The Tree of Heaven (collection)/The Tree of Dreams
CHAPTER IV
THE TREE OF DREAMS
It was a slim, well-groomed, top-hatted, frock-coated Smith who entered his private office that morning; it was a very different species of Smith who left stealthily by a back corridor an hour later, a shabby-genteel Smith whose cravatless collar was fastened with a democratic bone collar button—whose clean but shapeless trousers bagged and flapped in the June breeze—who gazed out at Broadway from under the faded brim of a cheap felt hat who, as he forced his pace from a Fifth Avenue saunter into a Third Avenue hustle, thrust both thin, clean hands into his trousers pockets and satisfied himself that every cent which he meant to spend for a week was there in the shape of ten one-dollar bills.
At Wall Street he adjusted his glasses and peered about with pleasant, near-sighted eyes to discover the policeman at the crossing in order to avoid him. Once beyond the financial zone downtown he had no fear of being recognized by anybody; his features, he was modestly persuaded, resembled the typical features of about fifty per cent of the male inhabitants of Manhattan, although those same features had been public and newspaper property for three years now—ever since his father, J. Abingdon Smith, 2d, had faded heavenward, leaving the enormous fortune in Manhattan real estate to his only son, J. Abingdon Smith, 3d.
He was still a young man, thin of hair, near-sighted, endowed with sufficient intelligence to enable him to turn over his inherited fortune, legitimately increased, to any heir he might have if he should ever marry. Had he resembled Smith the first, or Smith the second, he would have done this as a matter of family routine—married the sort of girl that generations of Smiths found inoffensive enough to marry; produced one heir, and, when the proper time arrived, would have in his turn decorously and formally faded heavenward—leaving a J. Abingdon Smith, 4th, to follow his example.
But Smith had inherited from his mother a thin but deep streak of romantic sentiment. This vein ran clean through him, and might have manifested itself in almost any form along the line of least resistance, had it not been half imbedded in a stratum of negative platitudes inherited from his emotionless father.
As he stood in his shabby clothes, near the new Hall of Records, waiting for a Fourth Avenue car, a slender, blue-eyed girl, passing, looked up at him with such a frank, sweet gaze that he missed his next breath and then made up for it by breathing twice too quickly. He had an idea that he had seen her before, but finally decided he hadn't.
To be loved for himself alone was one of his impractical ideas, born of the maternal sentimental streak; but, for years, the famous Smith fortune, its enormous holdings in realty, the doings of the Smiths, their shrewd sales, purchases, leases, improvements, their movements, their personal affairs, their photographed features had been common property and an unfailing source of news for the press; and he knew perfectly well that, however honest and theoretically disinterested a girl might be, the courtship of a J. Abingdon Smith, of whatever vintage, could not help representing a bunch of figures that no human being in shape of a female biped could avoid seeing, no matter how tightly she closed her innocent eyes. Thinking of these things, he calmly encountered the curious eyes of the conductor as he boarded a crowded car.
The blue-eyed girl also got in, but Smith, on the back platform, did not see her.
"That fellow," said the conductor to the grip-man, as he swung off the front platform after collecting a fare, "is a ringer for J. Abingdon Smith, the millionaire."
And the conductor was not the only one; several passengers were amused by the resemblance this near-sighted, shabby young man bore to the features that every newspaper had made familiar to the submerged tenth, the frantically swimming twentieth, and the marooned remainder of the great unwashed.
Half an hour later Smith said to the conductor: "Would you be kind enough to stop here?"
"Certainly, Mr. Smith," said the conductor, meaning a joke.
Smith ambled along, intent upon his own business. The blue-eyed girl had preceded him in the same direction; but as he entered the main door way of the Smith model tenement houses, which formed almost a complete quadrangle around the block, he was not aware that she was on the iron and concrete stairway, three stories above him, and was still climbing heavenward.
When he reached his room, which he had paid for in advance, he found that his trunk and furniture had arrived. The air in the room was close; he opened the window.
For a while he bustled busily about, arranging the meager furniture. The narrow iron bed he dragged into a corner by the window, pushed the washstand against the opposite wall and hung a ninety-eight-cent mirror over it. He laid a strip of carpet in the center of the floor, placed a pine table upon it, and then, picking up the only chair, distractedly began traveling about with it, trying the effect, first in one corner, then in another.
At this juncture Kerns, his agent, general estate manager, and boyhood friend, slipped into the room on tiptoe, carefully closing the door behind him.
"I don't know where to put it," Smith said, pausing to settle his refractory glasses and glance suspiciously at Kerns out of pleasant, near-sighted eyes. "When they have only one chair where do they usually put it, Tommy?"
"When they get down to one chair they usually put it in the stove," said Kerns.
"What? They do? That's another point, Kerns; we've got to give them free furniture somehow; I mean for the same rent. You figure it up; cut out something or other—" He gazed vaguely about the bare walls as though contemplating their possible economic elimination. Then, he looked at the floor; but his tenants, being wingless, required something to stand on. "Could we give them bed, tables, and chair, and cut out that gas range?" he suggested.
"Not unless you throw in a stove," said Kerns, trying to look serious. "And if you do that, they'll keep their coal in the bath tubs, as before."
Smith began to remove the contents of a shabby little trunk. First, there were shaving utensils, which he placed in a row on the unpainted wash- stand, then a tin pitcher and wash basin, a cake of soap, and last, some cheap towels.
"I've a notion that I've too much crockery," he said, gazing about. "Do you think I've overdone it? I don't need two plates—do I? And all that tinware—do I? What the deuce are you grinning at?" he added, diving into his battered trunk again and emerging with both arms full of tinware. These utensils he hung upon nails above the sink in the corner, arranging them with care.
"That's the place for pots and pans, isn't it, Kerns?" he said, backing off to observe the effect. Then, by chance, he caught sight of himself in the ninety-eight-cent mirror, and a slight flush of embarrassment rose to his cheeks.
"Do I look like a respectable man out of work?" he asked. "Tell me the truth."
"Exactly," replied Kerns; "you look like what you are—a well-meaning gentleman, permanently unemployed—and likely to remain so. In other words, dear friend, you resemble a Lulu bird of leisure."
"Do you mean to say I look like myself?" demanded Smith innocently. "Do I seem to be made up for a part? There was an impudent conductor who called me Smith. Don't you suppose he did it in joke? And—a—a—girl—who looked at me—er"
"Because you're a winner. Because a Smith ill dressed is half confessed; because a Smith in any other clothes would look as neat; because a Sm"
Smith's brows contracted, but lifelong endurance of Kerns's raillery had habituated him to disregard such gibes.
"John Abingdon," continued Kerns, "I've inspected these barracks of yours to-day because you insisted; I've met you here because you told me me to; but it's all portentous and top-heavy nonsense on your part, and it's my business to say so whether it makes you fidgety and sulky or not."
"We won't start that line of discussion again," said Smith, "because, Kerns, outside of your own harmless routine, you're so densely ignorant that I am continually ashamed of you. What do you know about humanity?"
"I thought you weren't going to start that thing going," yawned Kerns.
"You started it yourself," said Smith.
"All right, then; I'll go on. Haven't I told you a thousand times that, if you are anxious to know how your tenants live, I can tell you, or any of your collectors or your brokers, or even your janitors. Every time you do a thing without my advice you mess matters. You insisted on giving them bath tubs, and they used them for coal, and I had to straighten that out by taking away their cook stoves and substituting gas ranges and ovens. You insisted on inserting rotary ventilators in every window, and the noise of the wheels kept your tenants awake at night; and, when they don't sleep, they fight. Besides, they all caught cold, and there are a dozen enraged Hibernians suing you now. If you could only know what I know and see what I've seen"
"I've told you a hundred times, Tom, that I don't intend to slop over and bestow charity; but I do want to know what are my just obligations to my tenants, and how I can place them in a better position."
He was somewhat heated when he finished, and stood touching his forehead with his handkerchief.
"Toot! Toot!" said Kerns plaintively, backing toward the door. "The next stop is Chautauqua. Go it your own way, Smithy; I'm about due at the club for luncheon."
The door slammed as the wash basin struck it; Smith glared at the dent in the woodwork, prepared to hurl the coffeepot. But Kerns did not come back; and, after a while, he replaced the coffeepot, searched his trunk for a collar, buttoned it to his flannel shirt, and, picking up his hat, went out into the hallway.
And there he encountered the slender girl with the blue eyes.
There was something very innocent in her confident, fearless gaze; as he passed her, lifting his hat, he bade her good day in his pleasant voice. Her quaintly impersonal nod in acknowledgment pleased him.
"Just what I thought," he reflected, as he descended the stairs: "the poor are always nice to each other; they're frank and human, unspoiled by our asinine code of conventions. If I'd worn a top hat that girl would have looked the other way; if I'd noticed her she'd have been defiant or sullen or saucy."
And while he trudged about, purchasing groceries for his luncheon, he looked out upon the world through optimistic glasses, smiling, warm-hearted, pleased with himself and everybody he encountered.
He was hungry—it being long past his regular luncheon time—an hour from which he had not varied half a dozen times in a dozen years.
As he ascended the iron stairs of his lodging house once more he counted over the little packages of groceries piled up in his arms butter, salt, sugar, a bottle of milk, tea, coffee, rolls, and eggs. "Probably too much," he reflected; "I'll have to go about among these people and find out what they— eat Good Heavens! that is awful!"
In his own hallway a khamsin gust of cabbage smote him with its answer to his question, and he shuddered. He forced his door in with the point of his knee, made his way to the table, and dropped the packages. Then, producing a match box, he advanced blithely toward the gas range.
"The first thing to do is to start that exceedingly convenient machine and get action at once," he continued, turning on the gas and lighting a match. "Cooking coffee and eggs is nothing to any man who has ever camped out in the woods"
Flash!—bang! went the gas range; and Smith executed what his office boys might have characterized as a "quick get-away."
"W-what a perfectly ghastly species of range," he stammered, "g-going off in a man's face like a t-t-ten-inch shell!" He sat down in the only chair, breathed hard, and stared at the range; then, suddenly afraid that gas might be pouring into the room, he crept toward it, lighted another match, and extended his arm like the hero touching off a magazine in the ship's hold.
Bang! repeated the gas range emphatically.
"W-well, this is a pleasant situation!" he breathed, wringing his slightly scorched fingers. "Am I expected to fry my eggs over a volcano?"
Hesitating, he wiped his glasses, affixed them, and gazed earnestly at the range. Very gingerly he tiptoed toward it and, with a sudden dash, turned off the gas.
For a while he alternately stood in front of it and walked all around it. He looked at his coffee and eggs—he could not eat them raw. It was now long after his usual luncheon hour, and he began to feel famished.
"The trouble is that I don't know how to get the proper spark," he reflected; but, driven by necessity, he turned on the gas once more, and, lighting a match, applied it. There was no explosion this time; a bluish flame played all over the machine for a few seconds, sank, rose, subsided, and went out. In vain he lighted match after match. He got no more flame.
"This is a disgracefully run house!" he exclaimed aloud. "It's high time I heard something about it! Here I am two hours late and can't get enough heat to cook an egg!"
Very angry, he marched out on a hunt for the janitor; but, after climbing up and down stairs and making inquiries on every landing, he had come no nearer to discovering the janitor. A gentleman named Dugan thought that the janitor might be engaged in tenpins at Bauer's popular corner resort. Smith repaired thither, but could not discover him. Another gentleman, named Clancy, emerging from the two-room apartment adjoining Smith's, came in at Smith's invitation and rubbed a flat, rough thumb up and down the range. Then he departed, scratching his head and advising further search for the jaintor.
"Ye cud cook a bit an' a sup on our own range," he said, "but th' ould woman do be bilin' shirrts."
When Mr. Clancy had departed Smith spent ten more minutes tinkering with the range, growing hungrier and hungrier every second. But, hungry, angry and discouraged as he was, he obstinately refused to consider a restaurant as even a temporary solution. Once more he set off down the endless iron and concrete stairway to hunt up the janitor; and, returning unsuccessful, encountered the janitor on his own landing. The janitor was talking to the girl with the blue eyes.
"Please don't let me interrupt you," said Smith; "it's only that I can't work my range."
"You are not interrupting," said the girl with the blue eyes. "My ceiling is beginning to fall, that is all."
"I'll have that attended to at once!" exclaimed Smith, forgetting his rôle of tenant—"that is," he added, in confusion, "the janitor will notify M, the agent. You will, won't you?" he continued, turning to the janitor, whose face had been growing redder and redder as he grew madder and madder.
"Where do you think you are?" he demanded. "In the Waldorf? An' who do you think you are, young man? John D.? or the Dutch Emp'ror? Or do you think you're J. Abingdon Smith, the owner of this here plant, because you look like his grandfather's hired man?"
"Not at all," said Smith, turning red. "I had no intention of interfering."
"Well, you go and sit on your range and keep it warm till I get a gasfitter, see!" growled the janitor; "an' mebbe he'll fix it to-night," he said, looking back malevolently over his shoulder as he descended the stairs, "an' mebbe he'll fix it next month. You mind your business, young man, an' I'll mind yours."
Smith, tingling all over, looked after him, but his anger passed with a shrug and a short laugh as he realized that the rebuke had been in a fashion his own fault.
He had made a step across the hallway toward his own room, when he remembered the girl with the blue eyes.
"I'm sorry I caused any unpleasantness," he said. "I hope the janitor won't visit his petty tyranny on you."
"I don't think he will; I— Can't you make your range burn properly?"
"No," he said, smiling. "It blew up three times, and now it has retired from active business. I believe it has become permanently extinct."
"Perhaps," she ventured, "you are not accustomed to gas ranges. Are you?"
"No, but I've got to learn to manage them if I'm to do any cooking." He thought she meant to speak again, but, as she said no more, he turned to his own door. Behind him a hesitating voice began:
"You may use my range to cook on—until your own is repaired, if you wish"
"That's awfully nice of you," he said, gratefully surprised. "I've only a couple of eggs to fry—or boil—and a little coffee, but I didn't like to ask you"
"You didn't. I asked you," she said. "You are quite welcome." And, as he still hesitated: "I really don't mind," she said. "I can take my work somewhere else while you are cooking."
"No, no," he protested, beginning to realize the inconvenience he was causing her; but she nodded impatiently and, stepping back into her room, began to gather up into a writing portfolio a mass of scattered papers.
A few moments later he appeared in the open doorway, his arms piled high with the paper packages containing groceries. She looked up at him, her hands full of inky papers. Unbidden laughter was sparkling in her blue eyes.
"The range is ready," she said, schooling her voice. "You may begin at once. I shall be gone in a second." And she began to rummage furiously among the papers.
Sidelong glances she could not help casting at his culinary preparations. She saw him ruin two eggs, and hid her face in the table drawer where she was searching for that elusive something.
"No use trying to fry those eggs," he observed, gazing at the disintegrating yolks.
"You could scramble them," she suggested, raising her pretty head. Her face was delicately flushed; a bright strand of hair, loosened, fell like a tendril across one pink cheek.
"To scramble an egg," he said slowly, as though attempting to recall some intricate evolution in cookery—"To scramble an egg, you stir it round and round, I believe."
"And to scramble two eggs," she said almost hysterically, "you stir them both round and round."
"But," he added thoughtfully, "how to get them into the pan. I suppose one pours them in"
"Don't! Please don't! You have put no butter in yet," she said; but he had already poured a spoonful into the pan, where it began to char and sputter and smoke.
She laid aside her portfolio and papers, removed the smoking pan, scraped it, tinkered with it, and then, preparing it properly, poured in the remainder of the eggs.
"It's awfully good of you. I'm ashamed of myself," he muttered; "but, please—please don't mind about the coffee. I can do that, I'm sure."
"It will take only a moment," she said. "You are not accustomed to—to—gas ranges, I see."
Before he knew it his modest luncheon was ready. She swept the papers from the table, threw over it a white square of linen, and placed his luncheon under his mortified eyes.
"It will get cold if you attempt to carry it back to your room. You are quite welcome to eat it here, believe me. My range may fail me some day and I may have to beg a little fire at your door."
"You shall have oceans of it!" he cried gratefully.
"Thank you; and, please, begin. I am on my way out."
"Am I driving you away? I know I am"
"No, really you are not. I work out of doors all I can. I was going out as soon as the janitor came to examine my ceiling." She raised her pretty eyes; he looked aloft.
"It's a leak," he said. "I'll have it fi— I mean I'll tell the jan— What I do mean," he said, "is that somebody ought to have it fixed."
"I think so, too," she said demurely, gathering up her portfolio and papers. At the doorsill she halted:
"But—but how—but who is going to lock my door?" she asked.
"Oh, I'd better take my luncheon into my own room!"
"No, no. Please sit down again. Please do so now! I can leave my key with you if you are going to be here."
He thought to himself, charmed, what touching confidence the poor have in each other's honesty.
She drew from her purse the door key and laid it beside his plate.
"If I don't hear you in the hallway, will you please knock?" he asked.
"I think you had better leave the key with the janitor," she said; then, thinking further along the same line: "or perhaps you had better hide it." She stepped back into the hallway and looked all around; but no plausible hiding place presented itself. Then she gazed at him.
"I might leave it with my neighbor, Mrs. Clancy," he said with rare intelligence.
"No," she said with her pretty, fearless smile, "I will knock at your door and ask for it."
She was gone before he could rise again.
When he had finished he washed the dishes and did it thoroughly, restoring each to its shelf. His remaining groceries and his own tinware he carried into his own habitation, came back and locked her door, and then, lighting his pipe, began to prowl about the corridors.
Presently he fished out a pad and pencil, and, squatting down on the stairway, made some notes concerning the use of steel for doorsills and frames, and tiles or tassellated floors to replace the already worn and dirty planks of Southern pine.
"First of all, plenty of ventilation," he murmured. "Next, cleanliness; next, light. … I—I've a mind to complete the entire block—put up a big, square tower on that vacant lot—a big, clean, airy tower, ten stories—sixteen—twenty, by jingo!"
He seized his pad with enthusiasm and drew a plan of the block which he owned with the present model tenements on it and showing the vacant lot:
[Illustration: Proposed plan for Smith's Model Tenements]
There were no windows giving on the vacant lot—nothing but blank brick walls.
"That's what I'll do," he thought. "I'll have my own way for once. I'll plan and design and build an absolutely beautiful and sanitary tower with a hundred rooms and two elevators in it, and Kerns can laugh if he wants to. What these people need is light and air—cheap light and cheap air. I'll just go down and take a look at that lot."
He pocketed pad and pencil, seized his hat, and, locking his door on the outside, ran down the stairs.
"You can't go into that lot," said the janitor. "No tenants ain't allowed in there by orders of Mr. Kerns."
"Well, can't I just look at it?"
"No," said the janitor. "An' lemme tell you something else. If you an' me is goin' to gee you'd better do less buttin' in an' less runnin' up an' downstairs. You butt in an' you run around like you was the Dutch Emp'ror. Say, what are you lookin' for, anyhow? If you're a spotter, say so; I ain't worryin'. If you're just loony you're in the wrong hotel."
"But, my good fellow"
"Forget it!" retorted the janitor wrathfully. "Your good fellow! Look here, Percy, I ain't your good fellow, nor I ain't your dear old college chum, an' no buttin' in goes. See?"
"I'm not attempting to offend you!" exclaimed Smith desperately.
"That's all right, too," said the janitor unconvinced. "You seen me talkin' to Miss Stevens an' you make a play like you owned the buildin'. 'Here, me good man,' sez you, 'fix this an' fix that, an' be dd quick about it, too,' sez you"
"I didn't," retorted Smith indignantly; "at least I didn't mean to say"
"What you are," interrupted the janitor deliberately, "God knows an' I don't. You may be makin' phony stuff up there fur all I know."
"What's phony stuff?" demanded Smith, getting hotter.
"Look into the dictionary, Clarence," retorted the janitor, and slammed the door of his office in Smith's face.
"That man," thought Smith to himself, as he started up the stairs, "is a singularly impudent man, but he's probably faithful enough. I shall not do anything about it. But I wish I could get into my vacant lot."
The remainder of the afternoon he spent drawing magnificently unbuildable plans for his tower.
Then he pulled his chair out into the fire escape and sat there through the sunset hour and into the smoky June twilight.
Suddenly, as he sat there, dreaming, a faint sound at his door brought him to his feet and into the room.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "I was out on the fire escape. Did you knock more than once?"
"It doesn't matter," she said, smiling under the shadow of her big straw hat and taking her key from him.
"I'm terribly sorry," he repeated, "and I really am very grateful for letting me cook on your range"
"Is yours fixed yet?" she asked diffidently.
"By George!" he said. "I'd forgotten that! But it doesn't matter," he added, determined to dine on the remainder of his rolls and milk, for he simply would not begin by running to a restaurant at the first mishap.
She hesitated, not knowing whether again to offer her salt and fire; then, finding it too difficult, she said "Good night" in a low voice, and crossed the hallway to her own abode. And there she sat down, fair face tense, gaze concentrated on space, her big straw hat still on her head, her portfolio and papers in her lap.
Minutes ticked away on the little nickel alarm clock. She pondered on, and, sometimes, her straight, delicate brows contracted, and, sometimes, her teeth worried the edge of her lower lip; and once she smiled and lifted her eyes as though she could see through her closed door into his room across the hall.
After that she rose, made her toilet, cooked her own supper; and when, at length, the dishes had been laid away and her pretty hands rinsed, carefully examined, and soothed with glycerine and cream of almonds—luxuries she preferred to a varied menu—she laid a pile of yellow manuscript paper on her table, and, dipping her pen into the ink, began to scribble like mad. For, at last, her chance in life had come.
Meanwhile, Smith, doggedly munching his buttered rolls, drank his milk and considered plans for doing good to his tenants without either injuring their self-respect or bankrupting himself.
"Buy up block after block, cover 'em with handsome sanitary tenements, with a big, grassy court and a fountain in the middle—that's the decent and self-respecting way to invest one's surplus! That's the only way a rich man can keep his own respect and administer his stewardship. I'd be ashamed to make any more money! I won't! I'd be ashamed to keep what I have if I didn't use the income to help somebody. Clean, airy, sunny homes—within the means of the poorest working people! It can be done without making it a charity. It's got to be done. I'm going to build that tower—if my janitor ever lets me into the lot"
After he had completed his ablutions and was ready for bed he stood a moment at the open window looking out over the city.
"That girl—she was very nice to me. … I've the oddest notion that I've seen her before … somewhere. Wonderfully—ah—decorative her eyes—a graceful way of—er—moving."
He lay down on his bed and pulled up the sheet.
A few minutes later he murmured drowsily: "Build handsome tower—spite of Kerns. … Nobody pay rent. … 'Strordinary eyes that girl … pretty blue—very blue—for—a—a girl. … 'Strordinary rot I'm talking. … G'night, Smith; … night!"
The next morning a pessimistic gasfitter repaired Smith's range. That night it blew up again. Two days later it was again in commission, then remained quiescent for a week. After that the range worked fitfully, intimidating Smith until it had him so thoroughly cowed that he never attempted to light it except with the match inserted in the end of a broom handle. Between the range and the cookery he was almost famished.
However, it was a matter of too little importance to disturb him in his purpose; the days were full days indeed, no matter how empty he went. Hour after hour he sat cramped over the table, drawing impossible plans and elevations for the completion of his model tenements. Hour after hour he tramped the hot streets in search of likely sites for further philanthropic operations.
Almost every morning and evening he was sure to encounter his blue-eyed neighbor on the landing or stairs; and, after a while, he began to spend a few minutes of the day in looking forward to these brief meetings.
Matters were not going very well with his blue-eyed neighbor; but he didn't know it. Her work, always precarious and dependent on the whims of several underpaid people, was not sufficient to keep her very well nourished during the hot months of midsummer. She defaulted on the July payment for her small piano, and they took it away. The little desk went later; an armchair followed.
Alone in her room, palely considering the why and wherefore of the disagreeable, she invariably almost fell a prey to temptation; but, so far, the victory had remained with her. Temptation came when somebody refused her work or when somebody removed an article of furniture for nonpayment of the installment due, and the temptation confronted her in the shape of a packet of yellow manuscript.
She was the author of the manuscript; it lay in a drawer of her table.
Sometimes, when they frightened her by giving her no work or by lugging off a chair, she would sit down, white and desperate, and take out her manuscript and read it through.
She knew where she could place it in an hour. She had been promised a permanent position on the strength of just such work. It was well done, of its sort. It fairly bristled with double-leaded headlines; it was yellow enough for the yellowest—a "beat," a "scoop," a story that would be copied in every newspaper of the country. The title of it was "A Millionaire in Disguise." The subject, Smith. She had only to show it to the city editor who had promised to take her on the first time she displayed any ability. All she had to do was to tuck the yellow sheets under her arm and start downtown, and that would end all this removing of furniture and scarcity of foodstuffs—all this sleeplessness, this perplexed dismay—all these heavy-hearted journeys to the offices of the fashion papers where sometimes she was paid for her articles on domestic affairs and sometimes not.
After these experiences she usually returned to the temptation of her yellow manuscript, read it through, wept a little, cast it from her into the table drawer once more, and buried her face in her slim hands. Later, she usually dried her eyes, hurriedly gathered up her papers and portfolio, and, locking the door on the outside, descended to the cellar.
In this profound crypt a small iron door and a few stone steps ascending permitted her access to the vacant lot which the janitor had forbidden Smith to enter. And here she was accustomed to sit in the long, rank grass under a big ailantus tree, writing for the fashion papers, to which she contributed such predigested pabulum as the weak-minded might assimilate. In this manner she paid for lodging, board, and almond cream.
Meanwhile, she was growing shyer and more formal with Smith when they chanced to meet on stairs or landing. Beginning with the politely pleasant exchange of a few words concerning the initial episode which had excused their acquaintance, they had ventured on a little laughter at his expense—a shade less of the impersonal. But, little by little, the pretty, fearless gaze which he found so attractive changed to something more reserved and far less expressive. Her laughter, always edging lips and eyes, her untroubled voice, with its winningly careless sweetness, changed, too. He noticed this. Sometimes he wondered whether she was quite well. He had been aware from the first that she did not belong in her surroundings any more than did he, and at times he speculated on the subject, wondering what crumbling of her social and financial fabric had landed her here on her own resources, stranded along the outer edges of things.
One scorching day he had been drawing an elevation for his tower, which partook impartially of the worst in both Manhattan, Gothic, and Chinese architecture—a new crinkle in his theory being that the poor had a right to the best in art, and that they should have it in spite of Kerns. For an hour he had been trying to estimate the cost of such a masterpiece, and had grown cross and discouraged in the effort.
July was fast going. August already had been discounted by the monthly magazines; he had purchased one which contained an article on concrete construction, and, tired of his sweltering room, he put on his hat, pocketed the magazine, and went out to seek a bit of shade in Central Park.
As he passed his neighbor's door he glanced at it a trifle wistfully. He had not seen her now for nearly a week. He actually missed her, even though now she seldom seemed to have the leisure or inclination to chat with him.
The last time, he reflected, that they had exchanged a dozen words, he had, lured by her receptively intelligent attitude, drifted into an almost enthusiastic dissertation upon model lodgings for the poor. He had kept her standing before her door for almost half an hour while he, forgetting everything except the subject and the acquiescence of his audience, had aired his theories with a warmth and brilliancy which, later, it slightly astonished him to remember.
Since that they had exchanged scarcely a word. And now, as he passed her door, he looked wistfully at it, thinking of his slender neighbor.
And, thinking of her, he descended the stairs, and, still immersed in this agreeable reverie, he did not notice that he had passed the ground floor and was descending the cellar stairs, until he came to in front of an iron door. This seemed unfamiliar. He took out his handkerchief to rub his glasses, looked around at the furnaces and coal bins, passed his hand over his eyes, replaced the glasses, gazed at the iron door which was partly ajar, and caught a glimpse of green grass outside.
"I'll bet that's my vacant lot," he said aloud, and, opening the door, he ascended the stone steps into his own property.
There was green grass everywhere; south and west a high board fence; north and east the brick, windowless, rearward cliffs of the tenements; in the middle of the lot an ailantus tree in full foliage.
And, under it, a young girl lying in the grass, her wide straw hat hanging from a leafy branch above. Even before he stirred in his tracks she sat up, instinctively looking across the grass at him. It was his duty to make his excuses and go. But, for almost the first time in his life, he deliberately neglected duty.
"So this is where you come every day to work out of doors!" he exclaimed, smiling, as he halted beside her where she remained, seated in the grass, looking up at him.
There was color in her face and in his, too. He had had absolutely no idea how pleasant it could be to meet his neighbor again after so many days—seven in number—but a great many all the same.
Then he told her, laughingly, how he came to discover the cellar door that led to Paradise. "Paradise," he repeated; "for, you see, the Tree of Ten Thousand Dreams is here. Did you know that the ailantus tree is the Chinese Tree of Paradise—the fabled Tree of Dreams? Have you never heard of the Feng-Shui? Dragons live deep in the earth among the tree roots. You didn't know that, did you?"
"No," he said, smiling, "I didn't know that."
He looked at her. Her manner was not very cordial, and he decided not to ask permission to seat himself just yet. But he had nothing in particular to say to her and he was very anxious to say it.
"The Fung-Hwang also perches in the branches of the Dream Tree," he continued, for lack of a better topic; "it's an imperial as well as a celestial tree. Are you interested in Chinese mythology? If you are not, it's all right, because I am interested in anything you like."
She looked up at the foliage above her. "It is a curious tree," she said. "In early June these branches were full of great olive and rose-colored moths, enormous ones, flopping about at sunset like big, soft bats. In the daytime they hang to the leaves and bark, wings wide—such beautiful, such miraculous wings—set with silvery quarter-moons!"
She raised both hands to the nape of her neck to smooth and secure her hair—a most fascinating gesture, he thought, watching her seated there in the grass, slim and graceful as the lovely lotus-bearing goddess, Kwan-Yin.
"Silvery quarter-moons," she repeated, "and now, look! The silver has changed into metal pendants!" She pointed upward where, among the foliage, shining, white cocoons swung from silk-wound stems, each wrapped in its single green leaf.
"Wonderful fairy fruit your Tree of Dreams bears!" he said. "And how thickly it hangs! I don't know much about such things. I was inclined to be fond of all that until I read some modern nature books. So I fell back on real myths again."
She began to laugh and, meeting in her eyes all the old-time friendliness, he ventured to ask if he might seat himself.
"Yes," she said gravely, "but I must be going."
"Then I don't care to stay here," he said, unprepared to hear himself utter any such sentiment. His astonishment at himself overcame even the reaction which turned his face red. She, too, surprised, looked at him unconvinced.
"What have I to do with it?" she inquired.
"The fact is," he said impressively, as though the intelligence were well worth sharing with her, "I have been rather lonely."
"Have you?" she asked, wide-eyed. "So have I. But I usually am."
"I wish you had said so!"
"How could I? And to whom?"
They said nothing more for a while. The sunlight, filtering through the Tree of Dreams, glimmered on her hair. Her eyes, darker in the shadow, dwelt tranquilly upon the waste of thick, tall grass which the languid breezes furrowed now and then.
"Do you mind my offering you my friendship?" he asked at length; "for that's what I'm doing."
"No, I don't mind," she replied listlessly. "Other men have done that."
"Will you accept—this time?"
"Shall I?" she asked, raising her clear eyes. "Shall I? I have been here two years—and I have made no friends."
She folded her unringed hands on her knees, examined them with calm inattention, and said: "After a while, I suppose, a girl becomes partly stupefied under the strain of it all—the tension of self-respecting silence. Two years of self-suppression! Even pickpockets receive a sentence more humane. Shall I try your remedy?"
"It would be very jolly to see each other, now and then," he said, so pleasantly that she smiled at his simplicity.
"What about the conventions?" she inquired, amused. "Still, after all, what has a girl to do with conventions who lives as I live? Her problem is a great deal simpler than to bother with usages." There was a defiant smile hovering about eyes and lips—a hint of recklessness in the bright color rising under his gaze: "A girl can't live and flourish on silence."
"You always hurry past me when we meet"
"But surely you didn't expect me to invite you to a seat on the stairs, did you?"
"I wish you had."
"Then why didn't you invite me?" she asked with a gay audacity new to him. For, in the summer sunshine of the moment, she was forgetting all except the pleasure of the moment and its pretense that the old order of things had returned. Sunshine and green grass and the sophisticated city breeze in the leaves above—youth, and ardent health, and one of her own kind to speak to after the arid silence of these sad months—what wonder that she willfully forgot? What wonder that she dared to breathe and laugh again, drifting and relaxing in the moment's merciful relief from a tension that had benumbed her to the verge of actual stupidity?
Afterwards, in her room, the relaxed strain tightened again. She realized their acquaintance was only an episode—she knew his advent here was but a caprice. But it was an interim that gave her a chance—a brief vacation in which she might breathe for a moment before the inevitable returned again to submerge her. And she meant to enjoy it with all her heart—every moment, every atom of sunshine, every bright second of respite from what she actually dared look forward to no longer.
That first meeting under the ailantus tree was only one of a sequence.
At first, when he came sauntering across the grass, she politely laid aside her work—dissertation on flounces and napkins and old mahogany and the care of infants, and what Heppelwhite knew about table legs, and why Sheraton is usually saluted as Chippendale.
Later, she continued her work unembarrassed as long as she was able to concentrate her mind under the agreeable little shock of pleasure which his advent always brought to her.
"How did you find out all about such things?" he asked curiously, looking over her manuscripts with her shrugged permission.
"All about what things?"
"These—ah—crooked-legged tables and squatty chairs?"
"I had them—once."
"I see," he said gravely. Then, with embarrassed hesitation, but very nicely: "There must have been a pretty bad smash-up?"
She nodded.
"Ah—I'm awfully sorry! Hope it's going to come out all right—some day."
"Thank you." But she continued to be brief and uncommunicative, never volunteering anything.
In the days when she became accustomed to his coming to find her under the tree, she ventured to continue her writing, merely greeting him with a nod of confidence and pleasure. And so he fell into the habit of bringing his own impossible plans and elevations to the vacant lot. And often, biting her pencil reflectively, she would cast side glances at him where he lay, flat in the grassy shade, drawing board under his nose, patiently constructing lines and angles and Corinthian capitals and Romanesque back doors. He was a very, very poor draughtsman; even she could see that.
"I'm doing this for a man who means to build a big tower on this lot," he explained cheerfully. "I've a notion he will be delighted with this plan of mine."
"Oh, is he going to cut down your Tree of Dreams!" she exclaimed, raising her eyes in dismay.
He looked up at the tree, then at her. "By Jove! It is a pity, isn't it?" he said, "after the jolly hours we have spent out here."
"Perhaps he won't build his tower until after—after"
"After what?"
"After we—you and I have forgotten all about this tree" She hesitated. Then calmly—"and each other. Which, of course," she laughed, "means no tower at all."
He sat so long silent, preoccupied with his drawing, looking at it half dreamily, that she thought he had forgotten her rather foolish observations.
But he hadn't; for he said in a troubled voice: "There's a way—a way of taking up big trees. I'll ask him to do it. I don't want it chopped down."
"You're afraid of angering the dragon!" she said, laughing. "What use could such a man have for an old ailantus tree? Besides, where could he plant it?"
"There's a place I know of," he said. "I'll speak to him. … No; it wouldn't do to have our Tree of Dreams cut down"
"It's not my tree," she said, looking down at her pencil; "it's yours."
"It is yours," he insisted. "You found it, and I found you under it."
"Oh, it's mine because I found it?" she mocked gayly, "and, I suppose, I'm yours because you found me under it."
Her tongue had run away that time. She checked her badinage, picked up her pencil with an admirable self-possession that admitted nothing, and scribbled away in calm insouciance. Only the heightened brilliancy of her cheeks could have undeceived the adept. Smith was no adept; besides, he was thinking of other matters.
"Do you know," he said solemnly, "that I am going away for about a week? "
She congratulated him without raising her head from her writing pad. That was pure instinct, for the emotion she had detected in Smith's voice was perfectly apparent in his features.
Smith gazed at her for a long time, during which she grew busier and busier with her pencil, and more oblivious of him.
The intellectual processes of Smith were, at times, childlike in their circuitous simplicity.
"Do you think I'm a good draughtsman?" he asked.
"I don't know; are you?" she asked, numbering a fresh sheet of her pad.
"Why, you've seen my drawing!" he reminded her, a little hurt. "I think I am a good draughtsman. I could probably earn about a hundred and twenty dollars a month."
"You are very fortunate," she murmured, rubbing out a sentence.
"A hundred and twenty dollars a month is enough for anybody to marry on," he continued. "Don't—you think so?"
"It is probably sufficient," she said carelessly.
"Do you think it is?"
"I haven't considered such matters very seriously," she said. "It will be time when I am earning a hundred and twenty dollars a month. And I'm not likely to earn it if you continue to interrupt me."
Smith turned red; presently he tucked his drawing board under his arm and stood up.
"I'm going," he said. "Good-by."
She nodded her adieux pleasantly, scarcely raising her head from her work.
But when Smith had disappeared she straightened up with a quick, indrawn breath and stared across the grass at the blank, brick walls. After a long while she dropped her tired shoulders back against the trunk of the Tree of Dreams, reclining there inert, blue eyes brooding in vacancy.
Meanwhile, Smith had locked up his room, gone home for the first time in two months, telephoned for a stateroom on the Western Limited, and sent for Kerns, who presently arrived in an electric cab.
"I'm going to Illinois," said Smith, "to-night."
"The nation must know of this," insisted Kerns; "let me telegraph for fireworks."
"There'll be fireworks," observed Smith—"fireworks to burn, presently. I'm going to get married to a working girl."
"Oh, piffle!" said Kerns faintly; "let's go and sit on the third rail and talk it over."
"Not with you, idiot. Did you ever hear of Stanley Stevens, who tried to corner wheat? I think it's his daughter I'm going to marry. I'm going to Chicago to find out. Good heavens, Kerns! It's the most pitiful case, whoever she is! It's a case to stir the manhood in any man. I tell you it's got to be righted. I am thoroughly stirred up, and I won't stand any nonsense from you."
Kerns looked at him. "Smith," he pleaded in sepulchral tones; "Smithy! For the sake of decency and of common sense"
"Exactly," nodded Smith, picking up his hat and gloves; "for the sake of decency and of common sense. Good-by, Tommy. And—ah!"—indicating a parcel of papers on the desk—"just have an architect look over these sketches with a view to estimating the—ah—cost of construction. And find some good landscape gardener to figure up what it will cost to remove a big ailantus tree from New York to the Berkshires. You can tell him I'll sue him if he injures the tree, but that I don't care what it costs to move it."
"Smith!" faltered Kerns, appalled, "you're as mad as Hamlet!"
"It's one of my ambitions to be madder," retorted Smith, going out and running nimbly downstairs.
"Help!" observed Kerns feebly as the front door slammed. And, as nobody responded, he sat down in the bachelor quarters of J. Abingdon Smith, a prey to melancholy amazement.
When Smith had been gone a week Kerns wrote him, when he had been gone two weeks he telegraphed him, when the third week ended he telephoned him, and when the month was up he prepared to leave for darkest Chicago; in fact he was actually leaving his house, suit case in hand, when Smith drove up in a hansom and gleefully waved his hand.
Smith beckoned him to enter the cab. "I'm going home to put on my old clothes," he said. "It's all right, Tom. I've been collecting old furniture, tons of antique chairs and things. They were pretty widely scattered at the sale two years ago"
"What sale, in the name of sanity?" shouted Kerns.
"Why, when Stanley Stevens failed to corner wheat he shot his head off before they pounced on his effects. I managed to find most of the things. I've sent them to my place, Abingdon, and now I'm going to ask her to marry me."
"Oh, are you?"
"Certainly. And, Kerns, if she will have me it will be for my own sake. Do you know what she thinks? She thinks I'm a draughtsman at thirty dollars a week. Isn't it delightful? Isn't it perfectly splendid?"
"Dazzling," whispered Kerns, unable to utter another word.
Smith's progress was certainly rapid. When he arrived at the door of his tenement lodgings he fairly soared up the stairs, flight on flight, until he came to the top.
The door of his neighbor's room stood open and he impulsively crossed the hallway, but there were only two men there moving out a table, and his slender blue-eyed neighbor was nowhere visible.
"What's that for?" he inquired. "Is Miss Stevens moving?"
"No, but her table is," said one of the men.
Something about the proceeding kept Smith silent. He saw one of the men drop his end of the table, close the door, lock it, and hang the key on a nail outside.
"That isn't safe," said Smith. "I'll take charge of the key until Miss Stevens returns."
He unhooked it, and, turning, let himself into his own room, but left the door ajar.
Two flights down the table drawer dropped out, dumping a pile of yellow manuscript on the stairs.
"Glory!" panted one of the movers; "that's hers. Take it up and leave it with the guy in the glasses, Bill."
And so it happened that Smith, standing outside on his fire escape for a breath of air, returned to find a mass of yellow manuscript littering his bed.
Wondering, he picked up the first sheet, saw his own name in her handwriting, stared, and sat down in astonishment to read. Suddenly his face burned fiery red, and, as long as he sat there, the deep color remained throbbing, scorching him anew with every page he turned.
After a long while he dropped the sheets and returned to the first page. It was dated in June, the day after his arrival.
He was slowly beginning to understand the matter now. He was beginning to realize that this manuscript had been placed in his room by mistake; that it had never been intended for him to read; that, if it had been written with a purpose, it had never been used for any purpose.
Then he remembered the moving of her table. Clearly the men had found it and, as he had assumed possession of her key, no doubt they had returned and flung the papers on his bed.
"In that case," said Smith thoughtfully, "I think I'll go down to the ailantus tree, and see if, by any chance, she is there."
•••••
She was there, seated in a chair, very intent on her writing pad. He was quite near her before she noticed him, and then she seemed dazed for a moment, rising and holding out her hand mechanically, looking at him in silence as he held her fingers imprisoned.
"I did not think you would return," she said. "It is a month—at least"
"Are you glad to see me?"
"Of course," she said simply, reseating herself. "Have you been well?"
"Yes; and you?"
"Perfectly, thank you."
He looked around at the long grass withered in patches; at the leafless tree. "Do you remember our first encounter here?" he said.
"Perfectly. You told me that there was a dragon under the tree, and a Chinese bird sat in its branches. That was in August, I think. This is November. Look up at the branches. All the leaves are gone. Only the silvery cocoons are hanging in clusters everywhere." And, bending slowly above her work again, "When are you going to turn our Tree of Dreams into a tower of bricks?"
But he only sat silent, smiling, watching her white fingers flying over the pad on her knees.
"I wonder," she said carelessly, "how long you are going to stay here this time."
"I wonder, too," he said.
"Don't you know?" she asked, raising her eyes and laughing faintly.
"No, I don't. Besides, why should I leave this lodging house? I like it."
"Can't you afford to leave—after all that lucrative tower designing?"
He said, looking at her deliberately: "You know perfectly well that I can afford to."
Something in the quiet voice and gaze of the man startled her, but only a delicate glow of rising color in her cheeks betrayed any lack of self-possession. "I don't think I understand you," she said.
"I think you do," he insisted, seating himself at her feet in the grass.
She wrote a word or two on her pad, then looked down to meet his changed smile. A moment more, and she resumed her work in flushed confusion.
"You know who I am," he said calmly. "I didn't think you did until an hour ago. Shall I tell you what happened an hour ago?"
She managed to meet his gaze without expression, but she did not answer.
"Then I will tell you what happened," he continued.
"Some men carried out a table from your room. A few moments later one of the men deposited a lot of loose manuscript which he had, I suppose, found in the table drawer. This all occurred while I was out on the balcony. When I returned to the room I found the papers on my bed. I could not avoid seeing my own name at the head of this breezy newspaper article. It is very cleverly written."
Wave after wave of scarlet flooded her face.
"So you have known who I am all this time?" he nodded slowly.
"Y-yes."
"It was a good chance—a legitimate chance for an article. You thought so, and you wrote it. The papers would have given it three columns and double leads. … Why didn't you use it?"
The tears flashed in her eyes. "I did not use it for the same reason that I am here with you now! Some things can be done, and some cannot. Good-by."
"Good-by?" he repeated slowly.
He stepped back; she passed before him, halted, turned, and spoke again, steadying her voice which broke deliciously in spite of her: "I did not mean to ridicule you. When I wrote that article I had known you only a day or two—and I was desperate—frightened—half-starved. The chance came, and I took it—or tried to. But I couldn't. I never could have. So—that is all."
"I knew all that, too," he said. "I only thought I'd speak of it. I wanted to ask you something else"
She had halted.
"Ask it," she said, exercising every atom of self-command.
"Won't you turn around?"
"No. I—I cannot. What is it you wish, Mr. Smith?"
"Ah—about this tree. It's to be taken up, I believe. They've a method of doing it, you know. I—ah—have considered arrangements."
She made no movement.
"Fact is," he ventured, "I've a sort of a country place in the Berkshires. Do you think that our tree would do well in the Berkshires?"
"I don't know, Mr. Smith."
"Oh, I thought, perhaps, you'd be likely to know!"
There was a pause of a full minute. "Is that all?" she asked, turning toward him with tear-flushed self-possession—but she had no idea that he was so close to her—no idea of what he was doing with her hands so suddenly imprisoned in his.
"Can you stand such a-a m-man as I am?" he stammered, the ancestral sentimental streak in the ascendency. "Would yo—ah—mind marrying me? "
Her face was pale enough now.
"Do you mean you love me?" she said, dazed. And the next moment she had released her hands, stepping toward the tree.
"Yes, I mean that," he repeated; "I love you."
"But—but I do not love you, Mr. Smith"
"I—I know it. P-perhaps you could try. D-do you mind trying—a little"
He had followed her to the ailantus. She retreated, facing him, and now stood backed up against the tree, her hands flat against the trunk behind her.
"Couldn't you try?" he asked. "I love you—I love you dearly. I know you're younger—I know you think me m-more or less of a"
"I don't!"
"I suppose I really haven't many brains," he said; "but yours are still intact."
Her blue eyes filled and grew starry.
"Did you read that entire article?" she asked unsteadily—"did you?"
"Yes—in bits—before I knew you had not meant me to. … I guess I am the sort of a man you make fun of"
Her eyes met his fairly for a moment, were lowered, then again raised. Something within them gave him courage, or perhaps the splendid rising color in her face, or perhaps the provocation of her mouth. And he kissed her. She did not stir; her lips were stiffly unresponsive.
But when, once more, he bent above her, she caught both his hands with a sob and met his lips with heart and soul, closing her wet eyes.
"D-darling," said J. Abingdon Smith, bending his head over hers where it lay buried in his shoulder, "I don't mind being an ass—really I don't"
Her hands crushed his, signaling silence.
"It isn't the funny things you wrote about me," he persisted; "but I really am that sort of a man. And likely to continue. You don't care, do you, dear?"
"W-when I love you!" she sobbed; "how can you say such things! D-do you think I'd love an idiot?"
He was discreetly silent for a while, then: "Anyway, I've found all your furniture—the bandy-legged chairs and things," he whispered cheerfully. "They are waiting for you at—a—Abingdon—a place I have in the country. Are you pleased?"
She lifted her face and made an effort to speak.
"Never mind," he said, dizzy with happiness, "we'll talk it over to-morrow. I think," he added, "that I'll have the men here to-morrow to remove our tree. There's a splendid place for it on the lawn."
She turned, her hands clasped in his, and looked up at the Tree of Dreams. Then, very gently, she bent and laid her lips against the bark.