Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  Mrs. Roberts: “Where was the janitor?”

  Campbell: “Where the janitor always is — nowhere.”

  Lawton: “Eating his Christmas dinner, probably.”

  Mrs. Roberts, partially abandoning and then recovering herself: “Yes, it’s perfectly spoiled! Well, friends, I think we’d better go to dinner — that’s the only way to bring them. I’ll go out and interview the cook.” Sotto voce to her husband: “If I don’t go somewhere and have a cry, I shall break down here before everybody. Did you ever know anything so strange? It’s perfectly — pokerish.”

  Lawton: “Yes, there’s nothing like serving dinner to bring the belated guest. It’s as infallible as going without an umbrella when it won’t rain.”

  Campbell: “No, no! Wait a minute, Roberts. You might sit down without one guest, but you can’t sit down without five. It’s the old joke about the part of Hamlet. I’ll just step round to Aunt Mary’s house — why, I’ll be back in three minutes.”

  Mrs. Roberts, with perfervid gratitude: “Oh, how good you are, Willis! You don’t know how much you’re doing! What presence of mind you have! Why couldn’t we have thought of sending for her? O Willis, I can never be grateful enough to you! But you always think of everything.”

  Roberts: “I accept my punishment meekly, Willis, since it’s in your honor.”

  Lawton: “It’s a simple and beautiful solution, Mrs. Roberts, as far as your aunt’s concerned; but I don’t see how it helps the rest of us.”

  Mrs. Miller to Mr. Campbell: “If you meet Mr. Miller “ —

  Curwen: “Or my wife” —

  Bemis: “Or my son” —

  Lawton: “Or my daughter” —

  Campbell: “I’ll tell them they’ve just one chance in a hundred to save their lives, and that one is open to them for just five minutes.”

  Lawton: “Tell my daughter that I’ve been here half an hour, and everybody knows I drove here with her.”

  Bemis: “Tell my son that the next time I’ll walk, and let him drive.”

  Mrs. Miller: “Tell Mr. Miller I found I had my fan after all.”

  Curwen: “And Mrs. Curwen that I’ve got her glove all right.” He holds it up.

  Mrs. Roberts, at a look of mystification and demand from her brother: “Never mind explanations, Willis. They’ll understand, and we’ll explain when you get back.”

  Lawton, examining the glove which Curwen holds up: “Why, so it is right!”

  Curwen: “What do you mean?”

  Lawton: “Were you sent back to get a left glove?”

  Curwen: “Yes, yes; of course.”

  Lawton: “Well, if you’ll notice, this is a right one. The one at home is left.”

  Curwen, staring helplessly at it: “Gracious Powers! what shall I do?”

  Lawton: “Pray that Mrs. Curwen may never come.”

  Mr. Curwen, dashing through the door: “I’ll be back by the time Mr. Campbell returns.”

  Mrs. Miller, with tokens of breaking down visible to Mrs. Roberts: “I wonder what could have kept Mr. Miller. It’s so very mysterious, I” —

  Mrs. Roberts, suddenly seizing her by the arm, and hurrying her from the room: “Now, Mrs. Miller, you’ve just got time to see my baby.”

  Mr. Roberts, winking at his remaining guests: “A little cry will do them good. I saw as soon as Willis came in instead of her aunt, that my wife couldn’t get through without it. They’ll come back as bright as” —

  Lawton: “Bemis, should you mind a bereaved father falling upon your neck?”

  Bemis: “Yes, Lawton, I think I should.”

  Lawton: “Well, it is rather odd about all those people. You can say of one or two that they’ve been delayed, but five people can’t have been delayed. It’s too much. It amounts to a coincidence. Hello! What’s that?”

  Roberts: “What’s what?”

  Lawton: “I thought I heard a cry.”

  Roberts: “Very likely you did. They profess to deaden these floors so that you can’t hear from one apartment to another. But I know pretty well when my neighbor overhead is trying to wheel his baby to sleep in a perambulator at three o’clock in the morning; and I guess our young lady lets the people below understand when she’s wakeful. But it’s the only way to live, after all. I wouldn’t go back to the old up-and-down-stairs, house-in-a-block system on any account. Here we all live on the ground-floor practically. The elevator equalizes everything.”

  Bemis: “Yes, when it happens to be where you are. I believe I prefer the good old Florentine fashion of walking upstairs, after all.”

  Lawton: “Roberts, I did hear something. Hark! It sounded like a cry for help. There!”

  Roberts: “You’re nervous, doctor. It’s nothing. However, it’s easy enough to go out and see.” He goes out to the door of the apartment, and immediately returns. He beckons to Dr. Lawton and Mr. Bemis, with a mysterious whisper: “Come here both of you. Don’t alarm the ladies.”

  II.

  In the interior of the elevator are seated Mrs. Roberts’s Aunt Mary (Mrs. Crashaw), Mrs. Curwen, and Miss Lawton; Mr. Miller and Mr. Alfred Bemis are standing with their hats in their hands. They are in dinner costume, with their overcoats on their arms, and the ladies’ draperies and ribbons show from under their outer wraps, where they are caught up, and held with that caution which characterizes ladies in sitting attitudes which they have not been able to choose deliberately. As they talk together, the elevator rises very slowly, and they continue talking for some time before they observe that it has stopped.

  Mrs. Crashaw: “It’s very fortunate that we are all here together. I ought to have been here half an hour ago, but I was kept at home by an accident to my finery, and before I could be put in repair I heard it striking the quarter past. I don’t know what my niece will say to me. I hope you good people will all stand by me if she should be violent.”

  Miller: “In what a poor man may with his wife’s fan, you shall command me, Mrs. Crashaw.” He takes the fan out, and unfurls it.

  Mrs. Crashaw: “Did she send you back for it?”

  Miller: “I shouldn’t have had the pleasure of arriving with you if she hadn’t.”

  Mrs. Crashaw, laughing, to Mrs. Curwen: “What did you send yours back for, my dear?”

  Mrs. Curwen, thrusting out one hand gloved, and the other ungloved: “I didn’t want two rights.”

  Young Mr. Bemis: “Not even women’s rights?”

  Mrs. Curwen: “Oh, so young and so depraved! Are all the young men in Florence so bad?” Surveying her extended arms, which she turns over: “I don’t know that I need have sent him for the other glove. I could have explained to Mrs. Roberts. Perhaps she would have forgiven my coming in one glove.”

  Miller, looking down at the pretty arms: “If she had seen you without.”

  Mrs. Curwen: “Oh, you were looking!” She rapidly involves her arms in her wrap. Then she suddenly unwraps them, and regards them thoughtfully. “What if he should bring a ten-button instead of an eight! And he’s quite capable of doing it.”

  Miller: “Are there such things as ten-button gloves?”

  Mrs. Curwen: “You would think there were ten-thousand button gloves if you had them to button.”

  Miller: “It would depend upon whom I had to button them for.”

  Mrs. Curwen: “For Mrs. Miller, for example.”

  Mrs. Crashaw: “We women are too bad, always sending people back for something. It’s well the men don’t know how bad.”

  Mrs. Curwen: “‘Sh! Mr. Miller is listening. And he thought we were perfect. He asks nothing better than to be sent back for his wife’s fan. And he doesn’t say anything even under his breath when she finds she’s forgotten it, and begins, ‘Oh, dearest, my fan’ — Mr. Curwen does. But he goes all the same. I hope you have your father in good training, Miss Lawton. You must commence with your father, if you expect your husband to be ‘good.’”

  Miss Lawton: “Then mine will never behave, for papa is perfectly incorr
igible.”

  Mrs. Curwen: “I’m sorry to hear such a bad report of him. Shouldn’t you think he would be ‘good,’ Mr. Bemis?”

  Young Mr. Bemis: “I should think he would try.”

  Mrs. Curwen: “A diplomat, as well as a punster already! I must warn Miss Lawton.”

  Mrs. Crashaw, interposing to spare the young people: “What an amusing thing elevator etiquette is! Why should the gentlemen take their hats off? Why don’t you take your hats off in a horse-car?”

  Miller: “The theory is that the elevator is a room.”

  Young Mr. Bemis: “We were at a hotel in London where they called it the Ascending Room.”

  Miss Lawton: “Oh, how amusing!”

  Miller, looking about: “This is a regular drawing-room for size and luxury. They’re usually such cribs in these hotels.”

  Mrs. Crashaw: “Yes, it’s very nice, though I say it that shouldn’t of my niece’s elevator. The worst about it is, it’s so slow.”

  Miller: “Let’s hope it’s sure.”

  Young Mr. Bemis: “Some of these elevators in America go up like express trains.”

  Mrs. Curwen, drawing her shawl about her shoulders, as if to be ready to step out: “Well, I never get into one without taking my life in my hand, and my heart in my mouth. I suppose every one really expects an elevator to drop with them, some day, just as everybody really expects to see a ghost some time.”

  Mrs. Crashaw: “Oh, my dear! what an extremely disagreeable subject of conversation.”

  Mrs. Curwen: “I can’t help it, Mrs. Crashaw. When I reflect that there are two thousand elevators in Boston, and that the inspectors have just pronounced a hundred and seventy of them unsafe, I’m so desperate when I get into one that I could — flirt!”

  Miller, guarding himself with the fan: “Not with me?”

  Miss Lawton, to young Mr. Bemis: “How it does creep!”

  Young Mr. Bemis, looking down fondly at her: “Oh, does it?”

  Mrs. Crashaw: “Why, it doesn’t go at all! It’s stopped. Let us get out.” They all rise.

  The Elevator Boy, pulling at the rope: “We’re not there, yet.”

  Mrs. Crashaw, with mingled trepidation and severity: “Not there? What are you stopping, then, for?”

  The Elevator Boy: “I don’t know. It seems to be caught.”

  Mrs. Crashaw: “Caught?”

  Miss Lawton: “Oh, dear!”

  Young Mr. Bemis: “Don’t mind.”

  Miller: “Caught? Nonsense!”

  Mrs. Curwen: “We’re caught, I should say.” She sinks back on the seat.

  The Elevator Boy: “Seemed to be going kind of funny all day!” He keeps tugging at the rope.

  Miller, arresting the boy’s efforts: “Well, hold on — stop! What are you doing?”

  The Elevator Boy: “Trying to make it go.”

  Miller: “Well, don’t be so — violent about it. You might break something.”

  The Elevator Boy: “Break a wire rope like that!”

  Miller: “Well, well, be quiet now. Ladies, I think you’d better sit down — and as gently as possible. I wouldn’t move about much.”

  Mrs. Curwen: “Move! We’re stone. And I wish for my part I were a feather.”

  Miller, to the boy: “Er — a — er — where do you suppose we are?”

  The Elevator Boy: “We’re in the shaft between the fourth and fifth floors.” He attempts a fresh demonstration on the rope, but is prevented.

  Miller: “Hold on! Er — er” —

  Mrs. Crashaw, as if the boy had to be communicated with through an interpreter: “Ask him if it’s ever happened before.”

  Miller: “Yes. Were you ever caught before?”

  The Elevator Boy: “No.”

  Miller: “He says no.”

  Mrs. Crashaw: “Ask him if the elevator has a safety device.”

  Miller: “Has it got a safety device?”

  The Elevator Boy: “How should I know?”

  Miller: “He says he don’t know.”

  Mrs. Curwen, in a shriek of hysterical laughter: “Why, he understands English!”

  Mrs. Crashaw, sternly ignoring the insinuation: “Ask him if there’s any means of calling the janitor.”

  Miller: “Could you call the janitor?”

  The Elevator Boy, ironically: “Well, there ain’t any telephone attachment.”

  Miller, solemnly: “No, he says there isn’t.”

  Mrs. Crashaw, sinking back on the seat with resignation: “Well, I don’t know what my niece will say.”

  Miss Lawton: “Poor papa!”

  Young Mr. Bemis, gathering one of her wandering hands into his: “Don’t be frightened. I’m sure there’s no danger.”

  The Elevator Boy, indignantly: “Why, she can’t drop. The cogs in the runs won’t let her!”

  All: “Oh!”

  Miller, with a sigh of relief: “I knew there must be something of the kind. Well, I wish my wife had her fan.”

  Mrs. Curwen: “And if I had my left glove I should be perfectly happy. Not that I know what the cogs in the runs are!”

  Mrs. Crashaw: “Then we’re merely caught here?”

  Miller: “That’s all.”

  Mrs. Curwen: “It’s quite enough for the purpose. Couldn’t you put on a life-preserver, Mr. Miller, and go ashore and get help from the natives?”

  Miss Lawton, putting her handkerchief to her eyes: “Oh, dear!”

  Mrs. Crashaw, putting her arm around her: “Don’t be frightened, my child. There’s no danger.”

  Young Mr. Bemis, caressing the hand which he holds: “Don’t be frightened.”

  Miss Lawton: “Don’t leave me.”

  Young Mr. Bemis: “No, no; I won’t. Keep fast hold of my hand.”

  Miss Lawton: “Oh, yes, I will! I’m ashamed to cry.”

  Young Mr. Bemis, fervently: “Oh, you needn’t be! It is perfectly natural you should.”

  Mrs. Curwen: “I’m too badly scared for tears. Mr. Miller, you seem to be in charge of this expedition — couldn’t you do something? Throw out ballast, or let the boy down in a parachute? Or I’ve read of a shipwreck where the survivors, in an open boat, joined in a cry, and attracted the notice of a vessel that was going to pass them. We might join in a cry.”

  Miller: “Oh, it’s all very well joking, Mrs. Curwen” —

  Mrs. Curwen: “You call it joking!”

  Miller: “But it’s not so amusing, being cooped up here indefinitely. I don’t know how we’re to get out. We can’t join in a cry, and rouse the whole house. It would be ridiculous.”

  Mrs. Curwen: “And our present attitude is so eminently dignified! Well, I suppose we shall have to cast lots pretty soon to see which of us shall be sacrificed to nourish the survivors. It’s long past dinner-time.”

  Miss Lawton, breaking down: “Oh, don’t say such terrible things.”

  Young Mr. Bemis, indignantly comforting her: “Don’t, don’t cry. There’s no danger. It’s perfectly safe.”

  Miller to The Elevator Boy: “Couldn’t you climb up the cable, and get on to the landing, and — ah! — get somebody?”

  The Elevator Boy: “I could, maybe, if there was a hole in the roof.”

  Miller, glancing up: “Ah! true.”

  Mrs. Crashaw, with an old lady’s serious kindness: “My boy, can’t you think of anything to do for us?”

  The Elevator Boy yielding to the touch of humanity, and bursting into tears: “No, ma’am, I can’t. And everybody’s blamin’ me, as if I done it. What’s my poor mother goin’ to do?”

  Mrs. Crashaw, soothingly: “But you said the runs in the cogs” —

  The Elevator Boy: “How can I tell! That’s what they say. They hain’t never been tried.”

  Mrs. Curwen, springing to her feet: “There! I knew I should. Oh” — She sinks fainting to the floor.

  Mrs. Crashaw, abandoning Miss Lawton to the ministrations of young Mr. Bemis, while she kneels beside Mrs. Curwen and chafes her hand: �
�Oh, poor thing! I knew she was overwrought by the way she was keeping up. Give her air, Mr. Miller. Open a — Oh, there isn’t any window!”

  Miller, dropping on his knees, and fanning Mrs. Curwen: “There! there! Wake up, Mrs. Curwen. I didn’t mean to scold you for joking. I didn’t, indeed. I — I — I don’t know what the deuce I’m up to.” He gathers Mrs. Curwen’s inanimate form in his arms, and fans her face where it lies on his shoulder. “I don’t know what my wife would say if” —

  Mrs. Crashaw: “She would say that you were doing your duty.”

  Miller, a little consoled: “Oh, do you think so? Well, perhaps.”

  Young Mr. Bemis: “Do you feel faint at all, Miss Lawton?”

  Miss Lawton: “No, I think not. No, not if you say it’s safe.”

  Young Mr. Bemis: “Oh, I’m sure it is!”

  Miss Lawton, renewing her hold upon his hand: “Well, then! Perhaps I hurt you?”

  Young Mr. Bemis: “No, no! You couldn’t.”

  Miss Lawton: “How kind you are!”

  Mrs. Curwen, opening her eyes: “Where” —

  Miller, rapidly transferring her to Mrs. Crashaw: “Still in the elevator, Mrs. Curwen.” Rising to his feet: “Something must be done. Perhaps we had better unite in a cry. It’s ridiculous, of course. But it’s the only thing we can do. Now, then! Hello!”

  Miss Lawton: “Papa!”

  Mrs. Crashaw: “Agne-e-e-s!”

  Mrs. Curwen, faintly: “Walter!”

  The Elevator Boy: “Say!”

  Miller: “Oh, that won’t do. All join in ‘Hello!’”

  All: “Hello!”

  Miller: “Once more!”

  All: “Hello!”

  Miller: “Once more!”

  All: “Hello!”

  Miller: “Now wait a while.” After an interval: “No, nobody coming.” He takes out his watch. “We must repeat this cry at intervals of a half-minute. Now, then!” They all join in the cry, repeating it as Mr. Miller makes the signal with his lifted hand.

  Miss Lawton: “Oh, it’s no use!”

  Mrs. Crashaw: “They don’t hear.”

  Mrs. Curwen: “They won’t hear.”

  Miller: “Now, then, three times!”

  All: “Hello! hello! hello!”

  III.

  Roberts appears at the outer door of his apartment on the fifth floor. It opens upon a spacious landing, to which a wide staircase ascends at one side. At the other is seen the grated door to the shaft of the elevator. He peers about on all sides, and listens for a moment before he speaks.