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A TOP-FLOOR IDYL
by
GEORGE VAN SCHAICK
Author of "Sweetapple Cove," "The Son of the Otter," "The Girl at Big
Loon Post"
Illustrated by Chase Emerson
Boston
Small, Maynard & Company
Publishers
Copyright, 1917,
By Small, Maynard & Company
(Incorporated)
Printers
S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, U.S.A.
TO
MY DEARLY LOVED SISTER
ELISE
[Illustration: And always she was a friend, nothing but the dear
friend.]
CONTENTS
I THE NIGHT ALARM
II FRIEDA THE ANGEL
III I WATCH AN INFANT
IV THE BOLT
V GORDON HELPS
VI A BIT OF SUNSHINE
VII THE OTHER WOMAN
VIII WE TAKE AN EXCURSION
IX I HEAR RUMOURS ABOUT GORDON
X THE WORK LOST
XI GORDON VACILLATES
XII GORDON BECOMES ENGAGED
XIII DR. PORTER GOES TO WORK
XIV I BEGIN TO PLOT
XV THE LIGHTNING STROKE
XVI FRANCES READS MY BOOK
XVII MISS VAN ROSSUM CALLS
XVIII DIANA AMONG MORTALS
XIX FRANCES GOES TO THE COUNTRY
XX RICHETTI IS PLEASED
XXI THE CONCERT
XXII GORDON RETURNS
XXIII THE REPAIR OF A BROKEN STRAND
XXIV "THE MOTHER AND CHILD"
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
And always she was a friend, nothing but the dear friend.
No, she was only a woman, with a soul for harmony.
Her lovely head was bent down towards the sleeping mite.
A TOP-FLOOR IDYL
CHAPTER I
THE NIGHT ALARM
I smiled at my friend Gordon, the distinguished painter, lifting up my
glass and taking a sip of the _table d'hote_ claret, which the Widow
Camus supplies with her famed sixty-five cent repast. It is, I must
acknowledge, a somewhat turbid beverage, faintly harsh to the palate,
and yet it may serve as a begetter of pleasant illusions. While drinking
it, I can close my eyes, being of an imaginative nature, and permit its
flavor to bring back memories of ever-blessed _tonnelles_ by the Seine,
redolent of fried gudgeons and mirific omelettes, and felicitous with
gay laughter.
"Well, you old stick-in-the-mud," said my companion, "what are you
looking so disgruntled about? I was under the impression that this feast
was to be a merry-making to celebrate your fortieth birthday. Something
like a grin just now passed over your otherwise uninteresting features,
but it was at once succeeded by the mournful look that may well follow,
but should not be permitted to accompany, riotous living."
At this I smiled again.
"Just a moment's wool-gathering, my dear fellow," I answered. "I was
thinking of our old feasts, and then I began to wonder whether the tune
played by that consumptive-looking young man at the piano might be a
wild requiem to solemnize that burial of two-score years, or a song of
triumphant achievement."
"I think it's what they call a fox-trot," remarked Gordon, doubtfully.
"Your many sere and yellow years have brought you to a period in the
world's history when the joy of the would-be young lies chiefly in wild
contortion to the rhythm of barbaric tunes. I see that they are getting
ready to clear away some of the tables and, since we are untrained in
such new arts and graces, they will gradually push us away towards the
doors. The bottle, I notice, is nearly half empty, which proves our
entire sobriety; had it been _Pommard_, we should have paid more
respectful attention to it. Give me a light, and let us make tracks."
We rose and went out. A few couples were beginning to gyrate among the
fumes of spaghetti and _vin ordinaire_. Gordon McGrath, unlike myself,
lives in one of the more select quarters of the city, wherefore we
proceeded towards Fifth Avenue. The partial solitude of Washington
Square enticed us, and we strolled towards it, sitting of common accord
upon one of the benches, in the prelude of long silence resulting from
philosophic bent and indulgence in rather tough veal. It was finally
broken by Gordon; being younger, speech is more necessary to him.
"What about that sarcophagus you've lately selected for yourself?" he
asked me.
"They are pleasant diggings," I answered. "Being on the top floor, they
are remote as possible from hand-organs and the fragrance of Mrs.
Milliken's kitchen. The room is quite large and possesses a bath. It
gives me ample space for my books and mother's old piano."
"Wherefore a piano?" he asked, lighting another cigarette. "You can't
even play with one finger."
"Well, my sister Jane took out nearly all the furniture, and the
remainder went to a junkman, with the exception of the piano. Jane
couldn't use it; no room for it in her Weehawken bungalow, besides which
she already has a phonograph, purchased at the cost of much saving. You
see, Gordon, that old Steinway was rather more intimately connected with
my mother, in my memory, than anything else she left. She played it for
us when we were kiddies. You have no idea of what a smile that dear
woman had when she turned her head towards us and watched us trying to
dance! Later on, when she was a good deal alone, it was mostly 'Songs
without Words,' or improvisations such as suited her moods. Dear me! She
looked beautiful when she played! So, of course, I took it, and it
required more room, so that I moved. I've had it tuned; the man said
that it was in very good condition yet."
"You were always a silly dreamer, Dave."
"I don't quite see," I began, "what----"
"I'll enlighten your ignorance. Of course you don't. David, old man,
you've had the old rattle-trap tuned because of the hope that rises
eternal. Visions keep on coming to you of a woman, some indistinct,
shadowy, composite creature of your imagination. You expect her to float
into your room, in the dim future and in defiance of all propriety, and
sit down before that ancient spinet.
"You keep it ready for her; it awaits her coming. To tell you the truth,
I'm glad you had it tuned. It shows that you still possess some human
traits. I'll come, some day, and we'll go over and capture Frieda Long.
We will take her to dinner at Camus, and give her a benedictine and six
cups of black coffee. After that we'll get a derrick and hoist her to
your top floor, and she'll play Schubert, till the cows come home or the
landlady puts us out. She's a wonder!"
"She's a great artist and a dear, lovable woman," I declared.
"That's probably why she never had a love story," conjectured Gordon.
"Always had so much affection for the general that she could never
descend to the particular. By the way, I went to her studio for a look
at her portrait of Professor Burberry."
"It's good, isn't it?"
"Man alive! It's so good, I should think the old fellow would be
offended. Through her big dabs of paint he's shown up to the life. You
can see his complacency bursting out like a flaming sunflower. Upon his
homely mug are displayed all the platitudes of Marcus Aurelius. He is
instinct with ignorance that Horace was a drummer for Italian wines and
an agent for rural residences, just a smart advertiser, a precursor of
the fellows who write verse for the Road of Anthracite or canned soup,
and Burberry has never found it out. He would buy splinters from the
wooden horse of Troy, and only avoids gold bricks because they're
modern. It's a stunning picture!"
That's one reason why I am so fond of Gordon. He's a great portraitist,
and far more successful than Frieda, but he is genuine in his admiration
of good work. He is rather too cynical, of course, but at the bottom of
it there usually lies good advice to his friends. I'm very proud he
continues to stick to me.
"I understand he was greatly pleased," I told him, "and I was awfully
glad that Frieda got the commission. She needed it."
"Yes, I told her that she ought to go off for a rest in the country," he
remarked, "but it seems she has one of her other queer ideas that must
be worked out at once. She itched to be at it, even while she was
painting Burberry. Mythological, I think, as usual, that latest notion
of hers. Some demigod whispering soft nothings to a daughter of men.
Showed me a dozen charcoal compositions for it, all deucedly clever. And
how are the other animals in the menagerie you live in now?"
That's a way Gordon has. From one subject he leaps to another like a
canary hopping on the sticks of his cage; but there is method in his
madness. He swiftly exhausts the possibilities of a remark and goes to
another without losing time.
"The animals," I answered, "are a rather dull and probably uninteresting
lot. First, come two girls who live in a hall bedroom, together."
"It shows on their part an admirable power of concentration."
"I suppose so; their conversation is chiefly reminiscent and plentifully
dotted with 'says I' and 'says she' and 'says he.' They are honest young
persons and work in a large candy-shop. Hence they must be surfeited
with sweets at a deplorably early age."
"Not with all of them; they will find some hitherto untasted, but just
as cloying in the end," remarked Gordon.
"I hope not. There is also an elderly couple living on the bounty of a
son who travels in collars and cuffs. Sells them, you know. Then I've
seen three men who work somewhere and occasionally comment upon what
they see in the newspaper. Murders fill them with joy, and, to them,
accidents are beer and skittles. I suspect that they esteem themselves
as what they are pleased to call 'wise guys,' but they are of refreshing
innocence and sterling honesty. One of them borrowed a dollar from me,
the other day, to take the two girls to the movies. He returned it on
next pay day."
"Look out, David, he may be trying to establish a credit," Gordon warned
me. "You are such an easy mark!"
"I'll be careful," I assured him. "Then we have a poor relation of the
landlady. He looks out for the furnace in winter and is a night watchman
in a bank. An inoffensive creature who reads the papers the other
boarders throw away."
"Altogether it makes up a beautiful and cheering totality of ineptitude,
endowed with the souls of shuttles or cogwheels," opined Gordon.
"Well, as Shylock says, if you prick them, they bleed," I protested. "At
any rate they must have some close affinity with the general scheme of
Nature."
"Nature, my dear Dave, is a dustbin in which a few ragmen succeed in
finding an occasional crust of dry bread wherewith to help fill the pot
and make their hearts glad. It is a horribly wasteful organization by
which a lady cod produces a million eggs that one fish may possibly
reach maturity and chowder. Four trees planted on a hill commonly die,
but, if you stick in a few thousands, there may be a percentage of
survivals, besides nuts for the squirrels. Humanity represents a few
tall trees and a host of scrubs."
Thus does Gordon always lay down the law, to which I generally listen
with some amusement. He is dogmatic and incredulous, though he lacks
scepticism in regard to his own opinions.
"Then all honor to the scrubs, my dear Gordon!" I interjected. "I admire
and revere the courage and persistency with which they keep on growing,
seeking a bit of sunlight here and there, airing their little passions,
bearing their trials bravely. But I forgot to mention another inmate of
my caravanserai. She's only there for a day or two, in a room opposite
mine, hitherto vacant and only tenanted yesterday. I met her as she was
coming up the stairs. She walked heavily, poor thing. I could only see
her by the dim light of the gas-jet on the landing. It was a young face,
deeply lined and unhappy. Downstairs I came across Mrs. Milliken, my
landlady, who explained that the person I had met expected to go next
day to a hospital. The Milliken woman had known her husband. He went off
to the war, months ago, and the young wife's been teaching French and
giving piano lessons, till she couldn't work any longer. The French
government allows her twenty-five or thirty cents a day."
"I'm glad it keeps a paternal eye on the wives of its brave defenders,"
remarked Gordon.
"It does, to that extent, but it doesn't go very far in this country.
She has a remarkable face; looks a good deal like that Madonna of
Murillo's in the Louvre."
"That's a back number at this stage of the world's history. Most of us
prefer snub noses. I notice that you said she plays the piano."
"I don't see what----"
"Well, you've just had yours tuned. Oh! I forgot you said she was going
off to the hospital. Never mind, Dave, they come out again, so don't
worry. I've known you to be disturbed for a whole week over somebody's
sick dog and to go two blocks out of your way to steer a strayed and
unpleasantly ragged blind man. What is it, appendicitis?"
"Mrs. Milliken darkly hinted, I think, that it was an expected baby."
"Oh! Well, I suppose a baby had to go with a Murillo; the picture would
have been incomplete. I'm glad that this particular case appears to be a
perfectly safe one."
"What do you know about it?" I asked.
"I mean from your standpoint. I dare presume that the Milliken female
has a holy horror of sprouting infants, like all landladies. She would
naturally foresee a notice to quit from the old couple, disturbed in
their slumbers, and extravagance in the use of hot water and linen would
stare her in the face. You have made me sympathize with you for nothing,
for your Murillo-woman will vanish into space and become the handmaiden
of a scrub in the making. Henceforth, the case will only interest the
Bureau of Vital Statistics and the manufacturers of improvements on
mother's milk. Give me another cigarette."
I handed him the cardboard box, for, although I have a silver case, I
never know where it is. If I did, I wouldn't use it since I don't
believe in flaunting one's vices. He took a cigarette, tapped it on the
back of his hand, and engaged in conversation the lonely policeman, who
had strolled over to see that we were not flouting the majesty of the
law by dozing on the bench. He remarked that the night was fine but
warm, Gordon assenting. Then my friend suddenly asked him what kind of
boots he wore, and put down the address most carefully on his cuff,
thanking him effusively, after which the guardian walked off,
ponderously.
"Will you kindly explain your object?" I asked Gordon, who has what the
French call the _coquetterie du pied_ and asserts there's only one man
in New York who can make boots, a delusion that costs him about fifteen
dollars a pair.
"You're not lacking in sympathy," he instructed me, "but, on your part,
the feeling is but an unintelligent instinct. Any idiot can feel sorry
for a cripple or a man compelled by poverty to smoke cheap tobacco. I
now call your attention to the fact that this old minion is ancient and
corpulent. He's on his feet during all working hours, and his
cogitations must often turn to his nether extremities. He carefully
nurses them, while he raps those of lawless slumberers on these seats.
Civilly, I spoke to him of the subject uppermost in his mind, and now he
has left us, happy in the thought that he has put a fellowman on the
right road. That's what I call taking a sympathetic interest in a
deserving old ass. You didn't suppose for a moment that I'd wear such
beastly things, did you?"
"You would rather go barefooted," I told him.
"I would," he assented. "If Gordon McGrath appeared in the street, naked
as to his toes, the papers would mention the fact. The _Banner_ would
send me the famed Cordelia, who would insist on photographing my feet
for publication in a Sunday supplement, with a hint to the effect that I
am a rather well known painter. It would be an advertisement."
"If I went without boots, benevolent old ladies would stop me and hand
out copper pennies," I remarked, without jealousy.
"You just wait till the 'Land o' Love' is out, old man," he told me,
"and the same old dames will write for your autograph."
Gordon is quite daffy over the book I sent to my publishers last week.
He has read the first, one middle and the last chapter, and predicts
great things for it. Of course, I know better, for it will be just like
the others. From four to six thousand copies sold, a few flattering
notices, mostly in journals unheard of, and swift oblivion after some
months. But I care nothing that I may be a scrub among writers, for the
occupation suits me. I am not ambitious, and I can rise late in the
morning, pound the keys of my old machine for an hour before lunch,
waste a good part of the afternoon in one of the libraries, and go to
work again after the hand-organs and knife-grinders have been abed some
hours. Then, some time before sunrise, the rattle of milk-carts remind
me of Mrs. Milliken's bedspring and mattress, and I go to bed. I am not
doing so badly, and sell one or two short stories every month. Last year
I opened an account in the savings bank. The time may come when I shall
be classed among the malefactors of great wealth.
"But one reader ever wrote to me," I finally answered. "It was a young
person anxious to know whether I could recommend the 'City's Wrath' as a
birthday present to a Baptist aunt. I advised against it, thus cheating
myself out of ten per cent. royalty on a dollar thirty-five."
"Oh! She'd have sent a second-hand copy," he answered consolingly, and
shifted to a discussion of the ultimate blackening of vermilions, which
seemed to give him some concern.
After this he looked at his watch and declared he had just twenty-five
minutes to get to the Lambs Club. That's just like him; he will loll and
sprawl around for hours with you, looking like a man without a
responsibility in the world, and suddenly arise and sprint away to far
regions, always arriving in the nick of time. My way is to prepare far
in advance to meet my rare engagements, to think of them persistently,
and, usually, to arrive ten minutes late.
I walked over to the subway with him, at such a breathless pace that I
wondered if the friendly policeman would change his mind about us,
should we meet him in crossing the square. Gordon left me at the
entrance, with a wave of one hand, the other searching for a nickel, and
I was permitted to return leisurely to my domicile, in a profuse
perspiration. I felt my wilted collar, knowing that Gordon would
unquestionably reach the club, looking spick and span. That's also one
of his traits.
As I crossed the square again, I saw a belated tramp leading an
emaciated yellow dog by a string. The man looked hungrier than the dog,
and I broke all precepts of political economy by handing him a dime. He
was blameworthy, for he should have looked out for himself, and not have
assumed foolish responsibilities. He was entirely wrong. What business
had he to seek affection, to require the faithfulness of a rust-colored
mongrel? How dared he ask charity that should have gone to the widow and
orphan, wherewith to feed a useless quadruped? I sat down again, for it
was only midnight, and thought pleasantly upon the vagaries of human
nature. Suddenly, a splendid story suggested itself to me about a dog
and tramp. It would be good for about four thousand words, and I hurried
away to Mrs. Milliken's lest the inspiration might vanish on the way. I
would have a dog all but human, a tramp all but dog, and the animal
would sacrifice itself for a master redeemed at last by the spectacle of
canine virtue. I knew just what magazine might accept it. A few minutes
later I reached the house, which, like the Milliken woman, has seen
better days. The frittering brownstone and discolored brick suit me as
naturally as a hole in the sand befits a prairie dog. I let myself in,
softly, with due regard to the slumbers of people compelled by the
tragedy of life to go to bed at the behest of a clock, and trod the
creaking stairs in utter darkness, guided by a friendly but shaky
balustrade. Then I reached my landing, opened my door, turned on the
light, put on my slippers and fired my coat on the bed. As soon as I had
dropped my collar and tie on the floor, I was ready for work and sat
down to my machine. Thank goodness, the inspiration had remained;
clearly and cogently the sentences flowed; after I had finished the
first page, I was already weeping in spirit for my noble dog. Then,
suddenly, came a rap at my door, hurried, eager, impatient.
"Great Heavens!" I thought at once. "I am to be interrupted because that
blessed woman objects to loud typewriting at one a.m. I'm glad she's
going away to the hospital."
I went to the door, assuming my most austere mien, and opened it.