A Top-Floor Idyl Part 5

I a.s.sured her that it was and said I was very glad that Mrs. Dupont was not quite dest.i.tute. By this time the baby was a week old and most reasonably silent. Mrs. Milliken felt rea.s.sured, and the two young women who sold candy had come up, one evening, to admire the infant. From the goodness of their hearts they had brought an offering of gummy sweets, which I subsequently confiscated and bestowed upon Eulalie for her sister's children, who, she a.s.sures me, are to be envied in the possession of iron stomachs. The commercial young men have instinctively slammed their doors less violently, and the deaf old lady, precluded by age from ascending to top floors, sent up a pair of microscopic blue and white socks and a receipt for the fashioning of junket, which, I understand, is an edible substance.

"Tell you what!" exclaimed Frieda. "You might take me to Camus this evening. Dutch treat, you know. I insist on it. I'm tired to-day and don't want to wrestle with my gas-stove. Besides, I want to talk to you about Kid Sullivan."

"I'm afraid I'm unacquainted with the youthful Hibernian," I said. "Is it another baby that you take a vicarious interest in?"

"No, he would have been the lightweight champion, but for his losing a fight, quite accidentally," she explained. "He told me exactly how it happened, but I don't remember. At any rate, it was the greatest pity."

"My dear Frieda," I told her, "no one admires more than I a true democracy of acquaintance and catholicity of friendship, but don't you think that consorting with prizefighters is a little out of your line?"

"Don't talk nonsense," she said, in her decided way. "I just had to get a model for Orion, and he's my janitress's brother. The most beautiful lad you ever saw. He already has a wife and two little children, and his shoulders are a dream!"

"So far," I told her, "I have fought shy of the squared circle in my literary studies and know little about it. But I surmise that, if your Orion continues his occupation, he is likely to lose some of his good looks. Be sure and paint his face first, Frieda, while the painting is still good, and before his nose is pushed askew and he becomes adorned with cauliflower ears."

"I know nothing of such things," she answered, "and he's a delight to paint."

"But for that perfectly accidental defeat, the man would have refused to appear as a demiG.o.d," I a.s.serted. "A champion would think himself too far above such an individual."

"That's neither here nor there," she a.s.serted, impatiently. "When I try to talk, you're always wandering off into all sorts of devious paths.

What I wanted to say was that, if any of your acquaintances happen to require a very competent truck-driver, the Kid is out of a job. Of course I can't afford to pay him much. He poses for me to oblige his sister."

"The youth appears to have several strings to his bow," I remarked, wondering why Frieda should ever think I could possibly know people in need of truck-drivers. But then, she never leaves a stone unturned, when she seeks to help more or less deserving people.

In my honor she put on her most terrific hat, and we went arm in arm to Camus, where she revelled in olives and radishes and conscientiously went through the bill of fare.

"Do you know, Frieda, I am thanking goodness for the advent of that baby," I told her. "It has permitted me to enjoy more of your company than I have for months and months. Every minute I can feel that you are growing nearer and dearer to me."

She showed her fine teeth, laughing heartily. She delights in having violent love made to her by some one who doesn't mean it. To her it const.i.tutes, apparently, an excruciatingly funny joke. Also to me, when I consider her hat, but, when she is bareheaded, I am more serious, for, then, she often looks like a real woman, possessing in her heart the golden casket wherein are locked the winged pa.s.sions. _Quien sabe?_ She is, perhaps, fortunate in that filmy G.o.ddesses and ethereal youths have so filled her thoughts that a mere man, to her, is only the gross covering of something spiritual that has sufficed for her needs. Poor, dear, fat Frieda! A big gold and crimson love bursting out from beneath the varnish covering her hazy pigments would probably appal and frighten her.

"Will you have some of the _sole au vin blanc_?" she asked, bringing me down to earth again.

I thanked her and accepted, admiring the witchery whereby the Widow Camus can take a vulgar flounder and, with magic pa.s.ses, translate it into a fair imitation of a more heavenly fish. One nice thing about Frieda is that she never appears to think it inc.u.mbent upon her companion to devote every second of his attention to her. If I chance to see a tip-tilted nose, which would serve nicely in the description of some story-girl, and wish to study it carefully and, I hope, un.o.btrusively, she is willing to let her own eyes wander about and enjoy herself, until I turn to her again. I was observing the details of a very fetching and merry little countenance, when a girl rose from an adjoining table and came up to Frieda.

"I happened to turn my head and see you," she exclaimed. "So I just had to come over and say howdy. I'm so glad to see you. I have my cousin from Mackville with me and am showing him the town."

She was a dainty thing, modestly clad, crowned with fluffy auburn, and with a face pigmented with the most genuine of cream and peaches.

Frieda presented me, and she smiled, graciously, saying a few bright nothings about the heat, after which she rejoined her companion, a rather tall and gawky youth.

"She posed for me as Niobe two years ago," said my friend. "At present, she teaches physical culture."

"What!" I exclaimed, "that wisp of a girl."

"Yes, I don't know how many pounds she can lift; ever so many. She's a perfect darling and looks after an old mother, who still deplores Mackville Four Corners. Her cousin is in safe hands."

I took another look at the six-footer with her, who smoked a cigarette with evident unfamiliarity.

"Would," I said, "that every youth, confronted by the perils of New York for the first time, might be guided in such security. She is showing him the revelry of Camus and has proved to him that a slightly Bohemian atmosphere is not incompatible with personal cleanliness and a soul kept white. It will broaden his horizon. Then she will take him home at a respectable hour, after having demonstrated to him the important fact that pleasure, edible viands and a cheerful atmosphere may be procured here out of a two-dollar bill, leaving a little change for carfare."

"If I were a man," said Frieda, "I should fall in love with her."

"If you were a man, my dear, you would fall in love a dozen times a day."

"Gordon McGrath says it's the only safe way," she retorted.

"Don't be quoting him to me," I advised her. "To him it is a mere egotistic formula. Like yourself, he has always been afraid to descend from generalities. I don't like the trait in him, whereas, in you, I admire it, because, with you, it is the mere following of a tendency to wholesale affection for your fellow-beings. Yet it is a slightly curious and abnormal condition."

"Like having to wear spectacles," she helped me out.

"Just so, whereas in Gordon it is simply the result of a deliberate policy, a line of conduct prepared in advance, like a chess-opening.

Some day, in that game of his, a little p.a.w.n may move in an unexpected way, and he will be hoist with his own petard."

"I hope so," she answered cheerfully. "It will probably be very good for him."

"But it might also break his heart," I suggested.

"Don't get gloomy," Frieda advised me. "What about yourself? Here you are abusing your friends because they fight shy of the archer G.o.dling. I should like to know what you have done to show any superiority."

"Well, if my memory serves me right, I have proposed to you, once or twice."

"O dear no! You may have meant to, perhaps, but never really got to the point," she answered, laughing. "I haven't the slightest doubt that once or twice you came to my flat all prepared for the sacrifice. But, suddenly, you doubtless became interested in some other trifling matter.

Give me three lumps of sugar in my coffee, and don't let them splash down. This is my best gown."

We left Camus and returned together to Mrs. Milliken's. Frieda had a curious notion to the effect that, as she hadn't seen the baby since several hours, something very fatal might happen to it, if she failed to run in again. My landlady and her ancient male relative were sitting on the steps, fanning themselves and discussing the price of coal. By this time, the woman ate right out of Frieda's hand, although the latter does not seem to be aware that she has accomplished the apparently impossible. The old night-watchman informed us that he was enjoying a week's holiday from the bank. He was spending it, cheerfully, dividing his leisure between the front steps and the backyard. He also told us of a vague and ambitious project simmering in his mind. He was actually planning to go all the way to Flatbush and see a niece of his. For several years he had contemplated this trip, which, he apprised us, would take at least an hour each way. I bade him good courage, and we went upstairs. While Frieda went into Mrs. Dupont's room, I turned on the gas in mine and sat before my window, with my feet on the ledge, smoking my calabash.

"Has Monsieur looked upon his bed?" Eulalie startled me by asking suddenly.

Now, in order to respond with decent civility, I was compelled to remove my feet from their resting place, to take the pipe from my mouth and turn in my chair. Women can sometimes be considerable nuisances.

"No," I answered, "I have not looked upon the bed. Why should I? A bed is the last resource of the weary and afflicted, it is one of the things one may be compelled to submit to without becoming reconciled to it. I take good care never to look at it so long as I can hold a book in my hand or watch pa.s.sers-by in the street."

"Very well, Monsieur," she answered placidly. "It is all there, and I have darned the holes in the socks."

This was highly interesting and I hastily rose to inspect her handiwork.

She had placed my washing on the coverlet and the result looked like an improvement on Celestial efforts. I took up the topmost pair of socks and gazed upon it, while a soft and chastened feeling stole over me.

"Thank you, Eulalie," I said, with some emotion. "It is exceedingly nice; I am glad you called my attention to it. In the future I shall be obliged, if you will stuff it in the chiffonier. Had I first seen all this on going to bed, I am afraid I should have pitched it on the floor, as usual, and been sorry for it next morning."

She smilingly complied at once with my request and withdrew, bidding me a good night, while I sat again, feeling great contentment. I had now discovered that a man, if lucky, might have his socks darned without being compelled to take a wife unto himself, with all the uncomfortable appurtenances thereof. It was a new and cheering revelation. No sooner had I begun to cogitate over the exquisiteness of my fate than I was disturbed again, however. Frieda partly obeyed conventionality by knocking upon my open door and walking in.

"Frances Dupont wants me to thank you ever so much for the pretty roses, David," she told me. "It was really very kind of you to bring them. I have snipped the stems and changed the water and put them on the window sill for the night."

"Yes," I explained, "I had to change that twenty-dollar bill, and there was a hungry-looking man at the corner of Fourteenth Street, who offered them to me for a quarter. So we had to go over to the cigar store to get the note broken up into elementals. The fellow really looked as if he needed money a great deal more than roses, so I gave him a dollar."

"But then why didn't you take a dollar's worth of flowers?" asked Frieda, high-priestess of the poetic brush, who is a practical woman, if ever there was one.

"Never thought of it," I acknowledged; "besides, he had only three bunches left."

"And so you didn't want to clean out his stock in trade. Never mind, Dave, it was very sweet of you."