Round the Block Part 68

CHAPTER IV.

FIVE YEARS.

Five years are an eventful s.p.a.ce in the history of blocks, as of men.

Within that period, they may be burnt down, blown down, or torn down to make room for grander blocks. In quick-growing American cities, the average life of blocks is less than that of the human generation that tenants them. First wood, then brick, then brownstone or marble--these are the successive forms of block life, before anything like stability is reached. Marble is the only real type of the permanent in American architecture. n.o.body pulls down marble.

But five years had made little change in the exterior of our block. It was situated at a point in the city from which the ebb tide of Fashion was slowly receding, and which the flood tide of Trade had not yet touched. There was not a new house on the block, or an old one materially altered. A little paint, and a diligent application of broom and Croton water, had kept the block quite fresh and jaunty. On the south side there were some slight external modifications, in the shape of oblong black signs, fastened near bas.e.m.e.nt doors, and bearing names of doctors. Ten of these signs had been added to the south side within five years. There were only two houses upon that side, now, to which you could come amiss in pursuit of medical advice.

One of these was old Van Quintem's. Five years had pa.s.sed over the old house and the old man lightly (both had been made to last, and were well taken care of), and gave to them only a mellower and riper look. The old man's long white hair had not commenced falling out; and his cheeks still bloomed with a ruddiness that does not belong to second childhood.

He could still read his dear old books--and carefully chosen new ones--without spectacles; though he often preferred to hear them read in a soft, sweet tone, by a dear girl whom he always called Pet, and who would sit for hours at the old man's feet, giving to the n.o.ble thoughts of poet, novelist, or philosopher, the added charm of a sympathetic voice. At such times, a fine fellow, who was still known as Bog, would look on and listen, with rapt attention, and the happiest smile on his face. Sometimes these tranquil scenes would be pleasantly broken in upon, and the meaning of the author profitably obscured, by the entrance of a certain little Helen, whom the old man would kiss, and call "Grandpop's sugarp'um," and "Sweety peety." Bog would then catch it up, and toss it aloft, all whirling with curls, laces, and blue ribbons, and would say, "Cud-je-wod-je now, cud-je-wod-je now, cud-je-wod-je now," at each tossing; and the child, with the marvellous instinct of eighteen months, would understand this mysterious dialect, and then would smile through large blue eyes that looked like its mother's.

To this house, Myndert Van Quintem, jr., had never returned; and no authentic intelligence of him had ever come. Fayette Overtop, Esq., while on a professional visit to St. Paul, Minnesota, to settle a large land claim, had heard of a notorious Van Benton, who had kept a gambling house there several years, and was finally killed by a spendthrift whom he had cleaned out of his last cent one night. The best description which he could get of this man, tallied precisely with that of Myndert Van Quintem, jr. But Overtop, with that discretion which was continually enlarging his circle of paying practice, said nothing of this to the old gentleman. Among the reports that Overtop had heard of this Van Benton, was one, that he had forged his father's signature to large amounts in New York city, and had fled to the West, and there changed his name to avoid the arrest and punishment which his father had promised him. Had the old gentleman been informed of this circ.u.mstance, he would at once have identified Van Benton as his son; for it was known to him alone, that young Myndert had repeatedly forged his name (evidences of which had been found in the desk where Marcus Wilkeson had often seen the young man busily writing--evidences which the forger had accidentally omitted to burn), and that he had been induced to leave the city through fear that his father would give him up to justice at last. On the memorable night in the milliner's shop in Greenpoint, the young profligate had seen that his father was terribly in earnest, and had quailed in the presence of that outraged and indignant soul.

The second house not ornamented by a doctor's sign, on the south side of the block, was the old tenement building of which Mr. Minford had occupied the upper story, five years before. The tenants had all been changed two or three times; but the "Minford tragedy" was still a current legend among them. Murders, or strange homicides, are fixtures of houses where they occur. Nothing obliterates their memory but tearing down the houses, and building anew--which is the course of treatment that the proprietor was proposing to himself, in consequence of the steady depreciation of rents. Pet never pa.s.sed that house, or dared to look at it even from a distance.

Bachelors' Hall, on the north side of the block, was still occupied by the three original tenants; and they liked it so well, that they had bought it, and owned it on the Tontine plan--viz., that, upon the death of one of the owners, his share shall go to the survivors.

Five years had improved Marcus Wilkeson's relish for a good book, an after-dinner pipe, and a chat with a friend. It was plain to all his friends--even to those who were happiest in their wedded lives--that Marcus was a great deal better off single than married. His was the genial monkish nature, which thrives best in celibacy.

Every afternoon Marcus visited his white-haired neighbor opposite, and never forgot to take along a toy, or some candy, for his grandniece Helen. He brought these offerings in lieu of baby talk, which he could never master. This fact pointed him out, beyond all question, as a predestined old bachelor.

The general supervision of the house was intrusted to Mrs. Overtop; and most sensibly did she manage it. Knowing that a bar of cast iron is more easily bent than the set habits of men of twenty-five and upward, she attempted no changes in the domestic regulations of the establishment.

The three friends found that they had not only all of their old freedom, but a charming female voice to accompany them in their songs, and on the piano or guitar, and a capital fourth hand at whist, and a beautiful reader, and an ever-cheerful companion. "If I could find such a wife, now!" Marcus and Maltboy would say. "But you can't," Overtop would answer. "There's not another like her in this world." There was a little Fayette Overtop, jr., two years old, a great pet of the bachelors, and the far-off husband of little Helen, on the other side of the block.

Matthew Maltboy weighed two hundred and twenty pounds. As a.s.sociate counsel of Overtop, he made an imposing show in court, which was not fully borne out by his legal attainments. He was always talking of matrimonial intentions--a sure sign that a man never will be married.

His last rebuff from Miss Trapper (now the wife of a wealthy tanner and currier) had taught him to keep his flirtations within narrower limits; but he openly professed, and probably believed, that, when he really wanted to marry--without joking, you know--he could take his pick from the wide and varied ranges of female society. He smoked incessantly like a martyr, to reduce his flesh, but no adipose matter ever vanished in that cloud of sacrifice!

Mash, the cook, bestowed her honest hand and maiden heart upon Patching, the artist, who had first seen her at the station house, and there contracted an artistic admiration of her face and figure. She would have preferred a pirate; but Patching's enormous hat gave him a freebooterish appearance, which went far to reconcile her to him. She was really a pretty woman--much handsomer than some of the shadowy beauties Patching was wont to put on canvas--and she made him a good and faithful wife--and cooked better dinners for him, at a small expense, than he had ever eaten before--and sent him out into the world clean and tidy every morning. Patching affected to be ashamed of his wife, and snubbed her sometimes in the presence of other people. But everybody who knew the couple, saw that he had the best of the bargain. Mrs. Patching still took her favorite weekly, and cried over the stories as copiously as ever.

Mrs. Crull continued to be the dearest and best friend of Pet and Mrs.

Overtop; and little Helen and little Fayette would never know the great debt of grat.i.tude that they owed to that excellent lady. Whenever she called on Mrs. Overtop, she always began to be extremely circ.u.mspect in her p.r.o.nunciation and grammar, from force of habit; but soon relapsed into those old errors which, happily, were of the head, and not of the heart. Mrs. Crull made no mistakes in her affections. She was in mourning for Mr. Crull, and truly vowed that she would never marry again.

Mrs. Slapman had ceased to live on the block. Mr. Slapman had basely defeated the beneficent decree of the law, by turning his property into ready cash, and sailing for Europe. This deprived Mrs. S. of her alimony the second year after their separation, and compelled her to give up housekeeping, and the pursuit of TRUTH, in New York. She is now living among a small colony of Jigbees, in an obscure village of Connecticut, the pride of her family, the envy of the neighbors, and the idol of two local poets and of the professor of a High School in an adjoining town, who has learned her history, and is now patiently waiting for Slapman to die before offering her his hand in marriage.

Uncle Ith rang the great bell in the high tower for a number of years, with perfect satisfaction to himself and to the firemen. He took a paper, and he read it, and he found its political arguments so powerful, and so interesting, that he adopted them as his own--as many another man of greater pretensions has done--and he got into the bad habit of talking politics in a small way. It happened, not long after, that there was an election for mayor; and a mayor was chosen who held to a variety of politics quite the opposite of that which was so ably inculcated in Uncle Ith's favorite journal. About a month later, Uncle Ith turned to the political column of his paper, and there read that he had been turned out of office, and that one Schimmerfliming--a German politician of the ----th Ward, who had been of great service in compa.s.sing the election of the new mayor--had been appointed in his place. The fact was, that Uncle Ith was highly acceptable to all parties as a no-party man. But, when he turned politician, he made himself amenable to the harsh laws of political warfare, and became (as his paper phrased it) "the h.o.a.ry-headed victim of the unprincipled tyrant who, with the cunning of the serpent and the vindictive ferocity of the hyena, weaves his spider's web of mischief in his dark corner of the City Hall." Uncle Ith retired to private life with a snug property, patiently saved up and thoughtfully invested. But, as Adam went on eating apples, notwithstanding the disaster which had come to him from that species of fruit, so Uncle Ith took his newspaper, and paid for it punctually, and devoured it daily to the last.

While Uncle Ith fell by politics, Coroner Bullfast rose by it. A judicious distribution of money and liquors, a notoriety for street fights, a singular talent for profanity, and an unstinted adulation of the basest cla.s.ses of the community, won for him, in succession, some of the best prizes of the Munic.i.p.al lottery. He has his small, sunken eyes now fixed on one of the highest offices of the State; and it will take a strong combination to defeat a candidate backed by such powerful agencies and interests.

Mr. and Mrs. Frump lived happily on their country property. Mr. Frump tried experiments in blackberry raising, which proved a success, and was, at last accounts, concentrating his talents on the development of a new strawberry seedling. Whenever he went to town, he made a point of carrying back Matthew Maltboy, for whom his regard was inexplicably strong; and nothing gave him greater pleasure than to see his wife, gracefully mounted on the spirited filly, and Matthew, heavily astride of the sober gray, starting off for a morning's ride, while he stayed at home to push on the seedling.

When Wesley Tiffles had spent ten thousand dollars in elegant leisure, he arrived at the n.o.ble determination to "salt down," as he called it, the remaining ten thousand dollars, in ten different savings banks. He distributed it thus, in order that the failure of one of the banks might not ruin him. The interest of this money, drawn half-yearly, furnished him with a basis for operations of a character requiring genius, pens, ink, and paper, rather than ready cash. Whenever Tiffles's resources ran short, as they did occasionally, he always borrowed, and paid on the next interest day. In this policy he was inflexible; and he flattered himself on the sternness of his self-denial.

Among the schemes which failed to receive the cordial approbation of capitalists, were the following: "A process for extracting green paint from green leaves;" ditto for "making nutritious food from the direct combination of earth, air, and water;" a plan (submitted to the unappreciating Government of Naples) to "extinguish the volcano of Vesuvius, by pumping water from the Bay into the crater, in consideration of the sum of one million florins, and a monopoly of working the extinct volcano for lava."

Wesley Tiffles, profiting, at a late day, by the lesson of the "Cosmopolitan Window Fastener," finally invented and patented a striking improvement in an apple-paring machine, and, at last accounts, was clenching a good bargain for the sale of his invention.