THREE BACHELOKS.
Near the centre of the north side of the block stood a house in which
three men, who have much to do in this story, were whiling away an hour
before dinner, at the edge of evening, in the month of December, 185-.
The house had strange stones let in over the windows and door, and was
broad and sturdy, and was entered by steps slightly worn, and was shaded
by a tall and old chestnut tree, and showed many signs of age. It was
because of these evidences of antiquity, although the house was in good
preservation and vastly comfortable, that it had been picked out and
rented by the three men, two weeks previously.
Yet the three men exhibited no marks of age, past or coming, upon them.
The oldest, Mr. Marcus Wilkeson, looked no more than thirty-two; but
frankly owned to thirty-six. Being six feet and two inches high, having
a slim figure, round face, smooth brow, gentle eyes, perfect teeth to
the utmost extent of his laugh, and a head of hair free from the
plague-spot of incipient baldness which haunts the young men of this
generation, his appearance, now that he was confessedly a man, was very
much like that of an overgrown boy. On the contrary, when he was really
a boy, his extraordinary height (six feet at sixteen years) had given
him the outward semblance of a premature man. Probably his long legs and
arms, which were exceedingly supple, and were always swinging about with
a certain juvenile awkwardness, contributed much to the youthfulness of
his appearance.
At the time of his introduction here, his legs were as quiet as in their
nature they could be, having been elevated, for the greater comfort of
the owner, to the top of a pianoforte, and presenting an inclination of
forty-five degrees to Mr. Wilkeson's body, reposing calmly and smoking
an antique pipe in his favorite chair below. One of his long arms was
hanging listlessly by his side, and the other made a sharp projecting
elbow, and terminated in the interior of his vest. This was the attitude
which, of all possible adjustments of the human anatomy, Mr. Wilkeson
preferred; and he always assumed it and his pipe the moment he had put
on his dressing gown and Turkey slippers. He was well aware that popular
treatises on the "Art of Behavior" and the "Code of Politeness" were
extremely hard upon this disposition of the legs. His half-sister,
Philomela Wilkeson, who was high authority, had often visited his legs
with the severest censure, when, upon suddenly entering the room where
he was seated, she found the offending members confronting her from the
top of the piano, or the table, or a chair, or sometimes from the
mantelpiece. While Marcus Wilkeson admitted the full force of her
strictures as applied to legs in general, he claimed an exception for
his legs, which were always in his own or other people's way when they
rested on the floor, or were crossed after the many fashions popular
with the short-legged part of mankind.
Marcus Wilkeson's heretical opinion concerning legs was part of a system
of independent views which he entertained of life generally. He had
given up a profitable broker's shop in Wall street, a year before,
because he had made a fortune ten times larger than he would ever spend.
Having fulfilled the object for which he started in business, and for
which he had toiled like a slave ten years, he conceived that nothing
could be more sensible than to retire from it, make room for other
deserving men, and enjoy his ample earnings in the ways which pleased
him most, before an old age of money getting had deadened his five
senses, his intellect, and his heart.
Persons who knew Marcus Wilkeson well were aware that he was a shy,
self-distrustful fellow, amiable, generous, and that the only faults
which could possibly be alleged against him were an excessive fondness
for old books, old cigars, and profitless meditations, and a catlike
affection for quiet corners. And when his half-sister Philomela--who had
no hypocritical concealment about her, thank heaven! and always told
people what she thought of them--pronounced the first of those luxuries
"trash," the second "disgusting," and the other two "idiotic," he met
her candid criticisms with a pleasant laugh, and said that, at any rate,
they hurt nobody but himself.
To which Philomela invariably retorted: "But suppose every strapping
fellow, at your time of life, should take to novel-reading, and such
fooleries, what would become of the world, I would like to know?"
And her brother, puffing out a long stream of smoke, would respond:
"Suppose, my dear sister, every woman was destined to be an old maid, as
you are, what would become of the world, _I_ would like to know?"
The conversation always terminated at this point, by Philomela declaring
that coarse personality was the refuge of weak-minded people when they
could not answer arguments, and that, for her part, she would never take
the trouble to say another plain, straightforward word for his good;
whereupon there would be a truce, lasting sometimes a whole day.
Fayette Overtop, the second of the three young men--the one looking out
of the window, drumming idly on the glass, and continually tossing back
his head to clear the long black hair from his brow, over which it hung
in an incurable cowlick--was a short, compact, nervous person,
twenty-five years old. Mr. Overtop had been educated for the law, but,
finding the profession uncomfortably crowded when he came into it, had
not yet achieved those brilliant triumphs which he once fondly imagined
within his reach. For three years he had been in regular attendance at
his office from nine A.M. to three P.M. (as per written card on the
door), except in term time, when he was a patient frequenter of the
courts. During these three years he had picked up something less than
enough to pay his half of the rent of two small, dimly lighted, but
expensive rooms on the fourth floor of a labyrinth in the lower part
of the city.
Mr. Overtop, when asked to explain this state of things, about which he
made no concealment, always attributed it to a "lack of clients."
If he had clients enough, and of the right kind, he felt confident that
he could make a figure in the profession. Having few clients, and those
in insignificant cases only, of course he had no opportunities for
distinction. He could not stand in the street and beg for clients, or
drag men forcibly into his chambers and compel them to be clients; and
he would not degrade the dignity of his calling by advertising for
clients, or taking any means whatever to get them, except by
establishing a reputation for professional learning and integrity. The
only inducement which he ever put in the way of clients, was a series of
signs, outside the street door, on the first flight of stairs, at the
head of the first landing, on the second flight of stairs, at the head
of the second landing, and so on to the fourth floor, where the firm
name of "Overtop & Maltboy" confronted the panting climber for the
eighth and last time, painted in large gold letters on black tin, nailed
to the office door.
Mr. Overtop was willing to give clients every facility for finding him,
when they had once started at the bottom of the building; and would, as
it were, lead them gently on, by successive signs; but good luck and a
good name, slowly but surely acquired, must do the rest.
A snug property, of which Mr. Overtop spent less than the income,
fortunately enabled him to indulge in these novel views, and to regard
clients, much as they were desired, as by no means indispensable to his
existence. In his unprofessional hours, Mr. Overtop was everything but a
lawyer. He was chiefly a philosopher, a discoverer, a searcher after
truth, a turner-up of undeveloped beauties in every-day things, which,
he said, were rich in instruction when intelligently examined. He could
trace out lines of beauty in a gridiron, and detect the subtle charm
that lurks in the bootjack.
As not unfrequently happens, in partnerships of business and of other
descriptions, Matthew Maltboy--the young man standing before the blazing
coal fire, and critically surveying his own person--was quite the
opposite of Fayette Overtop. Maltboy was fat and calm. Portraits were in
existence showing Maltboy as a young lad in a jacket and turn-down
collar, having a slim, graceful figure, a delicate face, and a sad but
interesting promise of early decay upon him. Other portraits, of the
same original, taken at later periods of the photographic art,
represented a gradual squaring out of the shoulders, a progressive
puffiness in the cheeks, lips, and hands, incipient folds in the chin,
and a prevalent swollen appearance over all of Matthew Maltboy that the
artist permitted the sun to copy.
Portraits of Maltboy for a series of years would have proved a valuable
contribution to human knowledge, as showing the steady and remarkable
changes through which a man who is doomed to be fat passes onward to his
destiny. But Maltboy stopped sitting for portraits when he reached the
age of twenty, deciding, as many another public character has done, to
transmit only the earlier and more ethereal representations of himself
to posterity.
By some compensating law of Nature, there were given to Maltboy a light
and cheerful heart, a tendency to laugh on the smallest provocation, and
a nice susceptibility to the beautiful. Not the beautiful in rivers,
forests, skies, and other inanimate things, but the beautiful in woman.
And as Overtop was gifted to discover charms in material objects which
were plain in other eyes, so Maltboy possessed the wonderful faculty of
seeing beauty in female faces, where other people saw, perhaps, only a
bad nose, dull eyes, and a pinched-up mouth. This mental endowment might
have been a priceless gift to a portrait painter, who was desirous of
gratifying his sitters; but it was for Matthew Maltboy a fatal
possession. It had led him to love too many women too much at first
sight, and to shift his admiration from one dear object to another with
a suddenness and rapidity destructive to a well-ordered state
of society.
Though these multiplied transfers of affection occasionally caused some
disappointment among the victims of Mr. Maltboy's inconstancy, it was
wisely ordained that he should be the principal sufferer--that every new
passion should involve him in new difficulties, and subject him to a
degree of mental distress which would have reduced the flesh of any man
not hopelessly predisposed to fatness. As Mr. Matthew Maltboy stood by
the fire, he was not taking the profitable retrospective view of his
life which he should have taken, but was glancing with an expression of
concern at the circumference of a showy vest pattern which cut off the
view of his legs.
The apartment in which the three bachelors were keeping a meditative
silence, was large, square, high, on the first floor back, commanding an
ample prospect of neglected rear yards, and all the strange things that
are usually huddled into those strictly private domains. The furniture
of the room was rich and substantial, but not too good to be used. The
chairs were none of those frail, slippery structures of horsehair and
mahogany so inhospitably cold to the touch; but they were oak, high
backed, deep, long armed, softly but stoutly cushioned with leather, and
yawned to receive nodding tenants and send them comfortably to sleep
amid the fragrant clouds of the after-dinner pipe or cigar.
At one end of the room was Marcus Wilkeson's library, consisting of
about five hundred volumes, of poems, novels, travels by land and sea,
histories, and biographies, which the owner dogmatically held to be all
the books in the world worth reading. The admission of a new book to
this select company of standard worthies, Mr. Wilkeson was vain enough
to regard as a high compliment to the author, and as a final settlement
of any disputes which might have been abroad as to its merits.
On another side of the room was a grand piano, open, and covered with
the latest music, and sometimes played on in a surprisingly graceful
manner by the fat fingers of Matthew Maltboy. On the walls hung some
pictures, that were not unpleasant to look at. There were two portraits
of danseuses, with little gauzy wings, and wands tipped with magic
stars; one large, full-faced likeness of a pet actress, taken in just
the right attitude to show the rounding shoulders, the lightly poised
head, and the heavy hair, to the best advantage; some charming French
prints, among them "Niobe and her Daughters" and "Di Vernon;" and a half
dozen pictures of the fine old English stage-coach days. Over the
fireplace were suspended several pairs of boxing gloves, garnishing the
picture of a tall fellow in fighting attitude, whose prodigious muscles
were only a little smaller than those of all the saints and angels of
all the accredited masterpieces of ancient art. A pair of foils and
masks, neatly arranged over each corner of the mantelpiece, completed
the decorations of the room.
The three bachelors had gone into housekeeping by way of experiment, as
a relief from the tedium and oppression of hotels and boarding houses,
and as an escape from female society, which was beginning to pall even
upon the huge appetite of Matthew Maltboy.
But two weeks of this self-imposed exile--with no female society but
Miss Philomela Wilkeson, and Mash, the cook--proved rather too much for
Matthew's fortitude. He yawned audibly.
"I understand you," said Marcus; "you are sick of this."
"Well--hum--it's a little prosy at times." Maltboy yawned again.
"Incorrigible monster!" cried Marcus. "What shall we do with him, Top?"
The person addressed swung back the rebellious cowlick from his
forehead, as if to clear his thinking faculties from a load while he
considered the grave question. "Do with him? Do with him? Oh! I'll tell
you." Here the speaker's eyes flashed with the light of a great
discovery. "Tether him like a horse, with a certain limited area to feed
in. D'ye see? D'ye see?"
"A horse? Can't say that I do," returned Mr. Marcus Wilkeson.
"And I can't say that _I_ do, either," added Mr. Matthew Maltboy. "A
horse! Why not say a donkey? I should see it quite as well."
"As you please," resumed the impetuous Overtop. "A donkey, then. Perhaps
the metaphor will be better. What I mean--what you two are so dull as
not to see--is to put this unreliable Maltboy on a moderate allowance of
flirtation; to keep him, for example, within the limits of this block.
D'ye see? D'ye catch the idea?"
"It begins to dawn on me," said Wilkeson.
"And I catch a ray or two of it," added Maltboy. But--"
"Excuse me," interrupted Overtop, stepping between his two companions,
and gesticulating wildly at each of them in turn, as if he would dart
conviction into them like electricity from the tips of his fingers.
"Here is a block full of people. Their houses are joined together, or
nearly so, all the way round. The inhabitants hear each other's pianos
playing and each other's babies squalling all day long. If a fire breaks
out in the block, it may be all burned down together. If the measles
makes its appearance on the block, it probably runs through it. Is there
not, therefore, a community of dangers among us; and if of dangers, why
not of pleasures? Why should not the inhabitants of a block be regarded
as a distinct settlement, or tribe, whose members owe kindness and
goodwill to each other before the rest of the world? Looking at it in
the light of humanity, is it not our duty to know our neighbors?"
"And Matt would say, To love them too--that is, the young and pretty
ones," observed "Wilkeson.
"Precisely," said Maltboy.
"Excuse me," continued Overtop, deprecating further interruption with
both hands. "That is the point I was just coming to. Since Maltboy
_must_ have female society, and cannot be kept out of it by main force,
why not give him the range of this block? Catch the idea, eh?--in its
full force and bearings?"
"Wilkeson and Maltboy implied, by nods, that they caught it.
"And--ahem--I think I'll take the same range too," added Overtop. "Not
because I care a pin about female society, but just to test my
new theory."
Cries of "Oh! oh!" from Marcus Wilkeson.
Overtop laughed. "You'll be a convert to it yet, my good fellow."
"Never," said Marcus, inflexibly, "so long as books and tobacco hold
out."
"We'll see," replied Overtop. "But let me think how we are to begin." He
rubbed his nose with a forefinger, then tossed back the cowlick, and
said, impetuously: "I have it--I have it! We know Quigg, the grocer, at
the corner below, for we are customers of his. Of course, he has an
immense number of customers on the block, and will make New Year's
calls on all of them, in the way of business. Why can't he take us in
tow? It's as plain as daylight."
"Plain enough, I admit," said Marcus Wilkeson; "but what will Quigg's
customers say?"
"Poor fellow!" returned Overtop. "How feebly you hermits reason about
society! If you had knocked round town on New Year's days, as Matt and I
have often done, you would know that visitors are valued only because
they swell the number of calls, and that it is entirely immaterial who
they are, or who introduces them. The militia general, the banker, the
judge, the D.D., the butcher, the drygoods clerk, are units of equal
value on that day, each adding one more to the score which is privately
kept behind the door. We shall be welcome; never fear for that. You must
come with us, and see for yourself."
"I thank you," said Marcus Wilkeson, laughing. "No such fooleries at my
time of life."
"Very well," said Overtop. "Matt and I will try to represent the new
firm of bachelor housekeepers creditably. Matt will look after the
pretty girls, and I after the sensible ones--that is, if there happen to
be any on this block."
"Agreed," observed Matthew Maltboy, catching a view of himself in a
glass over the fireplace, and not wholly displeased with his appearance.
"Another thought strikes me," said Overtop, explosively. "It's nearly
half an hour to sunset. I am impatient to begin my acquaintance with our
fellow citizens--our future friends, if I may so call them. Let us look
out of the windows, and see what the excellent people are doing. Perhaps
it may interest even a recluse and bookworm like you."
"Nonsense," rejoined Marcus Wilkeson. "There's no curiosity in my
composition."
And yet, when his two companions stood at the window of the little back
parlor, pressing their noses against the glass, and looking out, he
could not resist the temptation to join them, although he thought
proper to punch them in the ribs, and call them a pair of inquisitive
puppies, by way of showing how much he was superior to the great human
infirmity.