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.