Moses was having a busy day. The front hall was packed full with
a heterogeneous mass of miscellaneous furniture, the sidewalk
littered with straw packing, kitchen utensils, empty bird-cages,
umbrella-stands, crates of china, and rolls of carpet. Mr. Ebner
Ford, late of Clapham Four Corners, State of Connecticut; Mrs. Ebner
Ford, formerly Preston, late of Roy, State of North Carolina, and her
daughter, Miss Sue Preston, were moving in.
Moses was in his shirt-sleeves, a green baize apron tied about his
waist, a close-fitting skull-cap crowning his gray wool. There were
spots on his cranium which the friction of life had worn to a polish,
and, the January air being keen and searching, the old darky braved no
unnecessary risks.
The force was properly apportioned. Mrs. Ford was in charge of the
stowage, moving back, and hanging-up department. Mr. Ford had full
charge of the sidewalk, the big furniture van and the van’s porters.
Moses was at everybody’s beck and call, lifting one moment one end of a
sofa, the other steadying a bureau on its perilous voyage from the curb
to the back bedroom, while Miss Preston, with an energy born of young
and perfect health, tripped up and down the few steps, pointing out to
the working force this or that particular chair, table, or clock most
needed. All this that the already tired mother might get the room to
rights with the least possible delay.
It was not the first time this young woman had performed this service.
The later years of her life had been spent in various intermittent
moves in and out of various houses since the gentleman from Connecticut
had married her mother.
Her first experience had taken place some months after the unexpected
wedding, when her stepfather--he was at that time a life-insurance
agent--had moved his own bag and baggage into the family homestead.
Shortly after he had elaborated a plan by which the entire family would
be infinitely better off if a red flag should be hoisted out of the
second-story window, and the old place knocked down to the highest
bidder. He would then invest the proceeds in the purchase of some town
lots in one of the larger cities up the State. They would then have a
home of their own, more in keeping with the aspirations of his wife,
who really had married him to escape her present poverty, and the
welfare of his stepdaughter, whose sole ambition was to perfect herself
in music, she being the possessor of a wonderful soprano voice.
In this new venture six houses were to be built; one they would live
in, rent and cost free, the income from the other five supporting them
all.
Then had come a hasty packing up and rather sudden departure for
Norfolk, the houses being partly built, and none of them rented or
sold, Mr. Ford having abandoned life insurance and given his attention
to a new dredging machine for use in the Dismal Swamp Canal. And then
a third exodus to a small village near New York, where the promoter of
a brilliant and entirely new adaptation of laundry machinery, never
before imagined, and the formation of which was known among the favored
few as The United Family Laundry Association, Limited, engrossed the
distinguished engineer Mr. Ebner Ford’s sole attention.
It was from this near-by village the fourth move had been made, the
van and supplementary cart having absorbed the contents of a small
house, situated on the outskirts of the town, that deluded individual
having exchanged a year’s rent for a delicately engraved sheet of
paper, certifying that he was the proud possessor of ten shares of the
company’s preferred.
That these several shiftings, migrations, and re-handlings had had
their effect on the family belongings could be seen by even the most
cursory examination of the several articles littering the sidewalk.
Even the old family sideboard--and every Southern family has an
old-fashioned sideboard--lacked a brass door-handle or escutcheon
here and there, and similar defects could be found in Mrs. Ford’s
high-poster, once the property of her dead mother, two of the carved
feet being gone by reason of a collision in an extra-hazardous journey.
It was because of the knowledge gained in these experiences, as well as
a fervent desire to get the whole matter over as quickly as possible,
that the young girl had taken charge of the “picking-out” department,
so that each article might reach her mother in regular order, and in
discrete corners as much as what was left of the old mahogany was saved.
She was again on the sidewalk, dragging out a rocker, ordering a
crate here, and a bundle of fire-tongs there, when the gentleman
from Connecticut must have got in her way, for she broke in in an
authoritative tone of voice, much to Moses’ astonishment, with:
“No, Mr. Ford, stop right where you are. Mamma doesn’t want any more
small things until she gets the big ones arranged, and don’t you send
them in!”
“My dear Sue, you will have to take them as they come.”
“No, I’m not going to take them as they come. I’m going to take them as
I want them. You’ve got plenty of room here, and you’ve got plenty of
men to help. That wardrobe comes next.”
“Well, but can’t you take these here cushions?”
“Yes, send in the cushions, but that’s the last, until I tell you what
next.”
The distinguished engineer raised his hands, opening his fingers in
a deprecatory way, expressive of his firm belief that she would live
to see the day when she would keenly regret her interference, and in
subdued, almost apologetic, tones called Moses.
“Here, Moses--your name is Moses, ain’t it?”
The darky nodded.
“Well, be good enough to carry this here bundle of cushions to Mrs.
Ford. And be careful, Moses.”
Moses, without a word in reply, swung the bundle to his shoulder,
mounted the few steps and deposited the pillows at Mrs. Ford’s feet,
and resumed his place on the sidewalk. He was making up his mind as
to the character and personality of the new tenants, and nothing had
so far escaped him. The old janitor’s likes and dislikes had a very
important bearing on the status occupied by the various tenants.
Furthermore, his diagnosis was invariably correct.
Thus far, two things had impressed him. That the young lady should have
addressed her stepfather as if he had been a mere acquaintance, and
that that master of the house should have prefaced his order to him
with a “be good enough.” Nobody had ever, so far as he could remember,
addressed him in any such way. His former master’s customary formula,
generally with a laugh, was: “Here, Moses, you infernal scoundrel.” His
later employers had been contented with Moses, Mose, or Mr. Harris (the
latter he despised). The new young gentlemen had begun with Moses, and
had then passed on to “You ebony gargoyle,” or “Bulrushes,” “Pottifer’s
Kid.” But the order came direct as if they meant it, and was always
carried out by him in the same kind of spirit. “Be good enough, eh,” he
kept saying to himself, “’spec’ he ain’t ’customed to nuffin’.”
The young lady seemed to be cast in a different mould.
“That’s too heavy for you, Uncle,” she had said in a low, soft voice,
the more surprising to him when he remembered the tones in addressing
her stepfather. He was struggling under the weight of one end of the
dining-room table at the time. “Come here, one of you men, and help
him. Put it down, Uncle. You’ll break your poor old back, first thing
you know.”
“Thank you, young mistiss. ’Tis little mite heavy,” he had answered
humbly, as the leg he was carrying sagged to the sidewalk, adding as he
watched her disappear again into the house: “Befo’ God, she’s one of my
own people, dat she is. I ain’t been called Uncle by nobody, since I
went back home dat Christmas time.”
The van was empty now, and the supplementary cart, carrying the odds
and ends, a rusty, well-burnt-out stove, two pieces of pipe, a big
mirror with a gilt frame, a set of wooden shelves, two wash-tubs, and
on top, a dainty work-table with spindle legs, was being backed to the
sidewalk.
Some article must have been forgotten or broken or scraped, for the
language of the man from Clapham Four Corners had lost its soft edge,
his outburst ending with:
“See here, you lunkhead, don’t you handle that work-table as if it was
a ton of coal. Don’t you see you’ve broken the glass!”
The young girl had just emerged from the door.
“Oh, what a pity!” she cried. “I loved it so. No, please don’t touch it
again. I’ll lift it down myself.”
She had mounted a chair now which stood by the tail of the cart and,
against the protest of the group, was carefully disentangling the
precious legs from the chaos of pipes, tubs, and stove-fittings.
“Oh, you darling little table! Nobody ever thought about you. It’s all
my fault. No, go away all of you. You shan’t one of you touch it. I’ll
lift it down myself. Oh, the drawer has caught in that stove door!
Uncle, won’t you just push it back so I can----”
“Permit me to help this--” came a voice from behind. Before she could
catch her breath, an arm reached forth, lifted the precious table clear
of the entangling mass and, without waiting for protest or thanks,
carried it into the house at the feet of the astonished mother. Then
with a remark, “That he was glad to be of service,” Mr. Joseph Grimsby,
occupant of the third floor, backed out and rejoined the astonished
girl.
“A lovely bit of Chippendale, is it not, Miss Ford? It is Miss Ford,
isn’t it? Yes, our old colored janitor told me you were expected
to-day. I and my chum live up-stairs. But please don’t worry about
the glass. That is quite easily replaced. I must apologize for my
intrusion, but when I saw what a beauty it was, and heard you say how
you loved it, I had to help. There is nothing like Chippendale, and
it’s getting rarer every day.”
“Oh, but you were very kind. It was my grandmother’s and I have always
used it since I was a girl. Thank you very much.”
Joe was about to say: “That--” but checked himself in time--“if she
would permit the digression, she was still a girl, and a very pretty
one.” In fact, he had not seen any one quite as pretty for a very
long period of time. He had thought so when he stood in the doorway,
watching her efforts to save the table from further destruction. He had
only a view of her back, but he had noticed in that brief glance the
trim, rounded figure, curve of her neck, and the way her tight woollen
sweater clung to her small waist and hips. He had caught, too, a pair
of very small and well-shod feet.
When she turned in surprise and looked him square in the eyes, in one
of those comprehensive, searching glances, and his own lenses had
registered her fresh color, small ears, and dainty, enchanting mouth
and teeth, the whole surrounded by a wealth of light, golden hair,
escaping from the thraldom of a tam-o’-shanter hat, part of her working
clothes, he would have taken an oath on a pile of Bibles as high as a
church steeple that she was altogether the most radiantly attractive
young woman he had ever met in the whole course of his natural
existence.
This was not at all unusual. It was Joe’s way with every fresh girl
he met. Such hyperbole was only a safety-valve, giving vent to his
enthusiastic appreciation. He had had similar outbursts over two or
three since he had left Paris. He had not only _looked_ a similar
declaration into the eyes of the inamorata who had begun her letter
with “Dearest,” and ended it with an initial--the letter he had
cremated and tucked away in the burial-plot of his forgetfulness--but
he had told her so in so many plain words, and had told her a lot of
other things besides, which the young beauty had believed.
The scribe who knew them both will tell you that Sue Preston, despite
Joe’s panegyrics, was just a trim, tidy, well-built, rosy, and
thoroughly wholesome girl, no prettier than half a dozen other Southern
girls brought up in her own town, which she had left when the gentleman
from Connecticut had married her mother. That her independence of
speech and bearing, as well as her kindness, came from the fact that
she was obliged to earn her own living with her voice, singing at
private houses and teaching music. The life, which, while it had not
dulled her enthusiasm or love for things worth the having, had taught
her a knowledge of the world far beyond her years. This could have been
detected in the short talk she had had with Moses, after Joe, having
reached the limit of his intrusion, had lifted his hat in respectful
admiration and taken himself off to his office, where he spent what
was left of the morning pouring into Atwater’s ears a wholly inflated
account of the charms of the new arrival, and how plans must be laid at
once to get on the friendliest terms possible with the occupants of the
first floor.
“You ask me, young mistiss, who is dat gentleman?” Moses had rejoined
in answer to her question, her eyes fixed on Joe’s graceful, manly
figure as he swung down the street.
“Dat’s Mr. Grimsby, and dere ain’t nobody moved into dis house since
I been here, and dat’s eleven years next June, any better. Fust time I
see him, I says to Matilda: ‘Matilda, don’t he look like Marse Robin
when he was his age? He’s got just de air of him.’ Don’t care for
nobody dat ain’t quality. Ain’t you from the South, young mistiss?”
Moses never forgot his slave days when he was talking to his own people.
“Yes, Moses, I’m from North Carolina.”
“And de mistiss, too?”
“Yes; mother, too.”
“But dat--dat--” the darky hesitated, “dat gentleman dat--dat married
yo’ ma. He ain’t one our people, is he?”
The girl laughed, a crisp, sparkling laugh, as if she really enjoyed
answering his questions.
“No, he’s a Yankee.”
“Gor a’mighty, I knowed it. ’Scuse me, young mistiss, for askin’, but
we got to get along together, and I’m goin’ to do evertin’ I can to
please you.”
Joe had turned the corner by this time, and her eyes again sought the
old darky’s.
“What does he do, this Mr. Grimsby?”
“I don’t know, young mistiss; I think he builds houses. What dey call a
architect.”
“And how long has he been here?”
“’Bout two weeks, goin’ on three now.”
A curious expression now crossed her face.
“And is he always as polite as that to everybody he meets for the first
time?”
It was Moses’ turn to chuckle now. “I ain’t never seen him with
nobody, fur dere ain’t nobody ’round fit fur him to bow and scrape fur
till you come, and you ain’t seen de last of him, young mistiss, unless
I miss my guess.” And with a prolonged chuckle, Moses seized a chair,
backed away with it to the house, and returned again to his duties on
the sidewalk.
That the new tenant interested him enormously could be seen as the
old negro stood watching his self-imposed supervision. He had been
accustomed to all sorts of people since he had held his position,
especially the kind that constantly moved in and out of the first
floor. There had been inebriates who had been laid up for days at a
time, broken-down bank clerks looking for another situation, with only
money enough for the first month in advance, ending in final collapse
and exit, with most of their furniture in pawn. There had been a
mysterious widow, a rather flabby person, whose son was a reporter,
and who came in at all hours of the night. And there had been a
distinguished lawyer, who moved in for the summer and was going when
the heating apparatus broke down on the first cold day.
But the gentleman from Connecticut represented a type which Moses had
never seen before. His dress showed it, with a full suit of black,
his white collar showing above his overcoat. His speech was another
indication. Where most men used verbal ammunition at the rate of so
many spoken words a minute, Ford’s delivery was as rapid and continuous
as the outpouring of a Gatling gun.
“How many times must I tell you to be careful, men? How often must I go
on insistin’ that you should not bump things on the sidewalk? This here
furniture is made to sit on, not to be smashed into kindlin’ wood. Easy
there, now, on that bureau! Pull out the drawers. Quick, now! One at a
time. And now let go of that other end. It’s extraordinary how sensible
men like you should go on ignorin’ the simplest rules of safety. Sue,
my dear, tell your dear mother that I am doin’ the best I can. But
that if everything is brought to a piecemeal, it’s only what’s to be
expected. Out of the way, Moses, give them men plenty of room. There,
that’s more like it!”
That the two broad-backed porters in linen jumpers had for years passed
everything from a piano-stool to a folding-bed from the top of the
highest tenement in New York, without so much as a scrape of paint
from the side walls, and that nothing that Ford had said or done made
the slightest impression on them, was entirely clear to Moses as he
listened to their harangue.
He had seen a busy clown at the circus picking up and dropping at a
critical moment the ends of the carpet spread out on the sawdust, a
remembrance which pumped up another chuckle in the old darky’s interior.
When the sidewalk was cleared, the van and the supplementary cart
emptied, and the entire belongings of the Ford family securely housed,
and the door of the apartment discreetly closed, so that the passers
up and down the staircase might not become familiar with the various
imperfections of the household gods, when I say what Moses called the
biggest circus he had ever seen for many a day was over, that guardian
of the house moved into the rear basement to talk it all over with
Matilda.
The old woman--and she was very nearly as old as Moses, sixty-five
if she was a day--was busy ironing, her head tied up in a big red
bandanna, her shrewd eyes peering out of a pair of big-bowed spectacles.
“Well, is you through?” her eyes on her work, not on her husband.
“Yes; through!”
“Well, what you think of him?”
Moses had dropped into a chair now and begun to untie his big green
baize apron, his morning work being over.
“I ain’t got no think, Matilda. He can talk de legs off a iron pot.
Dat’s one of my thinks. Ain’t never heard nuffin’ like it. Jes’ like
one of dese patent-medicine fellers with a stand on de street corner.”
“Well, is dat all?” She had dropped her iron now and with her hands on
her hips was looking at him curiously.
“Dat’s all. Unless I’m much mistuk, dat’s all dere is to him. Jes’
wind. De madam is sumfin’ better. She looks as if she might have been
quality afo’ she struck him. But young mistiss is de real thing. How
she can put up wid him is mo’ ’an I can understand.”