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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.