THE LANDLORD OF RICKETT'S COURT.
"And yet it was never in my soul
To play so ill a part:
But evil is wrought by want of thought
As well as by want of heart."
--_Thos. Hood._
[Illustration: {Drawing of Solomon Meyer.}]
Solomon Meyer, who collected the rents at Rickett's Court, was looked
upon by the tenants as the landlord, though he distinctly disclaimed
that honor, explaining that he was only the agent, empowered merely to
receive money, never to disburse. According to Mr. Meyer the landlord
was a heartless miser, whom he had entreated to make repairs and to
lower rents, but who always turned a deaf ear to such appeals. If he,
Solomon Meyer, only owned Rickett's Court, there would be no end to the
reforms which his tender heart would cause him to institute; as it was,
there was no hope for anything of the kind; his orders were explicit--if
tenants could not pay, they must leave.
Many of the tenants believed that Mr. Meyer was really the owner of
their building, and that the landlord whom he represented as responsible
for all their discomfort was purely imaginary, but in this they wronged
the agent. Solomon Meyer had no scruples against telling a lie whenever
it would serve his purpose, but here the truth did very well. Rickett's
Court had a landlord who, although he was not the inhuman wretch which
Solomon represented him, still cared nothing for his tenants, and, while
the agent had never suggested any reforms or repairs, might well have
guessed that they were needed. Adelaide Armstrong would have been
shocked beyond expression if she had known that the true landlord of
Rickett's Court was no other than her own father. Mr. Armstrong would
have been no less shocked if he had known of the abuses for which he was
really responsible. He had never seen his own property. It had been
represented to him as a profitable investment, and had proved so. He was
only in New York for brief intervals each year, and he left the entire
management of Rickett's Court to Solomon Meyer, well pleased with the
returns which he rendered, and not suspecting that they were less than
the sums wrung from the tenants.
He had mentally set aside Rickett's Court as Adelaide's property, and he
used its proceeds to defray her expenses. There was a neat little
surplus left over each quarter-day, which he placed in the savings bank
to her credit, and with which he intended to endow her on her marriage.
But of all this Adelaide of course knew nothing. Mr. Armstrong's more
important business ventures were in western railroad speculations. These
absorbed his attention, and needed the closest application of his
faculties. He was glad of this. The East had grown distasteful to him
since the loss of his wife and infant son. He felt that he might have
been a different man if his wife, whom he tenderly loved, had lived;
and Adelaide had never ceased to mourn her mother, whom she could not
remember. "What shall I ever do," she frequently asked, "when I finish
school? If I only had a mother to be my companion and counselor! but I
shall be so lonely, and so unfit to take care of myself!"
The circumstances which I relate in this chapter because they belong
here in sequence of time, did not come to my knowledge until long after
their occurrence.
Mr. Armstrong came on from the West the evening of our fair. He was
weary and much occupied by matters of business, and he did not attend
it, much to our regret. He lent a kindly ear to Adelaide's description
of it, for he was fond and proud of his beautiful daughter, and he liked
to see her a leader in everything.
He manifested apparently little interest, however, in what she had to
tell him of Rickett's Court. "There, there, Puss!" he said, lightly,
"you must not get fanatical, and rant. I hardly think things are as bad
down there as you make them out."
"But, papa," Adelaide interrupted, "I went there myself. I saw it with
my own eyes. It is horrible to think that human beings should be
obliged to live in such filth and misery. I think the landlord of
Rickett's Court ought to be prosecuted. I wish I knew that old Rickett!
I would give him a piece of my mind."
"I've no doubt of it; but spare me, Puss, since my name is not Rickett."
He must have felt a sharp twinge of conscience as he spoke, while his
daughter's words could not have failed to make an impression on the
false Rickett. He had read in the cars a little book entitled "Uncle
Tom's Tenement," by Alice Wellington Rollins, and Helen Campbell's
"Prisoners of Poverty." He wondered if their pictures of tenement life
were indeed true. A few days later he listened to some remarks of Mr.
Felix Adler's on tenement reform. He knew what Mr. Charles Pratt was
doing in Brooklyn, and his better man told him that now was his
opportunity. Why should he not put the plumbing in his tenement in
decent repair; it might not cost much more, after all, than to bribe the
inspector to report it as all right--a proceeding which Solomon Meyer
advised. He could at least drain the sink in the court, and do away with
the unchristian smells which now drove the chance visitor from the
vicinity. And if he should have the rooms cleaned and whitewashed, he
might even pose before the public as a humanitarian landlord, and so
gain the cooperation of some of the philanthropists of the day for some
other schemes which he had in mind.
He visited the court with a plumber, and found it in worse condition
than he had imagined. There was a leak from the sewer in the back
basement. All of the rooms were foul with vermin, and rats scuttled back
into the walls through great holes. Many of the tenants had left, for
various reasons. The opening of the Home of the Elder Brother was in
great part responsible for the emptying of Rickett's Court, for the
better class of its tenants had embraced this great opportunity to place
their children in good surroundings. So many children had been
transferred from Mrs. Grogan's care to the Home by their mothers that
Mrs. Grogan, finding her occupation gone, betook herself to petty
larceny and was arrested.
The Italian rag-pickers had taken to the road, with a monkey and an
organ as tramps for the summer, leaving their filth behind them.
Mr. Armstrong looked into their vacated den, and found it impossible to
imagine what it could have been when occupied.
The windows had been stoned by the street boys until hardly a pane
remained, and the staircase had rotted so that he thrust his foot
through it. The house would need plastering and glazing as well as
replumbing. It began to look like a great undertaking. However, he bade
the plumber make and send him his estimates, and hurried out of the
court, not taking a full breath until he was fairly on Broadway. Then he
sent a mason and a carpenter to look at the building. "I must make some
repairs," he said to himself, "or I shall get no tenants whatever."
He had noticed another defect: there was but one staircase. He must add
a fire-escape, for the place was a death-trap. He had a feeling of
responsibility in regard to endangering the lives of human beings by
fire, and he was trying to invent a scheme for heating and lighting
railroad cars in such a manner as to do away with the danger of fire in
case of accident. So far, the full completion of the invention escaped
him, but he worked at it by night and day, not so much because it would
be an immense boon to the age, but because he was sure that, if
introduced only on his own railroad, it would boom the line above a
rival route, and if patented, would make his fortune. Solomon Meyer, in
enumerating the tenants of the court, had mentioned a Mr. Trimble, a
poor inventor, who occupied the back attic, whom it would be well to
turn out, as he had paid no rent for some time, though he had promised
well, saying that he had just invented a scheme for the safe heating of
cars, from which he hoped to realize a large sum. Mr. Armstrong
thoughtlessly displayed before his agent the interest which he felt.
"Bring the man to me," he exclaimed; "if he has really worked out the
problem, it is just what I want."
The agent at once paid a visit to the poor inventor and possessed
himself of his plans and model, promising to do his best for him.
Mr. Armstrong saw at a glance that the inventor had compassed just what
had baffled him so long.
"What will he take for this invention?" he asked, eagerly.
"Not one cent less as five t'ousand dollar," replied Mr. Meyer.
"That is a good round sum," remarked Mr. Armstrong, "but the right to it
is worth more than that to me. Arrange the papers for me, get the
gentleman to sign them, give him this check for a thousand dollars, and
I will send him another, soon, for four thousand."
Mr. Meyer saw his opportunity here. He returned to Mr. Trimble, assured
him that his contrivance had been anticipated and already patented by
another man: he was too late. The poor man's disappointment was intense;
his head and hands trembled.
"I thank you for trying for me," he said; "there is nothing for me now
but the river. I have occupied this room in the hope of paying my rent
when I realized from that invention, but I have no longer any
expectations, and I had better go and drown myself."
Then for the first time Mr. Meyer realized that there was another person
in the room. Jim had come down to the court to see his old friends, and
had dropped in to inquire after Mr. Trimble's son, a merry little fellow
who had been a playmate of his in the old days. Jim had retreated into a
corner when the agent called, but he now sprang forward and threw his
arms around the poor inventor's neck.
"No, no!" he cried; "Mr. Meyer will beg Mr. Rickett to let you stay
until the first of the month, and something may turn up by that time."
Some sense of shame prompted Solomon Meyer to yield to this request,
though in his secret heart he knew that his own plans could be more
safely carried out if his victim did drown himself; and the sooner the
better. Then he hurried away to collect rents of the new tenants, with
the money which Mr. Armstrong had sent Stephen Trimble burning like a
coal in his pocket.
The contract for the new invention was returned to Mr. Armstrong at the
same time with the estimates of the different mechanics for the
improvements of Rickett's Court. It would cost three thousand dollars to
put the tenement in decent repair, and this did not include the
fire-escape. Mr. Armstrong whistled as he added up the items. It was
really not convenient for him to place his hand on so much ready cash;
certainly not without using the money which he had placed in the savings
bank to Adelaide's credit. Mr. Meyer stood cringing before him, and Mr.
Armstrong explained the situation.
The agent promptly disapproved of the improvements. They would be a
great waste of money. No one would rent the tenements after they were
repaired, for it would be necessary to charge a higher rent, and tenants
able to pay it, or desiring bathrooms and sanitary plumbing, would not
occupy such a quarter of the city.
"But suppose I do not charge any more rent, but simply try to educate my
old tenants to better habits of life?"
Mr. Meyer explained that Mr. Armstrong could throw away his money in
that way if he wished, but that the class of tenants who patronized
Rickett's Court could not be educated. They preferred filth to
cleanliness, and, however respectable their quarters were made, would
soon convert them into sinks again.
Mr. Armstrong reminded his agent that his best tenants had left him,
that the house was practically deserted, and that something must be done
to attract new occupants.
Mr. Meyer assured him that applications had already been received for
the rooms in their present state. A ship-load of emigrants had just
arrived: Polish Jews and exiled Russians, who had been imprisoned as
Nihilists, and who had suffered such barbarities that Rickett's Court,
horrible as it was, seemed positively comfortable to them.
Mr. Armstrong hesitated. He did not like to give up his scheme of
renovation; still, there were the papers waiting for his signature for
the transfer of the invention, and this he had decided he must have; it
was sure to bring in a great deal of money, and another year he could
much better afford to make these improvements. He decided, reluctantly,
that he would put them off for the present.
"I will have a fire-escape put up," he said to his agent, "and we will
do the rest as soon as possible."
Solomon Meyer shrugged his shoulders. "There is no danger of fire," he
said, "and I was about to propose that you take out a fire insurance
policy on that building; that cost about the same, and much more
sensible."
Mr. Armstrong thought a moment. "If the danger of fire is sufficient to
warrant me in insuring, it is also great enough to make furnishing the
fire-escape an imperative duty. I insist on your seeing that one is
adjusted immediately. You may also take out an insurance policy for
twenty thousand. See if Mr. Trimble can wait for the rest of his money
until the first of the month. (The agent's face fell.) You have given
him my check for one thousand; he ought to be willing to wait a few days
for the rest. If he is not satisfied, tell him to come down and see me,
and we'll come to some agreement."
This was exactly what Solomon Meyer did not wish. "I will try my best to
make him sign the papers on those terms," he said, and carried them away
to his own den, where he forged the name of Stephen Trimble to both
contract and check. He found no difficulty in cashing the check, for Mr.
Armstrong's name was well known, though Stephen Trimble's was not.
And in the mean time the poor inventor sat in his garret trying to
think. His wife was in the hospital, and his little son busied himself
with washing the supper dishes. It was not a heavy task, for their
supper had consisted only of some cold griddle-cakes which, the
flap-jack man had given them. When the boy had finished his work he
crept close to his father and laid his head on his knee.
"Why don't you light the lamp?" Mr. Trimble asked, rousing himself.
"There isn't any oil, daddy."
"No matter. I can think better in the dark, and you had better go to
bed."
"I am going out pretty soon to help the flap-jack man wheel his cart."
"Very well, Lovey, if he is a good man; I don't want you to do anything
wrong."
"He's good to me, daddy."
"I'm glad of that; you need a friend, and you may need one more." He
kissed his little boy as he went out--an unwonted action on the father's
part--and waited until he was sure that the child had left the building,
then rose, with a desperate look upon his face, and stepped out on the
landing. The house was very full now; people had been coming for two
days past with great bales of foul clothing, offensive with odors of the
steerage, and had packed into the already dirty rooms. It was an
unusually warm night for spring, and the house was unbearably close. The
tenants had resorted to the roof, and were sitting under the stars,
trying in vain to find fresh air, and screaming and scolding at one
another in a strange, harsh language.
Stephen Trimble was about to descend the staircase, when two men of
unpleasant aspect stopped him.
"You are the machinist who lives on the top floor?"
"Yes."
"Have you time for a little job?"
"Plenty of time. Thank God!" he added, mentally, "who has sent me help
in time."
"Then come down-stairs with us: we are your neighbors, and are just
under you.
"What do you want me to do?"
"We'll show you."
The men admitted him to their room, and carefully locked the door behind
them. One of them struck a light, and in so doing dropped a match upon
the floor. The other sprang upon it quickly, ground it out with his
heel, and cursed him for his carelessness. Stephen Trimble looked about
him, and saw that one end of the room was piled with boxes and tin cans,
one of which was open, showing a compound slightly resembling maple
sugar. A table stood before the low window, and on it was apparatus or
machinery of some sort. The first man placed his candle on the table,
and drew up a packing-box for Mr. Trimble to sit upon. There was no
other furniture in the room.
"You do not live here?" said the inventor.
"No," replied the first man, who constituted himself the spokesman for
both; "it isn't a sweet place to live in. We hire it as a workshop. You
see, we are perfecting a sort of torpedo. You've heard of the submarine
torpedoes that did such good service in blowing up the Turkish ships in
the Russo-Turkish war?"
"Oh yes," replied Stephen Trimble, much interested. "I thought that
stuff looked like dynamite! So you are inventing a new torpedo, which
you mean to sell the Government? That's a good idea. They are thinking
of increasing the navy, and it's always better to deal with the
Government than with private individuals."
The silent man nudged his partner and remarked, "Yes, we're agoin' to
deal with the Government. That's a good way to put it."
The other man made an impatient gesture, and proceeded to explain a
small machine to Mr. Trimble. "You don't exactly understand my friend,"
he said, "but no matter. This kind of a torpedo isn't of the submarine
kind; we pack the explosives here, matches here, friction paper just
beside them; but just here we are stuck, and we need you or some other
mechanic to show us how the thing can be set off by electricity, the
operator to touch a button at a distance."
Mr. Trimble bent himself to an examination of the contrivance. He asked
several questions, and as his scrutiny continued, his expression of
satisfaction changed to one of mistrust and alarm. Suddenly he sprang
from his seat and pushed the model from him. "That is an
infernal-machine!" he exclaimed.
"That's about the long and the short of it," said the man, calmly.
"Then I will have nothing to do with it," and he turned toward the door.
"Hold on, my friend, ain't you a trifle in a hurry? All we want you to
do is to fix that attachment for us, and if you won't do it some other
man will, but we're willing to pay you a hundred dollars for the job.
That's a goodish sum to pay, if the job is a little queer, but I take it
you're used to doing queer things by the big checks that pass through
your hands."
"What do you mean?" Stephen Trimble asked, with some indignation.
"Oh! you needn't pretend innocence and poverty. A man doesn't scatter
round thousand-dollar checks who's as poor as you pretend to be, or as
good, either."
"Tell me what you mean."
"Now don't tell us you know nothing of a check for a thousand dollars
which we happened to see in the pocket-book of the agent of this
building when he dropped in here to collect the rent."
"I never saw a check for a thousand dollars in my life."
"If you don't believe me, ask that sharp little boy of yours. It was he
who first let me know there was a scientific man in the building. He saw
me unpacking my machine. I happened to leave the door open just a
minute. I never saw such a sharp little fellow. In he comes and says,
'My father makes machines too. He's going to make us awful rich some
day.'
"After that he got in the way of knocking at the door and asking to see
my machinery. I thought it would be a good idea to let him, for he is
too little to suspect anything, and I could stuff him with the idea that
I was making a new kind of telegraph, for I was pretty sure that he
would tell it around, and that people would believe it and think there
couldn't be anything shady in what I was doing if I let anybody and
everybody have the freedom of the room.
"Well, the day I'm speaking of, your little chap was sitting there
turning the crank of that machine just as cheerful as if it wouldn't
have blown him to kingdom come if the attachment had only been on, when
in come another little feller who had been looking for him. 'See here,'
says my partner, 'there's getting to be too many children here; we don't
keep a Sunday-school, we don't.' They were just going to leave, when the
agent he come in with the rent contract for us to sign. Well, the boys
lingered round, full of curiosity, as boys are, and we signed the paper
and handed over the cash. Mr. Meyer in stuffing it away in his
pocket-book brought to light that thousand-dollar check I was telling
you about. He fumbled to hide it, but it dropped on the floor, and a
little gust of wind carried it over to where the boys were. The oldest
boy--Jim, I think your son called him--picked it up, and took a good
look at it. 'Hullo!' says he, 'here's your father's name, Lovey. "Pay to
the order of Stephen Trimble one thousand dollars"!' The agent he just
made one dive for that check, with his fist lifted as though he were
going to strike the boy, who dropped the check, and both the little
shavers scooted, and none too soon either, for Meyer looked mad enough
to kill the youngster, though he tried to laugh it off, and turned the
check over and showed me that it was his fast enough, for it was
endorsed on the back, 'Pay to the order of Solomon Meyer.'"
Stephen Trimble put his hand to his head in a dazed way. "You are
fooling me," he said.
"Not we, but somebody is, if you don't know anything about it. Well, if
you are not the bloated bondholder we took you for, perhaps you'll
consider our little offer?"
"No, gentlemen, not to-night at least; give me time to think it over.
One bad man may have wronged me, but I've no call to go against the
law."
"Oh yes, take plenty of time"--and they opened the door. Some one was
knocking at Stephen Trimble's own room. It was the flap-jack man, and
he had a white, scared face.
"What is the matter?" asked the inventor.
"Lovey's been--"
"Run over?" gasped the poor father.
"No; arrested."
Stephen Trimble gave one exclamation of horror--then asked, "What's he
done?"
"Nothing but wheeling my cart; they'd have caught me, too, but I cut and
run. This is a pretty country where one is arrested for trying to earn
an honest living!"
This was the last straw. Stephen Trimble had said that he had no reason
to resist the law, but he could not hold to that now. He staggered
feebly down-stairs, knocked at the door of the dynamiters, and said.
"I've come back sooner than I thought I would. Give me five dollars in
advance, and I'll undertake that business of yours to-morrow, and maybe
I'll get up a little infernal-machine for my own use at the same time,
but just now I must find my boy."
The man handed him some greasy bills. "You look sick," he said. "You had
better go down to the free-lunch counter at the saloon, and have a good
square meal."
Stephen Trimble went and ate and drank to excess. He did not look for
his little son, and he did not return to the dynamiters' the next
morning, for he was drunk--and drunk for three days thereafter. Then he
sobered down and applied himself to the task which they had set him--a
task intended to bring ruin to the class which had wronged him. He knew
the aims, now, of the men for whom he was working, and he believed that
he sympathized with them. They told him how they had borne imprisonment
and torture for no wrong in Russia, and had come to this country
expecting to find it the land of justice and kindness, but had met only
the same tyranny of the rich over the poor--the rich, who cared for
nothing but their own pleasures, and ground the poor under their chariot
wheels.
As he worked he thought of his own private wrongs, and determined that
as soon as his task was done he would seek out the man who had defrauded
him. He was sure now that the check which the men had seen had something
to do with his invention, but he believed that the true criminal was
some one behind Solomon Meyer, the man to whom the agent said he had
given his invention--the landlord of Rickett's Court. It was like a man
who would compel human beings to live in such a state as this to commit
such a fraud. He would hunt him down presently, and in the name of his
tenants, as well as in his own cause, wreak such revenge that the ears
of those who heard should tingle.
The landlord of Rickett's Court, all unconscious of the volcano upon
which he was treading, attended the closing exercises of Madame's
school, and listened with pride to his daughter's prize essay on "The
Dangerous Classes."
There was a quotation from Ruskin at the close which pricked his heart a
little, and made him regret that it was not convenient to carry out his
good intentions just at present. How charming she looked in the white
India silk, and how well she read that final quotation!
"If you can fix some conception of a true human state of life to be
striven for--life for all men as for yourselves--if you can determine
some honest and simple order of existence following those trodden ways
of wisdom, which are pleasantness, and seeking those quiet and withdrawn
paths, which are peace; then, and so sanctifying wealth into
'commonwealth,' all your art, your literature, your daily labors, your
domestic affection, and citizen's duty, will join and increase into one
magnificent harmony. You will know, then, how to build well enough; you
will build with stone well, but with flesh better--temples not made with
hands, but riveted of hearts, and that kind of marble, crimson-veined,
is indeed eternal."
Mr. Armstrong entirely ruined a new pair of kid gloves in applauding his
daughter.
He consigned her to Mrs. Roseveldt for the summer, and in reply to that
lady's urgent request that he would visit them, explained that
Narragansett Pier was fraught with so many memories that he had never
been able to revisit it. "I own a cottage a little distance from the
town," he said. "It was there that both my children were born. We were
in the habit of occupying it every summer, but since my wife's death I
have neither been able to bring myself to go there, or to rent it, and
it has remained closed."
"O papa, will you not let me have it for the summer?" Adelaide asked.
"Certainly, Puss, if you want to fit it up for a studio or that sort of
thing; but it is in a lonely wood, and you must have suitable company
with you if you think of staying there. If you manage to change the
place and infuse new life in it, I may bring myself to look in upon you
there. At all events, I will join you at the Roseveldts' as soon as I
can; just now important business detains me."
The business, as we know, was the securing and putting in service of the
new invention for heating and lighting cars. It was necessary for him to
go to Washington to arrange for the patent, and it was on this trip that
a clue most unexpectedly fell into his hands which seemed to lead to a
startling discovery--a discovery which was more to him than any fortune
which the invention could bring.
It all came about through a scrap of paper which fell in his way as he
was looking about his hotel bedroom for a piece of wrapping-paper with
which to cover the model of the machine which he was about to carry to
the Patent Office. He could find nothing for this purpose but an old
newspaper which lined a bureau drawer. In this he wrapped his machine,
and took his seat in the street-car, the package resting on his knees.
His fellow-passengers were uninteresting, and he fixed his gaze upon
his package. A heading to one of the shorter articles in the old
newspaper attracted his attention.
"Remarkable Case of Loss of Identity; the Doctors Puzzled."
He read on aimlessly.
"The physicians of ---- Hospital have an interesting case. One of their
patients, a lady, was injured at the burning of the _Henrietta_ in the
Sound in October last. This accident has resulted in a partial loss of
memory, and total confusion as to her identity. The unfortunate lady is
unable to give her own name or that of her friends. A remarkable
circumstance in the case is the fact that, through all the horror and
suffering of the accident, which has resulted in a partial loss of her
reason, the poor lady kept her infant boy safely clasped in her arms,
and the child, entirely uninjured, was rescued with her. Any person who
believes that he recognizes a lost friend in this case is requested to
communicate with Dr. H. C. Carver, of the ---- Hospital."
Mr. Armstrong read this item over and over again. He had believed that
his wife and child were lost in the burning of this steamer. Was it
possible that they still lived? and what had ten years of separation
done for them?
The horse-car passed the Patent Office, but he did not see it. He sat
staring at the newspaper until the car brought him to the end of the
route and the conductor touched him on the shoulder. "Pardon me, sir; I
forgot you wished to stop at the Patent Office."
Mr. Armstrong woke from his reverie.
"No," he exclaimed, "at the railway station. I want to catch the next
train for New York--none until 4 o'clock? Then I _will_ go to the Patent
Office; but, first, tell me where I can send a telegram."
[Illustration: {Drawing of girls near rowboat.}]