第16章 PART FIRST(14)

The apartment which the janitor unlocked for them,and lit up from those chandeliers and brackets of gilt brass in the form of vine bunches,leaves,and tendrils in which the early gas-fitter realized most of his conceptions of beauty,had rather more of the ugliness than the dignity of the hall.But the rooms were large,and they grouped themselves in a reminiscence of the time when they were part of a dwelling that had its charm,its pathos,its impressiveness.Where they were cut up into smaller spaces,it had been done with the frankness with which a proud old family of fallen fortunes practises its economies.The rough pine ~floors showed a black border of tack-heads where carpets had been lifted and put down for generations;the white paint was yellow with age;the apartment had light at the front and at the back,and two or three rooms had glimpses of the day through small windows let into their corners;another one seemed lifting an appealing eye to heaven through a glass circle in its ceiling;the rest must darkle in perpetual twilight.Yet something pleased in it all,and Mrs.March had gone far to adapt the different rooms to the members of her family,when she suddenly thought (and for her to think was to say),"Why,but there's no steam heat!""No,ma'am,"the janitor admitted;"but dere's grates in most o'de rooms,and dere's furnace heat in de halls.""That's true,"she admitted,and,having placed her family in the apartments,it was hard to get them out again."Could we manage?"she referred to her husband.

"Why,I shouldn't care for the steam heat if--What is the rent?"he broke off to ask the janitor.

"Nine hundred,sir."

March concluded to his wife,"If it were furnished.""Why,of course!What could I have been thinking of?We're looking for a furnished flat,"she explained to the janitor,"and this was so pleasant and homelike that I never thought whether it was furnished or not."She smiled upon the janitor,and he entered into the joke and chuckled so amiably at her flattering oversight on the way down-stairs that she said,as she pinched her husband's arm,"Now,if you don't give him a quarter I'll never speak to you again,Basil!""I would have given half a dollar willingly to get you beyond his glamour,"said March,when they were safely on the pavement outside."If it hadn't been for my strength of character,you'd have taken an unfurnished flat without heat and with no elevator,at nine hundred a year,when you had just sworn me to steam heat,an elevator,furniture,and eight hundred.""Yes!How could I have lost my head so completely?"she said,with a lenient amusement in her aberration which she was not always able to feel in her husband's.

"The next time a colored janitor opens the door to us,I'll tell him the apartment doesn't suit at the threshold.It's the only way to manage you,Isabel.""It's true.I am in love with the whole race.I never saw one of them that didn't have perfectly angelic manners.I think we shall all be black in heaven--that is,black-souled.""That isn't the usual theory,"said March.

"Well,perhaps not,"she assented."Where are we going now?Oh yes,to the Xenophon!"She pulled him gayly along again,and after they had walked a block down and half a block over they stood before the apartment-house of that name,which was cut on the gas-lamps on either side of the heavily spiked,aesthetic-hinged black door.The titter of an electric-bell brought a large,fat Buttons,with a stage effect of being dressed to look small,who said he would call the janitor,and they waited in the dimly splendid,copper-colored interior,admiring the whorls and waves into which the wallpaint was combed,till the janitor came in his gold-banded cap,like a Continental porker.When they said they would like to see Mrs.Grosvenor Green's apartment,he owned his inability to cope with the affair,and said he must send for the superintendent;he was either in the Herodotus or the Thucydides,and would be there in a minute.The Buttons brought him--a Yankee of browbeating presence in plain clothes--almost before they had time to exchange a frightened whisper in recognition of the fact that there could be no doubt of the steam heat and elevator in this case.Half stifled in the one,they mounted in the other eight stories,while they tried to keep their self-respect under the gaze of the superintendent,which they felt was classing and assessing them with unfriendly accuracy.They could not,and they faltered abashed at the threshold of Mrs.Grosvenor Green's apartment,while the superintendent lit the gas in the gangway that he called a private hall,and in the drawing-room and the succession of chambers stretching rearward to the kitchen.Everything had,been done by the architect to save space,and everything,to waste it by Mrs.Grosvenor Green.She had conformed to a law for the necessity of turning round in each room,and had folding-beds in the chambers,but there her subordination had ended,and wherever you might have turned round she had put a gimcrack so that you would knock it over if you did turn.The place was rather pretty and even imposing at first glance,and it took several joint ballots for March and his wife to make sure that with the kitchen there were only six rooms.At every door hung a portiere from large rings on a brass rod;every shelf and dressing-case and mantel was littered with gimcracks,and the corners of the tiny rooms were curtained off,and behind these portieres swarmed more gimcracks.The front of the upright piano had what March called a short-skirted portiere on it,and the top was covered with vases,with dragon candlesticks and with Jap fans,which also expanded themselves bat wise on the walls between the etchings and the water colors.The floors were covered with filling,and then rugs and then skins;the easy -chairs all had tidies,Armenian and Turkish and Persian;the lounges and sofas had embroidered cushions hidden under tidies.