Chapter 7

THE PRICE OF QUIET

Mr. and Mrs. Jimmie were among our frequent visitors in the new apartment. Jimmie can never realize that I am really married, and in view of our manifold travelling experiences together he regards the Angel with an eye in which sympathy and apprehension are mingled.

His congratulations at the wedding were unique. "I'd like to congratulate you, old man," he said, wringing the Angel's hand, "but honestly I think you are up against it."

To me at their first call he said:

"What will you do with such a man--you, who have gone scrapping through life, browbeating gentle souls like myself into giving you your own way on every point, and letting you ride rough-shod over us without a protest? _He_ requires consideration and tact and a degree of courtesy--none of which you possess. And you can't drag him away from his writing to go to the morgue or a pawn-shop with you the way you did me in Europe. And most of all he must have quiet. Gee whiz! There will be hours together when you must hold your tongue. You'll die!"

"No, I won't," I declared. "You don't know him. He is an Angel." And with that the argument closed, for Jimmie went off into such a fit of laughter that he choked, and his wife came in a fright to find me pounding him on the back with unnecessary force.

"But why," said Jimmie, when order had been restored, "did you take an apartment, when Aubrey's chief requirement is absence of noise! Furthermore, why do you live in New York, that city which reigns supreme in its accumulation of unnecessary bedlam?"

"Ah, we have thought of all those things," I said, proudly. "First, we avoided a street paved with cobblestones. Second, we took the top floor. Third, there are no houses opposite--only the Park."

"But best of all," said the Angel, speaking for the first time, as Jimmie noted, "it is in the lease that no children are allowed, for children, after all, are the most noise-producing animals which exist. So if an apartment can be noise-proof--"

"Exactly," cut in Jimmie. "If!"

"That's what I say--if it can," said the Angel, "this one should prove so. Faith and I certainly took sufficient pains in selecting it."

"Well, I don't want to discourage you," said Jimmie, and then, after the manner of those who begin their sentences in that way, he proceeded to discourage us in every sort of ingenious fashion which lay at his command. Verily, friends are invaluable in domestic crises!

Nevertheless, his gloomy prophecies disturbed us. We tried to make light of our fears--to pooh-pooh them--to pretend a scorn for Jimmie's opinions, which in secret we were far from feeling, for the fact remained that the Jimmies were experienced and we were not. "Living in an apartment," Jimmie had declared, "is like driving. You may have perfect control over your own horse, but you have constantly to fear the bad driving of other people."

These words kept ringing in our ears. We never forgot for a moment that there were people under us. We crept in gently if a supper after the theatre kept us out until two in the morning. We never allowed the piano to be played after ten in the evening nor before breakfast. We gave up the loved society of our dog, and boarded him in the country because dogs, cats, and parrots were not allowed.

But day by day we found that each one of these self-inflicted maxims was being violated by all the other residents. Singing popular songs, a pianola, half a dozen fox terriers, laughing and shouting good nights in the corridors kept us awake half the night, and worst of all, what we patiently submitted to as visitors with children, we, to our horror, discovered were residents with children, and children of the most detested sort at that. Five of these hyenas in human form lived below us. Their parents were of the easy-going sort. They had all come from a plantation in Virginia, and they had brought their plantation manners with them.

Now, ordinary children are bad enough, and even well-trained ones at that, in the matter of noise, but the noises made by the Gottlieb children were something too appalling to be called by the plain, ordinary word. They had never learned to close a door. They slammed it, and every cup and saucer on our floor danced in reply. When their mother wanted them, she never thought of going to the room they were in to speak to them. She sat still and called. They yelled back defiant negatives or whining questions, and then the negro nurse was sent, and she hauled them in by one arm, their legs dragging rebelliously on the floor and their other arm clutching wildly at pillars or furniture to delay their reluctant progress.

They had a piano, and all five of them took piano lessons. Out of the kindness of their hearts they invited the three children who lived opposite them on the same floor to practise on their piano, so that from seven in the morning until nine at night we were treated to five-finger exercises and scales. Their favourite diversion was a game which consisted of the entire eight racing through their apartment, jumping the nursery bed, and landing against the wall beyond. They had hardwood floors and no rugs.

And the Angel must have quiet in which to write!

We discussed the situation, and resolved to take action. Move? Certainly not! We had done our best in taking this apartment, and we modestly felt that our best was not to be sneezed at. We would make the other people move,--the impertinent people who had dared to produce children off the premises, and then to introduce them ready-made in a non-children apartment-house. Of course a landlord could not protect himself against the home-grown article, so to speak, but he could defend both himself and us against articles of foreign manufacture, and so flagrantly, as evidenced by the names of these "made in Germany."

Other noises which stunned us were remediable by other means. For example, the janitor of the apartment-house which stood next had a pleasant little habit of three times a day emptying some dozen or more metal garbage-cans in the stone-paved court, and as these with their lids and handles merrily jingled back into place, a roar as if from a boiler factory rose, reverberating between the high buildings until, when it reached the sensitive ears of the Jardines, it created pandemonium.

At such times the Angel used to look at me in dumb but helpless misery. I tried bribing the janitor, but they changed so often I couldn't afford it. Then, without a word to the Angel, I appealed to the Health Department. I made a stirring plea. I set forth that not only our health, but our lives (by which I meant our pocketbooks, because the Angel could not write in a noise), were threatened, and I implored protection.

An Irishman answered. God bless soft-hearted, pleasant-spoken Irishmen! This one rescued us from a slow death by torture. He was amenable to blarney. He got it. The result was that never again did any of the serial of janitors, which ran continuously next door, empty garbage-cans in the court.

Rendered jubilant by this victory, we confidently prepared to meet the agents of our building. But before we could arrange this, Considine, the novelist who had come to New York for the winter, called. He was one of the Angel's dearest friends, and we greeted him with effusion.

"I've come to say good-bye," he said at once. "I'm off to-morrow for my farm."

"For a visit?" I cried, unwilling to believe the worst.

"No, for good. I'm done. I'm finished. New York has put an end to me!"

"Why, how do you mean?" we asked, in a breath.

"The noise! The blankety, blankety, et cetera noise of this ditto ditto town! The remainder of these remarks will be sent in a plain, sealed envelope upon application and the receipt of a two-cent stamp!"

The Angel and I looked at each other. We dared not speak.

"How--why--" I faltered at last.

It was all Considine needed--perhaps more than he needed--to set him going.

"I came here under contract, as you know. I was behindhand in my work, but I hoped that the inspiration I would receive from the society of my fellow authors would give me an impetus I lacked in the country. There I often have to spur myself to my work. Here I hoped to work more steadily and with less effort. Ye gods!" He got up and strode around the apartment. "Ye gods! What fallacies we provincials believe! I was in heaven on my farm and didn't know it! And from that celestial paradise of peace and quiet and tranquillity of nature, I deliberately came to this--with a view of bettering my surroundings! When I think of it--when I consider the money I have spent and the time I have lost--" he stopped by reason of choking.

"Why, do you know," he began again, squaring around on the Angel, "I've spent twenty thousand dollars on that apartment of mine, trying to make it sound-proof so that I could make ten thousand by writing! I rented the apartment below me--had to, in order to get a fellow out whose son was learning the violin. I've bribed, threatened, enjoined, and at the last a subway explosion of dynamite broke all the double windows and mirrors, knocked down my Italian chandeliers, and--people tell me I have no redress! Now they have started some kind of a drilling machine in the next block that runs all night, and I can't sleep. New York to live in? New York to work in? Why, I'd rather be a yellow dog in Louisville than to be Mayor of New York!"

But before he could go the bell rang and Mr. and Mrs. Jimmie walked in, so then Considine came back for ten minutes, and stayed two hours.

We told them what we had been discussing, and then we all took comfortable chairs. Cigars and tall glasses with ice and decanters and things that fizz were produced, and, as Jimmie said, "we had such a hammerfest on the City of New York as the old town hadn't experienced in many a long day."

But then, when you come to think of it, didn't she deserve it?

In New York the elevated trains thundering over your head and darkening the street, surface electric cars beneath them being run at lightning speed, the street paved with cobblestones over which delivery carts are being driven at a pace which is cruelty to animals, form a combination of noises compared to which a battery of artillery in action is a lullaby, and which I defy any other city in the world to equal. A hen crossing a country lane in front of a carriage, squawking and wild-eyed, is a picture of my state of mind whenever I have a street to cross. Yesterday there were two street-car accidents and one runaway, which I saw with my own eyes in an hour's outing, and I had no sooner locked myself in my sixth-floor apartment with a sigh of relief at being saved from sudden death when a crash came in the street below, and by hanging out of the window I saw that an electric car had struck a plate-glass delivery wagon in the rear, upset it, smashed the glass, thrown the horse on his side, and so pushed them, horse, cart, and all, for a quarter of a block before the car could be stopped. I shrieked loud and long, but in the noise of the city no one heard me, and all the good it did was to ease my own mind.

New York is a good place to come to, to be amused, or to spend money, but as a city of terrific and unnecessary noises, there is not one in the world which can compare to it.

Scissors-grinders are allowed to use a bugle--a bugle, mind you, well known to be the most far-reaching sound of all sounds, and intended to carry over the roar of even artillery, else why is it used in a battle? So this bugling begins about seven in the morning, and penetrates the most hermetically sealed apartments. Then the street-cleaners, the "White Wings," garbage and ash-can men begin their deadly rounds, and the clang of dashing empty metal cans on the stone-paved courts and areas reverberates between high buildings until one longs for the silence of the grave.

The noise and shock of blasting rock is incessant. They are blasting all along the Hudson shore and in Central Park. It sounds like cannonading, and the succession of explosions sometimes wakens one before dawn or after midnight with the frightened conviction that a foreign fleet is upon us to force us to reduce the tariff. The blasting occasionally goes a little too far, and breaks windows or brings down pieces of the ceiling. Last week it caved in a house and broke some arms and legs of the occupants. One woman went into convulsions, and was rigid for hours from the shock, but as nobody was killed no action was taken.

Old clothes men are permitted a string of bells on their carts, which all jangle out of tune and at once, while street-cries of all descriptions abound in such numbers and of such a quality that I often wonder that the very babies trundled by in their perambulators do not go into spasms with the confusion of it.

Considine and I stated all this with some excusable heat while the Angel was serving our guests with what their different tastes demanded. It always gives me a feeling of unholy joy seeing Mrs. Jimmie trying to join her husband in his low pleasures. She regarded it as a religious duty to take beer when he did while we were abroad, but in England and here he takes whiskey and soda, so as champagne is not always on tap in people's houses, sometimes she tries to emulate his example.

Have you ever seen anybody take cod-liver oil? Well, that is the look which comes over Mrs. Jimmie's face when the odour of whiskey assails her aristocratic nostrils. Nevertheless she valiantly sits the whole evening through with her long glass in her hand. The ice melts and the whole mess grows warm and nauseous, but she hangs on, sipping at it with an air of determined enjoyment painful to see. If she did as she would like, she would either hold her nose and gulp it all down at once or else she would fling glass and all out of the window.

In vain we all try to make it easy for her to refuse. If we don't offer it she looks hurt, so the kindest thing we can do is to pretend we notice nothing, and to let her believe that she is her husband's boon companion, since that is her futile ambition.

Jimmie crossed his feet, blew a cloud of smoke into the air, and carried on the attack by saying:

"London, Paris, and Berlin all put together cannot furnish the noise of New York, while the roar of Chicago is the stillness of a cathedral compared to it. And most of it, I may be allowed to state, is entirely unnecessary. The papers are full of accounts of nervous collapses, the sanatoria are crowded, while I never heard as much about insanity in the whole of my life elsewhere as I have heard in New York in one year. There is not a day in which the papers do not contain some mention of insane wards in the city hospitals, but people here are so accustomed to it, that no one except a newcomer like yourself would be likely to notice it."

Considine nodded.

"I lay fully one-half of it to the incessant noises which prey upon even strong nerves for nine months of the year without our realizing them," he said, "and these so work upon the nervous system that it only takes a slight shock to bring about a collapse, and then no weeks in the country, no physic, no tonics can avail. It means a rest cure or the insane ward. It is typical of our American civilization. New Yorkers are the most nervous people I ever saw. The children are nervous; little street urchins, who should not know what nerves are, tremble with nervous tension, while the exodus to the country on Friday nights fairly empties the town. Everybody wants to 'get away from the noise,' and it is an undisputed fact that men who have no right to allow themselves the luxury take every Saturday as a holiday, so that in many lines of business so many men are known to be out of town on Saturdays that business is practically suspended on that day except for routine work. This is true to such an extent in no other city that I know of, and why? It is the noise. Distracted nature clamours for a cessation of it, and the unfortunate who cannot afford the luxury must pay the penalty. It is a question for the Board of Health."

"Poor old chap!" said Jimmie. "It comes hard enough on us common people, but how writing chaps like you and Aubrey stand it, I can't see. I should think you'd find New York the very devil to write in."

"In some ways we do," said the Angel, "but it has its compensations. For example, not even Paris is so beautifully situated as New York. The tall office buildings in the lower end of town look down upon river sights and shipping with a broad expanse of blue water and green shores which a man would cross the ocean to see on the other side. The Hudson beautifies the West Side. Central Park is in my eyes the most beautiful park I ever saw. With its rocks and rolling greens, its trees and wild flowers, it forms a spot of loveliness that makes in the midst of the hot, rushing, busy city a dream of soothing repose. Washington Heights is a crowning wilderness looking down upon the city from Fort George, while the Sound and a glimpse of the village beyond seen through the faint blue haze of distance lend a touch of fairylike enchantment. The Jersey shore and the Palisades are one long drawn out joy, so that, turn where you will, you find New York beautiful."

"Then, too," said Mrs. Jimmie, speaking for the first time, "New York is old, and say what you will you feel the charm of the established, and it gives you a sense of satisfaction to realize that you can't detect the odour of varnish and new paint. New York has got beyond it, and has begun to take on the gray of age."

"The churches show this," I cut in. "They are beautiful stepping-places in the rush of city life. They cool and steady, and their history and traditions form a restful contrast to the bustle of the marketplace."

"But as to those who worship in these beautiful spots," said Considine, "it is safe to say that church parade in Fifth Avenue is an even smarter spectacle than church parade in Hyde Park, for American women have an air, a carriage, and a taste in dress which English women as a race can never acquire. In Hyde Park on Sunday morning, during the season, one will see half a dozen beauties whose clothes are Parisian and the loveliness of whose whole effect almost takes the breath away, but the general run of the other women makes one want to close one's eyes. In America the average woman is lovely enough to make each one worth looking at, while the word 'frump,' which is continually useful in England, might almost be dropped from the American language.

"As to manners in New York," he went on, "well, patriotic as I am, American manners in public in any city almost make me long for the outward politeness and inward insincerity of the Gallic nations. Russians and Poles are the only ones I have observed to be alike both in public and in private. In New York street-car etiquette or the etiquette of any public conveyance is something highly interesting from its variety of selfishness and rudeness."

"That is true," I said, "New York manners are seldom aggressively rude, except on the elevated trains. In other cities you are pushed about, walked over, elbowed aside, and often bodily hurt in crowds of their own selfish making. Not so in New York. Civilization has gone a step further here. In surface cars men never step on you, but they gently step ahead of you and take the seat you are aiming for, and if they can sit sidewise and occupy one and a half seats, and if you beg two of them to move closer together and let you have the remaining space, the two men may rise, one nearly always does and takes off his hat and begs you to have his place. Then all the eyes in the car are fixed on you--not reprovingly, or smilingly, or in derision or reproach, but earnestly, as if you form a social study which it might be worth their while to investigate. Never once during a year's observance of surface-car phenomena have I seen a row of luxuriously seated people make a movement to give place to a new-comer, no matter how old or how well gowned she may be. Even ladies will sometimes give their seats to each other. But they won't 'move up.'"

"In Denver," said Jimmie, "I once heard a conductor call out 'The gents will please step forward and the ladies set closter.' If I knew where that man was I would try to get him a position with the Metropolitan, for most of them feel as a conductor said here in New York when I jumped on him for not obeying my signal, 'Schmall bit do _I_ care!'"

"Then the cars themselves," I cried, "Aren't they the most awful things! I can earnestly commend the surface cars of New York as the most awkward and uncomfortable to climb in and out of that I have ever seen. I use the word 'climb' advisedly, as the step is so high that one must take both hands to hoist oneself, while the conductor is generally obliged to reach down and seize the ambitious woman by the arm to assist her. The bell rings while you are still on the lower step; the conductor says, 'Step lively, please;' the car attains its maximum of speed at one jump; the conductor puts his dirty hand on your white silk back and gives you a forward shove, and you plunge into the nearest seat, apologizing to the people on each side of you for having sat in their laps. Then comes a cry, 'Hold fast,' and around a curve you go at a speed which throws people down, and on one occasion I saw a woman pitched from her seat.

"The Boston street railway system is the most perfect of any American city that I know of. There they pursue such a leisurely course that a Boston woman never rises from her seat until the car has come to a full stop. In fact, Bee and I were identified as strangers in town by the husband of our friend who met us at the terminus of one of the street-car lines, with his carriage. His never having seen us, and approaching us without hesitation, naturally led us to ask how he knew us. He answered:

"'Oh, I saw you walking through the car before it reached the corner and standing on the platform when it stopped, so I said to myself, "There they are!"'"

"I can easily believe you," said Considine, "but in saying that the etiquette of any public conveyance in New York is interesting from its varieties of selfishness, oughtn't you to confine your statement to surface-cars, elevated roads, and ferry-boats, and oughtn't you to make an exception of that dignified relic of antiquity, the Fifth Avenue stage? The most uncomfortable vehicle going, yet let me give the angel his due--in a stage people do move up; everybody waits on everybody else; hands fare; rings for change, and pays all of the old-fashioned courtesies which went from a busy city life with the advent of the conductor, the autocrat of ill manners and indifference."

"Superstition evidently does not obtain in New York on one subject at least," said Aubrey, "and that is the bad luck supposing to accrue from crossing a funeral procession. Never in any other city in the world have I seen such rudeness exhibited toward the following of the dead to their last resting-place as I have seen in New York. The beautiful custom in Catholic countries not only of giving them the right of way, but of the men removing their hats while the procession passes, has resolved itself into a funeral procession going on the run; the driver of the hearse watching his chance and fairly ducking between trucks and surface-cars, jolting the casket over the tracks until I myself have seen the wreaths slip from their places, and sometimes for five or ten minutes the hearse separated from its following carriages by a procession of vehicles which the policeman at the crossing had permitted to interfere. Such a proceeding is a disgrace to our boasted civilization. We are not yet too busy nor too poor to allow our business to pause for a moment to let the solemn procession of the dead pass uninterrupted and in dignity to its last resting-place. Such consideration would permit the hearse to be driven at a reasonably slow pace in keeping with the mournful feelings of its followers. As it is now, New York funerals go at almost the pace of automobiles."

"My brother once told me," I said, "that I was so slow that some day I would get run over by a hearse. Not being an acrobat, that fate may yet overtake me in New York and yet be no disgrace to my activity."

"I am more afraid of automobiles," said Considine, shaking his head, "than I am of what I shall get in the next world. I wouldn't own one or even ride in one to save myself from hanging. I always 'screech,' as Faith says, when my cab meets one."

"You don't know how quickly they can be stopped, Considine," said Jimmie.

"That may be," retorted Considine, "but are you going to pad your broughams and put fenders on your cab horses?"

"I was in an electric cab not long ago," I said, "and a bicyclist rode daringly in front of us. In crossing the trolley-tracks, his bicycle naturally slackened a little, and my careful chauffeur brought the machine to a dead stop. Result that I was pitched out over the dashboard and barely saved myself from landing on my head.

"When I was gathered up and put back I asked the man why he stopped so suddenly (I admit that it was a foolish question, but as I am always one who asks the grocer if his eggs are fresh, I may be pardoned for this one), and he answered: 'Well, did you want me to kill that man?' I replied that of the two alternatives I would infinitely have preferred to kill the man to being killed myself,--a reply which so offended the dignity of my Jehu that he charged me double. I never did get on very well with cab-drivers."

Jimmie laughed. He was remembering the time I knocked a Paris cabman's hat off with my parasol to make him stop his cab. My methods are inclined to be a little forceful if I am frightened.

"But New York is a city of resources," I continued. "There is always somewhere to go! New York only wakes up at night and the streets present as brilliant a spectacle as Paris, for until the gray dawn breaks in the sky the streets are full of pleasure-seekers; cabs and private carriages flit to and fro; the clubs, restaurants, and supper-rooms are full to overflowing, the lights flare, and the ceaseless whirl of America's greatest city goes on and on. And nobody ever looks bored or tired as they do in England. We are all having a good time, and we don't care who knows it. I love New York when it is time to play."

"Well, we've about done up the old town to-night," said Jimmie, as they prepared to leave. "She has hardly a leg to stand on."

"She deserves it," said Considine, gloomily. "I'm off. I'm about to desert and go back to my cabbages. New York won't let you work. She won't help you. She won't protect you. She mocks you. She laughs in your face. I'd rather die than try to work here!"

During every word of this impassioned speech the Angel and I had been growing colder and colder. We could see ourselves just where Considine had found himself--driven out of New York by reason of its abominable noise.

"And the worst of it is," went on Considine, "is that most of this noise is so unnecessary. It comes from--"

A terrific crash came from down-stairs. Three doors slammed. Then some one screamed shrilly. Considine gazed with starting eyes at the jingling globes and glasses and actually lost a little colour.

"What is it?" he whispered.

"It is nothing," said the Angel, with a wave of the hand, "but our little friends below stairs. Our neighbour is blessed with five charming little olive-branches, who have versatile tastes in athletics, and are bubbling over with animal spirits. We think privately that they are the meanest little devils that ever cursed an apartment-house, but their noise is dear to their parents, and they would not allow it when we fain would boil the children alive or beat them with bed-slats."

Jimmie laughed heartlessly, but Considine took his head between his hands.

"They have just illustrated what I was going to say. Nobody has any regard for the rights of others. Peddlers are allowed horns, and cornets, and strings of bells. Why not allow them to send up poisoned balloons to explode in your open windows, and thus call attention to their wares? I wouldn't object a bit more! Why do parents allow such noises? Have you ever remonstrated with the mother?"

"Oh, yes," said the Angel. "One day Faith called and apologized to Mrs. Gottlieb, but begged to know if she might not take the children out herself in order to let me finish a chapter. But Mrs. Gottlieb was justly incensed at any one daring to object to the healthful sports of her little brood, and said: 'Mrs. Jardine, my children are in their own apartment, and I shall allow them to make all the noise they wish.'"

"And the next day," I broke in, excitedly, "she bought the three girls tin horns and the boys drums!"

Considine ground his teeth.

"If our wicked ways of life demanded that each of us should bear some horrible affliction, but Providence had mitigated the sentence by allowing us to choose our own form of mutilation," he said, slowly, "instead of giving up an arm or a leg or an eye, I would give up both ears and say, 'Lord, make me deaf!' For, much as I love music and the sound of my friends' voices, I believe that I could give up all conversation, and for ever deny myself to Grieg and Beethoven and Wagner rather than stand the daily, hourly torture of the street sounds of a great city."

He looked around at us and real tears stood in his eyes.

"Do you know," said the Angel, answering the look in his friend's eyes, "I believe no one on earth understands the anguish those of us who compose suffer from noise. It is not nervousness which causes us this anguish. It is the creating spirit,--the power of the man who brings words to life in literature or who brings tones to life in music. It is part of the artistic temperament, and if I ever saw a child start and shake and go white at a sudden noise, I should lay my hand on the little chap's head and say to his mother: 'Take care of that child's brain, for in it lies the power of the creator of something great. Teach him above everything self-expression that he may not labour as too many do, yet labour in vain.'"

I loved Considine for the way he looked at my Angel after that speech and the way he moved toward him and took his hand in his big, soft, strong grip.

"I can't stand it!" he declared, standing up. "I'm going. I wouldn't live in New York if they'd give me the town. I'm going back to my five hundred acres and get in the middle of it with a revolver, and I'll shoot anything that approaches!"

But when they had all gone something like dismay seized us.

"He has so much more money than we have," I wailed, "and if _he_ can't do anything where do we come in, I'd like to know!"

The Angel paced up and down thoughtfully with his hands behind his back,--an attitude conducive to deep meditation in men, I have observed.

"I think I have it," he said, finally. "Considine is too impulsive. He was not firm enough. Now I got an important letter from the agents to-day, saying that they could do nothing about the noise of the children. In the lease it expressly mentions them. I shall simply hold back the rent and see what that produces!"

I was filled with admiration at the Angel's firmness.

The result was speedily produced, such as it was. Jepson called. He called often. Then we began to get letters, and finally they threatened us with eviction. It made me feel quite Irish.

Then one day the owner and the agents and their lawyer called, and we discussed the matter. They were affable at first, but as the noise from the Gottlieb apartment grew more boisterous, their suavity departed, for they realized that our grievance was a substantial one, yet they declared they could do nothing.

"But it is in the lease," we protested. Then they delivered themselves of what they really had come to say.

"My dear sir," said the owner, "that lease and those rules can never be enforced in this city. They simply don't hold--that's all."

"Very well," I said, triumphantly. "If the clauses upon which we took the apartment do not hold, then neither does the clause regarding the payment of the rent obtain."

They all three broke in together with hysterical eagerness:

"Ah, but that does hold. You must know that, madam."

"The rent clause is the only clause which the law backs up, is it? We have no redress against your getting us here under false pretences?"

They looked at each other uneasily. Then their masculinity asserted itself. What? To be thus browbeaten by a woman? They looked commiseratingly at the Angel for being saddled with such a wife.

They stood up to go. I looked expectantly at Aubrey.

"Gentlemen," he said, quietly. "You have heard the noises from the surrounding apartments to-day, and you have admitted that they were extraordinary. I declare them not to be borne. If then, you cannot mitigate the nuisance, this apartment will be at your disposal from the first of February."

They smiled patronizingly. The lawyer even laid his hand on the Angel's shoulder. He should have known better than that.

"My dear fellow," he said, benevolently. "You are liable for the whole year's rent--until next October. You will see by your lease."

Aubrey shook his hand off haughtily.

"Provided the lease is signed," he said, quietly. "Will you gentlemen have the goodness to find my signature on this lease? I haven't even returned it to your office."

They examined it with dropped jaws. They had not even the strength to hand it back to him. Between them it fell to the floor,--the lease whose only binding clause was the one regarding the payment of the rent.

"From the first of February," repeated the Angel, politely.

"But my dear sir," protested the lawyer, recovering first. "Let us see if we cannot adjust this little difficulty. You sign the lease, for we cannot rent such an apartment as this in midwinter. We would lose eight months' rent if you gave it up now, and I will myself personally see Mr. Gottlieb in regard to his children's noise. It really is abominable."

"We shall move this month," said Aubrey. "From the first of February this apartment is yours."

"You are very stiff about it," said the owner. "Why not be reasonable?"

"I am perfectly reasonable," said Aubrey, gently. "I have listened for an hour to the justice you administer to a tenant with a signed lease. My reason is what is guiding me now."

He rose as he spoke and moved toward the door.

They glared at us both as they went out.

Aubrey sat and figured for a few moments in silence.

"It has cost us quite a little," he said at last, "to learn that such as we cannot live in New York. We will go into the country where the right to live, and to live this side of insanity, is guaranteed, not by a lease, but by the exact centre of five acres of ground."

"I have always wanted to!" I cried, with enthusiasm. "We will be commuters."

"We will commute," said Aubrey, pausing to let the fire-engines go by, "when necessary."