Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  As he stood in his shabby clothes, near the new Hall of Records, waiting for a Fourth Avenue car, a slender, blue-eyed girl, passing, looked up at him with such a frank, sweet gaze that he missed his next breath and then made up for it by breathing twice too quickly. He had an idea that he had seen her before, but finally decided he hadn’t.

  To be loved for himself alone was one of his impractical ideas, born of the maternal sentimental streak; but, for years, the famous Smith fortune, its enormous holdings in realty, the doings of the Smiths, their shrewd sales, purchases, leases, improvements, their movements, their personal affairs, their photographed features had been common property and an unfailing source of news for the press; and he knew perfectly well that, however honest and theoretically disinterested a girl might be, the courtship of a J. Abingdon Smith, of whatever vintage, could not help representing a bunch of figures that no human being in shape of a female biped could avoid seeing, no matter how tightly she closed her innocent eyes. Thinking of these things, he calmly encountered the curious eyes of the conductor as he boarded a crowded car.

  The blue-eyed girl also got in, but Smith, on the back platform, did not see her.

  “That fellow,” said the conductor to the grip-man, as he swung off the front platform after collecting a fare, “is a ringer for J. Abingdon Smith, the millionaire.”

  And the conductor was not the only one; several passengers were amused by the resemblance this near-sighted, shabby young man bore to the features that every newspaper had made familiar to the submerged tenth, the frantically swimming twentieth, and the marooned remainder of the great unwashed.

  Half an hour later Smith said to the conductor: “Would you be kind enough to stop here?”

  “Certainly, Mr. Smith,” said the conductor, meaning a joke.

  Smith ambled along, intent upon his own business. The blue-eyed girl had preceded him in the same direction; but as he entered the main doorway of the Smith model tenement houses, which formed almost a complete quadrangle around the block, he was not aware that she was on the iron and concrete stairway, three stories above him, and was still climbing heavenward.

  When he reached his room, which he had paid for in advance, he found that his trunk and furniture had arrived. The air in the room was close; he opened the window.

  For a while he bustled busily about, arranging the meager furniture. The narrow iron bed he dragged into a corner by the window, pushed the washstand against the opposite wall and hung a ninety-eight-cent mirror over it. He laid a strip of carpet in the center of the floor, placed a pine table upon it, and then, picking up the only chair, distractedly began traveling about with it, trying the effect, first in one corner, then in another.

  At this juncture Kerns, his agent, general estate manager, and boyhood friend, slipped into the room on tiptoe, carefully closing the door behind him.

  “I don’t know where to put it,” Smith said, pausing to settle his refractory glasses and glance suspiciously at Kerns out of pleasant, near-sighted eyes. “When they have only one chair where do they usually put it, Tommy?”

  “When they get down to one chair they usually put it in the stove,” said Kerns.

  “What? They do? That’s another point, Kerns; we’ve got to give them free furniture somehow; I mean for the same rent. You figure it up; cut out something or other—” He gazed vaguely about the bare walls as though contemplating their possible economic elimination. Then, he looked at the floor; but his tenants, being wingless, required something to stand on. “Could we give them bed, tables, and chair, and cut out that gas range?” he suggested.

  “Not unless you throw in a stove,” said Kerns, trying to look serious. “And if you do that, they’ll keep their coal in the bath tubs, as before.”

  Smith began to remove the contents of a shabby little trunk. First, there were shaving utensils, which he placed in a row on the unpainted wash-stand, then a tin pitcher and wash basin, a cake of soap, and last, some cheap towels.

  “I’ve a notion that I’ve too much crockery,” he said, gazing about. “Do you think I’ve overdone it? I don’t need two plates — do I? And all that tinware — do I? What the deuce are you grinning at?” he added, diving into his battered trunk again and emerging with both arms full of tinware. These utensils he hung upon nails above the sink in the corner, arranging them with care.

  “That’s the place for pots and pans, isn’t it, Kerns?” he said, backing off to observe the effect. Then, by chance, he caught sight of himself in the ninety-eight-cent mirror, and a slight flush of embarrassment rose to his cheeks.

  “Do I look like a respectable man out of work?” he asked. “Tell me the truth.”

  “Exactly,” replied Kerns; “you look like what you are — a well-meaning gentleman, permanently unemployed — and likely to remain so. In other words, dear friend, you resemble a Lulu bird of leisure.”

  “Do you mean to say I look like myself?” demanded Smith innocently. “Do I seem to be made up for a part? There was an impudent conductor who called me Smith. Don’t you suppose he did it in joke? And — a — a girl — who looked at me — er—”

  “Because you’re a winner. Because a Smith ill dressed is half confessed; because a Smith in any other clothes would look as neat; because a Sm—”

  Smith’s brows contracted, but lifelong endurance of Kerns’s raillery had habituated him to disregard such gibes.

  “John Abingdon,” continued Kerns, “I’ve inspected these barracks of yours to-day because you insisted; I’ve met you here because you told me to; but it’s all portentous and top-heavy nonsense on your part, and it’s my business to say so whether it makes you fidgety and sulky or not.”

  “We won’t start that line of discussion again,” said Smith, “because, Kerns, outside of your own harmless routine, you’re so densely ignorant that I am continually ashamed of you. What do you know about humanity?”

  “I thought you weren’t going to start that thing going,” yawned Kerns.

  “You started it yourself,” said Smith.

  “All right, then; I’ll go on. Haven’t I told you a thousand times that, if you are anxious to know how your tenants live, I can tell you, or any of your collectors or your brokers, or even your janitors. Every time you do a thing without my advice you mess matters. You insisted on giving them bath tubs, and they used them for coal, and I had to straighten that out by taking away their cook stoves and substituting gas ranges and ovens. You insisted on inserting rotary ventilators in every window, and the noise of the wheels kept your tenants awake at night; and, when they don’t sleep, they fight. Besides, they all caught cold, and there are a dozen enraged Hibernians suing you now. If you could only know what I know and see what I’ve seen—”

  “I’ve told you a hundred times, Tom, that I don’t intend to slop over and bestow charity; but I do want to know what are my just obligations to my tenants, and how I can place them in a better position.”

  He was somewhat heated when he finished, and stood touching his forehead with his handkerchief.

  “Toot! Toot!” said Kerns plaintively, backing toward the door. “The next stop is Chautauqua. Go it your own way, Smithy; I’m about due at the club for luncheon.”

  The door slammed as the wash basin struck it; Smith glared at the dent in the woodwork, prepared to hurl the coffeepot. But Kerns did not come back; and, after a while, he replaced the coffeepot, searched his trunk for a collar, buttoned it to his flannel shirt, and, picking up his hat, went out into the hallway.

  And there he encountered the slender girl with the blue eyes.

  There was something very innocent in her confident, fearless gaze; as he passed her, lifting his hat, he bade her good day in his pleasant voice. Her quaintly impersonal nod in acknowledgment pleased him.

  “Just what I thought,” he reflected, as he descended the stairs: “the poor are always nice to each other; they’re frank and human, unspoiled by our asinine code of conventions. If I’d worn a top hat that girl woul
d have looked the other way; if I’d noticed her she’d have been defiant or sullen or saucy.”

  And while he trudged about, purchasing groceries for his luncheon, he looked out upon the world through optimistic glasses, smiling, warm-hearted, pleased with himself and everybody he encountered.

  He was hungry — it being long past his regular luncheon time — an hour from which he had not varied half a dozen times in a dozen years.

  As he ascended the iron stairs of his lodging house once more he counted over the little packages of groceries piled up in his arms — butter, salt, sugar, a bottle of milk, tea, coffee, rolls, and eggs. “Probably too much,” he reflected; “I’ll have to go about among these people and find out what they eat — Good Heavens! that is awful!”

  In his own hallway a khamsin gust of cabbage smote him with its answer to his question, and he shuddered. He forced his door in with the point of his knee, made his way to the table, and dropped the packages. Then, producing a match box, he advanced blithely toward the gas range.

  “The first thing to do is to start that exceedingly convenient machine and get action at once,” he continued, turning on the gas and lighting a match. “Cooking coffee and eggs is nothing to any man who has ever camped out in the woods—”

  Flash! — bang! went the gas range; and Smith executed what his office boys might have characterized as a “quick get-away.”

  “W-what a perfectly ghastly species of range,” he stammered, “g-going off in a man’s face like a t-t-ten-inch shell!” He sat down in the only chair, breathed hard, and stared at the range; then, suddenly afraid that gas might be pouring into the room, he crept toward it, lighted another match, and extended his arm like the hero touching off a magazine in the ship’s hold.

  Bang! repeated the gas range emphatically.

  “W-well, this is a pleasant situation!” he breathed, wringing his slightly scorched fingers. “Am I expected to fry my eggs over a volcano?” Hesitating, he wiped his glasses, affixed them, and gazed earnestly at the range. Very gingerly he tiptoed toward it and, with a sudden dash, turned off the gas.

  For a while he alternately stood in front of it and walked all around it. He looked at his coffee and eggs — he could not eat them raw. It was now long after his usual luncheon hour, and he began to feel famished.

  “The trouble is that I don’t know how to get the proper spark,” he reflected; but, driven by necessity, he turned on the gas once more, and, lighting a match, applied it. There was no explosion this time; a bluish flame played all over the machine for a few seconds, sank, rose, subsided, and went out. In vain he lighted match after match. He got no more flame.

  “This is a disgracefully run house!” he exclaimed aloud. “It’s high time I heard something about it! Here I am two hours late and can’t get enough heat to cook an egg!”

  Very angry, he marched out on a hunt for the janitor; but, after climbing up and down stairs and making inquiries on every landing, he had come no nearer to discovering the janitor. A gentleman named Dugan thought that the janitor might be engaged in tenpins at Bauer’s popular corner resort. Smith repaired thither, but could not discover him. Another gentleman, named Clancy, emerging from the two-room apartment adjoining Smith’s, came in at Smith’s invitation and rubbed a flat, rough thumb up and down the range. Then he departed, scratching his head and advising further search for the jaintor. “Ye cud cook a bit an’ a sup on our own range,” he said, “but th’ ould woman do be bilin’ shirrts.” When Mr. Clancy had departed Smith spent ten more minutes tinkering with the range, growing hungrier and hungrier every second. But, hungry, angry and discouraged as he was, he obstinately refused to consider a restaurant as even a temporary solution. Once more he set off down the endless iron and concrete stairway to hunt up the janitor; and, returning unsuccessful, encountered the janitor on his own landing. The janitor was talking to the girl with the blue eyes.

  “Please don’t let me interrupt you,” said Smith; “it’s only that I can’t work my range.”

  “You are not interrupting,” said the girl with the blue eyes. “My ceiling is beginning to fall, that is all.”

  “I’ll have that attended to at once!” exclaimed Smith, forgetting his rôle of tenant—” that is,” he added, in confusion, “the janitor will notify M — , the agent. You will, won’t you?” he continued, turning to the janitor, whose face had been growing redder and redder as he grew madder and madder.

  “Where do you think you are?” he demanded. “In the Waldorf? An’ who do you think you are, young man? John D.? or the Dutch Emp’ror?

  Or do you think you’re J. Abingdon Smith, the owner of this here plant, because you look like his grandfather’s hired man?”

  “Not at all,” said Smith, turning red. “I had no intention of interfering.”

  “Well, you go and sit on your range and keep it warm till I get a gasfitter, see!” growled the janitor; “an’ mebbe he’ll fix it to-night,” he said, looking back malevolently over his shoulder as he descended the stairs, “an’ mebbe he’ll fix it next month. You mind your business, young man, an’ I’ll mind yours.”

  Smith, tingling all over, looked after him, but his anger passed with a shrug and a short laugh as he realized that the rebuke had been in a fashion his own fault.

  He had made a step across the hallway toward his own room, when he remembered the girl with the blue eyes.

  “I’m sorry I caused any unpleasantness,” he said. “I hope the janitor won’t visit his petty tyranny on you.”

  “I don’t think he will; I — Can’t you make your range burn properly?”

  “No,” he said, smiling. “It blew up three times, and now it has retired from active business. I believe it has become permanently extinct.”

  “Perhaps,” she ventured, “you are not accustomed to gas ranges. Are you?”

  “No, but I’ve got to learn to manage them if I’m to do any cooking.” He thought she meant to speak again, but, as she said no more, he turned to his own door. Behind him a hesitating voice began:

  “You may use my range to cook on — until your own is repaired, if you wish—”

  “That’s awfully nice of you,” he said, gratefully surprised. “I’ve only a couple of eggs to fry — or boil — and a little coffee, but I didn’t like to ask you—”

  “You didn’t. I asked you,” she said. “You are quite welcome.” And, as he still hesitated: “I really don’t mind,” she said. “I can take my work somewhere else while you are cooking.”

  “No, no,” he protested, beginning to realize the inconvenience he was causing her; but she nodded impatiently and, stepping back into her room, began to gather up into a writing portfolio a mass of scattered papers.

  A few moments later he appeared in the open doorway, his arms piled high with the paper packages containing groceries. She looked up at him, her hands full of inky papers. Unbidden laughter was sparkling in her blue eyes.

  “The range is ready,” she said, schooling her voice. “You may begin at once. I shall be gone in a second.” And she began to rummage furiously among the papers.

  Sidelong glances she could not help casting at his culinary preparations. She saw him ruin two eggs, and hid her face in the table drawer where she was searching for that elusive something.

  “No use trying to fry those eggs,” he observed, gazing at the disintegrating yolks.

  “You could scramble them,” she suggested, raising her pretty head. Her face was delicately flushed; a bright strand of hair, loosened, fell like a tendril across one pink cheek.

  “To scramble an egg,” he said slowly, as though attempting to recall some intricate evolution in cookery—” To scramble an egg, you stir it round and round, I believe.”

  “And to scramble two eggs,” she said almost hysterically, “you stir them both round and round.”

  “But,” he added thoughtfully, “how to get them into the pan. I suppose one pours them in—”

  “Don’t! Please don’t! You have
put no butter in yet,” she said; but he had already poured a spoonful into the pan, where it began to char and sputter and smoke.

  She laid aside her portfolio and papers, removed the smoking pan, scraped it, tinkered with it, and then, preparing it properly, poured in the remainder of the eggs.

  “It’s awfully good of you. I’m ashamed of myself,” he muttered; “but, please — please don’t mind about the coffee. I can do that, I’m sure.”

  “It will take only a moment,” she said. “You are not accustomed to — to — gas ranges, I see.”

  Before he knew it his modest luncheon was ready. She swept the papers from the table, threw over it a white square of linen, and placed his luncheon under his mortified eyes.

  “It will get cold if you attempt to carry it back to your room. You are quite welcome to eat it here, believe me. My range may fail me some day and I may have to beg a little fire at your door.”

  “You shall have oceans of it!” he cried gratefully.

  “Thank you; and, please, begin. I am on my way out.”

  “Am I driving you away? I know I am—”

  “No, really you are not. I work out of doors all I can. I was going out as soon as the janitor came to examine my ceiling.” She raised her pretty eyes; he looked aloft.

  “It’s a leak,” he said. “I’ll have it fi — I mean I’ll tell the jan — What I do mean,” he said, “is that somebody ought to have it fixed.”

  “I think so, too,” she said demurely, gathering up her portfolio and papers. At the doorsill she halted:

  “But — but how — but who is going to lock my door?” she asked.

  “Oh, I’d better take my luncheon into my own room!”

  “No, no. Please sit down again. Please do so now! I can leave my key with you if you are going to be here.”

  He thought to himself, charmed, what touching confidence the poor have in each other’s honesty.

  She drew from her purse the door key and laid it beside his plate.

  “If I don’t hear you in the hallway, will you please knock?” he asked.