twenty-four hundred it seemed almost
impossible to find fault. I began to be frightened for the Little Woman,
in the thought that now, after all, she really would be obliged to
confess that the little trifle of eighteen hundred dollars a year more
than we could possibly pay rendered the place undesirable. But a moment
later I realized how little I knew her. When we got to the kitchen she
remarked, passively, there was no morning sun in the windows. As the
apartment faced east, and there was morning sun in the parlor, this
condition seemed more or less normal, as the janitor meekly pointed out.
But the Little Woman declared she would never live in another place
where the kitchen was dark mornings, and turned away, leaving the
janitor scratching his head over the problem of making the sun shine
from two directions at once and remaining in that position all day long.
Still it was a narrow escape, and we were consuming time. So we
contented ourselves after that with merely inquiring the size and price
of the apartment of the hall-boy, and passing on. Even this grew
monotonous at length, and we gradually drifted into the outer edges of
the chosen district, and from the outer edges into that Section wherein
we had made our first beginning nearly four years before, the great
wilderness lying north of One Hundred and Sixteenth Street. Then we
began work in earnest. We looked at light apartments and dark
apartments--apartments on every floor, even to the basement. Though many
changes had taken place it carried us back to the day of our first
experience, and set us to wondering if we really had learned anything
after all.
We saw apartments that we would not have, and apartments which, because
of our Precious Ones, would not have us. Apartments that ran straight
through the house, apartments that, running down one side of the house
and back on the other, solved in a manner the Little Woman's problem of
having sunlight in both ends of the house at one time.
It was one of these last that we took. The building, which was
comparatively new, was located in the middle of the block, on a little
square bit of ground, and had on each floor a cozy octagonal hall with
one apartment running entirely around it. The entrance steps and halls
were not as unsullied as those of our present habitat, but the janitor
was a good-natured soul who won us at first glance, and who seemed on
terms of the greatest amity with a small boy who lived on the first
landing and accompanied us through. We saw also that the plumbing was in
praiseworthy condition, and the doors swung easily on their hinges.
To be sure, the price was a trifle more than we were paying in our
present apartment, and the location was somewhat farther from business;
but we said that a few blocks more or less were really nothing when one
was once on the car, which was almost as near as at the old place, and
we figured that the slight difference in rent we could save in the
gas-bill, though I had a lingering suspicion that to strike a general
average of light in the two places would be to cast but slight
reflection on either.
The janitor was the main thing--the good-natured janitor and the
landlord. We could even put up with slight drawbacks for the sake of an
apartment in good condition and the companionable soul down-stairs.
Then, too, we were foot-sore in flesh and spirit, and after the day's
experiences welcomed this haven as a genuine discovery. We went home
really gratified, though I confess our old nest had never seemed more
inviting.
I will touch but lightly upon the next few days. I would rather forget
the atmosphere of squalor and destitution that pervaded our household
when the carpets had been stripped up and we were stumbling about among
half-packed barrels upon bare, resounding floors. I do not seek to
retrace in detail the process of packing, which began with some buoyancy
and system, to degenerate at last in its endlessness into dropping
things mechanically and hopelessly into whatever receptacle came first
to hand. I do not wish to renew the moments of vehemence and
exasperation when our Precious Ones, who really seemed to enjoy it all,
clattered about among the débris, or the vague appreciation of suicide
that was born within me when, in the midst of my despair, the Little
Woman suggested that after all she was afraid we were making a mistake
in leaving our little home where we had been happy so long; also that we
moved too often, an unusual statement considering the fact that we had
been there for more than a year. I told her that she reminded me of my
mother, who daily rated my father for keeping them poor, moving, they
having moved twice in thirty-eight years. I added that I had seen my
mother publicly denounce my father for having left out a broken stew-pot
when they moved the last time, some twenty years before.
I will not review these things fully, nor will I recall, except in the
briefest manner, the usual perfidiousness of the moving-man, who, as
heretofore, came two hours late, and then arranged upon the pavement all
the unbeauteous articles of our household, leaving them bare and
wretched in the broad light of day while he thrust into the van the
pieces of which we were justly proud.
I will also skim but lightly over the days devoted to getting settled. I
sent word to the office that I was ill--a fact which I could have sworn
to if necessary, though for a sick man my activity was quite remarkable.
The Little Woman was active, too, while the Precious Ones displayed a
degree of enterprise and talent for getting directly in my chosen path,
which was unusual even for them.
We were installed at last, however, and the jolly janitor had given us a
lift now and then which completely won our hearts and more than made up
for some minor shortcomings which we discovered here and there as the
days passed. We named our new home the "Sunshine" apartment and assured
each other that we were very well pleased, and when one morning as I set
out for the office I noticed that the lower halls and stairway had
suddenly taken on an air of spruce tidiness--had been magically
transformed over night, as it were--I was so elated that I returned to
point these things out to the Little Woman. She came down to the door
with me and agreed that it was quite wonderful, and added the final
touch to our satisfaction. She added that it looked almost as if Thomas
had been at work there. I went away altogether happy.
Owing to the accumulation of work at the office it was rather later than
usual when I returned that evening. As I entered I observed on the face
of the Little Woman a peculiar look which did not seem altogether due to
the delayed dinner. The Precious Ones also regarded me strangely, and I
grew vaguely uneasy without knowing why. It was our elder hope who first
addressed me.
"On, pop! you can't guess who's here!"
"No," chimed in the echo, "you never could! Guess, papa; just guess!"
As for the Little Woman, she leaned back in her chair and began laughing
hysterically. This was alarming. I knew it could not be her brother who
had just sailed for Japan, and I glanced about nervously, having in mind
a composite vision of my Aunt Jane, who had once invaded our home with
disastrous results, and an old college chum, who only visited me when in
financial distress.
"Wh--where are--they?" I half whispered, regarding anxiously the
portières.
"Here--up-stairs, down-stairs, everywhere!" gasped the Little Woman,
while the Precious Ones continued to insist that I guess and keep on
guessing without rest or sustenance till the crack of doom.
Then suddenly I grew quite stern.
"Tell me," I commanded, "what is the matter with you people, and stop
this nonsense! Who is it that's here?"
The Little Woman became calm for a brief instant, and emitted a single
word. "Thomas!"
I sank weakly into a chair. "Thomas?"
"Yes, Thomas! Thomas!" shrieked the Precious Ones, and then they, too,
went off into a fit of ridiculous mirth, while recalling now the sudden
transfiguration of the halls I knew they had spoken truly. The Little
Woman was wiping her eyes.
"And Mr. Griffin, too," she said, calmly, as if that was quite a matter
of course.
"And Mr. Griffin, too!" chorused the Precious Ones.
"Mr. Griffin?"
"Why, yes," said the Little Woman. "He bought this house yesterday, and
put Thomas over here in charge. He will occupy the top floor himself."
"Oh!"
"And you never saw anybody so glad of anything as Thomas was to see us
here. It was the first time I ever saw him laugh!"
"Oh, he laughed, did he?"
"Yes; and he gave us each some candy!" chanted the Precious Ones. "He
said it was like meeting home folks."
"Oh, he did?"
"Mine was chocolate," declared our elder joy.
"Mine was marshmallows!" piped the echo.
"Little Woman," I said, "our dinner is getting cold; suppose we eat
it."
XI.
_Inheritance and Mania._
And now came one of these episodes which sometimes disturb the
sequestered quiet of even the best regulated and most conventional of
households. We were notified one day that my Aunt Jane, whom I believe I
have once before mentioned having properly arranged her affairs had
passed serenely out of life at an age and in a manner that left nothing
to be desired.
I was sorry, of course,--as sorry as it was possible to be, considering
the fact that she had left me a Sum which though not large was absurdly
welcome. I did not sleep very well until it came, fearing there might
be some hitch in administrating the will, but there was no hitch (my
Aunt Jane, heaven rest her spirit, had been too thoroughly business for
that) and the Sum came along in due season.
We would keep this Sum, we decided, as a sinking fund; something to have
in the savings bank, to be added to, from time to time, as a provision
for the future and our Precious Ones. This seemed a good idea at the
time, and it seems so yet, for that matter. I have never been able to
discover that there is anything wrong with having money in a good
savings bank.
I _put_ the Sum in a good savings bank, and we were briefly satisfied
with our prudence. It gave us a sort of safe feeling to know that it was
there, to be had almost instantly, in case of need.
It was this latter knowledge that destroyed us. When the novelty of
feeling safe had worn off we began to need the Sum. Casually at first,
coming as a mere suggestion, in fact, from one or the other of us, of
what we could buy with it. It is wonderful how many things we were
constantly seeing that the Sum would pay for.
Our furniture, for instance, had grown old without becoming antique, and
was costly only when you reckon what we had paid for moving it. We had
gradually acquired a taste (or it may have been only the need of a
taste) for the real thing. Whatever it was it seemed expensive--too
expensive to be gratified heretofore, but now that we had the Sum----
The shops along Fourth Avenue were literally bulging with things that we
coveted and that the Sum would pay for. I looked at them wistfully in
passing, still passing strong in my resolution to let the Sum lie
untouched. Then I began to linger and go in, and to imagine that I knew
a good piece and a bargain when I saw it. This last may be set down as a
fatal symptom. It led me into vile second-hand stores in the hope of
finding some hitherto undiscovered treasure. In these I hauled over the
wretched jetsam of a thousand cheap apartments and came out dusty and
contaminated but not discouraged.
I suggested to the Little Woman one day that it would be in the nature
of an investment to buy now, in something old and good, the desk I had
needed so long. I assured her that antiques were becoming scarcer each
year, and that pieces bought to-day were quite as good as money in the
savings bank, besides having the use of them. The Little Woman agreed
readily. For a long time she had wanted me to have a desk, and my
argument in favor of an antique piece seemed sound.
I did not immediately find a desk that suited me. There were a great
many of them, and most of them seemed sufficiently antique, but being
still somewhat modern in my ideas I did not altogether agree with their
internal arrangements, while such as did appeal would have made too
large an incursion into the Sum. What I did find at length was a
table--a mahogany veneered table which the dealer said was of a period
before the war. I could readily believe it. If he had said that it had
been _through_ the war I could have believed that, too. It looked it.
But I saw in it possibilities, and reflected that it would give me an
opportunity to develop a certain mechanical turn which had lain dormant
hitherto. The Little Woman had been generous in the matter of the desk.
I would buy the table for the Little Woman.
She was pleased, of course, but seemed to me she regarded it a trifle
doubtfully when it came in. Still, the price had not been great, and it
was astonishing to see how much better it looked when I was through with
it, and it was in a dim corner, with its more unfortunate portions next
the wall. Indeed, it had about it quite an air of genuine
respectability, and made the rest of our things seem poor and trifling.
It was the beginning of the end.
Some Colonial chairs came next.
The Little Woman and I discovered their battered skeletons one day as
we were hurrying to catch a car. They were piled in front of a place
that under ordinary conditions we would have shunned as a pest-house.
Still the chairs were really beautiful and it was a genuine "find"! I
did not restore these myself--they needed too much. I had them delivered
to a cabinet-maker who in turn delivered them to us in a condition that
made the rest of our belongings look even shabbier, and at a cost that
made another incursion into the Sum.
I renovated and upholstered the next lot of chairs myself, and was proud
of the result, though the work was attended by certain unpleasant
features, and required time. On the whole, I concluded to let the
cabinet-maker undertake the heavy lounge that came next, and was in
pieces, as if a cyclone had struck it somewhere back in the forties and
it had been lying in a heap, ever since. It was wonderful what he did
with it. It came to us a thing of beauty and an everlasting joy, and his
bill made a definite perforation in the Sum.
We did not mind so much now. It was merely altering the form of our
investment, we said, and we had determined to become respectable at any
cost. The fact that we had been offered more for the restored lounge
than it cost us reassured us in our position. Most of our old traps we
huddled together one day, and disposed of them to a second-hand man for
almost enough to pay for one decent piece--a chiffonier this time--and
voted a good riddance to bad rubbish.
Reflecting upon this now, it seems to me we were a bit hasty and
unkind. Poor though they were, the old things had served us well and
gone with us through the ups and downs of many apartments. In some of
them we had rocked the Precious Ones, and on most of them the precious
Ones had tried the strength and resistance of their toys. They were
racked and battered, it is true and not always to be trusted as to
stability, but we knew them and their shortcomings, and they knew us and
ours. We knew just how to get them up winding stairs and through narrow
doors. They knew about the length of time between each migration, and
just about what to expect with each stage of our Progress. They must
have long foreseen the end. Let us hope they will one day become
"antiques" and fall into fonder and more faithful hands.
But again I am digressing--it is my usual fault. We invested presently
in a Chippendale sideboard, and a tall clock which gave me no peace
night or day until I heard its mellow tick and strike in our own dim
little hall. The aperture in the Sum was now plainly visible, and by the
time we had added the desk, which I had felt unable to afford at the
start, and a chair to match, it had become an orifice that widened to a
gap, with the still further addition of a small but not inexpensive
Chippendale cabinet and something to put within it.
The Little Woman called a halt now. She said she thought we had enough
invested in this particular direction, that it was not wise to put all
one's eggs into one basket. Besides, we had all the things our place
would hold comfortably: rather more, in fact, except in the matter of
rugs. The floors of the Sunshine apartment were hard finished and
shellacked. Such rugs as we had were rare only as to numbers, and we
were no longer proud of them. I quite agreed with the Little Woman on
the question of furniture, but I said that now we had such good things
in that line, I would invest in one really good rug.
I did. I drifted one day into an Armenian place on Broadway into which
the looms of the Orient had poured a lavish store. Small black-haired
men issued from among the heaped-up wares like mice in a granary. I was
surrounded--I was beseeched and entreated--I was made to sit down while
piece after piece of antiquity and art were unrolled at my feet. At each
unrolling the tallest of the black men would spread his hands and look
at me.
"A painting, a painting, a masterpiece. I never have such fine piece
since I begin business;" and each of the other small black men would
spread their hands and look at me and murmur low, reverent exclamations.
I did not buy the first time. You must know that even when one has
become inured to the tariff on antique furniture, and has still the
remains of a Sum to draw upon, there is something about the prices of
oriental rugs that is discouraging when one has ever given the matter
much previous thought.
But the memory of those unrolled masterpieces haunted me. There was
something fascinating and Eastern and fine about sitting in state as it
were, and having the treasures of the Orient spread before you by those
little dark men.
So I went again, and this time I made the first downward step. It was a
Cashmere--a thick, mellow antique piece with a purple bloom pervading
it, and a narrow faded strip at one end that betokened exposure and age.
The Little Woman gasped when she saw it, and the Precious Ones approved
it in chorus. It took me more than a week to confess the full price. It
had to be done by stages; for of course the Little Woman had not sat as
I had sat and had the "paintings of the East" unrolled at her feet and
thus grown accustomed to magnificence. To tell her all at once that our
one new possession had cost about five times as much as all the rest of
our rugs put together would have been an unnecessary rashness on my
part. As it was, she came to it by degrees, and by degrees also she
realized that our other floor coverings were poor, base, and spurious.
Still I was prudent in my next selections. I bought two smaller pieces,
a Kazak strip, and a Beloochistan mat. This was really all we needed,
but a few days later a small piece of antique Bokhara overpowered me,
and I fell. I said it would be nice on the wall, and the Little Woman
confessed that it was, but again insisted that we would better stop now.
She little realized my condition. The small dark men in their dim-lit
Broadway cave had woven a spell about me that made the seductions of
antique furniture as a forgotten tale.
I bought a book on rug collecting, and I could not pass their
treasure-house without turning in. They had learned to know me from
afar, and the sound of my step was the signal for a horde of them to
come tumbling out from among the rugs.
It was the old story of Eastern magic. The spell of the Orient was upon
me, and in the language of my friends I went plunging down the _rug_ged
path to ruin. I added an Anatolian to my collections--a small one that I
could slip into the house without the Little Woman seeing it until it
was placed and in position to help me in my defense. It was the same
with a Bergama and a Coula, but by this time the Precious Ones would
come tearing out into the hall when I came home and then rush back,
calling as they ran: "Oh, mamma, he's got one and he's holding it behind
him! He's got another rug, mamma!"
So when I got the big Khiva I felt that some new tactics must be
adopted. In the first place, it would take two strong men to carry it,
and in the next place it would cover the parlor floor completely, and
meant the transferring to the walls of several former purchases.
Further than this, its addition would make the hole in the Sum big
enough to drive a wagon through--a band-wagon at that with a whole
circus procession behind it. Indeed, the remains of the Sum would be
merely fragmentary, so to speak, and only the glad Christmas season
could make it possible for me to confess and justify to the Little Woman
the fulness of the situation.
Luckily, Christmas was not far distant. The dark men agreed to hold the
big Khiva until the day before, and then deliver it to the janitor.
With the janitor's help I could get it up and into the apartment after
the Little Woman had gone to bed. I could spread it down at my leisure
and decorate the walls with some of those now on the floor. When on the
glad Christmas morning this would burst upon the Little Woman in sudden
splendor, I felt that she would not be too severe in her judgment.
It was a good plan, and it worked as well as most plans do. There were
some hitches, of course. The Little Woman, for instance, was not yet in
bed when the janitor was ready to help me, and I was in mortal terror
lest she should hear us getting the big roll into the hallway, or coming
out later should stumble over it in the dark. But she did not seem to
hear, and she did not venture out into the hall. Neither did she seem
to notice anything unusual when by and by I stumbled over it myself and
plunged through a large pasteboard box in which there was something else
for the Little Woman--something likely to make her still more lenient in
the matter of the rug. I made enough noise to arouse the people in the
next flat, but the Little Woman can be very discreet on Christmas eve.
She slept well the next morning, too,--a morning I shall long remember.
If you have never attempted to lay a ten-by-twelve Khiva rug in a small
flat-parlor, under couches and tables and things, and with an extra
supply of steam going, you do not understand what one can undergo for
the sake of art. It's a fairly interesting job for three people--two to
lift the furniture and one to spread the rug, and even then it isn't
easy to find a place to stand on. It was about four o clock I think when
I began, and the memory of the next three hours is weird, and lacking in
Christmas spirit. I know now just how every piece of furniture we
possess looks from the under side. I suppose this isn't a bad sort of
knowledge to have, but I would rather not acquire it while I am pulling
the wrinkles out of a two-hundred-pound rug. But when the Little Woman
looked at the result and at me she was even more kind than I had
expected. She did not denounce me. She couldn't. Looking me over
carefully she realized dimly what the effort had cost, and pitied me. It
was a happy Christmas, altogether, and in the afternoon, looking at our
possessions, the Little Woman remarked that we needed a house now to
display them properly. It was a chance remark but it bore fruit.
XII.
_Gilded Affluence._
Yet not immediately. We had still to make the final step of our Progress
in apartment life, and to acquire other valuable experience. It happened
in this wise.
Of the Sum there still remained a fragment--unimportant and fragile, it
would seem--but quite sufficient, as it proved, to make our lives
reasonably exciting for several months.
A friend on the Stock Exchange whispered to me one morning that there
was to be a big jump in Calfskin Common--something phenomenal, he said,
and that a hundred shares would pay a profit directly that would
resemble money picked up in the highway.
I had never dealt in stocks, or discovered any currency in the public
thoroughfares, but my recent inheritance of the Sum and its benefits had
developed a taste in the right direction. Calfskin Common was low then,
almost as low as it has been since, and an option on a hundred shares
could be secured with a ridiculously small amount--even the fragment of
the Sum would be sufficient.
I mentioned the matter that night to the Little Woman. We agreed almost
instantly that there was no reason why we should not make something on
Calfskin Common, though I could see that the Little Woman did not know
what Calfskin Common was. I have hinted before that she was not then
conversant with the life and lingo of the Stock Exchange, and on the
whole my advantage in this direction was less than it seemed at the
time. I think we both imagined that Calfskin Common had something to do
with a low grade of hides, and the Little Woman said she supposed there
must be a prospective demand from some foreign country that would
advance the price of cheap shoes. Of course it would be nice to have our
investments profitable, but on the whole perhaps I'd better lay in an
extra pair or so of everyday footwear for the Precious Ones.
I acquired some information along with my option on the stock next day,
so that both the Little Woman and myself could converse quite
technically by bed-time. We knew that we had "put up a ten per cent.
margin" and had an "option" at twelve dollars a share on a hundred
shares of the common stock in leather corporation--said stock being
certain to go to fifty and perhaps a hundred dollars a share within the
next sixty days. The fragment of the Sum and a trifle more had been
exchanged for the Stock, and we were "in on a deal." Then too we had a
"stop-loss" on the Stock so that we were safe, whatever happened.
The Little Woman didn't understand the "stop-loss" at first, and when I
explained to her that it worked automatically, as it were, she became
even more mystified. I gathered from her remarks that she thought it
meant something like an automatic water shut-off such as we had in the
bath-room to prevent waste. Of course, that was altogether wrong, and I
knew it at the time, but it did not seem worth while to explain in
detail. I merely said that it was something we could keep setting higher
as the stock advanced, so that in event of a downward turn we would save
our original sum, with the accrued profits.
Then we talked about what we would do with the money. We said that now
we had such a lot of good things and were going to make money out of the
Stock we ought to try one really high-class apartment--something with an
elevator, and an air of refinement and gentility. It would cost a good
deal, of course, but the surroundings would be so much more congenial,
so much better for the Precious Ones, and now that I was really doing
fairly well, and that we had the Stock--still we would be prudent and
not move hastily.
We allowed the Stock to advance five points before we really began to
look for a place. Five points advance meant five hundred dollars' profit
on our investment, and my friend on the exchange laughed and
congratulated me and said it was only the beginning. So we put up the
stop-loss, almost as far as it would go, and began to look about for a
place that was quite suitable for people with refined taste, some very
good things in the way of rugs and furniture, and a Stock.
We were not proud as yet. We merely felt prosperous and were willing to
let fortune smile on us amid the proper surroundings. We said it was
easy enough to make money, now that we knew how, and that it was no
wonder there were so many rich people in the metropolis. We had fought
the hard fight, and were willing now to take it somewhat easier. We
selected an apartment with these things in view.
It was some difficulty to find a place that suited both us and the
Precious Ones. Not that they were hard to please--they welcomed anything
in the nature of change--but at most of the fine places children were
rigorously barred, a rule, it seemed to us, that might result in rather
trying complications between landlord and tenant in the course of time
and nature, though we did not pursue investigations in this line. We
found lodgment and welcome at length in the Apollo, a newly constructed
apartment of the latest pattern and in what seemed a most desirable
neighborhood.
The Apollo was really a very imposing and towering affair, with onyx and
gilded halls. The elevator that fairly shot us skyward when we ascended
to our eerie nest ten stories above the street, and was a boundless joy
to the Precious Ones, who would gladly have made their playhouse in the
gaudy little car with the brown boy in blue and brass. Our fine
belongings looked grand in the new suite, and our rugs on the inlaid and
polished floor were luxurious and elegant. Compared with this, much of
our past seemed squalid and a period to be forgotten. Ann, who was still
with us, put on a white cap and apron at meal-times, and to answer the
bell, though the cap had a habit of getting over one ear, while the
apron remained white with difficulty.
The janitor of the Apollo was quite as imposing as the house itself,--a
fallen nobleman, in fact, though by no means fallen so far as most of
those whose possibilities of decline had been immeasurably less. He was
stately and uplifting in his demeanor. So much so that I found myself
unconsciously imitating his high-born manner and mode of speech. I had a
feeling that he was altogether more at home in the place than we were,
but I hoped this would pass. Whatever the cost, we were determined to
live up to the Apollo and its titled _Chargé d'Affaires_.
And now came exciting days. The Stock continued to advance, as our
friend had prophesied. Some days it went up one point, some days two.
Every point meant a hundred dollars' clear profit. One day it advanced
five full points. We only counted full points. Fractional advances we
threw into the next day's good measure, and set the stop-loss higher,
and yet ever higher.
We acquired credit with ourselves. We began to think that perhaps after
all we hadn't taken quite so good an apartment as we deserved. What was
a matter of a thousand dollars more or less on a year's rent when the
Stock was yielding a profit of a hundred or two dollars a day. We
repeated that it was easy enough now to understand how New Yorkers got
rich, and could afford the luxuries heretofore regarded by us with a
wonderment that was akin to awe. I began to have a vague notion of
abandoning other pursuits and going into stocks, altogether. We even
talked of owning our own home on Fifth Avenue. Still we were quite
prudent, as was our custom. I did not go definitely into stocks, and we
remained with the fallen nobleman in the Apollo. Neither did we
actually negotiate for Fifth Avenue property.
The Little Woman bought many papers during the day. In some of them
early stock quotations were printed in red, so it might be truly said
that these were red-letter days for the Little Woman. When she heard
"_Extra!_" being shouted in the street far below she could not
dispossess herself of the idea that it had been issued to announce a
sensational advance of the Stock. Even as late as ten o'clock one night
she insisted on my going down for one, though I explained that the Stock
Exchange had closed some seven hours before. The Precious Ones fairly
kept the elevator busy during the afternoon, going for extras, and when
the final Wall Street edition was secured they would come shouting in,
"Here it is. Look at the Stock, quick, Mamma, and see how much we've
made to-day!"
Truly this was a gilded age; though I confess that it did not seem quite
real, and looking back now the memory of it seems less pleasant than
that of some of the very hard epochs that had gone before. Still, it
occupies a place all its own and is not without value in life's
completed scheme.
The Stock did not go to fifty. It limped before it got to forty, and we
began to be harassed by paltry fractional advances, with even an
occasional fractional decline. We did not approve of this. It was
annoying to look in the Wall Street edition and find that we had made
only twelve dollars and a half, instead of a hundred or two, as had been
the case in the beginning. We even thought of selling Calfskin Common
and buying a stock that would not act that way; but my friend of the
exchange advised against it. He said this was merely a temporary thing,
and that fifty and a hundred would come along in good time. He adjusted
the stop-loss for us so that there was no danger of the Stock being sold
on a temporary decline, and we sat down to wait and watch the papers
while the Stock gathered strength for a new upward rush that was sure to
come, and would place us in a position to gratify a good many of the
ambitions lately formed.
A feverish and nerve-destroying ten days followed. The Stock had become
to us as a personal Presence that we watched as it stumbled and
struggled and panted, and dug its common Calfskin toes into things in a
frantic effort to scale the market. I know now that the men who had
organized the deal were boasting and shouting, and beating the air in
their wild encouragement, while those who opposed it were hammering, and
throttling and flinging mud, in as wild an effort to check and
demoralize and destroy. At the time, however, we caught only the echo of
these things, and believed as did our friend on the exchange, that a
great capitalist was in control of Calfskin Common and would send it to
par.
Only we wished he would send it faster. We did not like to fool along
this way, an eighth up and an eighth, or a quarter down, and all
uncertainty and tension. Besides, we needed our accruing profits to meet
our heavily increased expenses which were by no means easy to dispose of
with our normal income, improved though it was with time and tireless
effort.
Indeed, most of the eighths and quarters presently seemed to be in the
wrong direction. It was no fun to lose even twelve dollars and a half a
day and keep it up. The Presence in the household was in delicate
health. It needed to be coddled and pampered, and the strain of it told
on us. The Little Woman developed an anxious look, and grew nervous and
feverish at the clamor of an "extra." Sometimes I heard her talking
"plus" and "minus" and "points" in her sleep and knew that she had taken
the Stock to bed with her.
The memory of our old quiet life in the Sunshine and Monte Cristo began
to grow in sweetness beside this sordid and gilded existence in the
Apollo. The massive portals and towering masonry which at first had been
as a solid foundation for genuine respectability began to seem gloomy
and overpowering, and lacking in the true home spirit we had found
elsewhere. The smartly dressed and mannered people who rode up and down
with us on the elevator did not seem quite genuine, and their
complexions were not always real. It may have been the condition of the
Stock that disheartened us and made their lives as well as ours seem
artificial. I don't know. I only know that I began to have a dim feeling
that we would have been happier if we had been satisfied with our
oriental rugs and antique furniture, and the remnant of the Sum, without
the acquaintance of the Stock and the fallen nobleman below stairs. But,
as I have said, all things have their place and value, I suppose, and
our regrets, if they were that, have long since been dissipated, with
the things that made them possible.
Quickly, as they had come, they passed, and were not. I was working
busily one morning in my south front study when the Little Woman entered
hurriedly. It was late April and our windows were open, but being much
engaged I had not noticed the cries of "extra!" that floated up from the
street below. It was these that had brought the Little Woman, however,
and she leaned out to look and listen.
"They are calling out something about stocks and Wall Street," she said,
"I am sure of it. Go down and see, quick! Calfskin Common must have gone
to a hundred!"
"Oh, pshaw!" I laughed, "it's only the assassination of a king, or
something. You're excited and don't hear right."
Still, I did go down, and I fumed at the elevator-boy for being so slow
to answer, though I suppose he was prompt enough. The "extra" callers
had passed by the time I got to the street, but I chased and caught
them. Then I ran all the way back to the Apollo, and plunged into the
elevator that was just starting heavenward.
I suppose I looked pretty white when I rushed in where the Little Woman
was waiting. But the type that told the dreadful tale was red enough, in
all conscience. There it was, in daubed vermilion, for the whole world
and the Little Woman to see.
"PANIC ON WALL STREET.
"Break in Leather stocks causes general decline. Calfskin Common
falls twenty points in ten minutes. Three failures and more to
come!"
Following this was a brief list of the most sensational drops and the
names of the failing firms. For a moment we stared at each other,
speechless. Then the Little Woman recovered voice.
"Oh," she gasped, "we've caused a panic!"
"No," I panted, "but we're in one!"
"And we'll lose everything! People always do in panics, don't they?"
I nodded gloomily.
"A good many do. That is, unless----"
"But the stop-loss!" she remembered joyfully, "we've got a stop-loss!"
"That's so!" I assented, "the stop-loss! Our stock is already
sold--that is if the stop-loss worked."
"But you know you said it worked automatically."
"So it does--automatically, if--if it holds! It must have worked! I'll
telephone at once, and see."
There was a telephone in the Apollo and I hurried to it. Five women and
three men were waiting ahead of me, and every one tried to telephone
about stocks. Some got replies and became hysterical. One elderly woman
with a juvenile make-up and a great many rings fainted and was borne
away unconscious. A good many got nothing whatever.
I was one of the latter. The line to my brokers was busy. It was busy
all that day, during which we bought extras and suffered. By night-fall
we would have rejoiced to know that even the original fragment of the
Sum had been saved out of the general wreck of things on the Street.
It was. Even a little more, for the stop-loss that had failed to hold
against the first sudden and overwhelming pressure, had caught somewhere
about twenty, and our brokers next morning advised us of the sale.
It was a quiet breakfast that we had. We were rather mixed as to our
feelings, but I know now that a sense of relief was what we felt most.
It was all over--the tension of anxious days, and the restless nights.
Many had been ruined utterly. We had saved something out of the
wreck--enough to pay the difference in our rent. Then, too, we were
alive and well, and we had our Precious Ones. Also our furniture, which
was both satisfactory and paid for. Through the open windows the sweet
spring air was blowing in, bringing a breath and memory of country
lanes. Even before breakfast was over I reminded the Little Woman of
what she had once said about needing a home of our own, now that we had
things to put in it. I said that the memory of our one brief suburban
experience was like a dream of sunlit and perfumed fields. That we had
run the whole gamut of apartment life and the Apollo had been the
post-graduate course. In some ways it was better than the others, and if
we chose to pinch and economize in other ways, as many did, we still
might manage to pay for its luxury, but after all it was not, and never
had been a home to me, while the ground and the Precious Ones were too
far apart for health.
And the Little Woman, God bless her, agreed instantly and heartily, and
declared that we would go. Onyx and gilded elegance she said were
obtained at too great a price for people with simple tastes and moderate
incomes. As for stocks, we agreed that they were altogether in keeping
with our present surroundings--with the onyx and the gilt--with the
fallen nobleman below stairs and those who were fallen and not noble,
the artificial aristocrats, who rode up and down with us on the
elevator. We had had quite enough of it all. We had taken our apartment
for a year, but as the place was already full, with tenants waiting,
there would be no trouble to sublet to some one of the many who are ever
willing to spend most of their income in rent and live the best way they
can. Peace be with them. They are welcome to do so, but for people like
ourselves the Apollo was not built, and _Vanitas Vanitatum_ is written
upon its walls.
XIII.
_A Home at Last._
We began reading advertisements at once and took jaunts to "see
property." The various investment companies supplied free transportation
on these occasions. It was a pleasant variation from the old days of
flat hunting. The Precious Ones, who remembered with joy our former
brief suburban experiment, appreciated it, and raced shouting through
rows of new "instalment houses" with nice lawns, all within the
commutation limits. We settled on one, at last, through an agency which
the trolley-man referred to as the "Reality Trust."
The cash-payment was small and the instalments, if long continued, were
at least not discouraging as to size. We had a nice wide lawn with green
grass, a big, dry cellar with a furnace, a high, light garret, and eight
beautiful light rooms, all our own. At the back there were clothes-poles
and room for a garden. In front there was a long porch with a place for
a hammock. There was room in the yard for the Precious Ones to romp, as
well as space to spread out our rugs. We closed the bargain at once, and
engaged a moving man. Our Flat days were over.
And now fortune seemed all at once to smile. The day of our last move
was perfect. The moving man came exactly on time and delivered our
possessions at the new home on the moment of our arrival there. The
Little Woman superintended matters inside, while I spread out my rugs on
the grass in the sun and shook them and swept them and scolded the
Precious Ones, who were inclined to sit on the one I was handling, to my
heart's content. Within an hour the butcher, the baker, and the merry
milk-maker had called and established relations. By night-fall we were
fairly settled--our furniture, so crowded in a little city apartment,
airily scattered through our eight big, beautiful rooms, and our rugs,
all fresh and clean, reaching as far as they would go, suggesting new
additions to our collection whenever the spell of the dark-faced
Armenians in their dim oriental Broadway recess should assert itself
during the years to come.
[Illustration: OUR GARDEN FLOURISHED.]
Sweet spring days followed. We fairly reveled in seed catalogues, and
our garden flourished. Our neighbors, instead of borrowing our loose
property, as we had been led to expect by the comic papers, literally
overwhelmed us with garden tools and good advice. We needed both,
certainly, and were duly thankful.
As for the Precious Ones, they grew fat and brown, refused to wear hats
and shoes when summer came, and it required some argument to convince
them that even a fragmentary amount of clothes was necessary. All day
now they run, and shout, and fall down and cry, and get up again and
laugh, sit in the hammock and swing their disreputable dolls, and eat
and quarrel and make up and have a beautiful time. At night they sleep
in a big airy room where screens let the breeze in and keep out the few
friendly mosquitoes that are a part of all suburban life. We are
commuters, and we are glad of it, let the comic papers say what they
will. The fellows who write those things are bitten with something worse
than mosquitoes, _i. e._, envy--I know, because I have written some of
them myself, in the old days. Perhaps it _is_ hard to get to and from
the train sometimes--perhaps the snow _may_ blow into the garret and the
lawn be hard to mow on a hot day. But the joy of the healthy Precious
Ones and of coming out of the smelly, clattering city at the end of a
hot summer day to a cool, sweet quiet, more than makes up for all the
rest; while as one falls asleep, in a restful room that lets the breeze
in from three different directions, the memories of flat-life,
flat-hunting, and janitors--of sweltering, disordered nights, of
crashing cobble and clanging trolleys, of evil-smelling halls and
stairways, of these and of every other phase of the yardless,
constricted apartment existence, blend into a sigh of relief that is
lost in dreamless, refreshing suburban sleep.
XIV.
_Closing Remarks._
To those who of necessity are still living in city apartments, and
especially to those who are contemplating flat life I would in all
seriousness say a few closing words.
It requires education to get the best out of flat life. Not such
education as is acquired at Harvard, or Vassar, or even at the
Industrial or Cooking schools, but education in the greater school of
Humanity. In fact, flat living may be said to amount almost to a
profession. The choice of an apartment is an art in itself, and, as no
apartment is without drawbacks, the most vital should be considered as
all-important, and an agreeable willingness to put up with the minor
shortcomings of equal value. Sunlight, rental, locality, accessibility,
janitor-service, size, and convenience are all important, and about in
the order named. A dark apartment means doctor's bills, and by dark I
mean any apartment into which the broad sun does not shine at least a
portion of the day. Sunlight is the great microbe-killer, and as moss
grows on the north side of a tree, so do minute poison fungi grow in the
dim apartment. As to locality, a clean street, as far as possible from
the business center is to be preferred, and away from the crash of the
elevated railway. People are killed, morally and physically, by noise.
For this reason an apartment several flights up is desirable, though
the top floor is said by physicians to be somewhat less healthy than the
one just below.
It is hard to instruct the novice in these matters. He must learn by
experience. But there is one word that contains so much of the secret of
successful apartment life that I must not omit it here. That word is
Charity. I do not mean by this the giving of money or old clothes to
those who slip in whenever the hall door is left unlocked. I mean that
_larger_ Charity which comes of a wider understanding of the natures and
conditions of men.
You cannot expect, for instance, that a man or a woman, who serves for
rent only, and wretched basement rent at that, or for a few dollars
monthly additional at most, can be a very intelligent, capable person,
of serene temper and with qualities that one would most desire in the
ideal janitor. In the ordinary New York flat house janitors are engaged
on terms that attract only people who can find no other means of
obtaining shelter and support. Those who would fulfill your idea of what
a janitor should do have been engaged for the more expensive apartments,
or they have gone into other professions. The flat-house janitor's work
is laborious, unclean, and never ending. It is not conducive to a neat
appearance or a joyous disposition. If your janitor is only fairly
prompt in the matter of garbage and ashes, and even approximately
liberal as to heat and hot water, be glad to say a kind word to him now
and then without expecting that he will be humble or even obliging. If
you hear him knocking things about and condemning childhood in a
general way, remember that _your_ children are _only_ children, like all
the rest, and that a great many children under one roof can stretch even
a strong, wise person's endurance to the snapping point.
Then there are the neighbors. Because the woman across the hall is
boiling onions and cabbage to-day, do not forget that your cabbage and
onion day will come on Wednesday, and she will probably enjoy it just as
little as you are appreciating her efforts now. And because the children
overhead run up and down and sound like a herd of buffaloes, don't
imagine that your own Precious Ones are any more fairy-footed to the
people who live just below. It's all in the day's endurance, and the
wider your understanding and the greater your charity, the more
patiently you will live and let live. It was an old saying that no two
families could live under one roof; but in flat life ten and sometimes
twenty families must live under one roof, and while you do not need to
know them all, or perhaps any of them, you will find that they do, in
some measure, become a part of your lives, and that your own part of the
whole is just about what you make it.
Also, there are the servant girls. We cannot hope that a highly
efficient, intelligent young girl will perform menial labor some sixteen
hours a day for a few dollars a week and board, with the privilege of
eating off the tubs and sleeping in a five-by-seven closet off the
kitchen, when she can obtain a clerkship in one of the department stores
where she has light, clean employment, shorter hours, and sees
something of the passing show; or when, by attending night school for a
short time, she can learn stenography and command even better salary for
still shorter hours. It requires quite as much intelligence to be a
capable house servant as to be a good clerk; and as for education, there
is no lack of that in these days, whatever the rank of life. Even when a
girl prefers household service, if she be bright and capable it is but a
question of time when she will find employment with those to whom the
question of wages is considered as secondary to that of the quality of
service obtained in return.
So you see we must not expect too much of our "girl for general
housework," unless we are prepared to pay her for her longer hours and
harder work something approximating the sum we pay to the other girl
who comes down in a sailor hat and pretty shirt waist at nine or ten to
take a few letters and typewrite them, and read a nice new novel between
times until say five o'clock, and who gets four weeks' vacation in hot
weather, and five if she asks for it prettily, with no discontinuance of
salary. All this may be different, some day, but while we are waiting,
let us not forget that there are many things in the world that it would
be well to remember, and that "_the greatest of these_" and the one that
embraces all the rest, "_is Charity!_"
* * * * *
LORDS OF THE NORTH
By A. C. LAUT
A Strong Historical Novel
* * * * *
_LORDS OF THE NORTH_ is a thrilling romance dealing with the rivalries
and intrigues of _The Ancient and Honorable Hudson's Bay_ and the
_North-West Companies_ for the supremacy of the fur trade in the Great
North. It is a story of life in the open; of pioneers and trappers. The
life of the fur traders in Canada is graphically depicted. The struggles
of the Selkirk settlers and the intrigues which made the life of the two
great fur trading companies so full of romantic interest, are here laid
bare. _Francis Parkman_ and other historians have written of the
discovery and colonization of this part of our great North American
continent, but no novel has appeared so full of life and vivid interest
as _Lords of the North_. Much valuable information has been obtained
from old documents and the records of the rival companies which wielded
unlimited power over a vast extent of our country. The style is
admirable, and the descriptions of an untamed continent, of vast forest
wastes, rivers, lakes and prairies, will place this book among the
foremost historical novels of the present day. The struggles of the
English for supremacy, the capturing of frontier posts and forts, and
the life of trader and trapper are pictured with a master's hand.
Besides being vastly interesting, _Lords of the North_ is a book of
historical value.
_Cloth, 8vo, $1.50_
* * * * *
_A Drone_
and
_A Dreamer_
_A LOVE STORY_
_Illustrated, Cloth, 8vo, $1.50_
By NELSON LLOYD
_Author of "The Chronic Loafer"_
* * * * *
A critic in reviewing THE CHRONIC LOAFER said:
"Pennsylvania fiction has never been listed as a standard stock but
Mr. Lloyd has only to continue to write and Pennsylvania will be
lifted, I venture to add, into the list of preferred securities."
"A Drone and a Dreamer" is a rich fulfillment of this prophecy.
Brimming over with genial humor and wholesome fun, the book is an
exquisite love story and charming idyl of life among the mountains
and valleys of the Keystone State.
DROCH in _LIFE_:
"One of the most fertile yet unploughed regions in the United
States for local fiction is Pennsylvania. It is old, and vast and
picturesque. Bayard Taylor and Weir Mitchell have given the
Philadelphia end of the State some importance in fiction. John
Luther Long has written several effective tales in the Dutch
dialect, and the Moravians of Bethlehem have inspired a novel or
two. These writers, however, have hardly scratched around the
corners of the great state. Mr. Lloyd does not try to palm off a
weak imitation of a Miss Wilkins Yankee as a rustic Pennsylvanian.
His humor comes spontaneously from the soil."
_BOOK BUYER_:
"Mr. Lloyd is an excellent workman. He makes us see the quiet of
the hills and the allurements of the trout-stream, yet he refrains
as scrupulously as Mr. Howells himself from obtruding his own
personality. His characters themselves apparently produce the
effects due to his skill. His subject-matter is remarkably fresh.
Pervading it all is a delightful humor."
* * * * *
_PARLOUS TIMES_
DAVID DWIGHT WELLS
A Novel of Modern Diplomacy
BY THE AUTHOR OF
_"Her Ladyship's Elephant."_
* * * * *
Parlous Times is a society novel of to-day. The scene is laid in London
in diplomatic circles. The romance was suggested by experiences of the
author while Second Secretary of the United States Embassy at the Court
of St. James. It is a charming love story, with a theme both fresh and
attractive. The plot is strong, and the action of the book goes with a
rush. Political conspiracy and the secrets of an old tower of a castle
in Sussex play an important part in the novel. The story is a bright
comedy, full of humor, flashes of keen wit and clever epigram. It will
hold the reader's attention from beginning to end. Altogether it is a
good story exceedingly well told, and promises to be Mr. Wells' most
successful novel.
_Cloth, 8vo, $1.50_
* * * * *
NORTH
WEST _But One Verdict_ EAST
SOUTH
_THE CHRONIC LOAFER_
_BY NELSON LLOYD_
8vo, Cloth, $1.25
* * * * *
Outlook, New York
"A new American humorist. The stones have the point and dry force
found in those told by the late lamented _David Harum_."
San Francisco Argonaut
"Will bring a smile when it is read a second or third time."
New Orleans Picayune
"Racy with wisdom and humor."
Chicago Inter-Ocean
"A book full of good laughs, and will be found a sure specific for
the blues."
Omaha World Herald
"The reader will love him."
North American, Philadelphia
"Great natural humor and charm. In this story alone Mr. Lloyd is
deserving of rank up-front among the American humorists."
Portland Transcript
"A cheerful companion. The reviewer has enjoyed it in a month when
books to be read have been many and the time precious."
Denver Republican
"Nelson Lloyd is to be hailed as a Columbus. There isn't a story in
the book that isn't first-class fun, and there's no reason why _The
Chronic Loafer_ should not be placed in the gallery of American
celebrities beside the popular and philosophical _Mr. Dooley_."
* * * * *
CHARLES KINGSLEY
NOVELS, POEMS AND LIFE
* * * * *
CHESTER EDITION
* * * * *
Illustrated with 42 photogravure plates printed on Japanese paper, from
paintings by _Zeigler_, and from portraits by _Reich_ and others,
photographs, etc. Introductions by _Maurice Kingsley_. Printed from new,
large type, on choice laid paper.
* * * * *
_14 volumes, 8vo, cloth, gilt top, $20.00._
_One Half crushed morocco, gilt top, $41.00._
* * * * *
Supplied separately in cloth, as follows:
HEREWARD THE WAKE 2 Vols. $3.00
ALTON LOCKE 2 " 3.00
WESTWARD HO! 2 " 3.00
YEAST 1 " 1.50
TWO YEARS AGO 2 " 3.00
HYPATIA 2 " 3.00
POEMS 1 " 1.50
LETTERS AND MEMORIES 2 " 3.00
_This is the only illustrated edition of this author's works ever
issued._ The introductions by Charles Kingsley's son are particularly
interesting and timely.
* * * * *
_Little Leather_
_Breeches_
_AND OTHER SOUTHERN RHYMES_
COLLECTED AND ARRANGED BY
FRANCIS P. WIGHTMAN
_Forty-eight full-page colored illustrations and cover by the author_
Quarto, $1.50
* * * * *
PETER NEWELL
"_Little Leather Breeches_ is a permanent contribution to the
literature of the day. Not only is it highly amusing, but also of
genuine value as a collection and presentation of folk-lore of a
peculiar and interesting people. _I do not hesitate to set the
stamp of approval on your book._"
A. B. FROST
"The book is very well done, very bright and clever in its
treatment of the subject. The material you have gathered together
is excellent, very interesting, and should be preserved."
"The most unique gift-book of the season."--_St. Louis
Glove-Democrat._
"A bit of rollicking fun."--_The Book-Buyer._
"Refreshingly original. Lavishly illustrated."--_Brooklyn Daily
Eagle._
"Since the days of Lear's Nonsense Book nothing has appeared so
full of genuine humor."--_Savannah Press._
* * * * *
J. F. TAYLOR & COMPANY
_5 & 7 EAST SIXTEENTH ST._, NEW YORK
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