A Top-Floor Idyl

CHAPTER I

THE NIGHT ALARM

I smiled at my friend Gordon, the distinguished painter, lifting up my glass and taking a sip of the table d'hôte claret, which the Widow Camus supplies with her famed sixty-five cent repast. It is, I must acknowledge, a somewhat turbid beverage, faintly harsh to the palate, and yet it may serve as a begetter of pleasant illusions. While drinking it, I can close my eyes, being of an imaginative nature, and permit its flavor to bring back memories of ever-blessed tonnelles by the Seine, redolent of fried gudgeons and mirific omelettes, and felicitous with gay laughter.

"Well, you old stick-in-the-mud," said my companion, "what are you looking so disgruntled about? I was under the impression that this feast was to be a merry-making to celebrate your fortieth birthday. Something like a grin just now passed over your otherwise uninteresting features, but it was at once succeeded by the mournful look that may well follow, but should not be permitted to accompany, riotous living."

At this I smiled again.

"Just a moment's wool-gathering, my dear fellow," I answered. "I was thinking of our old feasts, and then I began to wonder whether the tune played by that consumptive-looking young man at the piano might be a wild requiem to solemnize that burial of two-score years, or a song of triumphant achievement."

"I think it's what they call a fox-trot," remarked Gordon, doubtfully. "Your many sere and yellow years have brought you to a period in the world's history when the joy of the would-be young lies chiefly in wild contortion to the rhythm of barbaric tunes. I see that they are getting ready to clear away some of the tables and, since we are untrained in such new arts and graces, they will gradually push us away towards the doors. The bottle, I notice, is nearly half empty, which proves our entire sobriety; had it been Pommard, we should have paid more respectful attention to it. Give me a light, and let us make tracks."

We rose and went out. A few couples were beginning to gyrate among the fumes of spaghetti and vin ordinaire. Gordon McGrath, unlike myself, lives in one of the more select quarters of the city, wherefore we proceeded towards Fifth Avenue. The partial solitude of Washington Square enticed us, and we strolled towards it, sitting of common accord upon one of the benches, in the prelude of long silence resulting from philosophic bent and indulgence in rather tough veal. It was finally broken by Gordon; being younger, speech is more necessary to him.

"What about that sarcophagus you've lately selected for yourself?" he asked me.

"They are pleasant diggings," I answered. "Being on the top floor, they are remote as possible from hand-organs and the fragrance of Mrs. Milliken's kitchen. The room is quite large and possesses a bath. It gives me ample space for my books and mother's old piano."

"Wherefore a piano?" he asked, lighting another cigarette. "You can't even play with one finger."

"Well, my sister Jane took out nearly all the furniture, and the remainder went to a junkman, with the exception of the piano. Jane couldn't use it; no room for it in her Weehawken bungalow, besides which she already has a phonograph, purchased at the cost of much saving. You see, Gordon, that old Steinway was rather more intimately connected with my mother, in my memory, than anything else she left. She played it for us when we were kiddies. You have no idea of what a smile that dear woman had when she turned her head towards us and watched us trying to dance! Later on, when she was a good deal alone, it was mostly 'Songs without Words,' or improvisations such as suited her moods. Dear me! She looked beautiful when she played! So, of course, I took it, and it required more room, so that I moved. I've had it tuned; the man said that it was in very good condition yet."

"You were always a silly dreamer, Dave."

"I don't quite see," I began, "what – "

"I'll enlighten your ignorance. Of course you don't. David, old man, you've had the old rattle-trap tuned because of the hope that rises eternal. Visions keep on coming to you of a woman, some indistinct, shadowy, composite creature of your imagination. You expect her to float into your room, in the dim future and in defiance of all propriety, and sit down before that ancient spinet.

"You keep it ready for her; it awaits her coming. To tell you the truth, I'm glad you had it tuned. It shows that you still possess some human traits. I'll come, some day, and we'll go over and capture Frieda Long. We will take her to dinner at Camus, and give her a benedictine and six cups of black coffee. After that we'll get a derrick and hoist her to your top floor, and she'll play Schubert, till the cows come home or the landlady puts us out. She's a wonder!"

"She's a great artist and a dear, lovable woman," I declared.

"That's probably why she never had a love story," conjectured Gordon. "Always had so much affection for the general that she could never descend to the particular. By the way, I went to her studio for a look at her portrait of Professor Burberry."

"It's good, isn't it?"

"Man alive! It's so good, I should think the old fellow would be offended. Through her big dabs of paint he's shown up to the life. You can see his complacency bursting out like a flaming sunflower. Upon his homely mug are displayed all the platitudes of Marcus Aurelius. He is instinct with ignorance that Horace was a drummer for Italian wines and an agent for rural residences, just a smart advertiser, a precursor of the fellows who write verse for the Road of Anthracite or canned soup, and Burberry has never found it out. He would buy splinters from the wooden horse of Troy, and only avoids gold bricks because they're modern. It's a stunning picture!"

That's one reason why I am so fond of Gordon. He's a great portraitist, and far more successful than Frieda, but he is genuine in his admiration of good work. He is rather too cynical, of course, but at the bottom of it there usually lies good advice to his friends. I'm very proud he continues to stick to me.

"I understand he was greatly pleased," I told him, "and I was awfully glad that Frieda got the commission. She needed it."

"Yes, I told her that she ought to go off for a rest in the country," he remarked, "but it seems she has one of her other queer ideas that must be worked out at once. She itched to be at it, even while she was painting Burberry. Mythological, I think, as usual, that latest notion of hers. Some demigod whispering soft nothings to a daughter of men. Showed me a dozen charcoal compositions for it, all deucedly clever. And how are the other animals in the menagerie you live in now?"

That's a way Gordon has. From one subject he leaps to another like a canary hopping on the sticks of his cage; but there is method in his madness. He swiftly exhausts the possibilities of a remark and goes to another without losing time.

"The animals," I answered, "are a rather dull and probably uninteresting lot. First, come two girls who live in a hall bedroom, together."

"It shows on their part an admirable power of concentration."

"I suppose so; their conversation is chiefly reminiscent and plentifully dotted with 'says I' and 'says she' and 'says he.' They are honest young persons and work in a large candy-shop. Hence they must be surfeited with sweets at a deplorably early age."

"Not with all of them; they will find some hitherto untasted, but just as cloying in the end," remarked Gordon.

"I hope not. There is also an elderly couple living on the bounty of a son who travels in collars and cuffs. Sells them, you know. Then I've seen three men who work somewhere and occasionally comment upon what they see in the newspaper. Murders fill them with joy, and, to them, accidents are beer and skittles. I suspect that they esteem themselves as what they are pleased to call 'wise guys,' but they are of refreshing innocence and sterling honesty. One of them borrowed a dollar from me, the other day, to take the two girls to the movies. He returned it on next pay day."

"Look out, David, he may be trying to establish a credit," Gordon warned me. "You are such an easy mark!"

"I'll be careful," I assured him. "Then we have a poor relation of the landlady. He looks out for the furnace in winter and is a night watchman in a bank. An inoffensive creature who reads the papers the other boarders throw away."

"Altogether it makes up a beautiful and cheering totality of ineptitude, endowed with the souls of shuttles or cogwheels," opined Gordon.

"Well, as Shylock says, if you prick them, they bleed," I protested. "At any rate they must have some close affinity with the general scheme of Nature."

"Nature, my dear Dave, is a dustbin in which a few ragmen succeed in finding an occasional crust of dry bread wherewith to help fill the pot and make their hearts glad. It is a horribly wasteful organization by which a lady cod produces a million eggs that one fish may possibly reach maturity and chowder. Four trees planted on a hill commonly die, but, if you stick in a few thousands, there may be a percentage of survivals, besides nuts for the squirrels. Humanity represents a few tall trees and a host of scrubs."

Thus does Gordon always lay down the law, to which I generally listen with some amusement. He is dogmatic and incredulous, though he lacks scepticism in regard to his own opinions.

"Then all honor to the scrubs, my dear Gordon!" I interjected. "I admire and revere the courage and persistency with which they keep on growing, seeking a bit of sunlight here and there, airing their little passions, bearing their trials bravely. But I forgot to mention another inmate of my caravanserai. She's only there for a day or two, in a room opposite mine, hitherto vacant and only tenanted yesterday. I met her as she was coming up the stairs. She walked heavily, poor thing. I could only see her by the dim light of the gas-jet on the landing. It was a young face, deeply lined and unhappy. Downstairs I came across Mrs. Milliken, my landlady, who explained that the person I had met expected to go next day to a hospital. The Milliken woman had known her husband. He went off to the war, months ago, and the young wife's been teaching French and giving piano lessons, till she couldn't work any longer. The French government allows her twenty-five or thirty cents a day."

"I'm glad it keeps a paternal eye on the wives of its brave defenders," remarked Gordon.

"It does, to that extent, but it doesn't go very far in this country. She has a remarkable face; looks a good deal like that Madonna of Murillo's in the Louvre."

"That's a back number at this stage of the world's history. Most of us prefer snub noses. I notice that you said she plays the piano."

"I don't see what – "

"Well, you've just had yours tuned. Oh! I forgot you said she was going off to the hospital. Never mind, Dave, they come out again, so don't worry. I've known you to be disturbed for a whole week over somebody's sick dog and to go two blocks out of your way to steer a strayed and unpleasantly ragged blind man. What is it, appendicitis?"

"Mrs. Milliken darkly hinted, I think, that it was an expected baby."

"Oh! Well, I suppose a baby had to go with a Murillo; the picture would have been incomplete. I'm glad that this particular case appears to be a perfectly safe one."

"What do you know about it?" I asked.

"I mean from your standpoint. I dare presume that the Milliken female has a holy horror of sprouting infants, like all landladies. She would naturally foresee a notice to quit from the old couple, disturbed in their slumbers, and extravagance in the use of hot water and linen would stare her in the face. You have made me sympathize with you for nothing, for your Murillo-woman will vanish into space and become the handmaiden of a scrub in the making. Henceforth, the case will only interest the Bureau of Vital Statistics and the manufacturers of improvements on mother's milk. Give me another cigarette."

I handed him the cardboard box, for, although I have a silver case, I never know where it is. If I did, I wouldn't use it since I don't believe in flaunting one's vices. He took a cigarette, tapped it on the back of his hand, and engaged in conversation the lonely policeman, who had strolled over to see that we were not flouting the majesty of the law by dozing on the bench. He remarked that the night was fine but warm, Gordon assenting. Then my friend suddenly asked him what kind of boots he wore, and put down the address most carefully on his cuff, thanking him effusively, after which the guardian walked off, ponderously.

"Will you kindly explain your object?" I asked Gordon, who has what the French call the coquetterie du pied and asserts there's only one man in New York who can make boots, a delusion that costs him about fifteen dollars a pair.

"You're not lacking in sympathy," he instructed me, "but, on your part, the feeling is but an unintelligent instinct. Any idiot can feel sorry for a cripple or a man compelled by poverty to smoke cheap tobacco. I now call your attention to the fact that this old minion is ancient and corpulent. He's on his feet during all working hours, and his cogitations must often turn to his nether extremities. He carefully nurses them, while he raps those of lawless slumberers on these seats. Civilly, I spoke to him of the subject uppermost in his mind, and now he has left us, happy in the thought that he has put a fellowman on the right road. That's what I call taking a sympathetic interest in a deserving old ass. You didn't suppose for a moment that I'd wear such beastly things, did you?"

"You would rather go barefooted," I told him.

"I would," he assented. "If Gordon McGrath appeared in the street, naked as to his toes, the papers would mention the fact. The Banner would send me the famed Cordelia, who would insist on photographing my feet for publication in a Sunday supplement, with a hint to the effect that I am a rather well known painter. It would be an advertisement."

"If I went without boots, benevolent old ladies would stop me and hand out copper pennies," I remarked, without jealousy.

"You just wait till the 'Land o' Love' is out, old man," he told me, "and the same old dames will write for your autograph."

Gordon is quite daffy over the book I sent to my publishers last week. He has read the first, one middle and the last chapter, and predicts great things for it. Of course, I know better, for it will be just like the others. From four to six thousand copies sold, a few flattering notices, mostly in journals unheard of, and swift oblivion after some months. But I care nothing that I may be a scrub among writers, for the occupation suits me. I am not ambitious, and I can rise late in the morning, pound the keys of my old machine for an hour before lunch, waste a good part of the afternoon in one of the libraries, and go to work again after the hand-organs and knife-grinders have been abed some hours. Then, some time before sunrise, the rattle of milk-carts remind me of Mrs. Milliken's bedspring and mattress, and I go to bed. I am not doing so badly, and sell one or two short stories every month. Last year I opened an account in the savings bank. The time may come when I shall be classed among the malefactors of great wealth.

"But one reader ever wrote to me," I finally answered. "It was a young person anxious to know whether I could recommend the 'City's Wrath' as a birthday present to a Baptist aunt. I advised against it, thus cheating myself out of ten per cent. royalty on a dollar thirty-five."

"Oh! She'd have sent a second-hand copy," he answered consolingly, and shifted to a discussion of the ultimate blackening of vermilions, which seemed to give him some concern.

After this he looked at his watch and declared he had just twenty-five minutes to get to the Lambs Club. That's just like him; he will loll and sprawl around for hours with you, looking like a man without a responsibility in the world, and suddenly arise and sprint away to far regions, always arriving in the nick of time. My way is to prepare far in advance to meet my rare engagements, to think of them persistently, and, usually, to arrive ten minutes late.

I walked over to the subway with him, at such a breathless pace that I wondered if the friendly policeman would change his mind about us, should we meet him in crossing the square. Gordon left me at the entrance, with a wave of one hand, the other searching for a nickel, and I was permitted to return leisurely to my domicile, in a profuse perspiration. I felt my wilted collar, knowing that Gordon would unquestionably reach the club, looking spick and span. That's also one of his traits.

As I crossed the square again, I saw a belated tramp leading an emaciated yellow dog by a string. The man looked hungrier than the dog, and I broke all precepts of political economy by handing him a dime. He was blameworthy, for he should have looked out for himself, and not have assumed foolish responsibilities. He was entirely wrong. What business had he to seek affection, to require the faithfulness of a rust-colored mongrel? How dared he ask charity that should have gone to the widow and orphan, wherewith to feed a useless quadruped? I sat down again, for it was only midnight, and thought pleasantly upon the vagaries of human nature. Suddenly, a splendid story suggested itself to me about a dog and tramp. It would be good for about four thousand words, and I hurried away to Mrs. Milliken's lest the inspiration might vanish on the way. I would have a dog all but human, a tramp all but dog, and the animal would sacrifice itself for a master redeemed at last by the spectacle of canine virtue. I knew just what magazine might accept it. A few minutes later I reached the house, which, like the Milliken woman, has seen better days. The frittering brownstone and discolored brick suit me as naturally as a hole in the sand befits a prairie dog. I let myself in, softly, with due regard to the slumbers of people compelled by the tragedy of life to go to bed at the behest of a clock, and trod the creaking stairs in utter darkness, guided by a friendly but shaky balustrade. Then I reached my landing, opened my door, turned on the light, put on my slippers and fired my coat on the bed. As soon as I had dropped my collar and tie on the floor, I was ready for work and sat down to my machine. Thank goodness, the inspiration had remained; clearly and cogently the sentences flowed; after I had finished the first page, I was already weeping in spirit for my noble dog. Then, suddenly, came a rap at my door, hurried, eager, impatient.

"Great Heavens!" I thought at once. "I am to be interrupted because that blessed woman objects to loud typewriting at one a.m. I'm glad she's going away to the hospital."

I went to the door, assuming my most austere mien, and opened it.

CHAPTER II

FRIEDA THE ANGEL

"Please help me!" cried the woman hoarsely. "My God! What shall I do?"

It was, as I had surmised, the Murillo-faced occupant of the room on the other side of the landing. In my dismay the desperate thought came to me that a lonely bachelor was the last individual she should have sought aid from. But her look of haggardness, the teeth pressed into her lips, the clenched hands, the chin carried forward in an expression of agonized supplication rebuked my egotism.

"I – I don't know," I confessed humbly.

She turned half way around, seized the balustrade and stared at me vacantly.

"Allow me to help you back to your room," I suggested shakily. "Then I'll run downstairs and get Mrs. Milliken."

She went with me, haltingly, and threw herself upon the decrepit horsehair sofa, as I abandoned her and ran downstairs, nearly breaking my neck on account of my slovenly old slippers. At the landlady's door I pounded till I chanced to remember she had informed me that she expected to spend the night at her married daughter's, in Fort Lee. In despond I bethought myself of the young women who sold candy. No! Such problems were not of their solving. Of course there was the negro cook, hidden in some ancillary cavern of the basement, but cowardice prevented me from penetrating such darkness, and I ran out of the house, coatless. Half way down the block were two doctors' signs. One shining in the freshness of new nickelling; the other an old thing of battered tin, with faded gold letters.

"This," I decided, "is a case requiring the mature experience of age," and I rang furiously, awaiting the appearance of the venerable owner of the ancient sign. A shock-headed and red-haired youth opened the door, clad in pajamas and rubbing his eyes.

"Yes," he said pleasantly.

"I need the doctor's services at once," I informed him. "Hustle him up immediately, my good fellow. Please be quick, it may be a matter of life and death."

"Oh! I'm the doctor," he said, "and I'll be with you in a few seconds. Sit right down."

He left me in the darkness of the hallway and I sank down on a wooden seat, upon a palm leaf fan that crackled dismally beneath my slender weight. Faintly, in the back, I discerned a ghostly folding bed and heard the swishing of garments flying across the room. In spite of my feverish impatience the doctor came out again as fast as if he had been clothed by some magic art.

"What kind of a case?" he asked.

"I believe you are wanted to help increase and multiply," I answered.

"Should have told me at once. Got the wrong bag!" he reproved me, disappearing. At once he returned. I went out first, and he followed me, slamming the door with a sound that reverberated through the quiet street, and we sprinted off. I used the key with a shaking hand.

"Top floor," I informed him.

"All my patients seem to live on top floors," he replied.

At the woman's door I knocked.

"I – I have brought you assistance," I told her. "This – this young gentleman knows all about such things; he's a doctor. I – I'll be in the next room, if there's anything else I can do for you."

"Is there no woman in the place?" inquired the young man.

"No. Only some girls who know nothing save the price of caramels and the intricacies of tango. But I can find one inside of twenty minutes; I'll go and get her."

"That's good," he assented cheerfully, going to his patient, who looked at him in some fear.

But I reflected that the doctor seemed kindly, and by no means overwhelmed by the responsibility thrust upon him, so that I took the time to slip on my boots, after which I ran to Eleventh Street, where Frieda Long burrows in a small flat. Her studio, shared with another woman, is farther uptown. Finally she opened the door, clad in a hoary dressing-gown and blinking, for she had not been able to find her spectacles.

"Who is it?" she demanded placidly, as if being awakened at two fifteen in the morning had been a common incident of her life.

"It's Dave, just Dave Cole," I answered. "I want you, Frieda – that is to say, a woman wants you badly, at my house – taking her share of the primal curse. Don't know who she is, but Mrs. Milliken's away. She's alone with a little half-hatched doctor, and – and – "

"Come in. Sit there in the front room. Cigarettes on that table. I'll close the door and be with you in five minutes," she assured me tranquilly.

I tried to smoke, but the thing tasted like Dead Sea fruit and I pitched it out of the open window. An amazingly short time afterwards Frieda was ready, bespectacled and wearing an awful hat. I think she generally picks them out of rag bags.

As we walked along, she entertained me with her latest idea for a picture. It would be a belted Orion pursuing the daughters of Pleione, who would be changing into stars. She explained some of the difficulties and beauties of the subject, and her conception of it, while I looked at her in wonder. I must say that, from her stubby, capable fingers, there flow pure poetry of thought and exquisiteness of coloring. Her form, reminding one of a pillow tied none too tightly in the middle, her tousled head containing a brain masculine in power and feminine in tenderness, her deep contralto, might be appanages of some back-to-the-earth female with an uncomfortable mission. But she's simply the best woman in the world.