The Van Dwellers: A Strenuous Quest for a Home

I did not immediately find a desk that suited me. There were a great many of them, and most of them seemed sufficiently antique, but being still somewhat modern in my ideas I did not altogether agree with their internal arrangements, while such as did appeal would have made too large an incursion into the Sum. What I did find at length was a table – a mahogany veneered table which the dealer said was of a period before the war. I could readily believe it. If he had said that it had been through the war I could have believed that, too. It looked it. But I saw in it possibilities, and reflected that it would give me an opportunity to develop a certain mechanical turn which had lain dormant hitherto. The Little Woman had been generous in the matter of the desk. I would buy the table for the Little Woman.

She was pleased, of course, but seemed to me she regarded it a trifle doubtfully when it came in. Still, the price had not been great, and it was astonishing to see how much better it looked when I was through with it, and it was in a dim corner, with its more unfortunate portions next the wall. Indeed, it had about it quite an air of genuine respectability, and made the rest of our things seem poor and trifling. It was the beginning of the end.

Some Colonial chairs came next.

The Little Woman and I discovered their battered skeletons one day as we were hurrying to catch a car. They were piled in front of a place that under ordinary conditions we would have shunned as a pest-house. Still the chairs were really beautiful and it was a genuine "find"! I did not restore these myself – they needed too much. I had them delivered to a cabinet-maker who in turn delivered them to us in a condition that made the rest of our belongings look even shabbier, and at a cost that made another incursion into the Sum.

I renovated and upholstered the next lot of chairs myself, and was proud of the result, though the work was attended by certain unpleasant features, and required time. On the whole, I concluded to let the cabinet-maker undertake the heavy lounge that came next, and was in pieces, as if a cyclone had struck it somewhere back in the forties and it had been lying in a heap, ever since. It was wonderful what he did with it. It came to us a thing of beauty and an everlasting joy, and his bill made a definite perforation in the Sum.

We did not mind so much now. It was merely altering the form of our investment, we said, and we had determined to become respectable at any cost. The fact that we had been offered more for the restored lounge than it cost us reassured us in our position. Most of our old traps we huddled together one day, and disposed of them to a second-hand man for almost enough to pay for one decent piece – a chiffonier this time – and voted a good riddance to bad rubbish.

Reflecting upon this now, it seems to me we were a bit hasty and unkind. Poor though they were, the old things had served us well and gone with us through the ups and downs of many apartments. In some of them we had rocked the Precious Ones, and on most of them the precious Ones had tried the strength and resistance of their toys. They were racked and battered, it is true and not always to be trusted as to stability, but we knew them and their shortcomings, and they knew us and ours. We knew just how to get them up winding stairs and through narrow doors. They knew about the length of time between each migration, and just about what to expect with each stage of our Progress. They must have long foreseen the end. Let us hope they will one day become "antiques" and fall into fonder and more faithful hands.

But again I am digressing – it is my usual fault. We invested presently in a Chippendale sideboard, and a tall clock which gave me no peace night or day until I heard its mellow tick and strike in our own dim little hall. The aperture in the Sum was now plainly visible, and by the time we had added the desk, which I had felt unable to afford at the start, and a chair to match, it had become an orifice that widened to a gap, with the still further addition of a small but not inexpensive Chippendale cabinet and something to put within it.

The Little Woman called a halt now. She said she thought we had enough invested in this particular direction, that it was not wise to put all one's eggs into one basket. Besides, we had all the things our place would hold comfortably: rather more, in fact, except in the matter of rugs. The floors of the Sunshine apartment were hard finished and shellacked. Such rugs as we had were rare only as to numbers, and we were no longer proud of them. I quite agreed with the Little Woman on the question of furniture, but I said that now we had such good things in that line, I would invest in one really good rug.

I did. I drifted one day into an Armenian place on Broadway into which the looms of the Orient had poured a lavish store. Small black-haired men issued from among the heaped-up wares like mice in a granary. I was surrounded – I was beseeched and entreated – I was made to sit down while piece after piece of antiquity and art were unrolled at my feet. At each unrolling the tallest of the black men would spread his hands and look at me.

"A painting, a painting, a masterpiece. I never have such fine piece since I begin business;" and each of the other small black men would spread their hands and look at me and murmur low, reverent exclamations.

I did not buy the first time. You must know that even when one has become inured to the tariff on antique furniture, and has still the remains of a Sum to draw upon, there is something about the prices of oriental rugs that is discouraging when one has ever given the matter much previous thought.

But the memory of those unrolled masterpieces haunted me. There was something fascinating and Eastern and fine about sitting in state as it were, and having the treasures of the Orient spread before you by those little dark men.

So I went again, and this time I made the first downward step. It was a Cashmere – a thick, mellow antique piece with a purple bloom pervading it, and a narrow faded strip at one end that betokened exposure and age. The Little Woman gasped when she saw it, and the Precious Ones approved it in chorus. It took me more than a week to confess the full price. It had to be done by stages; for of course the Little Woman had not sat as I had sat and had the "paintings of the East" unrolled at her feet and thus grown accustomed to magnificence. To tell her all at once that our one new possession had cost about five times as much as all the rest of our rugs put together would have been an unnecessary rashness on my part. As it was, she came to it by degrees, and by degrees also she realized that our other floor coverings were poor, base, and spurious.

Still I was prudent in my next selections. I bought two smaller pieces, a Kazak strip, and a Beloochistan mat. This was really all we needed, but a few days later a small piece of antique Bokhara overpowered me, and I fell. I said it would be nice on the wall, and the Little Woman confessed that it was, but again insisted that we would better stop now. She little realized my condition. The small dark men in their dim-lit Broadway cave had woven a spell about me that made the seductions of antique furniture as a forgotten tale.

I bought a book on rug collecting, and I could not pass their treasure-house without turning in. They had learned to know me from afar, and the sound of my step was the signal for a horde of them to come tumbling out from among the rugs.

It was the old story of Eastern magic. The spell of the Orient was upon me, and in the language of my friends I went plunging down the rugged path to ruin. I added an Anatolian to my collections – a small one that I could slip into the house without the Little Woman seeing it until it was placed and in position to help me in my defense. It was the same with a Bergama and a Coula, but by this time the Precious Ones would come tearing out into the hall when I came home and then rush back, calling as they ran: "Oh, mamma, he's got one and he's holding it behind him! He's got another rug, mamma!"

So when I got the big Khiva I felt that some new tactics must be adopted. In the first place, it would take two strong men to carry it, and in the next place it would cover the parlor floor completely, and meant the transferring to the walls of several former purchases.

Further than this, its addition would make the hole in the Sum big enough to drive a wagon through – a band-wagon at that with a whole circus procession behind it. Indeed, the remains of the Sum would be merely fragmentary, so to speak, and only the glad Christmas season could make it possible for me to confess and justify to the Little Woman the fulness of the situation.

Luckily, Christmas was not far distant. The dark men agreed to hold the big Khiva until the day before, and then deliver it to the janitor. With the janitor's help I could get it up and into the apartment after the Little Woman had gone to bed. I could spread it down at my leisure and decorate the walls with some of those now on the floor. When on the glad Christmas morning this would burst upon the Little Woman in sudden splendor, I felt that she would not be too severe in her judgment.

It was a good plan, and it worked as well as most plans do. There were some hitches, of course. The Little Woman, for instance, was not yet in bed when the janitor was ready to help me, and I was in mortal terror lest she should hear us getting the big roll into the hallway, or coming out later should stumble over it in the dark. But she did not seem to hear, and she did not venture out into the hall. Neither did she seem to notice anything unusual when by and by I stumbled over it myself and plunged through a large pasteboard box in which there was something else for the Little Woman – something likely to make her still more lenient in the matter of the rug. I made enough noise to arouse the people in the next flat, but the Little Woman can be very discreet on Christmas eve.

She slept well the next morning, too, – a morning I shall long remember. If you have never attempted to lay a ten-by-twelve Khiva rug in a small flat-parlor, under couches and tables and things, and with an extra supply of steam going, you do not understand what one can undergo for the sake of art. It's a fairly interesting job for three people – two to lift the furniture and one to spread the rug, and even then it isn't easy to find a place to stand on. It was about four o clock I think when I began, and the memory of the next three hours is weird, and lacking in Christmas spirit. I know now just how every piece of furniture we possess looks from the under side. I suppose this isn't a bad sort of knowledge to have, but I would rather not acquire it while I am pulling the wrinkles out of a two-hundred-pound rug. But when the Little Woman looked at the result and at me she was even more kind than I had expected. She did not denounce me. She couldn't. Looking me over carefully she realized dimly what the effort had cost, and pitied me. It was a happy Christmas, altogether, and in the afternoon, looking at our possessions, the Little Woman remarked that we needed a house now to display them properly. It was a chance remark but it bore fruit.

XII.

Gilded Affluence

Yet not immediately. We had still to make the final step of our Progress in apartment life, and to acquire other valuable experience. It happened in this wise.

Of the Sum there still remained a fragment – unimportant and fragile, it would seem – but quite sufficient, as it proved, to make our lives reasonably exciting for several months.

A friend on the Stock Exchange whispered to me one morning that there was to be a big jump in Calfskin Common – something phenomenal, he said, and that a hundred shares would pay a profit directly that would resemble money picked up in the highway.

I had never dealt in stocks, or discovered any currency in the public thoroughfares, but my recent inheritance of the Sum and its benefits had developed a taste in the right direction. Calfskin Common was low then, almost as low as it has been since, and an option on a hundred shares could be secured with a ridiculously small amount – even the fragment of the Sum would be sufficient.

I mentioned the matter that night to the Little Woman. We agreed almost instantly that there was no reason why we should not make something on Calfskin Common, though I could see that the Little Woman did not know what Calfskin Common was. I have hinted before that she was not then conversant with the life and lingo of the Stock Exchange, and on the whole my advantage in this direction was less than it seemed at the time. I think we both imagined that Calfskin Common had something to do with a low grade of hides, and the Little Woman said she supposed there must be a prospective demand from some foreign country that would advance the price of cheap shoes. Of course it would be nice to have our investments profitable, but on the whole perhaps I'd better lay in an extra pair or so of everyday footwear for the Precious Ones.

I acquired some information along with my option on the stock next day, so that both the Little Woman and myself could converse quite technically by bed-time. We knew that we had "put up a ten per cent. margin" and had an "option" at twelve dollars a share on a hundred shares of the common stock in leather corporation – said stock being certain to go to fifty and perhaps a hundred dollars a share within the next sixty days. The fragment of the Sum and a trifle more had been exchanged for the Stock, and we were "in on a deal." Then too we had a "stop-loss" on the Stock so that we were safe, whatever happened.

The Little Woman didn't understand the "stop-loss" at first, and when I explained to her that it worked automatically, as it were, she became even more mystified. I gathered from her remarks that she thought it meant something like an automatic water shut-off such as we had in the bath-room to prevent waste. Of course, that was altogether wrong, and I knew it at the time, but it did not seem worth while to explain in detail. I merely said that it was something we could keep setting higher as the stock advanced, so that in event of a downward turn we would save our original sum, with the accrued profits.

Then we talked about what we would do with the money. We said that now we had such a lot of good things and were going to make money out of the Stock we ought to try one really high-class apartment – something with an elevator, and an air of refinement and gentility. It would cost a good deal, of course, but the surroundings would be so much more congenial, so much better for the Precious Ones, and now that I was really doing fairly well, and that we had the Stock – still we would be prudent and not move hastily.

We allowed the Stock to advance five points before we really began to look for a place. Five points advance meant five hundred dollars' profit on our investment, and my friend on the exchange laughed and congratulated me and said it was only the beginning. So we put up the stop-loss, almost as far as it would go, and began to look about for a place that was quite suitable for people with refined taste, some very good things in the way of rugs and furniture, and a Stock.

We were not proud as yet. We merely felt prosperous and were willing to let fortune smile on us amid the proper surroundings. We said it was easy enough to make money, now that we knew how, and that it was no wonder there were so many rich people in the metropolis. We had fought the hard fight, and were willing now to take it somewhat easier. We selected an apartment with these things in view.

It was some difficulty to find a place that suited both us and the Precious Ones. Not that they were hard to please – they welcomed anything in the nature of change – but at most of the fine places children were rigorously barred, a rule, it seemed to us, that might result in rather trying complications between landlord and tenant in the course of time and nature, though we did not pursue investigations in this line. We found lodgment and welcome at length in the Apollo, a newly constructed apartment of the latest pattern and in what seemed a most desirable neighborhood.

The Apollo was really a very imposing and towering affair, with onyx and gilded halls. The elevator that fairly shot us skyward when we ascended to our eerie nest ten stories above the street, and was a boundless joy to the Precious Ones, who would gladly have made their playhouse in the gaudy little car with the brown boy in blue and brass. Our fine belongings looked grand in the new suite, and our rugs on the inlaid and polished floor were luxurious and elegant. Compared with this, much of our past seemed squalid and a period to be forgotten. Ann, who was still with us, put on a white cap and apron at meal-times, and to answer the bell, though the cap had a habit of getting over one ear, while the apron remained white with difficulty.

The janitor of the Apollo was quite as imposing as the house itself, – a fallen nobleman, in fact, though by no means fallen so far as most of those whose possibilities of decline had been immeasurably less. He was stately and uplifting in his demeanor. So much so that I found myself unconsciously imitating his high-born manner and mode of speech. I had a feeling that he was altogether more at home in the place than we were, but I hoped this would pass. Whatever the cost, we were determined to live up to the Apollo and its titled Chargé d'Affaires.

And now came exciting days. The Stock continued to advance, as our friend had prophesied. Some days it went up one point, some days two. Every point meant a hundred dollars' clear profit. One day it advanced five full points. We only counted full points. Fractional advances we threw into the next day's good measure, and set the stop-loss higher, and yet ever higher.

We acquired credit with ourselves. We began to think that perhaps after all we hadn't taken quite so good an apartment as we deserved. What was a matter of a thousand dollars more or less on a year's rent when the Stock was yielding a profit of a hundred or two dollars a day. We repeated that it was easy enough now to understand how New Yorkers got rich, and could afford the luxuries heretofore regarded by us with a wonderment that was akin to awe. I began to have a vague notion of abandoning other pursuits and going into stocks, altogether. We even talked of owning our own home on Fifth Avenue. Still we were quite prudent, as was our custom. I did not go definitely into stocks, and we remained with the fallen nobleman in the Apollo. Neither did we actually negotiate for Fifth Avenue property.

The Little Woman bought many papers during the day. In some of them early stock quotations were printed in red, so it might be truly said that these were red-letter days for the Little Woman. When she heard "Extra!" being shouted in the street far below she could not dispossess herself of the idea that it had been issued to announce a sensational advance of the Stock. Even as late as ten o'clock one night she insisted on my going down for one, though I explained that the Stock Exchange had closed some seven hours before. The Precious Ones fairly kept the elevator busy during the afternoon, going for extras, and when the final Wall Street edition was secured they would come shouting in,

"Here it is. Look at the Stock, quick, Mamma, and see how much we've made to-day!"

Truly this was a gilded age; though I confess that it did not seem quite real, and looking back now the memory of it seems less pleasant than that of some of the very hard epochs that had gone before. Still, it occupies a place all its own and is not without value in life's completed scheme.

The Stock did not go to fifty. It limped before it got to forty, and we began to be harassed by paltry fractional advances, with even an occasional fractional decline. We did not approve of this. It was annoying to look in the Wall Street edition and find that we had made only twelve dollars and a half, instead of a hundred or two, as had been the case in the beginning. We even thought of selling Calfskin Common and buying a stock that would not act that way; but my friend of the exchange advised against it. He said this was merely a temporary thing, and that fifty and a hundred would come along in good time. He adjusted the stop-loss for us so that there was no danger of the Stock being sold on a temporary decline, and we sat down to wait and watch the papers while the Stock gathered strength for a new upward rush that was sure to come, and would place us in a position to gratify a good many of the ambitions lately formed.

A feverish and nerve-destroying ten days followed. The Stock had become to us as a personal Presence that we watched as it stumbled and struggled and panted, and dug its common Calfskin toes into things in a frantic effort to scale the market. I know now that the men who had organized the deal were boasting and shouting, and beating the air in their wild encouragement, while those who opposed it were hammering, and throttling and flinging mud, in as wild an effort to check and demoralize and destroy. At the time, however, we caught only the echo of these things, and believed as did our friend on the exchange, that a great capitalist was in control of Calfskin Common and would send it to par.

Only we wished he would send it faster. We did not like to fool along this way, an eighth up and an eighth, or a quarter down, and all uncertainty and tension. Besides, we needed our accruing profits to meet our heavily increased expenses which were by no means easy to dispose of with our normal income, improved though it was with time and tireless effort.

Indeed, most of the eighths and quarters presently seemed to be in the wrong direction. It was no fun to lose even twelve dollars and a half a day and keep it up. The Presence in the household was in delicate health. It needed to be coddled and pampered, and the strain of it told on us. The Little Woman developed an anxious look, and grew nervous and feverish at the clamor of an "extra." Sometimes I heard her talking "plus" and "minus" and "points" in her sleep and knew that she had taken the Stock to bed with her.

The memory of our old quiet life in the Sunshine and Monte Cristo began to grow in sweetness beside this sordid and gilded existence in the Apollo. The massive portals and towering masonry which at first had been as a solid foundation for genuine respectability began to seem gloomy and overpowering, and lacking in the true home spirit we had found elsewhere. The smartly dressed and mannered people who rode up and down with us on the elevator did not seem quite genuine, and their complexions were not always real. It may have been the condition of the Stock that disheartened us and made their lives as well as ours seem artificial. I don't know. I only know that I began to have a dim feeling that we would have been happier if we had been satisfied with our oriental rugs and antique furniture, and the remnant of the Sum, without the acquaintance of the Stock and the fallen nobleman below stairs. But, as I have said, all things have their place and value, I suppose, and our regrets, if they were that, have long since been dissipated, with the things that made them possible.

Quickly, as they had come, they passed, and were not. I was working busily one morning in my south front study when the Little Woman entered hurriedly. It was late April and our windows were open, but being much engaged I had not noticed the cries of "extra!" that floated up from the street below. It was these that had brought the Little Woman, however, and she leaned out to look and listen.

"They are calling out something about stocks and Wall Street," she said, "I am sure of it. Go down and see, quick! Calfskin Common must have gone to a hundred!"

"Oh, pshaw!" I laughed, "it's only the assassination of a king, or something. You're excited and don't hear right."

Still, I did go down, and I fumed at the elevator-boy for being so slow to answer, though I suppose he was prompt enough. The "extra" callers had passed by the time I got to the street, but I chased and caught them. Then I ran all the way back to the Apollo, and plunged into the elevator that was just starting heavenward.

I suppose I looked pretty white when I rushed in where the Little Woman was waiting. But the type that told the dreadful tale was red enough, in all conscience. There it was, in daubed vermilion, for the whole world and the Little Woman to see.