BOOKS BY F. HOPKINSON SMITH

Published by CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

ENOCH CRANE

Lamont ... was again beside her, pleading to take her home.

[Page [114]

ENOCH CRANE

A NOVEL PLANNED AND BEGUN BY
F. HOPKINSON SMITH
AND COMPLETED BY
F. BERKELEY SMITH

ILLUSTRATED BY
ALONZO KIMBALL

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1916

Copyright, 1916, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
Published September, 1916

PREFACE

It was my father’s practise, in planning a novel, first to prepare a most complete synopsis from beginning to end—never proceeding with the actual writing of the book until he had laid out the characters and action of the story—chapter by chapter.

This synopsis, which closely resembled the scenario of a play, he kept constantly enriching with little side-notes as they occurred to him—new ideas and points of detail.

So spirited were these synopses, and so clearly did they reflect the process of his mind, that by the few who saw them in the course of publishing consultations, or friendly confidence, they were remembered often after the finished novel had obliterated its constructive lines.

A scheme like this he had prepared for “Enoch Crane”—a story which, like “Felix O’Day,” he had very much at heart. Once he had begun a novel it occupied his whole mind. He lived—as it were—with the characters he was developing, to the exclusion of all other work. He would talk to me constantly of their welfare or vicissitudes, and was often in grand good-humor when any of them had proved themselves worthy by their wit, their courage, or their good breeding. They all seemed to be old personal friends of his, whom by some chance I had never met.

My father had written three chapters of “Enoch Crane” when his brief illness came. Thus there has remained to me as a legacy of his unquenchably youthful spirit an unfinished novel, which to reach his readers needed to be wrought out on the lines he had so carefully laid down with that untiring enthusiasm with which he undertook everything; and this—his last story—it has been my privileged task to complete.

F. Berkeley Smith.

New York, 1916.

ILLUSTRATIONS

ENOCH CRANE

CHAPTER I

Joe Grimsby stood on the door-mat—a very shabby and badly worn door-mat, I must say—trying to fit his key into the tiny slit which, properly punctured, shot back the bolt which loosened the door, admitting him to the hallway leading to his apartment on the third floor of No. 99 Waverly Place.

“Somebody must have—no, here it is. Hello, Moses, is that you? I was just going to put my knee against it and——”

The old negro janitor bowed low.

“I wouldn’t do dat, sir; ’spec’ yo’ hand is a little unstiddy. You young gemmen gets dat way sometimes, ’specially when so much is goin’ on. Hold on till I turn up de gas. It gets dark so early, can’t find yo’ way up-stairs in de broad daylight, let alone de evenin’. I jes’ lighted a fire in yo’ room.”

“Bully for you, Moses. And don’t forget to come up-stairs when I ring. Mr. Atwater in yet?”

“No, sir; not as I knows on. Ain’t seen nuffin’ of him. ’Spec’ he’s a little mite how-come-you. I seen in de papers dat bofe on yo’ was at de big ball last night. Matilda was a-readin’ it out while I was a-brushin’ yo’ shoes.”

The young architect waved his hand in reply and mounted the stairs, his strong, well-knit frame filling the space between the wall and the banisters. He had mounted these same stairs in the small hours of the morning, but if he was at all fatigued by his night’s outing, there was no evidence of it in his movements. He was forging his way up, his coat thrown back, arms swinging loose, head erect, with a lifting power and spring that would have done credit to a trained athlete.

Only once did he pause, and that was when the door of Miss Ann’s apartment on the second floor was opened softly and the old lady’s fluffy gray head was thrust out. He had never met the dear woman, but he lifted his hat in a respectful salute, and brought his body to a standstill until she had closed the door again.

She, no doubt, misunderstood the sound of his tread, a curious mistake had she thought a moment, for no one of the occupants of 99—and there were a good many of them—had ever mounted the dingy stairs two steps at a time, humming a song between jumps, except the handsome, devil-may-care young architect. The others climbed and caught their breath. And climbed again and caught another breath. So did most of the visitors. As for her own invalid sister, Miss Jane, who shared with her the rooms behind this partly opened and gently closed door, the poor lady had no breath of any kind to catch, and so wheezed up one step at a time, her thin, bird-claw fingers clutching the hand-rail. It was she Miss Ann was waiting for, it being after five o’clock, and the day being particularly raw and uncomfortable, even for one in January.

He had reached his own door now, the one on the third floor—there was only one flight above it—and with the aid of a second key attached to his bunch made his way into the apartment.

The sight of his cosey sitting-room loosened up the bar of another song: the janitor’s fire was still blazing, and one of the three big piano-lamps with umbrella-shades Moses had lighted and turned down was sending a warm glow throughout the interior.

Joe tossed his hat on a low table, stripped off his overcoat and coat, pushed his arms into a brown velvet jacket which he took from a hook in his bedroom, and settled himself at his desk, an old-fashioned colonial affair, which had once stood in his grandfather’s home in his native town. Heaped up on a wide pad, the comers bound with silver clamps, was a pile of letters of various colors, shapes, and sizes.

These the young fellow smoothed out with a sweep of his hand, glancing hurriedly at the several handwritings, pulled out a drawer of the desk, opened a box of cigars, and selecting one with the greatest care, snipped its end with a cutter hung to his watch-chain. In the same measured way he drew a match along the under-side of the colonial, held the flame to the perfecto, and, after a puff or two to assure himself that it was in working order, proceeded leisurely to open his mail.

It is good to be young and good-looking and a favorite wherever you go. It is better yet to be good-natured, and well-born, and able to earn your living, and it is better still to so love the work by which you earn your daily bread that you count as nothing the many setbacks and difficulties which its pursuit entails.

Joe was all that; twenty-five, well-built, erect, strong of limb, well-dressed, even if sometimes a little bizarre in his outfit, more particularly in wide sombreros and low collars with loose ties; thoroughly content with his surroundings wherever they were, whether a student at the Beaux-Arts, living on the closest of allowances, or fighting his way in New York among his competitors; meeting each successive morning with a laugh and a song, and getting all the fun out of the remaining hours of which he was capable.

He had moved into these rooms but a fortnight before, and had at once proceeded to make himself as comfortable as his means and belongings would allow. His partner, Atwater, had come with him: there was the rent of the office to pay, and the wages of his two assistants, and they could save money by doubling up. With this in view, Joe had moved in some of the old furniture his father had left him, including the desk, and a set of shelves filled with books; had added a rare old Spanish sofa that had once stood in a hidalgo salon, to say nothing of the three or four easy chairs of the sofa-pillow-stuffed-armed variety, covered with chintz, that he had bought at an auction, and which had once graced his former quarters. Some small tables had then been commandeered—two were now surmounted by big lamps; a rug thrown on the floor and another before the fire—good ones both, one being a Daghestan and the other a Bokhara; and the two young men proceeded to make themselves at home. The bedrooms, one Atwater’s and the other Joe’s, although simply furnished, were equally comfortable, and the bathroom all that it should be.

As to creature comforts, did not Moses bring them their breakfast, and did not his wife Matilda cook the same on her own stove in the basement in the rear? For their dinners, some one of the restaurants on 14th Street could always be counted upon, unless some Wall Street potentate, or one of his innumerable friends, or the mother of Joe’s last lady love—he had a fresh one every month—laid a cover at her table in his honor.

His one predominant ambition in life, as has been said, was to succeed in his profession. His uncle had achieved both riches and distinction as one of the leading architects of his time and, divining Joe’s talents, had sent him abroad to uphold the honor of the family, a kindness the young fellow never forgot, and an obligation which he determined to repay by showing himself worthy of the old man’s confidence. If he had any other yearning, it was, as has also been said, to have a good time every moment of the day and night while the developing process was going on. And the scribe, who knew him well, freely admits that he succeeded, not only in New York, but in Paris.

When a posse of gendarmes followed a group of students along the Boul Miche who were shouting at the top of their voices their disapprovals or approvals, it made very little difference which, of some new law in the Latin Quarter, Joe’s voice was invariably the loudest. When the room under the sidewalk at the Taverne was full, every seat occupied, and the whole place in an uproar, it was Joe who was leading the merriment.

When, upon the dispersal of the gay revellers from the Quart’z’Arts ball, the Champs-Elysées was made the background of a howling mob of bareskinned warriors of the Stone Age, Joe led the chorus, the only student in the group who was entirely sober, intemperance not being one of the ways in which he enjoyed himself.

It was, therefore, quite in keeping with his idea of what a normal life should be that, when he nailed up his shingle in his down-town office, and started in to earn a crust and a reputation, this same spirit of fun should have dominated his idle hours to the exclusion of everything else except the habit of falling in love with every pretty girl he met.

If the beautiful and accomplished and fabulously rich Mrs. A. had a ball, Joe invariably led the german. If there was a week-end party at Mrs. B.’s, Joe’s engagements were always consulted and a day fixed to suit him. They couldn’t help it really. There was an air about the young fellow that the women, both married and single, could not resist. The married ones generally counted on him to make their parties a success, but the single ones manœuvred so as to be within arm’s reach whenever Joe’s partner was tired out and he ready for another.

Should you have tried to solve the problem of this ever-increasing popularity and, in marshalling your facts, had gone over his personal attractions—his well-groomed figure, never so attractive as in a dress suit, clear brown eyes, perfect teeth shining through straight, well-modelled lips shaded by a brown mustache blending into a close-cut, pointed beard, and had compared these fetching attractions with those possessed by dozens of other young men you knew, you would be still at sea.

Old Mrs. Treadwell, who, when Joe had sprained his ankle, had kept him at her country-seat for a whole week, came nearest to the solution. “Never thinks of himself, that young fellow.” That’s it. Hasn’t an ego anywhere about him. Never has had. Always thinking of you, no matter who you are. And he is sanely polite. Treats an apple woman as if she were a duchess, and a duchess, whenever he runs across one, as first a woman—after that she can be anything she pleases.

This accounted in a measure for the number and quality of the several notes he was opening, one after another, his face lighting up or clouding as he perused their contents.

CHAPTER II

Moses was having a busy day. The front hall was packed full with a heterogeneous mass of miscellaneous furniture, the sidewalk littered with straw packing, kitchen utensils, empty bird-cages, umbrella-stands, crates of china, and rolls of carpet. Mr. Ebner Ford, late of Clapham Four Corners, State of Connecticut; Mrs. Ebner Ford, formerly Preston, late of Roy, State of North Carolina, and her daughter, Miss Sue Preston, were moving in.

Moses was in his shirt-sleeves, a green baize apron tied about his waist, a close-fitting skull-cap crowning his gray wool. There were spots on his cranium which the friction of life had worn to a polish, and, the January air being keen and searching, the old darky braved no unnecessary risks.

The force was properly apportioned. Mrs. Ford was in charge of the stowage, moving back, and hanging-up department. Mr. Ford had full charge of the sidewalk, the big furniture van and the van’s porters. Moses was at everybody’s beck and call, lifting one moment one end of a sofa, the other steadying a bureau on its perilous voyage from the curb to the back bedroom, while Miss Preston, with an energy born of young and perfect health, tripped up and down the few steps, pointing out to the working force this or that particular chair, table, or clock most needed. All this that the already tired mother might get the room to rights with the least possible delay.

It was not the first time this young woman had performed this service. The later years of her life had been spent in various intermittent moves in and out of various houses since the gentleman from Connecticut had married her mother.

Her first experience had taken place some months after the unexpected wedding, when her stepfather—he was at that time a life-insurance agent—had moved his own bag and baggage into the family homestead. Shortly after he had elaborated a plan by which the entire family would be infinitely better off if a red flag should be hoisted out of the second-story window, and the old place knocked down to the highest bidder. He would then invest the proceeds in the purchase of some town lots in one of the larger cities up the State. They would then have a home of their own, more in keeping with the aspirations of his wife, who really had married him to escape her present poverty, and the welfare of his stepdaughter, whose sole ambition was to perfect herself in music, she being the possessor of a wonderful soprano voice.

In this new venture six houses were to be built; one they would live in, rent and cost free, the income from the other five supporting them all.

Then had come a hasty packing up and rather sudden departure for Norfolk, the houses being partly built, and none of them rented or sold, Mr. Ford having abandoned life insurance and given his attention to a new dredging machine for use in the Dismal Swamp Canal. And then a third exodus to a small village near New York, where the promoter of a brilliant and entirely new adaptation of laundry machinery, never before imagined, and the formation of which was known among the favored few as The United Family Laundry Association, Limited, engrossed the distinguished engineer Mr. Ebner Ford’s sole attention.

It was from this near-by village the fourth move had been made, the van and supplementary cart having absorbed the contents of a small house, situated on the outskirts of the town, that deluded individual having exchanged a year’s rent for a delicately engraved sheet of paper, certifying that he was the proud possessor of ten shares of the company’s preferred.

That these several shiftings, migrations, and re-handlings had had their effect on the family belongings could be seen by even the most cursory examination of the several articles littering the sidewalk. Even the old family sideboard—and every Southern family has an old-fashioned sideboard—lacked a brass door-handle or escutcheon here and there, and similar defects could be found in Mrs. Ford’s high-poster, once the property of her dead mother, two of the carved feet being gone by reason of a collision in an extra-hazardous journey.

It was because of the knowledge gained in these experiences, as well as a fervent desire to get the whole matter over as quickly as possible, that the young girl had taken charge of the “picking-out” department, so that each article might reach her mother in regular order, and in discrete corners as much as what was left of the old mahogany was saved.

She was again on the sidewalk, dragging out a rocker, ordering a crate here, and a bundle of fire-tongs there, when the gentleman from Connecticut must have got in her way, for she broke in in an authoritative tone of voice, much to Moses’ astonishment, with:

“No, Mr. Ford, stop right where you are. Mamma doesn’t want any more small things until she gets the big ones arranged, and don’t you send them in!”

“My dear Sue, you will have to take them as they come.”

“No, I’m not going to take them as they come. I’m going to take them as I want them. You’ve got plenty of room here, and you’ve got plenty of men to help. That wardrobe comes next.”

“Well, but can’t you take these here cushions?”

“Yes, send in the cushions, but that’s the last, until I tell you what next.”

The distinguished engineer raised his hands, opening his fingers in a deprecatory way, expressive of his firm belief that she would live to see the day when she would keenly regret her interference, and in subdued, almost apologetic, tones called Moses.

“Here, Moses—your name is Moses, ain’t it?”

The darky nodded.

“Well, be good enough to carry this here bundle of cushions to Mrs. Ford. And be careful, Moses.”

Moses, without a word in reply, swung the bundle to his shoulder, mounted the few steps and deposited the pillows at Mrs. Ford’s feet, and resumed his place on the sidewalk. He was making up his mind as to the character and personality of the new tenants, and nothing had so far escaped him. The old janitor’s likes and dislikes had a very important bearing on the status occupied by the various tenants.

Furthermore, his diagnosis was invariably correct.

Thus far, two things had impressed him. That the young lady should have addressed her stepfather as if he had been a mere acquaintance, and that that master of the house should have prefaced his order to him with a “be good enough.” Nobody had ever, so far as he could remember, addressed him in any such way. His former master’s customary formula, generally with a laugh, was: “Here, Moses, you infernal scoundrel.” His later employers had been contented with Moses, Mose, or Mr. Harris (the latter he despised). The new young gentlemen had begun with Moses, and had then passed on to “You ebony gargoyle,” or “Bulrushes,” “Pottifer’s Kid.” But the order came direct as if they meant it, and was always carried out by him in the same kind of spirit. “Be good enough, eh,” he kept saying to himself, “’spec’ he ain’t ’customed to nuffin’.”

The young lady seemed to be cast in a different mould.

“That’s too heavy for you, Uncle,” she had said in a low, soft voice, the more surprising to him when he remembered the tones in addressing her stepfather. He was struggling under the weight of one end of the dining-room table at the time. “Come here, one of you men, and help him. Put it down, Uncle. You’ll break your poor old back, first thing you know.”

“Thank you, young mistiss. ’Tis little mite heavy,” he had answered humbly, as the leg he was carrying sagged to the sidewalk, adding as he watched her disappear again into the house: “Befo’ God, she’s one of my own people, dat she is. I ain’t been called Uncle by nobody, since I went back home dat Christmas time.”

The van was empty now, and the supplementary cart, carrying the odds and ends, a rusty, well-burnt-out stove, two pieces of pipe, a big mirror with a gilt frame, a set of wooden shelves, two wash-tubs, and on top, a dainty work-table with spindle legs, was being backed to the sidewalk.

Some article must have been forgotten or broken or scraped, for the language of the man from Clapham Four Corners had lost its soft edge, his outburst ending with:

“See here, you lunkhead, don’t you handle that work-table as if it was a ton of coal. Don’t you see you’ve broken the glass!”

The young girl had just emerged from the door.

“Oh, what a pity!” she cried. “I loved it so. No, please don’t touch it again. I’ll lift it down myself.”

She had mounted a chair now which stood by the tail of the cart and, against the protest of the group, was carefully disentangling the precious legs from the chaos of pipes, tubs, and stove-fittings.

“Oh, you darling little table! Nobody ever thought about you. It’s all my fault. No, go away all of you. You shan’t one of you touch it. I’ll lift it down myself. Oh, the drawer has caught in that stove door! Uncle, won’t you just push it back so I can——”

“Permit me to help this—” came a voice from behind. Before she could catch her breath, an arm reached forth, lifted the precious table clear of the entangling mass and, without waiting for protest or thanks, carried it into the house at the feet of the astonished mother. Then with a remark, “That he was glad to be of service,” Mr. Joseph Grimsby, occupant of the third floor, backed out and rejoined the astonished girl.

“A lovely bit of Chippendale, is it not, Miss Ford? It is Miss Ford, isn’t it? Yes, our old colored janitor told me you were expected to-day. I and my chum live up-stairs. But please don’t worry about the glass. That is quite easily replaced. I must apologize for my intrusion, but when I saw what a beauty it was, and heard you say how you loved it, I had to help. There is nothing like Chippendale, and it’s getting rarer every day.”

“Oh, but you were very kind. It was my grandmother’s and I have always used it since I was a girl. Thank you very much.”

Joe was about to say: “That—” but checked himself in time—“if she would permit the digression, she was still a girl, and a very pretty one.” In fact, he had not seen any one quite as pretty for a very long period of time. He had thought so when he stood in the doorway, watching her efforts to save the table from further destruction. He had only a view of her back, but he had noticed in that brief glance the trim, rounded figure, curve of her neck, and the way her tight woollen sweater clung to her small waist and hips. He had caught, too, a pair of very small and well-shod feet.

When she turned in surprise and looked him square in the eyes, in one of those comprehensive, searching glances, and his own lenses had registered her fresh color, small ears, and dainty, enchanting mouth and teeth, the whole surrounded by a wealth of light, golden hair, escaping from the thraldom of a tam-o’-shanter hat, part of her working clothes, he would have taken an oath on a pile of Bibles as high as a church steeple that she was altogether the most radiantly attractive young woman he had ever met in the whole course of his natural existence.

This was not at all unusual. It was Joe’s way with every fresh girl he met. Such hyperbole was only a safety-valve, giving vent to his enthusiastic appreciation. He had had similar outbursts over two or three since he had left Paris. He had not only looked a similar declaration into the eyes of the inamorata who had begun her letter with “Dearest,” and ended it with an initial—the letter he had cremated and tucked away in the burial-plot of his forgetfulness—but he had told her so in so many plain words, and had told her a lot of other things besides, which the young beauty had believed.

The scribe who knew them both will tell you that Sue Preston, despite Joe’s panegyrics, was just a trim, tidy, well-built, rosy, and thoroughly wholesome girl, no prettier than half a dozen other Southern girls brought up in her own town, which she had left when the gentleman from Connecticut had married her mother. That her independence of speech and bearing, as well as her kindness, came from the fact that she was obliged to earn her own living with her voice, singing at private houses and teaching music. The life, which, while it had not dulled her enthusiasm or love for things worth the having, had taught her a knowledge of the world far beyond her years. This could have been detected in the short talk she had had with Moses, after Joe, having reached the limit of his intrusion, had lifted his hat in respectful admiration and taken himself off to his office, where he spent what was left of the morning pouring into Atwater’s ears a wholly inflated account of the charms of the new arrival, and how plans must be laid at once to get on the friendliest terms possible with the occupants of the first floor.

“You ask me, young mistiss, who is dat gentleman?” Moses had rejoined in answer to her question, her eyes fixed on Joe’s graceful, manly figure as he swung down the street.

“Dat’s Mr. Grimsby, and dere ain’t nobody moved into dis house since I been here, and dat’s eleven years next June, any better. Fust time I see him, I says to Matilda: ‘Matilda, don’t he look like Marse Robin when he was his age? He’s got just de air of him.’ Don’t care for nobody dat ain’t quality. Ain’t you from the South, young mistiss?” Moses never forgot his slave days when he was talking to his own people.

“Yes, Moses, I’m from North Carolina.”

“And de mistiss, too?”

“Yes; mother, too.”

“But dat—dat—” the darky hesitated, “dat gentleman dat—dat married yo’ ma. He ain’t one our people, is he?”

The girl laughed, a crisp, sparkling laugh, as if she really enjoyed answering his questions.

“No, he’s a Yankee.”

“Gor a’mighty, I knowed it. ’Scuse me, young mistiss, for askin’, but we got to get along together, and I’m goin’ to do evertin’ I can to please you.”

Joe had turned the corner by this time, and her eyes again sought the old darky’s.

“What does he do, this Mr. Grimsby?”

“I don’t know, young mistiss; I think he builds houses. What dey call a architect.”

“And how long has he been here?”

“’Bout two weeks, goin’ on three now.”

A curious expression now crossed her face.

“And is he always as polite as that to everybody he meets for the first time?”

It was Moses’ turn to chuckle now. “I ain’t never seen him with nobody, fur dere ain’t nobody ’round fit fur him to bow and scrape fur till you come, and you ain’t seen de last of him, young mistiss, unless I miss my guess.” And with a prolonged chuckle, Moses seized a chair, backed away with it to the house, and returned again to his duties on the sidewalk.

That the new tenant interested him enormously could be seen as the old negro stood watching his self-imposed supervision. He had been accustomed to all sorts of people since he had held his position, especially the kind that constantly moved in and out of the first floor. There had been inebriates who had been laid up for days at a time, broken-down bank clerks looking for another situation, with only money enough for the first month in advance, ending in final collapse and exit, with most of their furniture in pawn. There had been a mysterious widow, a rather flabby person, whose son was a reporter, and who came in at all hours of the night. And there had been a distinguished lawyer, who moved in for the summer and was going when the heating apparatus broke down on the first cold day.

But the gentleman from Connecticut represented a type which Moses had never seen before. His dress showed it, with a full suit of black, his white collar showing above his overcoat. His speech was another indication. Where most men used verbal ammunition at the rate of so many spoken words a minute, Ford’s delivery was as rapid and continuous as the outpouring of a Gatling gun.

“How many times must I tell you to be careful, men? How often must I go on insistin’ that you should not bump things on the sidewalk? This here furniture is made to sit on, not to be smashed into kindlin’ wood. Easy there, now, on that bureau! Pull out the drawers. Quick, now! One at a time. And now let go of that other end. It’s extraordinary how sensible men like you should go on ignorin’ the simplest rules of safety. Sue, my dear, tell your dear mother that I am doin’ the best I can. But that if everything is brought to a piecemeal, it’s only what’s to be expected. Out of the way, Moses, give them men plenty of room. There, that’s more like it!”

That the two broad-backed porters in linen jumpers had for years passed everything from a piano-stool to a folding-bed from the top of the highest tenement in New York, without so much as a scrape of paint from the side walls, and that nothing that Ford had said or done made the slightest impression on them, was entirely clear to Moses as he listened to their harangue.

He had seen a busy clown at the circus picking up and dropping at a critical moment the ends of the carpet spread out on the sawdust, a remembrance which pumped up another chuckle in the old darky’s interior.

When the sidewalk was cleared, the van and the supplementary cart emptied, and the entire belongings of the Ford family securely housed, and the door of the apartment discreetly closed, so that the passers up and down the staircase might not become familiar with the various imperfections of the household gods, when I say what Moses called the biggest circus he had ever seen for many a day was over, that guardian of the house moved into the rear basement to talk it all over with Matilda.

The old woman—and she was very nearly as old as Moses, sixty-five if she was a day—was busy ironing, her head tied up in a big red bandanna, her shrewd eyes peering out of a pair of big-bowed spectacles.

“Well, is you through?” her eyes on her work, not on her husband.

“Yes; through!”

“Well, what you think of him?”

Moses had dropped into a chair now and begun to untie his big green baize apron, his morning work being over.

“I ain’t got no think, Matilda. He can talk de legs off a iron pot. Dat’s one of my thinks. Ain’t never heard nuffin’ like it. Jes’ like one of dese patent-medicine fellers with a stand on de street corner.”

“Well, is dat all?” She had dropped her iron now and with her hands on her hips was looking at him curiously.

“Dat’s all. Unless I’m much mistuk, dat’s all dere is to him. Jes’ wind. De madam is sumfin’ better. She looks as if she might have been quality afo’ she struck him. But young mistiss is de real thing. How she can put up wid him is mo’ ’an I can understand.”

CHAPTER III

All the way to his office, Joe was planning for a better acquaintance with the girl on the first floor. He had had but a glimpse of the mother, but even that brief insight had convinced him that she was a woman of refinement, and must be handled with due regard for the conventionalities of life.

The father he had not seen, his eyes having been fastened on the trim figure of the girl in the close-fitting knitted jacket and tam-o’-shanter hat. He had heard more or less conversation in a high key, and had become aware of a strident voice soaring above the roar of the street, but he was too much occupied with the new arrival to give the incident further thought.

When Joe burst in, Atwater was in his shirt-sleeves, poring over a big drawing, showing the ground-plan of a large office building for which the firm were competing.

“By Jove, Sam, we’re in luck! Perfect stunner! Knocks cold anything you ever saw! Regular Hebe. Come here and I’ll tell you all about it.”

Sam moved aside his T-square and followed his partner into a small room, lighted by a punched-out skylight, which answered for their private office.

“Now, go on, Joe, and hurry up. What are you driving at? The Long Island woman has given us her cottage, hasn’t she? I thought that sketch of yours would fix her.”

“Long Island woman be hanged, Sam. This is something brand-new. Early colonial. Martha Washington when she was a girl. Beauties of the republican court not in it! Prettiest little figure, and a pair of eyes that would drive you crazy. And——”

Sam reached forward and grabbed Joe’s arm.

“What the devil are you talking about, Joe?”

“Miss Ford.”

“What Miss Ford?”

“The girl on the first floor.”

“Where?”

“Right below us, you lunatic! She got tangled up with the best bit of Chippendale I’ve seen for years, and I helped her out. Glass all smashed. Nearly broke her heart. Oh, you’ve got to see her, Sam, before you——”

Sam held both hands to his head, expressive of the fear that his precise and conservative mind was giving way.

“Joe, if it wasn’t but ten o’clock in the morning, and I didn’t know that you were plumb sober when I left you at breakfast an hour ago, I’d think you were boiling drunk. Now, pull yourself together, and give it to me straight. What are you raving about? Is it an order for a bungalow, or some girl who tramped up our stairs to sell you a ‘Trow’s Directory’?”

Joe threw up his arms and let out a laugh that made the two draftsmen in the next room raise their heads.

“None of ’em, you woodenhead. Listen, Sam, and I’ll put a fresh curl in your hair. When I reached the sidewalk this morning, the whole place—hall, steps, and curb—were cluttered up with furniture! Everything from a flat-iron to a folding-bed was all over the lot. That new family—the one Moses was telling us about last night—were moving in. Mounted on a chair—just a plain kitchen chair, mind you—stood a girl—oh, a daisy girl!—holding on to a dressing-table, its legs tied up in a stove. And, Sam——”

“Her legs tangled up in—what are you talking about, Joe?”

“Not hers, you idiot! The Chippendale’s.”

“Well, then, what’s the girl got to do with it?”

“Don’t I tell you she owned the table? She was all broken up. Called her ‘darling.’ Was just bursting into tears when I made a dive, grabbed the eighteenth-century relic by one corner, lifted it over everybody’s head, carried it inside, and laid it at the feet of a rather demoralized woman—no doubt her mother—her head tied up in a green veil. Hence, ‘Thanks,’ grateful looks, and ‘Oh, so kind of you, sir’—that sort of thing. Returned to the girl, apologized, more ‘Oh, thank yous,’ and retired in good order. A perfect stunner, I tell you, Sam! I knew we’d strike it rich when you picked out that old rookery. We’ll begin to live now. She’s right below. Go down any time she sends for us. I’ve been thinking it over, and the first thing to do is to have a tea. Got to be hospitable, you know. We’ve just moved in, and they’ve just moved in. We’ve been there the longest, and, therefore, we make the advances. That would be the decent thing to do if there wasn’t any girl. Don’t you think so?”

Sam’s mind had begun to wander. He had listened to a dozen just such outbursts in the past six months.

Joe rattled on:

“Of course, we must invite the mother and father. They won’t come. He won’t, anyway. Mother might, so as to find out who we were and how we lived, and after that it will be easy-going with the daughter. I’ll send for Higgins and his sister, and you get Matty Sands and her mother, and—”

Sam began moving toward the door.

“Better cut the tea out, Joe,” he said curtly.

“But you haven’t seen the girl; if you had, you’d——”

“No, I haven’t seen the girl, and I don’t want to see the girl. Bad enough to give up a day’s work. We’ve got a lot to do, you know. A tea smashes the whole afternoon. Make it at night.”

“Too expensive. Must have something to eat, and maybe something to drink. Moses and his wife could work the hot-water-and-sandwiches racket, all right, but a supper, no—can’t see it—break us.”

“Well, make it a musicale, and send for Paul Lambing and his violin. I’ll do the piano. Maybe your girl can sing.”

“No; she can’t sing.”

“How do you know she can’t sing?”

“Because she don’t look like a girl who can sing. I can tell every time.”

“Well what does she look like?”

“She’s a perfect stunner, I tell you.”

“Yes, you’ve said that three times already. Now give us the details. Elevation, openings, cornice, roof line, and——”

Again Joe roared, this time with his head thrown back, his white teeth glistening. “That’s just like you, Sam, you never had a soul above bricks and mortar, and you never——”

“Well, I don’t go out of my head over every petticoat I come across.” He was inside the drafting-room now, and was holding the door open between them. “And, another thing, Joe, take my advice and stop where you are. The girl no doubt’s all right, and the mother may be all right, but the father is a queer one. Looks like a cross between a tract distributer and a lightning-rod man. Go slow, Joe,” and he shut the door between them.

By the end of the week the Fords had settled down in their new quarters, so far as outside activities were concerned. But what was going on inside the unlucky suite of rooms, no one but Matilda knew. Moses had volunteered the remark, that when a carpet was full of holes “it didn’t make no diff’unce which side you laid down.” But whether this mutilation was discovered in one of Fords’ Axminsters or in his own floor coverings, Joe did not catch, nor did he press the inquiry.

His impatience, however, to get inside the sacred precinct was not cooled, and he was still at fever heat. Nor had the proposed entertainment been abandoned, Joe forcing the topic whenever the opportunity offered, Sam invariably side-tracking it whenever it was possible. To-night, however, Joe was going to have it out, and Sam, being entirely comfortable, was prepared to listen. Neither of them had engagements which would take them from their rooms, and so Joe had donned his brown velvet jacket, and Atwater had slipped his thin body into what Joe called his “High Church” pajamas, an embroidered moiré-antique dressing-gown, cut after the pattern of a priest’s robe, which a devoted aunt had made for him with her own hands, and which, to quote Joe, “should always be worn with smoked glasses as safeguards against certain dangerous forms of ophthalmia.”

Joe, finding another mail heaped up on his pad—there was always a mail for Joe—had seated himself at his desk, his legs stretched out like a ten-inch gun, his shapely feet in thin-soled, patent-leather shoes, resting on one corner of the colonial. Sam occupied the sofa, the slim curve of his girth almost parallel to the straight line of the Hidalgo’s favorite lounge.

Several schemes looking to a further and more lasting acquaintance had been discussed and rejected. One was to leave their own door ajar, be in wait until Fords’ was opened, and then in the most unexpected manner meet some one of the family on the stairs, Joe’s affability to do the rest.

Another was to waylay Ford as he entered from the street, engage him in conversation, and keep it up until he had reached his door, when Joe would be invited in and asked to make himself at home. This last was Atwater’s. Indeed, both of these “vulgar absurdities” (Joe’s view-point) were Atwater’s.

“Well, then,” retorted Sam, “go down like a man—now. It isn’t too late. It’s only nine o’clock. Ring the bell or pound on his door, and present your card. That’s the way you would do anywhere up-town. Try it here. Chuck that box of matches this way, Joe, my pipe’s out.”

Joe chucked, stretched his shapely legs another inch, and resumed:

“No, won’t do. Might all be out. All up with us then. Lightning-rod man would wait a week, watch until he saw us go out, tiptoe up-stairs and slip his card under the door. I couldn’t call again without upsetting everything. They’d think I was trying to ‘butt in.’ Better way would be to write the mother a note.”

“What kind of a note? Here, catch this box.”

“That’s the devil of it, Sam, I don’t exactly know. I’m thinking it over.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what to say, and I’m not thinking it over. Say you’re dead stuck on her daughter, and want to see more of her. That you’re going to get up a musicale which you can’t afford, and that you—oh, drop it, Joe, she’ll be asking us both to tea before the week is out, and before a month the whole family will be borrowing everything we own, and we’ll have to move out to get rid of them. I got a crack at the mother a day or two ago. You didn’t see her this morning because you had gone up on ahead, but a boy rang her bell as I passed. One of these short, old family portraits kind of woman. Round and dry as a bunch of lavender. Girl might be well enough, but my advice is to cut it all out. Get a new line. We’ve got a lot of work to do. I’ve carried the ground-plan as far as I can go, and you’ve got to pitch into the details.”

Joe had dropped his feet to the floor, had squared himself at his desk, and was half through a note. Sam had finished his outburst. His partner’s advice on matters connected with their profession Joe always respected; to listen to his views on social affairs was so much wasted time.

The note finished, Joe shifted his seat and faced his partner, the letter in his hand.

“Now, shut up, you hod-carrier, and pay attention. This is what I call a corker! And you needn’t try to alter a line, because it’s going just as it is.

“Dear Mrs. Ford:

“Would you think me presuming if I asked you to relieve the loneliness of the two young men who occupy the third floor over your head? Mr. Atwater and I have invited a few friends to come to our rooms on Friday of this week at nine o’clock to listen to some good music, and we would be most grateful if you and Mr. Ford and your daughter would join the company,

“Yours sincerely,
“Joseph Grimsby.”

“How’s that?”

Atwater settled himself deeper into the sofa, gathered the ends of the flaming robe closer about his thin body, and jammed a pillow under his head; but no word escaped him.

“Well, I’m waiting,” insisted Joe; “what do you think of it?”

“That you’ll get the mother, who’ll come to spy out the land; that the lightning-rod man will stay away, and that the girl, if she’s got any sense, and I think she has from what you’ve told me, will wait for the old lady’s report, and that that will end it. These people have come here to get away from everybody. That girl, no doubt, is all they’ve got, and they don’t want distinguished young architects mousing around. Save your money, Joe.”

“That letter’s going, Sam, just as I’ve written it. It’s the letter of a gentleman. Never will offend any lady, and she looks like one. Wait till I seal it. It ought to go at once—now—this very night. You get out of that Biblical bedquilt and get into your coat, slip down and leave it at the door. That will give me another chance in case this thing slips up. Could then make a suggestion about having the glass repaired. Never thought of that until this minute.”

“I wouldn’t get off this sofa, Joe, for all the girls in New York. Put a stamp on it, and I’ll mail it in the morning. There’s no hurry. We’re going to be here all winter.”

“Mail it, you half-breed! Mail a letter, and you in the same house!”

“Well, send it down by Moses.”

“Well, that’s more like it! Touch that bell—will you?—you’re nearest.”

Sam reached out and pressed a button within a foot of his head. Joe slipped the note into an envelope, sealed it with violet wax, waited until the little puddle was big enough to engulf the Grimsby crest engraved on his seal-ring, and was about to repeat the summons, when there came a knock at the door.

“Come in.”

The darky entered, his back crooked like a folding jack-knife.

“I knowed dat was yo’ ring, Mr. Joe, before it got done tinglin’.” A new—or rather an added joy—had crept again into the old slave’s heart—the joy of serving a white man whom he respected, and who was kind to him.

“You’re wrong, Gargoyles, that was Mr. Atwater’s ring!”

“Well, den you gib his touch.” And again Moses’ back was bent double.

“Wrong again, Moses. That the bell rang at all is entirely owing to the fact that the button was within reach of the distinguished architect’s hand. Had it been six inches farther down the wall, I should have been obliged to tingle it myself.”

“Yas, sah.”

“The distinguished architect, Moses, suffers from an acute form of inertia, Moses, owing to the fact that he was born tired.”

“Yas, sah.”

“And furthermore, Moses, he has so little knowledge of the ordinary civilities of life, that but for your kindly help he would have intrusted this delicately addressed missive, illumined with the Grimsby crest, to a cast-iron box decorating a street corner.”

“Yas, sah.”

Any further comment would have been presumptuous. None of this conversation, as he well knew, having been addressed to himself.

“And now, stop genuflecting, you chunk of darkness, and listen. Step down-stairs, rap gently and discreetly at the closed portal of the Ford family and pass in this letter.”

“Yes, sah, and den what?” He was included now.

“Nothing what, unless the young lady should open the door, when you will ask her if there is any answer. If she says there is, and gives it to you, you will bring it up here on the dead run.”

“And s’pose dat de—dat de—well, dat de gemman himself opens it?”

“What, the letter?”

“No, sah; de do’.”

“Hand him the letter all the same, say there is no answer; none of any kind, and to prove it, amble down into your own coal-hole.”

Moses reached for the missive, laid it across the creases of his wrinkled palm, and with a remark, “dat his old marse, Marse Robin, had one of dem little seals hangin’ to his watch-fob,” closed the door behind him.

With the departure of the darky a waiting calm fell upon the room. Joe resumed his task at his desk, and Sam continued to flatten out the several parts of his body until each inch of his lower length had found a resting-place.

“Everybody out, or Moses would have come up again,” remarked Joe, glancing at the clock, “been gone five minutes now.”

“Holding a council of war. Mother in tears, and the girl in a rage. At the present moment the lightning-rod man is looking for a club. My advice to you is to get out of that velvet jacket, or it will be mussed up before he gets through with you.”

Five minutes more. No Moses. No irate protector of the family. No news of any kind.

Nor was any further information available the following morning when Moses brought in their breakfast. “Didn’t nobody open de do’ but de hired girl, so I left it,” was his report. Moses’ mental distinction between a hired girl and a servant was convincingly apparent in the tones of his voice.

Nor was there any word sent to the office, nor had any message reached their room when Joe arrived home to dress for dinner. The nearest approach to a possible communication had been when he caught sight of Miss Sue’s back as she tripped out of the front door, just before he reached the sidewalk. But she was gone before he could have overtaken her, had he so wished, the unanswered note having now set up an insurmountable barrier between them.

Positive information reached him on his return home that night. He had occupied a front seat at Wallack’s, Mrs. Southgate having given a débutante a chance to be seen. Sam had kept awake and was waiting for him.

“Well, it’s come, Joe,” he shouted, before the absentee had closed the door behind him.

“What’s come?”

“The letter. She slipped it under the door after you left, and I came mighty near stepping on it when I came in half an hour ago. Looks like a railroad time-table, or a set of specifications.”

“The devil you did! What does she say? Is she coming?”

“How do I know? Haven’t opened it. It’s addressed to you.”

Joe caught up the letter, dropped into a chair and tore apart the envelope. Inside was the missive and a printed enclosure.

Sam edged nearer, awaiting the verdict, his eyes reading Joe’s face as he scanned the lines.

Joe read on to the end, and passed the open sheet to Atwater without a word. It bore the image and superscription of “The United Family Laundry Association, Limited,” and was signed by the vice-president and treasurer.

“Read it, Sam, and go out in the hall and swear. G-r-i-m-e-s-b-y, eh? Don’t even know how to spell my name. Here, hand it back, and listen.

“Joseph Grimesby, Esq.,

“Dear Sir: My wife can’t come. Neither can her daughter. But I will show up at nine o’clock. I enclose one of our circulars. Look it over. The last sale of our stock was at par.

“Yours, etc.,
“Ebner Ford,
“Vice-President and Treasurer.”

“Her daughter!” exploded Joe. “What does that mean?”

Sam staggered to the sofa, and fell along its length in a paroxysm of laughter.

“Magnificent! Superb! He’ll show up, will he? Of course he’ll show up—all of him. Oh, what a lark!”

Joe made a pianissimo beat with his outstretched hand in the hope of reducing Sam’s volume of protest, and scanned the letter once again.

“Just my luck!” he muttered. “Always some vulgarian of a father or crank mother gets in the way. No, we won’t have any party. I’m going to call it off. Tell him I’ve just got a telegram. Sent for from out of town. Professional business—that sort of thing. A man who will write a letter like that in answer to one addressed to his wife would be an intolerable nuisance. Couldn’t get rid of him with a dynamite bomb. I’ll fix him, and I’ll do it now,” and he squared himself at his desk.

“You’ll do nothing of the kind, Joe,” returned Sam.

“Now, the girls are not coming, we’ll have the party, nuisance or no nuisance. He’ll be more fun than a half-starved Harlem goat munching a tin sign. We’ll cut out Matty Higgins and the other girls, and make it a stag. Just you leave it to me. I’ll take care of him, and if there’s anything in him, I’ll get it out. If he can’t sing, he’ll dance. If he won’t do either, I’ll stand him on his head.”

That Sam should be willing, even enthusiastic, over the admission of any one member of the Ford family was a point gained in Joe’s mind. Whether, when he had once gained admission to the family circle, he could stand the surroundings, he would decide upon later. Mrs. Ford was evidently a woman of breeding and refinement; her daughter was—well, there was no use discussing that with Sam. Sam never went out of his way to be polite to any woman, young or old. As to Ford, Senior, there must be a good side to him or he could not be where he was. There was no question that he was unaccustomed to the usages of good society; his note showed that. So were a lot of other men he knew who were engrossed in their business.

Yes, he would have the party, and the next week he would give a tea, whether Sam was willing or not, and Miss Ford would pour it, or he would miss his guess. To keep on living on the top floor of the same house, day after day, and that girl two flights below, and not be able to do more than wish her “good morning” when he met her on the stairs—perhaps not even that—was, to a man of his parts, unthinkable. Yes, the party was the thing, and it would be a stag. And he would send for the fellows the very next day, which was done as soon as he reached his office, both by note and messenger. “Just to whoop things up in the new quarters,” ran the notes, and, “Well, then, all right, we’ll expect you around nine,” rounded up the verbal invitations. Lambing was to arrive early so that he and Sam could arrange one of their latest duets, Atwater to rattle the keys, and Lambing to scrape the catgut. Talcott, the portrait-painter, was also to come. Babson, a brother architect, who had won the gold medal at the League, Sampson, Billings, and a lot more. For refreshments there would be a chafing-dish and unlimited beer in bottles, which Moses was to serve, and a bowl of tobacco, not to mention a varied assortment of pipes, some of clay, with a sprinkling of corn-cobs, the whole to be gladdened by such sandwiches as Matilda could improvise from sundry loaves of baker’s bread and boiled ham. These last Joe attended to himself; the musical and literary features of the evening being left in the hands of his partner. In this was included the standing on his head the principal guest of the evening, provided that worthy gentleman was incapable of furnishing any other form of diversion.

CHAPTER IV

The stranger in passing Enoch Crane on the street would have been likely to have turned and said: “There goes a crusty old gentleman”—he would not have omitted the word “gentleman,” for that he looked and was.

Fifty years had moulded his appearance to a nicety in accordance with his mode of life, which was, for the most part (when he was not up-town at his club, or down-town at his office) passed in solitary confinement in the top-floor suite.

He was a man of medium height, who carried his stubborn head low bent from his shoulders, like most thinkers, though the rapid upward glance out of his keen brown eyes was quick and piercing—even commanding at times.

What remained of his gray hairs were neatly parted on the side and as carefully smoothed over a cranium surmounting a broad, intelligent forehead, the bushy eyebrows denoting a man of shrewd perception, shadowing a grave face framed in a pair of cropped side-whiskers. These met with a mustache nearly white, and as stiff as a tooth-brush, that bristled over a mouth whose corners curved downward in repose; when he opened his lips, they revealed his even lower teeth, giving him the tenacious expression of a bulldog. When he smiled, which was rarely, two seams bordering the chop side-whiskers deepened in the effort. When he laughed, there radiated upon these still rarer occasions, tinier wrinkles from the corners of his eyes. Sham and affectation he despised. Noise made him grit his teeth, and any undue outburst of geniality he regarded in the light of a personal insult. No one would have dared slap Enoch Crane on the back.

Years ago he had looked in the glass, decided he was ugly and, with the wisdom of a philosopher, thought no more about it. He was punctilious, nevertheless, about his dress—his favorite trousers being of white-and-black check shepherd’s plaid, and his coat and waistcoat of dark-gray homespun. On special occasions these were replaced by decent black broadcloth, which, like the rest of his clothes, were kept conscientiously brushed by Moses and hung in the big closet off his bedroom—the one next to a small wash-closet, provided with a cracked basin, and two worn, nickeled faucets, out of which the water dribbled, droned, and grumbled, as if angry at being summoned as far up as the top floor.

As for the generous square living-room itself adjoining, its four windows commanding a view of both the back yard and Waverly Place, there remained barely an inch of wall space from floor to ceiling that did not hold a memory; old prints and older pictures in the tarnished gilt frames he had picked them up in, all these hung over three packed shelves of books. There was, too, a blackened fireplace, a mahogany desk, its cubby-holes choked with papers and old pipes, and opposite, a high cabinet of rosewood, its glass doors curtained in faded green silk, screening some excellent port, and the sermons of Spurgeon, two volumes of which lay among the heap of papers piled on the round centre-table directly back of Enoch’s favorite armchair.

Though the evening was mild, it did not prevent Enoch from having a cheery fire in his grate, or from settling himself before it, sunk in the generous leather arms of his favorite chair. He had, too, for company a short-stemmed, brier pipe purring contentedly between his teeth, and an early edition of “Vanity Fair” open upon his knees.

Mr. Enoch Crane’s door was closed as tight as his lips when the agent of The United Family Laundry Association rapped. Ebner Ford’s rap indicated that he was used to knocking at doors where he was not needed. His career as an agent had made him past master in intrusion and provided him with a gift of speech, both the result of long experience.

At Ford’s summons, Enoch started irritably, laid his pipe beside Mr. Thackeray’s masterpiece, rose with a scowl, shot an annoyed glance at his door, and striding over to it with a grunt, flung it open wide to the intruder with a curt nod of recognition.

“Couldn’t help paying my respects,” grinned Ford; “must be neighborly, you know,” and with that he advanced with a smile of assurance across the threshold.

Enoch had not opened his lips.

“Neighborly,” shouted Ford, fearing he was deaf.

“Yes,” said Enoch. “I recognize you perfectly—Mr.—Mr.—er——”

“Ford,” returned the other, the grin broadening, his outstretched hand seeking Enoch’s, the other fumbling in the pocket of his waistcoat for his business card. Both the card and the hand Enoch accepted in silence.

“Looks comfy and homelike enough here,” blurted out Ford, glancing around him. “I tell my wife, there’s nothin’ like——”

“Be seated,” intervened Enoch, waving his visitor to the armchair. “Well, Mr.—er—Ford, what can I do for you?” He snapped out an old gold watch attached to a chain of braided human hair, and stood regarding his visitor with an expression of haste and annoyance. “Forgive me if I am brief,” he added briskly, as Ford flung himself into the proffered chair, “but I was about to go out when you knocked—a club meeting which I must attend—an important meeting, sir.”

“Well, now, that’s too bad. Must go, eh? Thinks I, as I told my wife, you’d be in to-night, and we could have a good old talk together—seeing we was neighbors. Got to go, have you?” and Ford sank deeper into the armchair, stretching out his long legs before the fire. “Well, that’s right, never pays to be late—reminds me of that story about the feller who was runnin’ to catch the train for Chicago and met a red-headed girl and a white horse on the way—old man Degraw used to tell this up in Syracuse—I can hear him now.” Here he emitted a thin, reminiscent laugh—cut short by Enoch.

“You do not seem to comprehend, sir, that I am pressed for time,” interrupted Enoch testily, again snapping out his watch. This time he held its dial out for Ebner Ford’s inspection. “Eighteen minutes of nine now, Mr. Ford—our meeting is at nine.”

“Ain’t you a little fast?” remarked the latter, pulling out his own. “Funny how I got that watch,” Ford rattled on with an insistence that keyed Enoch’s nerves to the quick.

Enoch had been bothered with many of the inmates in his time, but Ford’s effrontery was new to him. The very ease with which he had settled himself in the proffered chair set the muscles of the bulldog jaw twitching. Forced as he had been to open his door to him, nothing but his innate sense of breeding had, he felt, allowed the man to cross his threshold. What he regretted most now was that he had asked him to be seated. Ford’s hail-fellow-well-met manner sent the hot blood in him tingling. Twice during the account of the remarkable history of the watch Enoch had tried to check him and failed; he might as well have tried to halt the street vender of a patent medicine, selling with both hands to a gullible crowd. Only when his visitor had changed the subject to a rapid-fire eulogy over the hospitality of the young men on the floor beneath, touching at length upon the party of the night before—the wisdom of Mrs. Ford—the price of rent in other towns—and the care he had always observed in giving his daughter the best education money could buy, including French and piano lessons, did Enoch manage to dam the torrent of his volubility with:

“Mr. Ford, you must consider our interview at an end, sir—I am late and must be going,” and with that he strode over to the bedroom closet for his coat and hat.

Ebner Ford slowly rose to his feet.

“Want any help?” he ventured as he watched Enoch dig a closed fist into the sleeve of his night-coat.

“Thank you,” said Enoch curtly, wrenching himself into the rest of the ulster, “I’m not so old but that I can dress myself.”

“What I’d like to say,” continued Ford, as Enoch searched the corners of the closet for his night-stick, found it, and started to turn down the Argand burner on the centre-table, “is—that it makes an almighty big difference what kind of a house you’re in—don’t it?—as I told Mrs. Ford, we couldn’t have struck a better place—folks in it make a difference, too. Don’t know when I’ve enjoyed myself more’n I did last night. Quite a party, Mr. Crane—you missed it. Big-hearted fellers, both of ’em. We certainly had a royal time. Sorry you couldn’t make it, friend—you were invited, of course——”

In reply, the Argand burner sank to a dull blue flame. Enoch led the way in the semidarkness to his door.

“Some day when you’ve got more time,” continued Ford, “I’d like to show you just about the slickest laundry plant this side of Broadway. What we done was to get the best machinery money can buy, and we’re not sorry. Take our flat work alone. Fourteen steam-mangles, and seven wringers—figure that out and you’ll see how much business we do a month. Stocks above par, Mr. Crane; no man could ask a better investment for his money. Now, there’s a hundred shares preferred that——”

“After you, sir,” said Enoch, as he slammed his door shut, turned the key in the lock, and hurried his unwelcome visitor before him down the creaky, carpeted stairs.

“At seven per cent,” rattled on Ford over his shoulder as he descended and halted at the Grimsby-Atwater door. “Think it over, neighbor.”

“I bid you good night, sir,” said Enoch, quickening his pace past him.

“Damn his impertinence!” he muttered to himself as he reached the front door, opened it, closed it with a click, and rushed for a horse-car en route to his club.

CHAPTER V

Since the coming of the Fords the house in Waverly Place had awakened. Sue’s presence had had its effect from cellar to roof. No sunbeam that ever smiled into a dungeon could have been more welcome. The gloomy old stairs zigzagging up to the top floor seemed more cheerful, and the narrow hallways it led to less dingy. Even Aunt Matilda’s cat—a scared and fat-headed old mouser who had refused half through January to leave its warm refuge under her stove in the basement—could now be seen nibbling and cleaning her paws as far up as the top carpeted step on Enoch’s floor.

There radiates from the personality of a pure young girl like Sue something strangely akin to sunshine, something indefinable, luminous, and warm, which no one yet has been quite able to describe—any more than one can define “charm”—that which touches the heart, neither can we place our finger upon that thin, wavering border line between friendship and love—a pressure of the hand, a glance of the eyes, a smile, a sudden gaze of sympathy and understanding, and we stumble headlong across the frontier into the land of adoration. To fall in love! What nonsense! We rise, with love tingling through our veins—pounding at our temples, its precious treasure our own, safe forever, we believe, in our beating hearts.

Ah! yes indeed, it has ever been so, and it always will be. Why is it that Cupid, the god of love, has always been depicted as a frail little cherub, when the truth is he is a giant, dominating, relentless, strong as death—who swings the whole world at his beck and call. How much misery, doubt, and happiness he has conceived and fashioned to suit him since the world began (bless his little heart!) it is quite impossible to compute. Eve and Adam are unfortunately dead, or we should have it at first-hand from both of them.

Sue was not only beautiful—she was fresh, and young, and cheery, with a frank gleam in her clear blue eyes, a complexion like a rose, the sheen of gold in her fair hair—a lithe grace to her slim, active body—pearly teeth, and a kind word for every one who deserved it.

No wonder that Joe Grimsby impulsively lost his head and his heart to Sue at first sight of her. More than a week had elapsed, and although he had had from that young lady little more encouragement than his buoyant imagination supplied, he was far from disheartened. What really had occurred, was that he had met his ideal face to face on the stairs the day after the party, and she had thanked him for inviting her, rather coldly, Joe thought. Indeed it had been quite a formal little meeting after all. He had expressed his sorrow at her not being able to come, and she had expressed hers—quite as formally as a strange girl at a tea might, and he being too innately well-bred a gentleman to force matters, had accepted her proffered little hand with more added regrets, and shaken it as punctiliously as he was wont to do the hands of his various hostesses in bidding them good night. And so she went up-stairs and he went down, not, however, without a beating heart over the interview, brief and unsatisfactory as it had been, and a firm resolution to call on her mother—which he did the very next day, and received word from the Irish maid of all work who opened the door, that “Mrs. Ford begged to be excused.” The truth was that this Southern lady did not care to know the young men in the house, and as for Sue, the oversudden invitation to meet the young architects of the third floor had left more of an impression of distrust than desire.

As for Joe, Sam Atwater’s better sense and advice had only the effect it usually does in such painful cases, of fanning into a blaze Joe’s infatuation and spiriting on his stubborn determination to convince Sue Preston of its sincerity. Alas! Joe had reached that stage among young architects in love, of covering half the margins of his quarter-scale drawings with pictorial memories of Sue—sketching with his HB lead pencil her clean-cut, refined profile, detailing with infinite pains the exact curve of her lovely mouth, expressing as best he could the tenderness in her eyes, and the precise way in which she wore her hair, half hiding her small, pink ears—in fact, he got to dreaming hopelessly over her as he drew, and forgot in the second draft of the Long Island woman’s cottage important members of cornices, windows, and doors, laying in cross-sections and elevations in a scandalous, sloppy way, until Atwater finally had to call a halt over his shoulder with: “For Heaven’s sake, old man, cut it out,” at which Joe grinned, and with good-natured embarrassment promised to really get down to work.

He had declared to Sam Atwater in his outburst of enthusiasm at the office that Sue could not sing. He was positive of this—“She did not look like a girl who could sing”—whereas if Sue possessed one great gift, it was her splendid soprano voice. Her voice was her very life, her whole ambition, a possession far more valuable than the whole worthless lot of Ebner Ford’s business ventures combined, and wisely enough Sue realized that, whatever might happen to the always uncertain budget of the Ford family, at least with her concert work and her teaching, she could make her own living. When her stepfather’s six-house venture had failed, it was Sue who came to the rescue—with what she had earned during the two years previous, singing in the smaller towns of Connecticut, giving lessons wherever she could, mostly in Ebner Ford’s home town of Clapham, the very town in which her mother had married him ten years before to escape from impending poverty.

It may be seen, therefore, that the hard struggle the stepdaughter had gone through had left her with a far more serious knowledge and view of life than either Joe or the rest of the inmates of No. 99 Waverly Place were in the least conscious of.

Sue thoroughly understood her stepfather; briefly, she regretted his methods, and still wondered how her mother could have ever married him, poor as they were. Inwardly, too, she trembled over his wildcat schemes, none too overscrupulous at best, while his hail-fellow-well-met manner, which he assumed upon any occasion when he saw a commission for himself hanging loose about the stranger, grated upon her. Indeed she knew him thoroughly, just as he was, bombastic varnish, vagaries, common self-assurance, and all. Behind closed doors in the intimacy of his home, before her mother and herself, Ebner Ford was a different man. His respect for his stepdaughter’s wishes and better judgment was often one of ill-tempered resignation.

He dared not disagree with his wife—a short, thick-set little woman, several years his senior, addicted to side-combs, opinions of her own, and an extravagant way of boasting to others of her South Carolinian ancestry, and carefully avoiding any mention of her husband’s from central Connecticut.

Now it happened that that dear little old spinster, Miss Ann Moulton, who lived with her invalid sister on the second floor, was the first to really know Sue.

These two unmarried sisters had lived together since they were girls. They had a little property, just enough to provide for the modest apartment they were living in, and were anywhere from fifty to sixty years old. You could not possibly tell their exact age by looking at them, and, of course, they would not have told you had you asked them. They were both small, very much alike—little, gray, dried-up women. Both very refined, very gentle in their manners, gentle of voice, too. Miss Ann was the stronger of the two. She was the manager. Upon her frail, little person fell all the responsibility, their only relative being a brother who lived West, and who managed what little property they had. She had no one else to look after her affairs, and he was a lazy brother at that.

As for Miss Jane, the sister, she had always been an invalid. Her frail hands were strangely transparent when held to the light, her voice weak, her step uncertain, and her hair, like Miss Ann’s, nearly silver-white. On the street you could hardly tell the two sisters apart. They were so much alike, and dressed alike, which they had always done since they were children, and yet they were not twins. There was a difference, however; Miss Jane’s cheeks were sunken, and there were dark circles under her patient, gray eyes. She never let any one know she was an invalid; neither did Miss Ann mention it. It had all happened so many years ago, but it was as clear in Jane Moulton’s memory as if it had happened yesterday: Her gasping for breath, her failing strength as she fought on in the grip of an ebb-tide. His sharp cry to her to keep her head, then his strong arm about her—blackness—then the beach, and he whom she loved, who had given his life for hers, lying drowned upon it.

A small daguerreotype of him hung above her bed; one taken when he was eighteen, the year they were engaged.

The Misses Moulton’s apartment was furnished in a various and curious collection of quaint little round tables with spindle legs, a Franklin stove burning wood, some old family portraits in oval gilt frames, and high-post bedsteads for each of the bedrooms, the sunny one being Miss Jane’s. There were big easy chairs covered with chintz in the sitting-room, and an assortment of different kinds of china, suggesting relics of several family collections; none of them matched—three teacups and saucers of one set, and four of another, some in gold and lustre. They had but one servant—Mary—an American, who came from up New York State, a motherly woman of fifty, fat, serious, and good-natured.

Sue had been giving a singing lesson as far up-town as East 46th Street, to the daughter of a wealthy alderman, who owned a brownstone, high-stooped house, grafted intact from the last political election. This house was a block above the railroad bridge on Lexington Avenue, and there being no cars running to-day, owing to a strike on the Third Avenue horse-car line, Sue had been obliged this wretched January day, with the streets swimming in slush under a fine, drizzling rain, to reach her destination on foot. After her lesson she had crossed the bridge spanning the Grand Central tracks, and found her way back to Waverly Place by way of Madison Avenue.

Stairs have a habit of forcing acquaintanceships, and making friends, a way of introducing strangers, who otherwise would not dare speak to each other, of bringing neighbors face to face, and providing them with a firm foothold until they knew each other better. Where Joe Grimsby had failed on the stairs, Miss Ann Moulton succeeded. Miss Ann had put on her bonnet to do an errand, closed the door of her sitting-room, and stood in the dim light of the landing, buttoning a new pair of lisle-thread gloves she had purchased the day before at the big Stewart store, just as Sue, wet and tired from her lesson up-town, came up the stairs, her cloak and hat glistening with rain. As she neared the Moultons’ landing, she caught sight of the little old maid nervously struggling over the top button of her left-hand glove.

“Won’t you let me help you?” ventured Sue, as she reached the landing. “New gloves are so difficult to button.”

“Oh, please—I pray you—don’t bother,” returned Miss Ann, flushing with embarrassment, but Sue insisted, briskly laid the thin wrist in the palm of her hand, quickly extracted a hairpin from where it had nestled in her fair hair, and so deftly buttoned the new gray glove, that before Miss Ann could further protest the button was snug and safe in its buttonhole.

“Oh, thank you! Thank you so much,” stammered the little spinster. Then both glanced into each other’s eyes, and both smiled. “I’m so sorry to have troubled you,” added Miss Ann sweetly.

There was a friendly gleam in her aged gray eyes now that won Sue’s heart before the little woman before her, standing with her back to her sitting-room door, had uttered another word.

Sue laid her wet umbrella against the banisters next to Miss Ann’s dry one, and brushed the wet from her skirt.

“You are Miss Moulton, aren’t you?” she asked with a cheery smile.

“Yes, my child. How did you know? Except for Mr. Crane we know no one here at present. My sister and I live here; we have lived here nearly as long as Mr. Crane.”

“I know,” nodded Sue. “Moses told me.” There was something so gentle, frank, and sincere, especially in the word “child,” that Sue already felt they were friends. The frail, gloved hand lingered in Sue’s. “You don’t know how glad I am to meet you, Miss Moulton,” said she, pressing it firmly.

“And I to meet you, my dear. It’s such a joy to have a young girl come into this dreadful gloomy place,” sighed Miss Ann.

“It is gloomy to-day, isn’t it?” Sue declared. “If you don’t really have to go out I wouldn’t, Miss Moulton. It’s simply dreadful out. The streets are simply swimming in slush, and it’s just that kind of a drizzling rain that soaks you through and through.” Sue hesitated. “Do you really have to go out?” she asked seriously. “Please tell me, is there anything I can do? Do let me go if there is. Must you go?—and without your rubbers, too! I feel like scolding you,” she laughed.