A Top-Floor Idyl Part 2

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 ent.i.tled 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 G.o.d 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 c.u.mmerly, 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 _decollete_ 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, pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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 embarra.s.sed, 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 a.s.sure 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.