Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  There is no end to these apartment houses for multitude, and there is no street or avenue free from them. Of course the better sort are to be found on the fashionable avenues and the finer cross-streets, but others follow the course of the horse-car lines on the eastern and western avenues, and the elevated roads on the avenues which these have invaded. In such places they are shops below and apartments above, and I cannot see that the inmates seem at all sensible that they are unfitly housed in them. People are born and married, and live and die in the midst of an uproar so frantic that you would think they would go mad of it; and I believe the physicians really attribute something of the growing prevalence of neurotic disorders to the wear and tear of the nerves from the vivid rush of the trains passing almost momently, and the perpetual jarring of the earth and air from their swift transit. I once spent an evening in one of these apartments, which a friend had taken for a few weeks last spring (you can get them out of the season for any length of time), and as the weather had begun to be warm, we had the windows open, and so we had the full effect of the railroad operated under them. My friend had become accustomed to it, but for me it was an affliction which I cannot give you any notion of. The trains seemed to be in the room with us, and I sat as if I had a locomotive in my lap. Their shrieks and groans burst every sentence I began, and if I had not been master of that visible speech which we use so much at home, I never should have known what my friend was saying. I cannot tell you how this brutal clamor insulted me, and made the mere exchange of thought a part of the squalid struggle which is the plutocratic conception of life; I came away after a few hours of it, bewildered and bruised, as if I had been beaten upon with hammers.

  Some of the apartments on the elevated lines are very good, as such things go; they are certainly costly enough to be good; and they are inhabited by people who can afford to leave them during the hot season when the noise is at its worst; but most of them belong to people who must dwell in them summer and winter, for want of money and leisure to get out of them, and who must suffer incessantly from the noise I could not bear for a few hours. In health it is bad enough, but in sickness it must be horrible beyond all parallel. Imagine a mother with a dying child in such a place; or a wife bending over the pillow of her husband to catch the last faint whisper of farewell, as a Harlem train of five or six cars goes roaring by the open window! What horror, what profanation!

  The noise is bad everywhere in New York, but in some of the finer apartment houses on the better streets, you are as well out of it as you can be anywhere in the city. I have been a guest in these at different times, and in one of them I am such a frequent guest that I may be said to know its life intimately. In fact, my hostess (women transact society so exclusively in America that you seldom think of your host) in the apartment I mean to speak of, invited me to explore it one night when I dined with her, so that I might, as she said, tell my friends when I got back to Altruria how people lived in America; and I cannot feel that I am violating her hospitality in telling you before I get back. She is that Mrs. Makely, whom I met last summer in the mountains, and whom you thought so strange a type, but who is not altogether uncommon here. I confess that with all her faults, I like her, and I like to go to her house. She is, in fact, a very good woman, perfectly selfish by tradition as the American women must be, and wildly generous by nature, as they nearly always are; and infinitely superior to her husband in cultivation, as is commonly the case here. As he knows nothing but business, he thinks it the only thing worth knowing, and he looks down on the tastes and interests of her more intellectual life, with amiable contempt, as something almost comic. She respects business, too, and so she does not despise his ignorance as you would suppose; it is at least the ignorance of a business man, who must have something in him beyond her ken, or else he would not be able to make money as he does.

  With your greater sense of humor, I think you would be amused if you could see his smile of placid self-satisfaction as he listens to our discussion of questions and problems which no more enter his daily life than they enter the daily life of an Eskimo; but I do not find it altogether amusing myself, and I could not well forgive it, if I did not know that he was at heart so simple and good, in spite of his commerciality. But he is sweet and kind, as the American men so often are, and he thinks his wife is the delightfullest creature in the world, as the American husband nearly always does. As a matter of form, he keeps me a little while with him after dinner, when she has left the table, and smokes his cigar, after wondering why we do not smoke in Altruria; but I can see that he is impatient to get to her in their drawing-room, where we find her reading a book in the crimson light of the canopied lamp, and where he presently falls silent, perfectly happy to be near her. The drawing-room is of a good size itself, and it has a room opening out of it, called the library, with a case of books in it, and Mrs. Makely’s pianoforte. The place is rather too richly and densely rugged, and there is rather more curtaining and shading of the windows than we should like; but Mrs. Makely is too well up to date, as she would say, to have much of the bric-a-brac about which she tells me used to clutter people’s houses here. There are some pretty good pictures on the walls, and a few vases and bronzes, and she says she has produced a greater effect of space by quelling the furniture; she means, having few pieces and having them as small as possible. There is a little stand with her afternoon tea-set in one corner, and there is a pretty writing-desk in the library; I remember a sofa, and some easy chairs, but not too many of them. She has a table near one of the windows, with books and papers on it. She tells me that she sees herself that the place is kept just as she wishes it, for she has rather a passion for neatness, and you never can thrust servants not to stand the books on their heads, or study a vulgar symmetry in the arrangements. She never allows them in there, she says, except when they are at work under her eye; and she never allows anybody* there except her guests, and her husband after he has smoked. Of course her dog must be there; and one evening after her husband fell asleep in the armchair near her, the dog fell asleep on the fleece at her feet, and we heard them softly breathing in unison.

  She made a pretty little mocking mouth when the sound first became audible, and said that she ought really to have sent Mr. Makely out with the dog, for the dog ought to have the air every day, and she had been kept indoors; but sometimes Mr. Makely came home from business so tired that she hated to send him out, even for the dog’s sake, though he was so apt to become dyspeptic. “They won’t let you have dogs in some of the apartment houses, but I tore up the first lease that had that clause in it, and I told Mr. Makely that I would rather live in a house all my days, than any flat where my dog wasn’t as welcome as I was. Of course, they’re rather troublesome.”

  The Makelys had no children, but it is seldom that the occupants of apartment houses of a good class have children, though there is no clause in the lease against them. I verified this fact from Mrs. Makely herself, by actual inquiry, for in all the times that I had gone up and down in the elevator to her apartment, I had never seen any children. She seemed at first to think I was joking, and not to like it, but when she found that I was in earnest, she said that she did not suppose all the families living under that roof had more than four or five children among them. She said that it would be inconvenient; and I could not allege the tenement houses, where children seemed to swarm, for it is but too probable that they do not regard convenience in such places, and that neither parents nor children are more comfortable for their presence.

  Comfort is the American ideal, in a certain way, and comfort is certainly what is studied in such an apartment as the Makelys inhabit. We got to talking about it, and the ease of life in such conditions, and it was then she made me that offer to show me her flat, and let me report to the Altrurians concerning it. She is all impulse, and she asked, how would I like to see it now? and when I said I should be delighted, she spoke to her husband, and told him that she was going to show me through the flat. He roused himself pro
mptly, and went before us, at her bidding, to turn up the electrics in the passages and rooms, and then she led the way out through the dining-room.

  “This and the parlors count three, and the kitchen here is the fourth room of the eight,” she said, and as she spoke she pushed open the door of a small room, blazing with light, and dense with the fumes of the dinner and the dishwashing which was now going on in a closet opening out of the kitchen.

  She showed me the set range, at one side, and the refrigerator in an alcove, which she said went with the flat, and “Lena,” she said to the cook, “this is the Altrurian gentleman I was telling you about, and I want him to see your kitchen. Can I take him into your room?”

  The cook said, “Oh, yes, ma’am,” and she gave me a good stare, while Mrs. Makely went to the kitchen window, and made me observe that it let in the outside air, though the court that it opened into was so dark that one had to keep the electrics going in the kitchen night and day. “Of course, it’s an expense,” she said, as she closed the kitchen door after us. She added in a low, rapid tone, “You must excuse my introducing the cook. She has read all about you in the papers — you didn’t know, I suppose, that there were reporters, that day of your delightful talk in the mountains, but I had them — and she was wild, when she heard you were coming, and made me promise to let her have a sight of you somehow. She says she wants to go and live in Altruria, and if you would like to take home a cook, or a servant of any kind, you wouldn’t have any trouble. Now here,” she ran on, without a moment’s pause, while she flung open another door, “is what you won’t find in every apartment house, even very good ones, and that’s a back-elevator. Generally, there are only stairs, and they make the poor things climb the whole way up from the basement, when they come in, and all your marketing has to be brought up that way, too; sometimes they send it up on a kind of dumb-waiter, in the cheap places, and you give your orders to the marketmen down below through a speaking-tube. But here we have none of that bother, and this elevator is for the kitchen and the housekeeping part of the flat. The grocer’s and the butcher’s man, and anybody who has packages for you, or trunks, or that sort of thing, use it, and, of course, it’s for the servants, and they appreciate not having to walk up, as much as anybody.”

  “Oh, yes,” I said, and she shut the elevator door, and opened another a little beyond it.

  “This is our guest-chamber,” she continued, as she ushered me into a very pretty room, charmingly furnished. “It isn’t very light by day, for it opens on a court, like the kitchen and the servants’ room here,” and with that she whipped out of the guest-chamber and into another doorway, across the corridor. This room was very much narrower, but there -were two small beds in it, very neat and clean, with some furnishings that were in keeping, and a good carpet under foot. Mrs. Makely was clearly proud of it, and expected me to applaud it; but I waited for her to speak, which upon the whole she probably liked as well.

  “I only keep two servants, because in a flat there isn’t really room for more, and I put out the wash and get in cleaning-women when it’s needed. I like to use my servants well, because it pays, and I bate to see anybody imposed upon. Some people put in a double-decker, as they call it, a bedstead with two tiers, like the berths on a ship; but I think that’s a shame, and I give them two regular beds, even if it does crowd them a little more, and the beds have to be rather narrow. This room has outside air, from the court, and though it’s always dark, it’s very pleasant, as you see.” I did not say that I did not see, and this sufficed for Mrs. Makely.

  “Now,” she said, “I’ll show you our rooms,” and she flew down the corridor toward two doors that stood open side by side, and flashed into them before me. Her husband was already in the first she entered, smiling in supreme content with his wife, his belongings and himself.

  “This is a southern exposure, and it has a perfect gush of sun from morning till night. Some of the flats have the kitchen at the end, and that’s stupid; you can have a kitchen in any sort of hole, for you can keep on the electrics, and with them the air is perfectly good. As soon as I saw these chambers, and found out that they would let you keep a dog, I told Mr. Makely to sign the lease instantly, and I would see to the rest.”

  She looked at me, and I praised the room and its dainty tastefulness to her heart’s content, so that she said: “Well, it’s some satisfaction to show you anything, Mr. Homos, you are so appreciative. I’m sure you’ll give a good account of us to the Altrurians. Well, now we’ll go back to the pa — drawing-room. This is the end of the story.”

  “Well,” said her husband, with a wink at me, “I thought it was to be continued in our next,” and he nodded toward the door that opened from his wife’s bower into the room adjoining.

  “Why, you poor old fellow!” she shouted. “I forgot all about your room,” and she dashed into it before us and began to show it off. It was equipped with every bachelor luxury, and with every appliance for health and comfort. “And here,” she said, “he can smoke, or anything, as long as he keeps the door shut.. — . — . Oh, good gracious! I forgot the bath-room,” and they both united in showing me this, with its tiled floor and walls and its porcelain tub; and then Mrs. Makely flew up the corridor before us. “Put out the electrics, Dick!” she called back over her shoulder.

  When we were again seated in the drawing-room, which she had been so near calling a parlor, she continued to bubble over with delight in herself and her apartment. “Now, isn’t it about perfect?” she urged, and I had to own that it was indeed very convenient and very charming; and in the rapture of the moment, she invited me to criticise it.

  “I see very little to criticise,” I said, “from your point of view; but I hope you won’t think it indiscreet if I ask a few questions?”

  She laughed. “Ask anything, Mr. Homos! I hope I got hardened to your questions in the mountains.”

  “She said you used to get off some pretty tough ones,” said her husband, helpless to take his eyes from her, although he spoke to me.

  “It is about your servants,” I began.

  “Oh, of course! Perfectly characteristic! Go on!”

  “You told me that they had no natural light either in the kitchen or their bedroom. Do they never see the light of day?”

  The lady laughed heartily. “The waitress is in the front of the house several hours every morning at her work, and they both have an afternoon off once a week. Some people only let them go once a fortnight; but I think they are human beings as well as we are, and I let them go every week.”

  “But, except for that afternoon once a week, your cook lives in electric light perpetually?”

  “Electric light is very healthy, and it doesn’t heat the air!” the lady triumphed. “I can assure you that she thinks she’s very well off; and so she is.” I felt a little temper in her voice, and I was silent, until she asked me, rather stiffly: “Is there any other inquiry you would like to make?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but I do not think you would like it.”

  “Now, I assure you, Mr. Homos, you were never more mistaken in your life. I perfectly delight in your naïveté. I know that the Altrurians don’t think as we do about some things, and I don’t expect it. What is it you would like to ask?”

  “Well, why should you require your servants to go down on a different elevator from yourselves?”

  A. HOMOS.

  “Why, good gracious!” cried the lady. “Aren’t they different from us in every way? To be sure they dress up in their ridiculous best when they go out, but you couldn’t expect us to let them use the front elevator? I don’t want to go up and down with my own cook, and I certainly don’t with my neighbor’s cook!”

  “Yes, I suppose you would feel that an infringement of your social dignity. But if you found yourself beside a cook in a horse-car or other public conveyance, you would not feel personally affronted?”

  “No, that is a very different thing. That is something we cannot control. But, thank good
ness, we can control our elevator, and if I were in a house where I had to ride up and down with the servants, I would no more stay in it than I would in one where I couldn’t keep a dog. I should consider it a perfect outrage. I cannot understand you, Mr. Homos! You are a gentleman, and you must have the traditions of a gentleman, and yet you ask me such a thing as that!”

  I saw a cast in her husband’s eye which I took for a hint not to press the matter, and so I thought I had better say, “It is only that in Altruria we hold serving in peculiar honor.”

  “Well,” said the lady scornfully, “if you went and got your servants from an intelligence office, and had to look up their references, you wouldn’t hold them in very much honor. I tell you they look out for their own interests as sharply as we do for ours, and it’s nothing between us but a question of—”