The House of All Sorts (6 page)

I enjoyed my own animals so thoroughly that when a tenant asked, “May I keep a dog or a cat?” I replied, “Yes, if you look after it. There are vacant lots all round and there is Beacon Hill Park to run the animal in.”

But no, people were too lazy to be bothered. They simply opened their own door and shoved the creature into the narrow strip of front garden, let him bury his bones and make the lawn impossible. Always it was the landlady who had to do the tidying
up. I got tired of it. Anyone should be willing to tend his creature if he has any affection for it. They managed cats even worse, these so-called “animal lovers.” Stealthily at night a basement window would open, a tenant's cat be pushed through. The coal pile became impossible. I was obliged to ban all animals other than a canary bird, although I would far rather have banned humans and catered to creatures.

I HAD NEVER
before had the opportunity of observing the close-up of married life. My parents died when I was young. We four spinster sisters lived on in the old house. My girlhood friends who married went to live in other cities. I did not know what “till-death-do-us-part” did to them.

Every couple took it differently of course, but I discovered I could place “marrieds” in three general groupings—the happy, the indifferent, and the scrappy.

My flat being at the back of the house I overlooked no tenant nor did I see their comings and goings. The walls were as soundproof as those of most apartments, only voice murmurs came through them, not words. No secrets were let out. I neither saw nor heard, but I could
feel
in wordless sounds and in silences; through the floor when I went into my basement to tend the furnace I heard the crackle of the man's newspaper turning and turning—the creak of the woman's rocker.

There are qualities of sound and qualities of silence. When the sounds were made only by inanimate things, you knew that couple were the indifferent type. When you heard terse jagged little huddles of words, those were the snappers! If there was a
continuous rumbling of conversation, contented as the singing of a tea kettle or the purring of a cat, you knew that couple had married happily. There was the way they came to pay the rent too, or ask a small favour, or project a little grumble. The happily married ones spared each other; the wife asked or grumbled for the husband, the husband for the wife.

Snappy couples tore up my stairs, so eager to “snap their snaps” that they often found themselves abreast of each other anxious to be first!

It was immaterial whether the man or the woman of the indifferent pair came. They handed in the rent grudgingly and went away without comment. I liked them the least.

THERE WERE FOUR
western maple trees growing in the lot upon which I built my house. Two were in the strip of front lawn, clear of foundations, but when the builders came to overhead wiring they found one of the trees interfered. The line-men cut it down. The other front-lawn maple was a strong, handsome tree. I circled her roots with rock and filled in new earth. The tree throve and branched so heavily that the windows of Lower West and the Doll's Flat were darkened. Experts with saws and ladders came and lopped off the lower branches. This sent the tree's growth rushing violently to her head in a lush overhanging which umbrellaed the House of All Sorts. She was lovely in spring and summer, but when fall came her leaves moulted into the gutters and heaped in piles on the roof, rotting the cedar shingles. It put me to endless expense of having roof-men, gutter-men and tree-trimmers. At last I gave the grim order, “Cut her down.”

It is horrible to see live beauty that has taken years to mature and at last has reached its prime hacked down, uprooted.

The other two maple trees had stood right on the spot where my house was to be built. The builders had been obliged to saw them to within three or four feet of the ground. Both trees' roots
were in that part underneath the house which was not to be cemented; it would always be an earthy, dark place. The maple stumps were left in the ground. One died soon. The other clung furiously to life, her sap refused to dry up, grimly she determined to go on living.

The cement basement was full of light and air, but light and air were walled away from that other part, which was low. I could not stand there upright; there was but one small square of window in the far corner. The old maple stump shot sickly pink switches from her roots, new switches every year. They crept yearningly towards the little square of window. Robbed of moisture, light and air, the maple still remembered spring and pushed watery sap along her pale sprouts, which came limper and limper each year until they were hardly able to support the weight of a ghastly droop of leaves having little more substance than cobwebs.

But the old maple stump would not give up. It seemed no living thing in the House of All Sorts had less to live for than that old western maple, yet she clung to life's last shred—she loved living.

LOWER EAST AND
Lower West were both rented to brides.

The brides sat in their living-rooms with only a wall dividing; they looked out at the same view. They did not know each other.

In the East flat, the young husband was trying to accommodate himself to a difficult and neurotic wife.

In the West flat, a middle-aged groom was trying to slow a bright young girl down to his dullness. The girl drooped, was home-sick, in spite of all the pretty things he gave her and the smart hats she made for herself (she had been a milliner in New York before she married the middle-aged man). It was freedom she thought she was marrying—freedom from the drudgery of bread-and-butter-earning. When he dangled a “home of her own” before her eyes, she married him and was numbed; now came the pins and needles of awaking.

I had known the other bride since she was a child. When I welcomed her into my house, she chilled as if to remind me that she was a popular young bride—I a landlady: I took the hint. I had put the best I had into her flat, but she scornfully tossed my things into her woodshed, replacing them with things of her own. The rain came, and spoiled my things. When I asked her to hand
back what she did not want, so that I might store them safely, she was very insulting, as if my things were beyond contempt or hurting.

The little New York bride was very, very lonely, with her dull, heavy husband. She came up to my flat on any excuse whatever. One day she cried and told me about it. She said that she knew no one. “The girl next door is a bride too; she's smart; she has lots of friends. I see them come and go. Oh, I do wish I knew her.” Then she said, “You know her; couldn't you introduce me? Please!”

“I have known her since she was a child, but I could not introduce you to each other.”

“Why?”

“It is not my place to introduce tenants. People make opportunities of speaking to each other if they are neighbours, but they would resent being compelled by their landlady to know each other.”

“But you have known this girl since she was little—couldn't you? I have no friends at all. Please, please.”

“Listen, it would not make you happy. She is a snob.”

I would not subject this unhappy, ill-bred, little bride, with her ultra clothes worn wrong, her overdone make-up and her slangy talk, to the snubs of the stuck-up bride next door.

“You'll come and see me, won't you? Come often—he is out so much.”

“I will come when I can.”

She went slowly down to her empty flat, this lonely little bride who had sold her pretty face for laziness and a home.

Next day she ran up, all excitement.

“My opportunity came! The postman asked me to deliver a registered letter, because my neighbour was out; you are all wrong,
she is lovely. I expect we shall see a lot of each other now. I am so happy.”

She flew down-stairs, hugging her joy.

I missed her for some days. I went to see if she were ill, found her crumpled into a little heap on the sofa. She had red eyes.

“Hello! Something wrong?”

She gulped hard. “It is as you said—she is a snob. We met in the street. They saw me coming. When I was close they looked the other way and talked hard. Her husband did not even raise his hat!”

“Perhaps they did not see it was you.”

“They could not help seeing—not if they'd been as blind as new kittens. I spoke before I saw how they felt,” she sobbed.

“Pouf! Would I care? She is not worth a cry! What pretty hats you make!”

She had been working on one—it lay on the table half finished.

“You like them? I make them all myself. I was a milliner in New York—head of all the girls. They gave me a big pay because I had knack in designing—big fine store it was too!”

“Here you are crying because a snob who couldn't make one ‘frump's bow' did not speak to you! Come, let's go into the garden and play with the pups.”

She was soon tumbling with them on the lawn, kind wholehearted clumsy pups, much more her type than the next-door bride.

SHE WAS SO YOUNG
, so pretty, so charming! But when it came to a matter of shrewd bargaining, you couldn't beat her. Her squeezing of the other fellow's price was clever—she could have wrung juice from a raw quince. Her big husband was entirely dominated by his tall, slender wife; he admired her methods enormously. Sometimes he found it embarrassing to look into the face of the “squeezed.” While she was crumbling down my rent, he turned his back, looking out of the window, but I saw that his big ears were red and that they twitched.

It was the Doll's Flat she bargained for, which seemed ridiculous seeing that he was so large, she so tall, and the Doll's Flat so little.

“Won't it be rather squeezy?” I suggested.

“My husband is used to ship cabins. For myself I like economy.”

She was an extremely neat, orderly person, kept the Doll's Flat like a Doll's Flat—no bottles, no laundry, no garbage troubles, as one had with so many tenants. She made the place attractive.

She entertained a bit and told me all the nice things people said about her flat.

“If only I had ‘such and such a rug' or ‘such and such a curtain' it would be perfect!” and she wheedled till I got it for her. But these added charms to make her flat
perfect
always came out of my pocket, never out of hers.

I had a white cat with three snowball kittens who had eyes like forget-me-nots. When the tall, slim wife was entertaining, she borrowed my “cat family,” tied blue ribbons round their necks. Cuddled on a cushion in a basket they amused and delighted her guests—inexpensive entertainment. Flowers were always to be had out of my garden for the picking.

“If only toasted buns grew on the trees!” She liked toasted buns for her tea parties—the day-before's were half-price and toasted better…I heard her on my 'phone.

“Not deliver five cents' worth! Why should I buy more when I don't require them?” Down slammed the receiver and she turned to me.

“They do not deserve one's custom! I shall have to walk to town: it is not worth paying a twelve-cent carfare to fetch five cents' worth of stale buns!”

I SWORE AT THE
beginning of each month I would buy nothing new for her, but before the month was out I always had, and wanted to kick myself for a weak fool. I liked her in spite of her meanness.

She was proud of her husband's looks; he wore his navy lieutenant's clothes smartly.

“Ralph, you need a new uniform.”—He ordered it. “How much is the tailor charging? …Ridiculous!”

“He is the best tailor in town, my dear.”

“Leave him to me.”

The next day she came home from town. “I've cut that tailor's price in half!”

“What a clever wife!” But the lieutenant went red. He took advantage of her bargaining but he shivered at her boasting in front of me about it.

SHE DID HATE
to pay a doctor. She had been a nurse before she married; she knew most of the doctors in town. It was wonderful how she could nurse along an ailment till someone in the house fell sick, then she just “happened to be coming in the gate” as the doctor went out. He would stop for a word with the pretty thing.

“How are you?”

Out came tongue and all her saved-up ailments. She ran down to the druggist's to fill the prescription, to shop a little. Butcher, grocer always added a bit of suet, or a bone, or maybe she spotted a cracked egg, had it thrown in with her dozen. They
loved
doing it for her, everybody fell before her wheedle.

“I am going to stay with you forever,” she had said as an inducement to make me lower the rent and buy this or that for her flat. Then, “The very smartest apartment block in town—Ralph always fancied it, but it was too expensive for us. But—only one room, a bachelor suite—the man is sub-letting at
half
its usual price, furniture thrown in. He will be away one year. Wonderful for us! Such a bargain, isn't it my dear?”

“One room!”

“But, the block is so smart: such a bargain!”

THEY WENT TO
their bargain room. A professor and his wife moved into my Doll's Flat. They were as lavishly open-handed as the others had been stingy. The professor was writing a book. He
had a talkative wife whom he adored, but though he loved her tremendously, he could not get on with his book because of her chattering. He just picked her up, opened my door, popped her in.

“There! chatter, dear, all you like.” He turned the key on his peace—what about mine? I pulled the dust-sheet over my canvas. Landlady's sighs are heavy—is it not enough to give shelter, warmth, furniture? Must a landlady give herself too?

THE BABY HAD
straight honey-coloured hair, pale eyes, puckered brow, pouting mouth, and a yell, a sheer, bad-tempered, angry yell which she used for no other reason than to make herself thoroughly unpleasant. Bodily she was a healthy child.