But such are the tricks of Fate, that Tottie, outwardly and in spirit the true "artiste," was—as a plain matter of fact—a landlady, who kept "roomers" at so much per week.
Her rooming-house was one of those four-story-and-basement brownstone-front affairs with brownstone steps (and a service-entrance under the steps) that New York put up by the thousands several decades ago, and considered fashionable.
The house, therefore, was like every other house on the block. But to the observant passerby, one thing identified it. The basements of its neighbors were given over to various activities—commercial and otherwise. There were basements that were bakeries, or delicatessen shops, or dusty second-hand-book stores, or flower stalls. And not a few were used still for their primary purpose—the housing, more or less comfortably, of humans. The St. Clair house was distinguished by the fact that its front room on the basement level (the servants' living-room of better days) was rented for the accommodation of a "hand" laundry.
Often Miss St. Clair felt called upon to apologize for that laundry—at least to explain its presence. "Some of my friends say, 'Oh, my dear, a laundry!' But as I say, 'You can't put high-class people in the basement; and high-class people is the only people I'll have around. Furthermore, I can't leave the basement empty. And ain't cleanyness next to goodness? And what's cleaner'n a laundry? Besides, it's handy to have one so close.'"
The interior of the building was typical. Its front-parlor, the only room not "let," was high-ceilinged and of itself marked the house as one that had been pretentious in its day. It boasted the usual bay-window, a marble fireplace and a fine old chandelier with drop-crystal ornaments—all these eloquent of the splendor that was past. Double doors led to the back-parlor, which was the dining-room of earlier times.
There was the characteristic hall, with stairs leading down under stairs that led up, these last to rooms shorn of their former glory, and now graduated in price, and therefore in importance, first, by virtue of their outlook—their position as to front or rear; and, second, in reference to their distance above the street. The front stairs ended in a newel post that supported a bronze figure holding aloft a light—a figure grotesquely in contrast to the "hall stand," with its mirror and its hat hooks and its Japanese umbrella receptacle.
The pride of Miss St. Clair's heart was that "front-parlor." And upon it she had "slathered" a goodly sum—with a fond generosity that was wholly mistaken, since her purchases utterly ruined the artistic value of whatever the room possessed of good. She had papered its walls in red (one might have said with the idea of matching the background with her hair); but the paper bore a conventional pattern—in the same tone—which was so wrought with circles and letter S's that at a quick glance the wall seemed fairly to be a-crawl. And she had hung the bay-window with cheap lace curtains, flanked at either side by other curtains of a heavy material and a flashy pattern.
The fireplace had suffered no less than the window. On its mantel was the desecrating plaster statuette of a diving-girl—tinted in various pastel shades; this between two vases of paper flowers. And above the fireplace, against the writhing wall paper, hung a chromo entitled "The Lorelei"—three maidens divested of apparel as completely as was the diving-girl, but hedged about by a garish gold frame.
However, it was in the matter of furniture that Miss St. Clair had sinned the most. This furniture consisted of one of those perpetrations, one of those crimes against beauty and comfort, that is known as a "set." It comprised a "settee," a "rocker," an armchair, and a chair without arms—all overlaid with a bright green, silky velour that fiercely fought the red wall paper and the landlady's hair.
At this hour of the morning, the room was empty, save for a bird and a rag doll in long dresses. A sash of the bay-window was raised, and the cheap lace curtains were blowing back before a light breeze. Against the curtains, swinging high out of the way of the breeze, was a gilded cage of generous size, holding a green-and-yellow canary.