A Top-Floor Idyl

She panted to the top floor and, at my desire, followed me into my room, where I had left the door open and the gas burning. She gave a swift glance around the place, and her eyes manifested disapproval.

"I wonder how you can ever find anything on that desk," she reproved me, as I searched in a bureau drawer. To my utter terror she began to put some papers in order.

"Here's an unopened letter from Paisley's Magazine," she announced.

I pounced upon it and tore it open, to discover a check for eighty dollars.

"Good!" I exclaimed. "I'd forgotten that story. It was called 'Cynthia's Mule'; I wonder what possessed me to write about a mule? Don't know anything about them."

"That's why it sold, most likely," said Frieda. "The public prefers poetry to truth in its prose. What are you wasting time for, fooling in that drawer?"

"I have it. It's a twenty-dollar bill," I told her. "I put it among my socks so that I shouldn't spend it. Might be very handy, you know. She might need something, and you could go out and buy it."

"Can you afford it, Dave?" she asked me.

"Of course, and you forget the check I've just received. Mrs. Milliken will cash it for me at her butcher's. He's very obliging."

Just then we heard something. Frieda stuffed the bill in some part of her ample bosom and ran away. I heard her knock at the door and go in.

There was nothing for me to do but to look at the nearly finished page that was still in the embrace of my typewriter. For some silly reason my gorge rose at the idea of the virtuous dog, but I remembered, as I was about to pull out and lacerate the paper, that my mind sometimes plays me scurvy tricks. When I am interrupted in the beginning of a story, and look over it again, it always seems deplorably bad. Another day I will look at it more indulgently. Moreover, what was the use of thinking about such trivialities when the world's great problem was unfolding itself, just seven steps away over the worn strip of Brussels on the landing.

So I settled down in my old Morris chair to ponder over the matter of babies coming to the just and the unjust, provided with silver spoons or lucky to be wrapped up in an ancient flannel petticoat. The most beautiful gift of a kindly Nature or its sorriest practical joke, welcome or otherwise, the arriving infant is entitled to respect and commiseration. I wondered what might be the fate of this one. In a few hours it will be frowned down upon by Mrs. Milliken, who will consider it as an insult to the genus landlady. The mother, naturally, will smile upon the poor little thing; she will dote upon it as women do on the ordinarily useless articles they purchase with money or pain at the bargain counter of life. This wee white and pink mite, since its daddy's away fighting and the mother is poor, must prove a tragedy, I am afraid. It will be a little vampire, pretending to feed on milk but really gorging itself on a heart's blood.

My cogitations were interrupted by the rattle of a thousand milk cans, more or less, clattering through the street, on top of a huge, white motor truck. I took off my coat, instinctively thinking that it was time to go to bed, and put it on again because my door was open and it behooved me to keep awake, since I might be required to run other errands. The question of sleep thus disposed of, I brought out my percolator.

For a wonder there was alcohol in the lamp, and I found the coffee in a can I discovered in my cardboard hat-box. Two months before, my sister Jane had told me that a silk hat was proper for the following of one's mother to the grave, and I obeyed her. Poor darling! It was the least and last thing I could do for her.

The lamp was alight and the steam coming, when the doctor came out, looking rather spectral in a white gown.

"Thank goodness!" I exclaimed, dropping some pulverized bean on the floor. "So it is all over!"

"Not yet," he informed me, smiling, "but so far everything goes well. The big, fat Providence in gig-lamps is sitting by the patient. Sometimes three make poor company. The solid dame came in and called her 'my dear' and rummaged things out of the trunk and fixed up the bed, and tears began to flow. It must be a wonderful thing for a woman, who feels abandoned of God and man, to have such a big brave creature come in to pound the pillows and make one feel that there is yet corn in Egypt. I left them with their heads together. The poor thing was crying a bit and beginning to tell the story of her past life. Yes, thanks! I'll be glad of a cup, with three lumps of sugar. Great little machine, that! And so I thought I'd walk in here for a minute. Some things a woman tells another must be pretty sacred, don't you think?"

I poured out the coffee appreciatively.

"The person whom you call the solid dame," I told him, "is no less a woman than Frieda Long, the poet in pigments."

"Keeps a Beauty Shop?" he inquired.

"If you mean to ask whether she shampoos and manicures females and supplies them with hair," I answered, "your guess is utterly wrong. She paints women, and men too, on canvas, and any ordinary individual, such as you and I, ought to grovel before her."

"Just say the word," he answered, "and I'll make a start. She's the best old girl I've come across in many a long day."

"Frieda Long is hardly thirty-eight," I told him, "and, to change the subject for a moment, I will acknowledge that I deemed such cases best attended by the sere and ancient. I rang you up because your sign suggested long experience."

"Not half bad, is it?" he replied. "I aged it by setting it up in the backyard and firing brickbats at it. Old Cummerly, next door to me, had his replated."

He swallowed his coffee, without winking, though I thought it was boiling hot, and left me hurriedly again. I took greater leisure in my own beverage and leaned back in my chair. This young fellow appealed to me. The man of tact is born, not made. What serves him for a soul possesses refinement to dictate his leaving, for a few minutes, while one woman poured out her heart to another. I think he is considerate and kindly; he is probably destined to make many friends and little money.

I rose and looked out of the window. The dawn was beginning and promised another stifling, red-hot day. A very décolleté baker had come out of a cave beneath the bread and cake shop, opposite, and sponged off his forehead with the back of his hand. An Italian woman, clad in violent colors, passed with a hundredweight or so of broken laths poised on her head. At the corner the policeman was conversing with a low-browed individual, issued from the saloon with a mop. New York was awakening, and I decided I might as well shave, to pass away the time. Taking my strop and razor I sat down to give the latter a thorough overhauling. I suppose I fell asleep during the process.

"Contemplating suicide?" I heard Frieda ask suddenly.

I jumped up, startled, with the weapon in my hand.

"Put that thing down," she ordered me. "It makes me nervous. She's sleeping quietly, and the doctor's gone. An awfully nice fellow. It's a boy with brown hair."

"Not the doctor," I objected, somewhat dazed.

"No, the baby, you silly! The doctor is very nice. I am going out to get my washerwoman's sister to come and stay with Madame Dupont – might as well say Mrs. Dupont. Her husband's French, but she comes from Rhode Island. You can go with me. Never mind about shaving now, you can stop at a barber's later on. Your hair needs cutting. Put on a clean collar. After I get that woman, we'll stop at the flat; the milk will be there and I'll give you some breakfast. Come along!"

Frieda is a woman of the compelling kind, but it's a joy to obey her. After I had adjusted my collar and tie we started, but when we reached the door opposite she opened it, very quietly, while I waited, and tiptoed in.

"She's awake," she said, again opening the door. "She says she would like to thank you for your kindness. She knows she would have died, if you had not sought help for her."

"Stuff and nonsense," I said, quite low. "You don't expect me to go in there, do you?"

"I certainly do, because she wishes it. Don't be stupid!"

So I entered, rather embarrassed, thinking to see the face of a woman crucified. But her smile was the sweetest thing I had ever beheld, I'm very sure. I could hardly recognize her after that memory of haggard and tortured features. She put out her hand to me, weakly.

"I – I want to thank you – ever so much," she said. "It was so awfully kind of you, and – and you sent me an angel."

"Oh, yes," said Frieda, grinning. "I see myself with wings sprouting from my shoulder-blades. Good-by for a short time, my dear. You'll only be alone for a few minutes. Yes, the baby will be all right; don't you worry. No, he won't be hungry for a long time, the doctor said, and you are to let him sleep and do the same yourself. Now come along, David."

I was delighted to have Frieda's escort, as I scented danger below. Her support gave me boundless joy when, at the foot of the stairs, I saw Mrs. Milliken, returned on some frightfully early ferryboat. She looked at us with amazement and suspicion.

"My dear Mrs. Milliken," I began, in my most ingratiating tones, "a new boarder has arrived during the night. I can assure you the young man would not have intruded had he possessed greater experience of life. We will have to forgive him on account of his tender youth."

"They must be packed off at once," cried the woman. "How could you?"

"I beg to observe that it was not my tender heart but yours that gave her shelter," I said. "My own responsibility is extremely limited, and my part in the affair a most subsidiary one."

"And besides, Mrs. Milliken," put in Frieda, "no one but David Cole lives on that floor. If he makes no complaint, no others are very likely to, and then it would be inhuman to put the poor thing out now. In a few days she will be able to move. I am going to send a woman immediately, and you won't have the slightest trouble."

"For any little matter of extra expense, Mrs. Milliken, I will see that you are properly compensated," I added.

Had I been alone, Mrs. Milliken would probably have argued the matter for an hour, at the end of which I should have retired in defeat. But I think Frieda's size overawed her. She only stammered rather weakly that she knew it would all end badly.

"Don't mind her, David," said my friend, as we went out. "You can't expect the keeper of a cheap boarding-house to be an optimist. Her prediction may or not come true, but no one thinks that the bit of humanity upstairs can turn the world topsy-turvy for some time."

I felt greatly relieved and followed her towards the river, where, just west of Ninth Avenue, we found a tenement on the fourth floor of which there was a sort of rabbit-hutch where dwelt two women and a bevy of infants. I remained on the landing, while Frieda went in. Some of the children came out and contemplated me, all with fingers in their mouths. Remembering that I had changed a nickel on the previous evening, while waiting for Gordon, in order to obtain a cent's worth of assorted misinformation from my favorite paper, I pulled out the four remaining pennies and distributed them. By the infants my action was accepted as gentlemanly and urbane, I think, for they no longer considered me as a suspicious character and the gravity of their expressions changed into a look of unstinted approval.

"It's all right," said Frieda, coming out in a cloud of soapy steam. "She'll go at once. Putting her hat on now. Come along. I'm hungry as a hyena."

So I breakfasted with her at her flat. She had certainly worked much harder than I, during the night, and taken a great deal more out of herself, but she insisted on my sitting down while she juggled with a gas-stove and bacon and eggs and a pot of jam. Her coffee, I thought, was better than mine. At eight o'clock we parted at the corner of the street.

"I must hurry along," she said. "I have an appointment with a man who can pose as Orion."

I had time but for a few words of heartfelt thanks before she was in the middle of the avenue, waving a hand to the motorman of her car. She scrambled aboard, smiling at me cheerfully from the step, and I was alone, wondering at the luck of a chap who could pose as Orion for Frieda. I would rather have her think well of me than any one I know of, I am very sure, and I regretted that my lank form and ill-thatched head were so unsuited to the make-up of a Greek demigod. Never mind, I know that when my next book comes out she will send for me, hurriedly, and make me feel for some minutes as if I were really worthy of tying her big, ugly, sensible shoes. She has read every one of my stories and possesses all the books I ever perpetrated, bless her soul! It is good indeed for a man to be able to look up to a woman, to know in his heart of hearts that she deserves it, and that she doesn't want to marry him, and he doesn't want to marry her. It is fine to think they are a pair of great friends just because they're capable of friendship, a much rarer accomplishment than most people are aware of.

So I returned to the scene of the night's invasion and climbed up the stairs, rather wearily. I had the morning paper, three circulars and a fresh box of cigarettes. Upon my landing I met a large female with a moustache and decided it must be the washerwoman's sister. She smiled pleasantly at me and I returned the courtesy.

In such words as I remembered from my erstwhile residence in Paris I asked how the mother and child were doing.

The lady, she informed me, was doing ever so well. As for the infant, it had beautiful eyes and was a cherished little cabbage.

Wondering upon the philosophy of endearments as attained by foreign nations I entered my room, closing the door carefully, and looked over those pages about the virtuous dog. They were promising, I thought. After putting them down, I took up my razor, for I hate a barber's scraping, and indulged in the luxury of a shave.

The instrument, I thought, possessed a splendid edge. Who knows, some day I might bequeath it to a cherished cabbage.

CHAPTER III

I WATCH AN INFANT

It was all very well for Frieda to tell Mrs. Milliken that, if I had no objection to that baby, no one else could resent its presence. She assumes too much. If I had really belonged to the order of vertebrates I should have objected most strenuously, for its presence is disturbing. It diverts my attention from literary effort. But of course, since I am as spineless as a mollusk, I sought to accept this heaven-sent visitation with due resignation. My endeavor to continue that story was a most pitiful farce. Four times, in reading over a single page, I found the word baby inserted where I had meant to write dog or one of the few available synonyms. I wondered whether it was owing to lack of sleep that my efforts failed and threw myself upon the bed, but my seeking for balmy slumber was more ghastly than my attempt at literature. Never in all my life had I been more arrantly wakeful. A desperate resolve came to me and I flipped a quarter. Heads and I would sit down and play solitaire; tails and I would take a boat to Coney Island, a place I abhor. The coin rolled under the bed, and I was hunting clumsily for it with a stick when a tremendous knock came at the door, followed by the immediate entrance of the washerwoman's sister, whom I afterwards knew as Eulalie Carpaux.

I explained my position, half under the bed, feeling that she had caught me in an attitude lacking in dignity, but the good creature sympathized with me and discovered my money at once, after which she insisted on taking my whiskbroom and vigorously dusting my knees.

"I have come, Monsieur," she informed me, "to ask if your door may be left open. The heat is terrible and the poor, dear lamb has perspiration on her forehead. I know that currents of air are dangerous, but suffocation is worse. What shall I do?"

"You will open as many doors as you please," I answered meekly.

"Thank you. One can see that Monsieur has a good heart, but then any friend of Mademoiselle Frieda must be a good man. She is adorable and uses a great deal of linen. May I ask who does Monsieur's washing?"

"A Chinaman," I answered shortly. "He scrubs it with cinders and irons it with a nutmeg grater. I keep it in this closet on the floor."

"My sister," she informed me, "has four children and washes beautifully. I am sure that if Monsieur allowed me to take his linen, he would be greatly pleased."

"Take it," I said, and waved my hand to signify that the interview was closed, whereupon she mopped her red face, joyfully, with her apron and withdrew.

Here was a pretty kettle of fish. Immediately the most gorgeous ideas for my story crowded my brain and the language came to me, beautiful and touching. But the Murillo-woman's door was open and so was mine. Since Eulalie had ventured to leave the room, it was most probable that her charge was sleeping. The typewriter, of course, would awaken her at once. Was that infant destined to deprive me of a living, to snatch the bread from my mouth? But I reflected that temperatures of ninety in the shade were inconstant phenomena. It would be but a temporary annoyance and the best thing I could do, since I was driven out of house and home, was to take my hat and go to the beach for a swim. The die was cast and I moved to the door, but had to return to place a paperweight on loose sheets littering my desk, whereupon my eyes fell on the old pack of cards and I threw the hat upon the bed and began solitaire. My plans often work out in such fashion. Ten minutes later I was electrified by a cry, a tiny squeak that could hardly have disturbed Herod himself. But it aroused my curiosity and I tiptoed along the hallway, suspecting that the woman Eulalie might not be attending properly to her duties, whatever they were. Everything was still again, and the unjustly mistrusted party was rocking ponderously, with an amorphous bundle in her lap. She smiled at me, graciously. Upon the bed I caught a glimpse of wonderful chestnut hair touched by a thread of sunlight streaming tenuously from the side of a lowered blind; also, I saw a rounded arm. Eulalie put a fat finger to rubicund lips and I retired, cautiously.

How in the world could I have been bothering my head about a trumpery and impossible dog? In that room Nature was making apologetic amends. A woman had obeyed the law of God and man, which, like all other laws, falls heaviest on the weak. She was being graciously permitted to forget past misery and, perchance, dream of happier days to come, while David Cole, scrub coiner of empty phrases, bemoaned the need of keeping quiet for a few hours. I decided that I ought to be ashamed of myself. "The Professor at the Breakfast Table" was at my hand and I took it up, the volume opening spontaneously at the "Story of Iris," and I lost myself in its delight.

An hour later came a light step, swiftly, and the little doctor appeared. He is as tall as I, but looks so very young that he seems small to me. He entered my room, cheerfully, looking as fresh and nice as if rosy dreams had filled his night.

"Well! How are things wagging?" he inquired breezily.

He was fanning himself with his neat straw hat, and I asked him to sit down for a moment.

"Sure! But only for a minute or two. I have a throat clinic to attend at one o'clock. There's just time for this visit, then a bite at Childs' and a skip to Bellevue."

I looked at my watch and found he had allowed himself just fifty minutes for these various occupations.

"Don't let me detain you, my dear boy," I told him. "I – I just wanted to say that I haven't the least idea whether – whether that young creature in the other room has a cent to bless herself with. It seems to me – I think that she should have every care, and I shall be glad if you will consider me responsible – er – within the limits of a moderate income."

"Thanks," he said, "that's very kind of you."

His eyes strayed on my desk, and he pounced upon a copy of "The City's Wrath."

"Tell you what," he said, "that's a tip-top book. I borrowed my mother's copy and read it all night. The fellow who wrote it knows something about the slender connection between body and soul, in this big city. He's looked pretty deep into people's lives."

No compliments I ever received, with the exception of Frieda's, gave me greater pleasure than the appreciation of this honest, strong lad.

"Will you kindly give me your full name?" I asked him.

"Thomas Lawrence Porter," he answered.

I took the volume and wrote it down on the first page, adding kindest regards and my signature, and handed it to him, whereat he stared at me.

"D'ye mean to say you're the chap who wrote that book," he said, and wrung my hand, painfully. "I'm proud to meet you. If you don't mind, I'd like to come in some time and – and chat about things with you, any evening when you're not busy. You know an awful lot about – about people."

"My good friend," I told him, "don't permit youthful enthusiasm to run away with you. But I shall be delighted to have you drop in. And now, since your time is so limited, you had better go and see your patient."

He tucked his book under his arm and went down the hallway. After remaining in the room for perhaps a quarter of an hour, he came out again, cheerfully.

"Doing exceedingly well," he called to me. "By-by; see you again very soon, I hope."

He vanished down the stairs, and I took up my book again, holding it in one hand while I went to the windows, intending to draw down a blind against the sunlight that was streaming in. The heat was entering in gusts and, for a second, a sparrow sat on my window ledge with head drooping, as if it were about to succumb. Then I drew down the blinds and immediately let them up again, reflecting that in the room opposite mine they were lowered for the sake of darkness and air and that my action would lessen the latter. So I sponged off my cranium and panted. It was being revealed to me that babies, whatever their other qualifications, were exquisitely complicated nuisances.

Yet an Arab, I told myself, refuses to step on a piece of paper, lest upon it might be written the name of the Deity, while some Hindoos carry little brooms and sweep the path before them, that they may not tread upon one of Buddha's creatures. Who knows whether divinity does not leave its signature on every infant, and who can reasonably doubt that infinite goodness possesses an equity in prospective men and women. Shall I be less civil than a sand-washed Bedouin or the monk of a Benares shrine? It behooves me to welcome a chance to acquire merit by showing patience.

The book I held was as charming as ever, of course, but since I knew the story by heart I dropped it on my knees and waged a losing fight against a fly, which persisted in perching itself on my brow. Before me flitted the idea that a skull-cap made of sticky fly-paper might be patentable and sell by the million, combining protection and revenge; I must look into the matter. Finally hunger troubled me and I decided to go out for refreshment. Before my neighbor's door I stopped for an instant, my eyes seeking to penetrate the dimness. Eulalie came to me at once and began to whisper.

"Would Monsieur be so very kind as to remain here for a few moments and watch?" she said. "I am going to run over to my sister's and tell her to buy a chicken and make broth. It will be very good for our poor, dear lady. In ten minutes I will be back."

Man's freedom of action is apparently a mere academic concept. Theoretically, I was entirely at liberty to refuse, to look down upon this woman from the superior height of my alleged intellectuality and inform her that my soul craved for an immediate glass of iced tea and some poached eggs on toast. I could have asserted that I did not purpose to allow myself to be bulldozed by an infant seven hours and ten minutes old. As a matter of fact, I was helpless and consented, Eulalie shaking the stairs during her cautious, down-ward progress. It was with some of the feelings of an apprentice in the art of lion-taming that I entered the room. Would the proceeding be tranquil and dignified, or accompanied by roars?

I sat down upon the rocker just vacated by Eulalie and gazed on the horsehair sofa as if the package resting on it were explosive, with a fuse alight. I had feared that it would be thrust upon my lap, but it is likely that my competency had been justifiably suspected. I dared not move the chair, fearing to make a noise, and could see nothing of the white arms or the Murillo face. Suddenly, an orgy of steam-whistling began, rousing my apprehensions while recalling workers to their factories. It proved but a false alarm and stillness prevailed in the top-floor back, for at least three minutes, when the dreaded wail arose.