Chapter 4

The coffee was a success, but it was obtained at too great a risk. That night we wrote to Rosa and to her mother. We got no reply, and, after days of anxious waiting, the Little Woman went out to discuss the situation in person. But the family had moved, and there had been a very heavy snow. The Little Woman waded about nearly all day in pursuit of the new address. She learned it at last, but it was too late then to go any farther, so she came home and wrote again, only to get no reply. Then I tried my hand in the matter as follows:--

LINES TO ROSA IN ABSENCE.

Lady Rosa Vere de Smith, Leave your kin and leave your kith; Life without you is a mockery; Come once more and rend our crockery.

Lady Rosa Vere de Smith, Life for us has lost its pith; You taught us how to prize you thus, And now you will not bide with us.

Lady Rosa Vere de Smith, Have we no voice to reach you with? Come once more and wreck our larder; We will welcome you with ardor.

I could have written more of this, perhaps, and I still believe it would have proved effective, but when I read aloud as far as written, the Little Woman announced that she would rather do without Rosa forever than to let a thing like that go through the mails. So it was suppressed, and Rosa was lost to us, I fear, for all time.

But Providence had not entirely forgotten us, though its ways as usual were inscrutable. Wilhelmine, it seems, locked herself nightly in her room, and the locks being noiseless in the Monte Cristo apartments she could not realize when the key turned that she was really safely barred in. Hence it seems she continued to twist at the key which, being of a slender pattern, was one night wrenched apart and Wilhelmine, alas! was only too surely fortified in her stronghold. When she realized this she, of course, became wildly vociferous.

I heard the outburst and hastening back found her declaring that she was lost without a doubt. That the house would certainly catch fire before she was released and that she would be burned like a rat in a trap.

I called to her reassuringly, but it did no good. Then I climbed up on a chair set on top of a table, and observed her over the transom. She had her wardrobe tied in a bundle all ready for the fire which she assured me was certain to come, though how she hoped to get her wardrobe out when she could not get herself out, or of what use it would be to her afterwards was not clear.

It was useless to persuade her to go to bed and let me get a locksmith in the morning. I was convinced that she would carry-on all night like a forgotten _dachshund_, unless she was released. It was too late to find a locksmith and I did not wish to take the janitor into the situation.

I got a screw-driver and handed it over to her telling her to unscrew the lock. But by this time she had reached a state where she did not know one end of the implement from another. She merely looked at it helplessly and continued to leap about and bewail her fate loudly and in mixed tongues.

I saw at last that I must climb over the transom. It was small, and I am a large man. I looked at the size of it and then considered my height and shoulder measure. Then I made the effort.

I could not go through feet first, and to go through a transom head first is neither dignified or exhilarating. When I was something more than half through I pawed about in the air head down in a vain effort to reach a little chiffonier in Wilhelmine's room.

She watched me with interest to see how near I could come to it, and by some mental process it dawned upon her at last that she could help matters by pushing it toward me. Having reached this conclusion the rest was easy, for she was as strong as an ox and swung the furniture toward me like a toy.

Five minutes later I had unscrewed the lock and Wilhelmine was free. So were we, for when I threw the lock into a drawer with a few choice German remarks which I had been practising for just such an emergency, Wilhelmine seized upon her bundles, already packed, and, vowing that she would abide in no place where she could not lie down in the security of strong and hard twisting keys, she disappeared, strewing the stairway with German verbs and expletives in her departure.

We saw her no more, and in two weeks, by constant airing, we had our culinary memories of her reduced to such a degree that the flat on the floor above found a tenant, and carbolic acid was no longer needed in the halls.

IX.

_Ann._

And now came Ann, Ann, the Hibernian and the minstrel. During the first week of her abode with us she entertained us at dinner by singing a weird Irish love ballad and so won our hearts that the Little Woman decided to take the Precious Ones for a brief visit to homes and firesides in the Far West, leaving her Brother Tom and myself in Ann's charge.

When she went away she beamed upon Tom and me and said, reassuringly, "Ann will take good care of you all right. We were fortunate to secure a girl like Ann on such short notice. Get your lunches outside sometimes; that will please her." Then she and the Precious Ones kissed us both, the bell rang and they were gone.

My brother-in-law and I were doing what we referred to as "our book" at this time, and were interested to the point of absorption. Ann the Hibernian therefore had the household--at least, the back of the household--pretty much to herself.

I do not know just when the falling off did begin. We were both very much taken up with our work. But when, one morning, I happened to notice that it was a quarter of twelve when we sat down to a breakfast of stale bread and warmed-over coffee, it occurred to me that there was a hitch somewhere in our system.

That evening, when it got too dark to work, I arose and drifted out to the kitchen, perhaps with some idea of being hungry, and a mild curiosity to know when dinner might be expected. There was an air of desolation about the place that seemed strange, and an odor that seemed familiar. Like a hound on the trail I followed the latter straight on through the kitchen, to the servants' room at the back. The door was ajar, and the mystery was solved. Our noble Ann had fallen prey to the cup that yearly sweeps thousands into unhonored graves.

We went out for dinner, and the next morning we got our own eggs and coffee. When our minion regained consciousness we reviled her and cast her out.

We said we would get our own meals. We had camped out together and taken turns at the cooking. We would camp out now in the flat. We were quite elated with the idea, and out of the fulness of our freedom gave Ann a dollar and a little bracer out of some "private stock." Ann declared we were "pairfect gintlemen," and for the first time seemed sorry to go.

Both being eager to get back to our work after breakfast, neither of us referred to the dirty dishes, and I did not remember them again until dinner time. Tom got into a tangle with our heroine about one o'clock, and said he would get the lunch by way of relaxation. I presume he relaxed sufficiently without attending to the plates. At least, I found them untouched when I went out to look after the dinner.

I discovered, also, that the lavish Tom had exhausted the commissary to achieve the lunch. I was obliged, therefore, to go at once to the grocery, and on the way made up a mental list of the things easiest to prepare. I would get canned things, I said, as many of these were ready for the table, and some of them could be eaten out of the can. This would save dishes. I do not recall now just what I had planned as my bill of fare, but I suppose I must have forgotten some of it when I learned that our grocer was closing out his stock of wet goods very cheap, for Tom looked at the stuff when it came and asked if I thought of running a bar. I said I had bought with a view to saving dishes. Then he hunted up the cork-screw and we dined.

In spite of my superior management, however, the dish pile in the kitchen sink grew steadily.

On the morning of the third day the china closet was exhausted, and we took down the Little Woman's Crown Derby and blue India plates from their hangers in the parlor.

On the evening of the fourth day Tom got our work into an inextricable tangle, and took a reflective stroll out into the kitchen. He came back looking hopelessly discouraged. On the fifth morning we followed Ann's example.

The atmosphere suddenly cleared now. We reached conclusions by amazingly short cuts, and our troubles vanished like the dew of morning. The next day would be Sunday. We would go into the country for recreation. To-night we would put a line in the paper and on Monday morning we would have another servant. It seemed hardly worth our while to attempt to camp out permanently.

I will pass over Sunday without further comment. The recollection is weird and extravagant. I remember being surprised at finding certain stretches of pavement perpendicular, and of trying to climb them. Still we must have got a line in the paper on Saturday night, for on Monday the bell began ringing violently before we were up. Tom either did not hear it, or was wilfully unconscious. Finally I got up wretchedly and dragged on some garments. There was no ice, so I pressed my head for a few minutes to a marble-topped center table.

I suppose it was because I did not feel very bright that the voices of my guests were not restful to me. I was almost irritated by one shrill-voiced creature who insisted on going through every room, even to our study. Her tone was dictatorial and severe. Still I might have retained her had she not commented disagreeably on the dishes in the kitchen sink.

One after another they followed her example. Every woman of them began to make excuses and back away when she looked at that unwashed china. Most of them perjured themselves with the statement that they had come to see about a place for another girl.

After the initial lot they scattered along through the forenoon. Tom had got up, meantime, and was leaning on the front window-sill watching hungrily for the ice-man.

In the midst of this anguish the bell rang once more, timidly and with evident hesitation, and a moment later I feebly opened the door to admit--Ann!

She was neatly dressed, as when she had first come to us, and there were other gratifying indications of reform.

"Sure an' I saw your advertisement," she began, humbly, "an' I thought two such gintlemen as yerselves moight not be too hard on a daycent woman who only takes a drop or two now an' then----"

I led her back to the kitchen and pointed to the sink. As we passed through the dining-room she noticed the empty bottles on the table and crossed herself. When she looked at the kitchen sink she exclaimed, "Holy Mary!" But she did not desert us. Her charity was greater than ours.

I went in to tell Tom of the renovation and general reform that was about to begin. He had just succeeded in hailing the ice-man and was feeling better. When I went back into the kitchen there was a wash-boiler of water heating on the range.

Just then the postman whistled and brought a letter from the Little Woman.

"I have decided to stay a week longer than I intended," she wrote. "It is so pleasant here, and Ann, I am sure, is taking good care of you."

We had a confidential understanding with Ann that night. She remained with us a year afterward, and during that time the sacred trust formed by the three of us was not betrayed.

X.

_A "Flat" Failure._

In the Monte Cristo apartments it would seem that we had found harbor at last. Days ran into weeks, weeks to months, and these became a year, at length--the first we had passed under any one roof. Then there came a change. The house was not so well built as it had appeared, and with the beginning of decay there came also a change of landlord and janitor. Our spruce and not unworthy colored man was replaced by one Thomas, who was no less spruce, indeed, but as much more severe in his discipline as his good-natured employer was lax in the matter of needed repairs.

Every evening, at length, when we gathered about the dinner table, the Little Woman recited to me the story of her day's wrongs. They were many and various, but they may be summed up in the two words--janitor and landlord. The arrogance of one and the negligence of the other were rapidly making life in the Monte Cristo apartments insupportable. Of course there were minor annoyances--the children across the hall, for instance, and the maid in the kitchen--but these faded into insignificance when contrasted with the leaky plumbing, sagging doors, rattling windows and the like on the part of Mr. Griffin, the landlord, and new arbitrary rulings concerning the supply of steam for the parlor, coal for the kitchen range, the taking away of refuse, and the austere stairway restrictions imposed upon our Precious Ones on the part of Thomas, the janitor.

It is true the landlord was not over-exacting in the matter of rent, and when he came about, which was not often, would promise anything and everything with the greatest good-will in the world, while Thomas kept the front steps and halls in a condition which was really better than we had been used to, or than the rent schedule would ordinarily justify. But the good-will of the landlord usually went no farther than his ready promises, while the industry of Thomas was overshadowed by his gloomy discipline and haughty severity, which presently made him, if not the terror, certainly the awe, of Monte Cristo dwellers. We had not minded this so much, however, until when one day the Precious Ones paused on the stair a moment to rest, as was their wont, and were perhaps even laughing in their childish and musical way, Thomas, who had now been with us some three months or more, appeared suddenly from some concealed lurking-place and ordered them to their own quarters, with a warning against a repetition of the offense that seemed unduly somber. It frightened the Precious Ones so thoroughly that they were almost afraid to pass through the halls alone next day, and came and went quite on a run, looking neither to the right nor to the left.

It was then that we said we would go. Of course, moving was not pleasant; we had enough memories in that line already, though time had robbed them of their bitterness, I suppose, for we grew quite cheerful over the idea of seeking a new abiding-place, and it being Sunday, began looking over the advertisement columns immediately after breakfast. I would make a list, I said, and stop in here and there to investigate on the way to and from business. We would get nearer to business, for one thing, also nearer the car-line. We would have a lighter flat, too, and we would pay less for it. We agreed upon these things almost instantly. Then we began putting down addresses. It was surprising how many good, cheap places there seemed to be now. So many new houses had been built since our last move. We regretted openly to each other that we had not gone before. Then we rested a little to find fault with our quarters. We dug over all the old things, and unearthed a lot of new and hitherto concealed wretchedness that was altogether disheartening. We would move at once, we said. Now! This week!

Perhaps I seemed a trifle less cheerful when I returned next evening. The Little Woman must have noticed it, I suppose, for she asked if I wasn't well. I said that I was tired, which was true. I added that a good many landlords were unscrupulous in the matter of advertising, which I can take an oath is also true. I had left the office early and investigated a number of the apartments on my list, at the expense of some nerve-tissue and considerable car-fare. The advertisements had been more or less misleading. The Little Woman said that in the morning she would go.

The Little Woman herself looked tired the next evening--more tired and several years older than I had ever seen her look. She had walked a good many miles--steep stair miles which are trying. In the end she had arrived only at the conclusion that the best apartments were not advertised. She said it would be better to select the locality we preferred and walk leisurely about the good streets until we spied something attractive. She wished we might do so together.

I took a holiday and we pursued this programme. Like birds seeking a new nesting-place we flitted hither and thither, alighting wheresoever the perch seemed inviting. We alighted in many places, but in most of them we tarried but briefly. It was not that the apartments were inattractive--they were almost irresistible, some of them, but even hasty reflection convinced me that it would be inadvisable to invest ninety-five per cent of my salary each month in rent unless I could be altogether certain that the Little Woman and the Precious Ones could modify their appetites and remain quite well.

Being enthusiastic at first, we examined some of these apartments and the Little Woman acquired credit in my eyes as we proceeded. I did not realize until now the progress she had made since the day of our arrival in Gotham nearly four years previous. Her education was complete--she was a graduate in the great school of flat-life, and was contemplating a post-graduate course. Figures that made me gasp and sustain myself by the silver-mounted plumbing left her quite undisturbed. From her manner you would suppose that it was only the desirability of the apartment itself that was worth consideration. She criticised the arrangement of the rooms and the various appointments with an air of real consequence, while the janitor and I followed her about, humble and unimportant, wondering how we could ever have imagined the place suitable to her requirements.

In one place where the rent was twenty-four hundred it seemed almost impossible to find fault. I began to be frightened for the Little Woman, in the thought that now, after all, she really would be obliged to confess that the little trifle of eighteen hundred dollars a year more than we could possibly pay rendered the place undesirable. But a moment later I realized how little I knew her. When we got to the kitchen she remarked, passively, there was no morning sun in the windows. As the apartment faced east, and there was morning sun in the parlor, this condition seemed more or less normal, as the janitor meekly pointed out. But the Little Woman declared she would never live in another place where the kitchen was dark mornings, and turned away, leaving the janitor scratching his head over the problem of making the sun shine from two directions at once and remaining in that position all day long.

Still it was a narrow escape, and we were consuming time. So we contented ourselves after that with merely inquiring the size and price of the apartment of the hall-boy, and passing on. Even this grew monotonous at length, and we gradually drifted into the outer edges of the chosen district, and from the outer edges into that Section wherein we had made our first beginning nearly four years before, the great wilderness lying north of One Hundred and Sixteenth Street. Then we began work in earnest. We looked at light apartments and dark apartments--apartments on every floor, even to the basement. Though many changes had taken place it carried us back to the day of our first experience, and set us to wondering if we really had learned anything after all.

We saw apartments that we would not have, and apartments which, because of our Precious Ones, would not have us. Apartments that ran straight through the house, apartments that, running down one side of the house and back on the other, solved in a manner the Little Woman's problem of having sunlight in both ends of the house at one time.

It was one of these last that we took. The building, which was comparatively new, was located in the middle of the block, on a little square bit of ground, and had on each floor a cozy octagonal hall with one apartment running entirely around it. The entrance steps and halls were not as unsullied as those of our present habitat, but the janitor was a good-natured soul who won us at first glance, and who seemed on terms of the greatest amity with a small boy who lived on the first landing and accompanied us through. We saw also that the plumbing was in praiseworthy condition, and the doors swung easily on their hinges.

To be sure, the price was a trifle more than we were paying in our present apartment, and the location was somewhat farther from business; but we said that a few blocks more or less were really nothing when one was once on the car, which was almost as near as at the old place, and we figured that the slight difference in rent we could save in the gas-bill, though I had a lingering suspicion that to strike a general average of light in the two places would be to cast but slight reflection on either.

The janitor was the main thing--the good-natured janitor and the landlord. We could even put up with slight drawbacks for the sake of an apartment in good condition and the companionable soul down-stairs. Then, too, we were foot-sore in flesh and spirit, and after the day's experiences welcomed this haven as a genuine discovery. We went home really gratified, though I confess our old nest had never seemed more inviting.

I will touch but lightly upon the next few days. I would rather forget the atmosphere of squalor and destitution that pervaded our household when the carpets had been stripped up and we were stumbling about among half-packed barrels upon bare, resounding floors. I do not seek to retrace in detail the process of packing, which began with some buoyancy and system, to degenerate at last in its endlessness into dropping things mechanically and hopelessly into whatever receptacle came first to hand. I do not wish to renew the moments of vehemence and exasperation when our Precious Ones, who really seemed to enjoy it all, clattered about among the debris, or the vague appreciation of suicide that was born within me when, in the midst of my despair, the Little Woman suggested that after all she was afraid we were making a mistake in leaving our little home where we had been happy so long; also that we moved too often, an unusual statement considering the fact that we had been there for more than a year. I told her that she reminded me of my mother, who daily rated my father for keeping them poor, moving, they having moved twice in thirty-eight years. I added that I had seen my mother publicly denounce my father for having left out a broken stew-pot when they moved the last time, some twenty years before.

I will not review these things fully, nor will I recall, except in the briefest manner, the usual perfidiousness of the moving-man, who, as heretofore, came two hours late, and then arranged upon the pavement all the unbeauteous articles of our household, leaving them bare and wretched in the broad light of day while he thrust into the van the pieces of which we were justly proud.

I will also skim but lightly over the days devoted to getting settled. I sent word to the office that I was ill--a fact which I could have sworn to if necessary, though for a sick man my activity was quite remarkable. The Little Woman was active, too, while the Precious Ones displayed a degree of enterprise and talent for getting directly in my chosen path, which was unusual even for them.