Among the most remarkable people I have never met is the family that had
just moved out of the apartment we were going to rent. My knowledge of
those strangers is based entirely on odd bits of information casually
furnished by the renting-agent in the course of a single interview. Yet
they are more actual and alive to me than many people with whom I have
lived in intimate communion for years. Is it our fate ever to meet? I
look forward to the event and dread it. I look forward with eagerness to
a new sensation, and I fear lest the reality fall short of the vivid
image I have built up with the help of the renting-agent.
In the matter of picking out an apartment, it is an invariable rule that
I shall inspect the place and decide whether I like it. This I do after
Emmeline has paid down a month's rent and selected the wall-paper. On
questions of such nature, Emmeline is the Balkan States and I am the
European Concert. She creates a _status quo_ and I ratify. In the
present instance, however, I was really given a free hand. Emmeline
admitted she was suffering from headache when she told the renting-agent
that she rather liked the place. Later she recognised that the rooms
were altogether too small. What had swayed her judgment was that the
bedrooms had the sun in the morning and we should thus be saving on our
doctor's bills. In this respect expensive apartments are like
high-powered motor cars and a long summer vacation on the St. Lawrence.
They may be all easily paid for by cutting in two the doctor's annual
bills amounting to ninety-odd dollars. However, I understood that this
time Emmeline would be glad to be overruled.
The European Concert had its first shock when it was confronted with the
size of the nursery bedroom. The renting-agent called my attention to
the wall-paper. It had a very pretty border, showing scenes from
"Mother Goose"; this at once revealed the purpose for which the room was
intended. But I pointed out to him that if we put a chest of drawers
against the wall and a little armchair in the corner, the crib would
come hard against the steam pipe and would project halfway across the
window.
"Oh," he said, looking up in surprise. "There's a crib?"
"Naturally," I said, "we should want this nursery for the baby."
This did not seem to strike him as altogether unreasonable, but he was
puzzled nevertheless.
"You see," he explained, "the people who were here before you had a
music-box."
When a renting-agent discerns signs of disappointment in a prospective
tenant he immediately calls his attention to the shower. The agent's
face as he ushered me into the bath-room and pointed to the shower was
irradiated by a smile of ecstatic beatitude. He reminded me of Mme.
Nazimova when she waits for the Master Builder to tumble from the
church tower.
"Does the shower work?" I asked.
"Why, of course it does," he said.
"That is very interesting," I said. "Most of them either drip or else
the hot water comes down all at once. I don't suppose you have to keep
away to one side and thrust your finger forward timidly before you
venture under the shower?"
"Not at all," he said. "This has splendid pressure. Just turn it on for
yourself."
I did as I was told, and after he had finished drying himself with his
handkerchief he asked me whether this wasn't one of the best showers I
had ever come across. I agreed, and he then told me that the very latest
ideas in modern bath-room construction had been utilised by the
architect. As for the people who had just moved out, they were so
delighted with the shower that they spent the greater part of the day in
the tub, often doing their reading there.
On our way towards the library and living-room he called my attention
to the air in the hall. He said that if there was any breeze stirring
anywhere we were sure to get it in that particular apartment. This
puzzled me, because he had told Emmeline the same thing about another
apartment which she had inspected and which faces south and west, while
this one faces north and east. Suppose now a good northeast breeze-- But
we were now in the main bedroom and he was asking me to take notice of a
small iron safe let into the wall at the height of one's head.
"This," he said, "is extremely useful for jewels and old silver. You
don't find it in every apartment house, I assure you."
"That _is_ convenient," I said, and looked out of the window, "and of
course one could keep other valuables in there, too, like bonds and
mortgages and such things."
"A great many people do," he said.
We passed another bedroom which was so small that even the agent looked
apologetic. He said it was the maid's room, but that the people who had
just moved out had a woman come in by the day and used the chamber as a
store-room. He supposed we should prefer to have our maid sleep in the
house.
"We do," I said, "but then we might get a short maid. The Finns, for
example, are a notoriously chunky race and attain their full height at
an early age. Let us look at the library."
I did not like the room at all. It faced north and looked out upon the
rear of a tall building only thirty feet away. I asked him if the light
was always as bleak as it was to-day.
"You get all the light you want in here," he said. "Lots of people, you
know, object to the sun. It's hard on the eyes. The people who had this
apartment always kept the window shades down. It made the room so cosy."
I shook my head. The dimensions of the room were quite disappointing. It
was not only small, but there was little wall space, because the
architect had provided no less than three doorways which were supposed
to be covered with portières. I presume that architects find open
doorways much easier to plan than any other part of a room.
He was surprised at my objections. There was plenty of space, he
thought. As libraries go it was one of the largest he had seen. Here you
put an armchair, and here you put a small, compact writing-desk, and you
had plenty of floor space in the middle for a small table.
"And the bookcases?" I asked.
He looked downcast.
"You have bookcases?" he said.
"We have six."
He was about to say something, but I anticipated him.
"I know, of course," I said, "that the people who lived here before used
to keep their books in the kitchen, but I hardly see how we could manage
that. It's too much trouble, and besides I am somewhat absent-minded. It
would be absurd if I should walk into the kitchen for a copy of 'Man and
Superman,' and come back with half a grapefruit on a plate. And,
furthermore, I like a library where a man can get up occasionally from
his writing-table and pace up and down while he is clarifying his ideas.
You couldn't do that here."
"There is a nice, long hall," he said. "You might pace up and down
that." But he saw I was unconvinced, and he did not go to much pains in
exhibiting the dining-room, merely remarking that it did look rather
small, but the people who last lived in the apartment were accustomed to
go out for their meals.
You will see now why I am so intensely interested in the tenants whose
successors we were on the point of being. With life growing more flat
and monotonous about us, how refreshing to come across a family which
keeps a music-box in the nursery, does its reading in the bath-tub, and
never eats in the dining-room. Is it studied originality on their part
or are they born rebels? And how far does their eccentricity go? Does
the head of the house, when setting out for his office in the morning,
walk upstairs? Do they walk downstairs when they wish to go to bed?
I am still to meet these highly original citizens of New York, but their
numbers must be increasing. Every year I hear of more and more former
tenants who prefer dark rooms and libraries without shelf space. I have
never asked the renting-agent why, being so contented with their
surroundings, his tenants should have moved out. But probably it is
because they have found an apartment where the rooms are still smaller
and the windows have no sun at all.