An Officer and a Lady

by Rex Stout

  “Fuzzy thing!” said Mr. Chidden, in a tone of deep contempt. Then he turned around with a hasty glance at the kitchen window. No one was in sight.

  “Disgustin’ animal!” said Mr. Chidden, and gave a vicious poke with the broom handle. The cat leaped aside with a snarl, and disappeared up the side of the fence. Mr. Chidden allowed himself a momentary grin of appreciation, then sighed and resumed the melancholy stare at the toes of his boots. Five minutes passed.

  “Robert!” came a sudden voice, harsh and authoritative, from the kitchen door.

  Mr. Chidden rose to his feet and faced about. In the doorway appeared the form of a woman, angular, red-faced, something above fifty. She had the appearance of that class of females who manage somehow to exist in a perpetual state of agitation; and at this moment her emotion was apparent in every feature of her forbidding countenance.

  “Well?” said Mr. Chidden.

  The lady snorted. “Didn’t you hear the bell ring?”

  “I did not.”

  “Well, it did. Answer it. I’m too busy.”

  Mr. Chidden proceeded through the kitchen and lower hall, up a flight of stairs, and down another hall to the front door. There he found a boy from the tailor shop at the corner, who announced, in a squeaky voice, that he had come for Mr. Stubbs’ suit. Mr. Chidden mounted two flights of stairs to the third-floor front and returned with a heap of gray material hanging over his arm.

  “Be ready in half an hour,” said the boy, taking the suit. “Tell Mr. Stubbs he’ll have to send for it. I got to go to school.”

  Mr. Chidden nodded and closed the door. As he did so, a voice floated up from the kitchen:

  “Robert!”

  Mr. Chidden halted abruptly, while the settled melancholy of his face deepened to an expression of despair.

  “It’s too much!” he muttered aloud. “I’ll revolt, that’s what I’ll do, I’ll revolt!” Then he sighed, thrust his hands deep in his trousers pockets, and descended to the kitchen.

  “Have you removed that coal?” demanded the red-faced woman, as he entered.

  “What coal?” inquired Mr. Chidden.

  “Lord save us!” granted the lady. “The coal! Are you without brains, Robert Chidden? If ever woman were hangin’ on the neck of a worthless brother, you’re it. Go and move that coal!”

  “You ain’t hangin’ on my neck,” protested Mr. Chidden, with some energy. “You ain’t hangin’ on my neck, Maria Chidden.”

  “I’m not, perhaps, in a way,” agreed Miss Chidden. “As a figure of speech, which you don’t understand, I am, and have been for twenty years. But I’ve got no time for argument. Go and move that coal!”

  For a single moment Mr. Chidden’s brain entertained a giddy and audacious thought. The words, “I won’t move coal,” were formed in his throat. But, alas! they stuck there. He turned without a word, took the key to the cellar door from a nail on the wall, and made his way to the regions below. There, at the end toward the street, he found a large pile of coal which had been dumped in through the sidewalk, and which it was his painful duty to move with a shovel and basket to the vicinity of the furnace, some forty feet away. Mr. Chidden set about the unpleasant task with a dogged and gloomy air. It was easy to see that his heart was not in the work.

  Little wonder, for even his sister Maria would have admitted, if absolutely pushed, that Mr. Chidden was not born to move coal. Indeed, at one time in their lives—when, on the death of their father, they had found themselves in undisputed possession of an inheritance of six thousand dollars—she had regarded him as an equal. But when he had taken his half and gone up to New Rochelle to open a haberdasher shop, she had allowed herself certain dark observations concerning the state of his intellect; and when the haberdasher shop had failed and left its enterprising founder penniless, the observations had become painful convictions, declared with painful directness.

  Twenty long years had passed since Mr. Chidden, finding his inheritance gone and with it all his youthful ardor, had come to live with his sister in the rooming house she had established with a portion of her share of the patrimony. At first he had intended to make it merely a temporary visit, to recuperate his powers; but time had drifted on. At the end of a year he had become a fixed institution, and had remained so ever since. Several times he had made a desperate and spasmodic attempt to break away by getting a job of one sort or another, but the difficulties and disappointments encountered in each instance had filled him with the settled conviction that fate had marked him for the victim of a cruel and remorseless tyranny. He gave up altogether, and became a furnace tender and handyman around the house.

  Now and then, during the twenty years of horror, Mr. Chidden had lashed his sinking spirit to the point of rebellion. Once he had openly and fearlessly run away, only to be driven back by stern necessity in less than a fortnight. On another occasion he had conceived a bold and brilliant plan; and, after cogitating on it for two weeks and—more specifically—having fortified himself with a glass of blackberry cordial surreptitiously procured from a bottle in the sideboard, he had advanced a certain proposition to his sister Maria.

  “My money!” Miss Chidden had exclaimed, after gazing at her brother for two minutes in dazed stupefaction at his unspeakable temerity. “Give you my money to throw away, Robert Chidden! I’m not crazy, thank you.”

  “But it’s a chance,” Mr. Chidden had argued desperately. “I tell you it’s a real chance, Maria. Fine little shop—Seventh Avenue—has to sell—forty percent—can’t lose. It wouldn’t cost more than a thousand—fifteen hundred at the outside. You wouldn’t miss it. You must have ten thousand by this time. Where is it? Railroads, I suppose. Six percent. Is it railroads?”

  “No, it ain’t. And if you think—”

  “It don’t matter,” said Mr. Chidden, actually interrupting her in the excitement of his feelings. “I’m your own brother, Maria. I’d pay you back in a year. Eight percent. Wouldn’t you take eight percent from your own brother? You wouldn’t miss it out of ten thousand.”

  “You’re right,” said Miss Chidden grimly. “I won’t miss it, Robert. I won’t miss it at all. It may be ten thousand, and it may be more, and it may be less, but whatever it is, I’ll keep it. It ain’t in railroads, and it pays some better than six per cent. When I invest money, I don’t put it where them Wall Street robbers can peck at it. Neither do I give it to a lummox like you to throw away. Now you go out and clean off the sidewalk.”

  “But, Maria—” Mr. Chidden began, almost tearfully.

  “Robert! There’s the broom.”

  That had been the last eruption of the spirit of revolt in Mr. Chidden’s bosom. The fire still smoldered, but it gave off nothing but smoke—mutterings and moody thoughts. The chief pity of this proceeded from the fact that he was constitutionally a cheerful man. For two weeks following the unpleasant episode related above, he had endeavored to drown his discontent by frequent sippings of the blackberry cordial; then his sister, actuated by a mean suspicion, had put a lock on the sideboard door, and he had been denied even that medicinal solace.

  The amazing part of it was that Mr. Chidden was able to preserve the faintest trace of individuality under such trying conditions. But his was a spirit not easily conquered, even by twenty years passed under a galling yoke. We have seen him descend meekly to the cellar, resigned to the dirty task of moving coal. But it must not be supposed that he did so with any sense of appropriateness or true humility. He lacked the coal-moving instinct. As he inserted the blade of the shovel, with a vicious push, into the pile of hard black lumps, his imagination was no less active than his arms.

  “That for you!” he muttered. “That for you—” A grunt, and another savage lunge. “That for you, Maria Chidden, you domineerin’ despot!”

  Thirty minutes had passed in this manner, and a considerable hole had begun to appear in the black pile, when Mr. Chidden suddenly paused in the act of inserting the shovel, to consult a dollar nickel-plated watch in his poc
ket. Then, with the expression of one who has suddenly remembered something not unpleasant, he threw down the shovel, turned out the gas jet, mounted the stairs to the kitchen, crossed to the sink, and began washing his hands.

  “Now what’s the matter?” demanded Miss Chidden, entering from the dining room.

  “I’ve got to go to the tailor for Mr. Stubbs’ suit,” replied Mr. Chidden calmly, feeling himself in a safe position.

  “Humph!” grunted the lady. “It’s a pity he don’t go himself.”

  “Couldn’t,” said Mr. Chidden. “Sartorial wretchedness. He ain’t got but one.”

  This argument being incontrovertible, Miss Chidden returned to the dining room without further comment. Mr. Chidden scrubbed his hands and face, put on a collar and tie and coat, and sought the street. Half a block to the east, he turned into the door of a basement shop, above which was a blackboard with the legend in gilt:

  M. STURCKE,

  Fine Tailoring

  Gents’ Suits Sponged and Pressed 50c.

  “Morning,” said Mr. Chidden, entering.

  Two persons were in the shop—a fair-haired little woman with laughing blue eyes and an air of cheery amiability, and a young man with black hair and a pale, tragic countenance, who was energetically pounding on a tailor’s goose with a heavy iron. The woman, laying aside a piece of cloth on which she was sewing, rose to greet the newcomer.

  “Good morning, Mr. Chidden.”

  The caller, suddenly remembering his manners, jerked off his hat before he spoke:

  “Very fine, Mrs. Sturcke. Out for a little breath of air. By the way, you have a suit—belongs to one of the roomers—”

  “You want Mr. Stubbs’ suit, yes? Leo, is the gray suit done?”

  “In a minute,” replied the pale-faced young man, and began to pound with the iron harder than ever.

  “I’ll wait,” said Mr. Chidden, leaning himself gracefully against the counter.

  Mrs. Sturcke resumed her chair and took up her work. The pale-faced young man glanced twice at the pair, and each time the iron came down with a fearful thud.

  “How’s business?” asked Mr. Chidden, with a professional air.

  “Business is good,” replied Mrs. Sturcke, in a tone which implied that nothing else was.

  “It appears so,” said Mr. Chidden, glancing knowingly at the row of coats and trousers hanging on the rail in the rear. “You’ve done admirable here, Mrs. Sturcke.”

  “As well as could be expected,” agreed the lady.

  “Yes, you have indeed. It’s really surprising. As I said to Maria when your husband died two years ago, ‘Women ain’t tailors. She’ll cavort.’ But you haven’t.”

  “No, I aind’t.” Mrs. Sturcke smiled. “But, of course, Miss Chidden—your sister—knew better yet. Not but what it’s been hard. It’s hard, anyway, being a widow.”

  Mr. Chidden shook his head sympathetically. “I know. Lonesome memories. Past illusions. I have ’em myself, though I must say I ain’t a widow.” Mr. Chidden sighed. “The fact is, I’ve never been married.”

  Mrs. Sturcke had begun to smile at his little joke about not being a widow, but this last statement sobered her instantly.

  “And that’s a pity,” she observed gravely. “It’s not right, Mr. Chidden.”

  “Right!” exclaimed Mr. Chidden, with sudden energy. “Of course not! It’s a fault! I admit it; it’s a fault! But it’s not mine. It takes two to make a bargain, Mrs. Sturcke, and I’ve never found the coequal.”

  “Some women is fools,” declared Mrs. Sturcke emphatically.

  “Here’s the suit,” the pale-faced young man broke in, glancing from one to the other.

  Mr. Chidden took the suit and placed it over his arm—with the trousers underneath so the suspenders wouldn’t show—and prepared to leave. Mrs. Sturcke helped him with the adjustment.

  “Thanks,” said Mr. Chidden courteously. “Good morning, ma’am.”

  There was a little, perplexed frown on Mr. Chidden’s brow as he turned down Twenty-third Street, a frown that alternated, now with a smile, now with a whistle. When he reached the steps of the rooming house, the smile was in the ascendant, but as he entered the door the frown returned.

  “I wonder,” he said musingly to himself, “what the little widow meant by that about women being fools.”

  Then back came the smile, indicating, perhaps, that he had answered the question to his complete satisfaction.

  By twelve o’clock the coal was moved to the last shining lump, and Mr. Chidden went to the kitchen to wash up. Throughout that operation he whistled—there was no tune to it, but he whistled—and his sister Maria, hearing it, looked across at him suspiciously.

  “Robert,” she exclaimed, “for goodness’ sake stop that noise!”

  He returned her gaze with an air of the utmost cheerfulness, threw the towel on a nail, and wandered into the back court.

  After lunch, which he ate in the kitchen with his sister and the cook to avoid messing up the dining room, Mr. Chidden prepared to go out. This hour, from one to two, was his to do with as he liked, and he usually took advantage of the opportunity to walk down to the river, where he would loiter around watching the ferryboat crowds and the wagons of merchandise. For years he had been on friendly terms with the cabbies of the neighborhood, but the advent of taxis had thinned their ranks, and most of the old faces were gone.

  On this day Mr. Chidden somehow did not feel like walking to the river.

  “Sentiment of unrest,” he muttered to himself, taking down an old brown slouch hat from a hook in the basement hall. He put the hat on his head, then suddenly snatched it off again, and stood gazing at it in quick fury. The next moment he started up the stairs with a firm and resolute step, down the hall and into the parlor, where his sister was removing the summer covers from the furniture.

  “Well,” said Miss Chidden, without looking up, “what are you fooling around here for? Remember, you get back by two o’clock. There’s some rugs to beat.”

  “Maria,” said Mr. Chidden calmly, “I want two dollars.”

  At that she did look up.

  “What for?” she demanded in amazement.

  “For a new hat. Look at that!” said Mr. Chidden, holding up the old brown slouch. “It’s a disgrace. And, what’s more, it don’t fit, and it knows it. It’s even ashamed of itself.”

  “That’s all right,” replied the lady accusingly, “but you bought it new last year.”

  But Mr. Chidden was in no mood for argument. He threw the hat on the floor with a gesture of scorn, and put his foot on it.

  “Maria,” he said coldly, “I asked you for two dollars.”

  “And I said,” retorted his sister, “or at least I say, which is the same thing, that you shan’t have it. Don’t try to bully me, Robert Chidden. I won’t stand it. Don’t abuse your own sister. You can either wear that hat or go without. Pick it up!”

  “Maria—”

  “Robert!”

  Mr. Chidden surrendered before the gleam of her eye. Fool that he had been, ever to have imagined he could conquer that steely glance! He picked up the hat, walked slowly to the hall, opened the door, and descended the steps to the street.

  There he paused, undecided which way to turn. Certainly he did not want to walk to the river. The thing he would have liked most to do was to fight someone, pull his hair, kick him, punch his face; but that, he acknowledged to himself, was an impractical desire. He was a small man physically. He pulled the hat over his head, sighed heavily, and turned down the street to the right.

  He walked slowly, aimlessly, with his hands thrust deep in his pockets and his shoulders stooped in dejection.

  “Domineerin’ despot!” he muttered aloud. “A man as is a man wouldn’t stand it. Bob Chidden, you’re a sexual disgrace.”

  These and other sundry self-accusations occupied his thoughts till he had nearly reached the end of the block. Suddenly he stopped and turned. Before him was a window bearing the ins
cription:

  M. STURCKE,

  Fine Tailoring

  Gents’ Suits Sponged and Pressed 50c.

  For a minute Mr. Chidden stood and stared at the window, while his face gradually lost its gloom and became luminous with the brilliance of an idea. He took his hands from his pockets, removed the brown slouch hat, and pulled it into some sort of shape.

  “My foot!” he exclaimed to himself, as if dazed by the temerity of his own conception. “My foot!”

  Then suddenly his eyes brightened with the fire of determination. He pressed his lips firmly together, stepped down to the door of the tailor shop and opened it with a resolute hand.

  “Good afternoon,” said Mrs. Sturcke, looking up from her sewing as he entered.

  “How de do, ma’am?” Mr. Chidden, glancing hastily around, observed with relief that the pale-faced young man was not in sight. “Out for a breath of air,” he added, leaning against the counter and looking down at the plump little widow from the corner of one eye.

  Mrs. Sturcke smiled pleasantly.

  “I’m glad to know you can enjoy it, Mr. Chidden. For me, I don’t ever seem to get the time. More work every day, though I suppose I shouldn’t complain about that yet.”

  Mr. Chidden agreed that it was a good thing to have work to do, but hastened to add that it was a great pity that ladies should have no time for recreation.

  “Walking,” he declared, “is one of the great pleasures of life. It takes you away from things.”

  At this the widow smiled again, and invited Mr. Chidden to be seated. There were two empty chairs in the shop—one near the outer door, two paces from where he stood, and the other behind the counter, near that occupied by Mrs. Sturcke. Mr. Chidden hesitated a moment, then deliberately walked through the aisle to the other side of the counter and seated himself on the second chair.