“The coffee,” I said, as we started there, “is the best Java in New
York. It is raised for the exclusive use of a royal family in Europe;
but now and then the royal steward sells a bag to this coffee house. It
has to be smuggled in, bean by bean; the man said so.”
“Smuggled in, bean by bean,” repeated Appleby. “Do you think I could get
a bag?”
“A whole bag? What for?”
“For my house, of course,” he said. “I could serve it at the
housewarming.”
“Well,” I said, “it strikes me that a fellow who plans what sort of
coffee he’ll serve at the housewarming of a house that isn’t even
started yet must like to peer into the future.”
“I do,” said Appleby seriously.
As we neared the coffee house he suddenly darted from my side. With some
apprehension I saw him, by a somewhat hazardous display of gymnastic
ability, mount a window ledge that he might examine closely one of the
old ship lanterns that served to light the sign of the coffee house.
He climbed down, shaking his head.
“It won’t do,” he said.
“It won’t do what?” I asked.
“It won’t do for my house,” he replied.
As we entered the vestibule he dropped to his knees and ran an
appraising hand over the doormat.
“Too prickly,” he announced. “For me, at any rate.”
We took a table in the little back room, and while Appleby inquisitively
fingered the curtain material and searched the bottom of the sugar bowl
for the maker’s mark, I examined him. Save for the addition of a blond
snippet of mustache, he was much the same as he had been in college. He
wore the same sort of assiduously brushed brown suit, the same careful
necktie, the same intent, intense air.
“Did you see the Yale game this year?” I asked.
“No; but let me tell you about my house,” he answered. “Just now it’s to
be a rather simple affair of, say, ten rooms; a low, rambling house of
the English type, with plaster walls showing the trowel marks; or I may
have it of field stone, with a beamed ceiling in the living room
and——”
“But why are you going to build it, Appleby?”
He looked solemn.
“Because of my philosophy of life,” he said.
“I don’t see——”
“This is what I mean,” he explained: “I came out of college about as
well prepared for life as a snake is prepared to ride a bicycle. I’d no
idea what I wanted to do. First, I thought I’d like to be a painter; I
lived on art and sausages for five months; then I ran out of paint and
sausages. So I went to work in an advertising agency. I’m not just sure
now why I did. I think I ran into some fellow who said advertising was a
young giant still in its infancy and advised me to get in on the ground
floor; I remember the metaphor, if not the fellow. I did get in on the
ground floor and I stayed there for four months. Then I lost interest in
the superlative merits of the hair restorer my company advertised, and
left the young giant still in its infancy.”
The coffee came; he absent-mindedly, drank some.
“I entered finance,” he went on. “That is to say, I trekked all over
town trying to find someone feeble-minded enough to buy a bond from me.
Not finding anyone, I entered foreign trade; meaning, I sat at a desk
and tried to sell dolls in gross lots to Peruvian importers. I did this
for some endless months. One day I found myself looking out of my
ninth-story window and wondering why I didn’t jump. ‘Why,’ I found
myself asking myself, ‘do I continue to live? Do I care a snap about
dolls in gross lots? I do not! Do I like Peruvians? Not at all! In fact,
they both bore me. Life,’ I said to myself, ‘is as empty as a used
cantaloupe.’ What had I to live for?”
Appleby sipped his coffee, and I said I didn’t know.
“Nothing,” he said; “nothing. What was my life? Same routine. Get up in
the morning; miserable business, getting up. Shave myself; always
painful; tender skin, you know. Breakfast; same old coffee, same old
cereal, same old eggs. Jostle down to the office. Same dolls; same
Peruvians. Lunch with earnest young exporters; same oatmeal crackers and
milk; same talk about profits and markets. Back to the office; ‘Miss
Gurry, take a letter: “Yours of the fourteenth received, and in reply
would say in re shipment of 325 gross of best India-rubber dolls, style
7BB—squeaking—am shipping same f.o.b., Wappingers Falls, N. Y., at
once.”’ Oh, you know the line. Home to my apartment, the size of a
police patrol. Read the papers. Same old bunk. ‘Strike Situation
Serious.’ ‘International Situation Serious.’ ‘Pugilistic Situation
Serious.’ Everything serious, everybody serious. Dinner; that’s serious
too. Same old question: What shall I do to kill the evening? Read a
book? The usual bunk; either romance about people who are too happy, or
realism about people who are not happy enough. Go to a show? The old
plots, the old lines, the old girls. Same banalities; same strutting
hams spouting moss-covered buckets of bunk. Call on a girl? Ghastly
bore. Same old ‘Have you seen this or have you read that? Isn’t it
shocking about the Warps getting a divorce, or nice about the Woofs
getting married? Do you believe a man and a girl can really be friends
in the strictest sense of the word, and how is your golf game getting
on?’ Home to bed, wind the alarm clock; same old dreams, and
then—br-r-ring—7:30 same thing all over again. I was slaving at work I
hated, and what was I getting out of it? What was it all leading to?”
Again he sipped coffee; again I said I didn’t know; again he launched
himself.
“Nothing,” he said; “nothing. There I was at twenty-four doing work I
loathed in order to lead a life that bored me. The whole business seemed
as pointless as an aquarium without fish. What could I do to make life
worth living?”
“Well, what did you do?” I asked.
“First, I analyzed the situation. I always was analytic, you know. Then
I decided what I must do. I must have some definite object to work for.
I must set some goal for myself.”
He tossed off his coffee with a triumphant air; his eyes sparkled. I
signaled for more coffee and looked at him interrogatorily.
“And the goal?” I questioned.
His voice was alive with excitement as he said, “To have a house in the
country; to retire and live there and raise roses.”
“You’re pretty young to retire,” I remarked.
“Oh, I won’t be able to do that for years and years,” Appleby said.
“I’ll not only have to earn enough for a house but enough to bring me in
a modest income.”
“Well, you have your definite object.”
“I have,” said Appleby. “And you’ve no idea how it has bucked me up.
I’ve gained ten pounds since I thought of it. And my whole outlook has
changed; I’m as happy as a cat in a fish store these days. You see, I’m
going to build a perfect house. I take all the building magazines. Every
Sunday I go walking in the country looking for sites. And as for my
job——”
“You like it now?”
“I do not. I’m still distinctly bored by dolls in gross lots, and
Peruvians; but I take them seriously now. They’re pawns in my game, you
see. Now, every time I sell a gross of dolls I say to myself, ‘Ah, 144
dolls means a commission to me of $4.77, or enough to pay for one
electric outlet in my house.’ Or, if I sell ten gross I say to myself,
‘Good work, old boy! The commission will buy andirons, or bricks for the
chimney, or so many gallons of paint.’ I’m three times as good a
business man as I was. Indeed, I should be at my office this minute, but
I got thinking about revolving doors and could not be easy in my mind
till I tried some. I don’t think they’d be appropriate for a country
house, do you?”
“Decidedly not.”
He looked relieved.
“Good! Glad you agree. I’ll cross them off.”
He took out a fat memorandum book and crossed words off a list.
“When do you expect to make this dream a reality?” I asked.
A wistful look came to his face.
“If I do it by the time I’m fifty I’ll be lucky,” he said. “There isn’t
much money in dolls. It will take years. But”—and he brightened—“I
have already set aside enough money to pay for one window with leaded
glass, one foot scraper, three electric outlets and part of the coal
bin. Have you any ideas about coal bins?”
Before I could give him the benefit of my thought on this subject he
vanished from my sight. I perceived that he had dived under the table
and was subjecting the floor to a microscopic scrutiny. Presently he
looked up.
“Wanted to be sure whether the floor is painted or stained,” he
explained. “I think I’ll have my floors painted.” There was pride in his
voice as he accented the word “my.” He got to his feet.
“Well, I must rush along. Hope I can sell a few gross of dolls before
the market closes. Glad I ran into you. By the way, if you hear of
anybody who wants to buy dolls——”
He did not finish his sentence, for his attention was caught by the
door-knob of the front door and he bent over to see how it worked.
Then he went out. I did not see Hosmer Appleby again for six years.
New York eats men. It ate Appleby. At least I did not encounter him. He
may have ridden in the same cars or lived in the same block; but our
paths did not cross until one afternoon at the art museum. It was, as I
recall it, just six years after we drank coffee together and he told me
about his aim in life. I was in one gallery of the museum looking at a
new exhibition of etchings, when I heard a commotion in the next
gallery. A bass voice was in somewhat violent controversy with a tenor
voice.
“But you can’t lie in that there bed,” the bass voice protested loudly.
“Why can’t I?”
“That there bed,” declared the bass voice, “was slep’ in by Napoleon.
It’s worth twenty thousand dollars. We can’t have people layin’ in it,
now can we?”
“But I’m only trying it.”
“It’s against the rules of the museum,” stated the bass voice.
I entered the gallery at this moment and saw a fat and agitated museum
attendant, owner of the bass voice, expostulating with a small man in a
brown suit, the tenor, who was reclining on an enormous gilt, canopied,
four-poster bed of florid design.
“Oh, very well,” said the man on the bed. “I don’t think much of it as a
bed, anyhow. I wouldn’t have it in my house.”
Saying this, he rose from the bed and I saw that he was Hosmer Appleby.
“Oh, you wouldn’t, wouldn’t you?” said the attendant, loyal to his
charge. “Well, it was good enough for Napoleon, that there bed was.”
“Steel beds are more sanitary,” said Appleby. Then turning to me, “Don’t
you think so?”
He spoke as if I’d been with him all the time. He had the same absorbed
expression, the same intent, intense look.
“How’s the house?” I asked. “Are you enjoying living in it?”
“Living in it? Why, I haven’t started to build it yet!” he told me as we
strolled through the collection of Sheraton furniture, which he now and
then stopped to poke.
“No,” he continued, “I haven’t found a site. Haven’t the money, anyhow.
But I’m looking. I suppose I’ve looked at five hundred sites since I saw
you, and have got forty earaches listening to real-estate agents. I’m in
no great hurry. The perfect house on the perfect site—that’s my plan.”
He said it as if he were annunciating a religious principle.
“And the dolls?” I asked.
He made a wry face.
“Oh, I still sell the little beasts,” he replied. “I’m assistant sales
manager now, you know.”
“Good work!”
“Beastly grind,” he said. “I detest dolls. But they’re going to build me
a house in the country.”
“A doll house?” I suggested.
He did not smile; his look said that his house was too sacred a matter
for facetiousness.
“How are you, anyhow? Married, or anything like that?” I inquired.
“The living room is going to be thirty-five by twenty,” he said.