Chapter 3

ON THE SUBJECT OF JANITORS

I used to pride myself on being practical and on possessing no small degree of that peculiar brand of sense known as "horse." However, like most women inclined to take a rosy view of their virtues and to pass lightly over their obvious faults, I know now that I prided myself on the one thing in my make-up conspicuous by its absence. For I am luxurious to a degree, and so fond of beauty and grace that I feel with the man who said, "Give me the luxuries of life and I will do without the necessities."

This explanation is due to any man, woman, or child who has ever lived in a New York apartment, and who is moved to follow the fortunes of the Jardines further. Also this conversation took place before some of the events already narrated transpired, and while we were still at the Waldorf.

"Now, Aubrey," I said, "to begin at the beginning, marriage is supposed to perfect existence all around, isn't it?"

"It does," said Aubrey.

"No, now, I am speaking seriously. It has fed the mental and spiritual side of us, why not begin life with the determination to make it oil the wheels of daily existence? Why not bend our energies to avoiding the pitfalls of the ordinary mortal, and let _us_ lead a perfect life."

"Very well," said the Angel.

"Now in permitting housekeeping to conquer, most people become slaves to the small ills of life, which I wish to avoid."

"Get to the point," said Aubrey, encouragingly, fearing, I suppose, that if he did not give the conversation a fillip, I might go on in that strain for ever, which would be wearing.

"Well, the point is this. I've never known what it was to have good service in a private house, except abroad. Now even when people bring excellent servants over from London and Paris, they go all to pieces in a year. It's in the air of America."

"Well?" said Aubrey.

"Well, of course we have perfect service here in this hotel, and it seems to me that the nearest approach to that would be in one of those smart apartment-houses, where everything is done for you outside of your four walls. Then with Mary, who seems to be a delightful creature, all we need do is to be careful in the selection of a janitor. Do you follow me?"

"You have not finished," said Solomon.

"Quite true, oh, wise man of the East! Another of the trials of my life has always been to get letters mailed."

"To get letters _mailed_?" said Aubrey.

"To get letters mailed," I repeated, firmly. "Every woman knows that it is no trouble to write them, but the problem of leaving them on the hall-table for the first person who goes out to mail, the lingering fear when one doesn't hear promptly that the letter was lost or never went; the danger of somebody covering them up with papers and sweeping them off to be burned; the impossibility of running to the box with each one; the impoliteness of refusing the friend who offers to mail them permission even to touch them,--oh, Aubrey, really, the chief worry of my whole life has been to get letters mailed!"

"The most expensive apartment we looked at had a mail-chute," said my husband, thoughtfully, after a moment of silence.

"Well," I hazarded, timidly, "the only difference between a flat and an apartment is in the rent."

"That apartment had an ice-box and a sideboard built in, and a mail chute," repeated Aubrey.

"Yes, it did, as well as the most respectful janitor I ever saw. Did you notice him?"

"Was he the one who was cross-eyed?"

"Well, yes, I think his eyes weren't quite straight. But that may have been one reason why he was so gentle and deferential. I have often noticed that persons who are afflicted in some painful way are often the very kindest and best, as if the spiritual had developed at the expense of the physical."

"Well, Faith, if your heart is set on that one we must have it."

"I know the rent is exorbitant, but I intend to get all of my amusement and recreation out of my home, so count balls and receptions and functions out--or rather count them in the rent," I said, "for instead of going to the theatre as we have been doing, I want to give little dinners--real dinners to people we love, and give them with a view to the enjoyment of our guests rather than that of ourselves. I want to make a fine art of the selection of guests in their relation to each other."

"I'd like nothing better," declared Aubrey, "but don't you know that you won't be called upon to do much of that sort of thing the first winter, for everybody we know will be entertaining us."

"There's one other point I'd like to explain," I said. "And that is that I shall never entertain anybody whom I simply 'feel called upon' to entertain, nor, if I like people, shall I count favours with them. I shall conform to conventionality simply as a matter of dignity. It is the privilege of your friends to make the first advances to me because I am a stranger to most of them. But I want to make a practice of hospitality for my own sake. I want to see if the open house we kept in the South cannot be accomplished in New York. I never, for the good of my own soul, want to grow as cold and calculating as some so-called hospitable women whom I have met in the North."

Aubrey looked at me comprehendingly.

"I know," I said, smiling, "that it sounds to a hardened New Yorker like yourself about like the interview of a young actress who declares that she intends to elevate the stage. But in my case, I am in the position of one who doesn't want the stage to lower her. I don't want to grow cold, Aubrey, and I hope never to allow a friend to leave my house at meal-time without at least an invitation to remain and make, if necessary, a convenience of us. What are friends for, I should like to know?"

"From the position you have just stated I should think your definition of a friend would be 'a man or woman who can be imposed upon with impunity.'"

"Let them impose upon me if they want to," I declared, stoutly. "As long as I have respectful service, I will let those I love make a door-mat of me!"

"A slightly volcanic door-mat, I should say," observed the Angel. "You would allow yourself to be stamped upon just about as humbly as a charge of dynamite, and the remonstrance in both cases would be similar."

I could not help remembering this conversation after we had moved in and we had been settled by the efforts of the family of the cross-eyed janitor.

I never enjoyed anything in my life as I enjoyed moving into our first home. It was on the top floor, overlooking the park from the front windows, while the back gave upon a stretch of neat little flower gardens with the Hudson shining like a narrow silver ribbon between us and the undulating Jersey shore.

Every room was light. Every room opened on the street, and the sunlight came pouring in quite as if it did not know that in most apartments the sun is an unexpected luxury. There were parquet floors throughout, and the bathroom was white marble, all except a narrow frieze of cool pale green. The woodwork was daintily carved, the dining-room was panelled in oak with two handsome china-closets built in. We had eleven closets with an extra storeroom for trunks in the basement, and enough cabinets in the kitchen and butler's pantry to stock a hotel, and as a crowning glory the front door did not open opposite the bathroom or kitchen as is the case in most apartments, but was near the front like the home of a Christian, and the dining-room gave into the front room with a largeness of vista which made us feel like millionaires.

Does this read like a fairy-tale?

As we surveyed our domain, I felt such a flood of gratitude and pride of home sweep over my soul that I said to Aubrey:

"I actually feel like praying."

The Angel smiled an inscrutable smile, the exact meaning of which I did not catch, but it was not one of derision. Rather I should say that it had in it a waiting quality, as of a knowing one who intended to give thanks after he had tested a meal, instead of a reckless wight who in faith called down a blessing on a napkin and salt-cellars. But my gratitude was largely "a lively appreciation of favours to come."

I have no tale of woe to relate of things which did not come in time. Our purchases promised for a certain day arrived as scheduled, were uncrated on the sidewalk, with Aubrey and me hanging out of the sixth floor window to watch them. The gentle-mannered janitor and his buxom daughter were cleaning the last of the windows, and such was the genius of fortune and Mary that at three that same afternoon, when the best man called to see how we were getting on, there was nothing left to do but to hang pictures, so we set him to doing that while we sat around in languid delight and bossed the job. But it was thirsty work, and the best man rested often. Such perfection of planning seemed to irritate him, although he is by nature a gentle soul, for he said, "I must say you have done well, but I'll bet there is one thing you have forgotten."

"Not at all," said Aubrey, who was at college with the best man. "There are six siphons on the ice now, and six more under the kitchen sink. The corkscrew is on the mantel."

All the pictures were hung before dinner. That is, they were hung for the first time. The pictures in our apartment have travelled. One by one they have journeyed from the smoking-room down the long hall, stopping a day or two in each room, and all finding a resting-place except one, which will not look well in any colour, any spot, on any wall, nor in any light. It was a wedding-present from some one we like, or Aubrey would have put his foot through it long ago. As it is, it is under the blue room bed, whence we drag it every once in awhile to admire the frame and say, "I wonder if it wouldn't go there."

As long as that picture remains unhung, a vacant wall space in any house is full of interest and possibility to us, and if we ever move, we shall select a spot for that picture first, and consider the rent and plumbing second.

The janitor's manners continued perfect. Even Mary found no fault with him, and as my appreciation for anything is plainly evident in my manner, both Mary and the janitor felt that in me they had found a friend, and they waxed confidential withal.

One day he came up to clean windows, and when he mentioned the "parlour," I said:

"Don't call this room a parlour. I have neither parlour nor drawing-room. This small room is a smoking-room, and this other is a library. I wanted Mr. Jardine to feel at liberty to smoke all over the house."

The janitor looked about him and noticed the lack of gilt chairs and lace curtains.

"Will you excuse an old man for speaking, Mrs. Jardine, and not think me impertinent if I make free to say that if more young ladies started housekeeping with such ideas, homes would be happier. I make bold to say that you will not have trouble in keeping Mr. Jardine at home evenings."

I blushed with pleasure at having won the approval of this gentle soul. But when I told Aubrey he said:

"Poor old fellow! I saw his wife to-day. She weighs well on to four hundred, and has the air of an anarchist queen. She was engaged in reducing the agent to his proper level, and _I_ fled."

Evidently the agent conquered, for, alas! within a week we had a new janitor,--the opposite of my friend in every respect. Harris, the new janitor, was young, sprightly, self-confident, and an American of the type "I'm just as good as you are." This challenge lay so plainly in his eye that almost involuntarily I said, "I know you are," before I told him that the elevator squeaked.

I hated him from the moment I saw him, but I gave him an extra large fee to bribe, in the cowardly manner of all citizens of the land of the free and the home of the brave, a servant to do pleasantly the duties he is otherwise paid to do. He had three little children, and when one of them had a birthday I sent them ice-cream and a birthday cake. When his wife fell ill I sent her my own doctor, for her little pale, pinched, three-cornered face appealed to me. She did all the janitor's work. It was her voice at the dumb-waiter instead of his, and once Aubrey found her emptying a garbage can nearly as large as she was, when he went down to see why Harris didn't answer our bell. Aubrey found Harris asleep.

We discovered these things by degrees, and gradually I came to feel that my mail-chute was the only real, continuous luxury we had gained with this awful rent. Still we avoided discussing the matter. By ignoring it, we could keep ourselves deceived a little longer to the fact that we were being robbed by our own foolishness.

One day I invited the dearest old lady, over ninety years old, to luncheon. Her daughter was to bring her in her carriage, and I made Aubrey promise to be in the house by eleven o'clock in case she needed assistance, and I prepared to have a beautiful day. For weeks we had planned for this festival, for it was Mrs. Scofield's ninety-first birthday and would probably be her only outing during the winter. At ten o'clock I had word that she felt well enough to come, so I told Aubrey to bring over the ninety-one roses he had ordered in honour of her birthday.

He came in looking a florist shop. We arranged them, and waited and waited and waited. At two o'clock, the most disappointed of mortals, we sat down to luncheon.

"I am afraid something has happened," I said, and the anxiety and disappointment threw me into such a headache that I spent the afternoon in a darkened room, and had tea and toast sent in for my dinner.

About eight o'clock Aubrey persuaded me to go out for a little walk, so we started. We had no sooner got outside our door than we began to feel impending calamity in the air. The elevator was not running. There was a paper saying so fastened to the bell. We walked down five flights of stairs, occasionally looking at each other ominously. My headache vanished as if by magic. I felt strong and murderous.

On the table in the hall lay a dozen letters, which had arrived during the day, a telegram from Uncle John, asking us to dine at the Waldorf and share their box to see Irving and Terry and to sup with them at Sherry's that night. It was then a quarter to nine. We were not dressed, and we were half an hour from the theatre. There was also a note from Mrs. Scofield's daughter saying that they had come at half-past twelve, but found no hall-boy, no janitor, and the elevator not running, so, after vainly trying to communicate with us, they had been obliged to go home again.

I simply wept with rage and mortification. Aubrey started for the basement with me at his heels. I felt that the Angel could not cope alone with such a situation. We found Mrs. Harris pale, trembling, and apologetic. She said her husband was not there.

Aubrey turned away breathing vengeance.

"Aubrey," I said, firmly, "Harris is in that room."

"No, no, Mrs. Jardine! Indeed he is not!" insisted the little woman.

"I am sorry for you, Mrs. Harris," I said, "but you must allow me to see for myself." And with that I made as if to pass her, but Aubrey held me back.

"I'll go," he said.

He went and found Harris calmly reading the newspaper, with his feet on the mantel.

"Why isn't the elevator running?" demanded Aubrey.

"Because the hall-boy left this morning, and there was nobody to run it," said the man, impudently keeping his seat, with his hat on, and not even putting his feet on the floor.

"Is it broken?" asked my husband.

"It is not. I turned the power off, that's all."

"Why didn't you run it yourself?" asked Aubrey.

"It isn't my business. That's why, young feller. Now you know, don't you!"

"Don't you dare speak to my husband in that manner," I broke in. Aubrey shook his head at me. It was cruel of him, for I do love a fight.

"You come out this minute and start that elevator," said Aubrey.

"I'll do nothing of the sort. You'll walk up those five nights of stairs this night," said the janitor. Oh, how I wished I had that fee back!

Mrs. Harris plucked imploringly at my skirt.

"Harris, aren't you ashamed of yourself?" I said. "Look at your poor wife just out of bed, and you have lost this good place by this day's work. You and your family will not know where to lay your heads within a week."

"And how do you know that? I'll keep this place as long as I please. _I_ stand in with the agent. I suppose you think because you've been good to the children that you can run me, but let me tell you that you've not done half that you should! So you just shut up and go back where you belong."

Aubrey made a leap for him, but Mrs. Harris threw herself between them and I fastened myself to Aubrey's coat-tails. This was more than I had bargained for.

"No, Aubrey, come. Let us once for all declare our independence. For some time I have suspected that there was collusion between janitors and agents. Now let's get to the bottom of it."

By holding out such a prospect to him, I got the Angel up-stairs, where we poured forth our souls in a letter to the agent.

He called, listened to us with polite incredulity, and said he would hear Harris's side, as if he wished to judge impartially between two criminals.

We held on to ourselves while he consulted the gentleman below stairs. When he came back he said:

"Harris denies everything. Now who am I to believe?"

For once the Angel rose to the occasion.

"Mr. Jepson, you may believe whom you please if you have no more decency than to put the word of a gentleman against that of a drunken servant. You have violated the terms of our lease, and unless Harris is dismissed inside of a week our apartment is at your disposal."

"Very well, Mr. Jardine," said Jepson, "if you insist on our dismissing a janitor for his first offence without even giving him a second chance, then there is nothing to do but to agree to your demand."

Aubrey bowed in a truly haughty manner. The Angel!

"I so insist," he said. The agent left us.

"Aubrey," I said, thoughtfully, "we have gained a gallant victory over the janitor, but I fear the battle with the agent will be the bloodiest of our campaign."

But we looked forward hopefully. Like all man-eating monsters, having once tasted human blood, we thirsted for more.