The Elevator, William Dean Howells [best book clubs txt] 📗

your luxuries and conveniences. In Florence we ALWAYS walk up. They have ascenseurs in a few great hotels, and they brag of it in immense signs on the sides of the building.”

LAWTON: “What pastoral simplicity! We are elevated here to a degree that you can’t conceive of, gentle shepherd. Has yours got an air-cushion, Mrs. Roberts?”

MRS. ROBERTS: “An air-cushion? What’s that?”

LAWTON: “The only thing that makes your life worth a moment’s purchase in an elevator. You get in with a glass of water, a basket of eggs, and a file of the ‘Daily Advertiser.’ They cut the elevator loose at the top, and you drop.”

BOTH LADIES: “Oh!”

LAWTON: “In three seconds you arrive at the ground-floor, reading your file of the ‘Daily Advertiser;’ not an egg broken nor a drop spilled. I saw it done in a New York hotel. The air is compressed under the elevator, and acts as a sort of ethereal buffer.”

MRS. ROBERTS: “And why don’t we always go down in that way?”

LAWTON: “Because sometimes the walls of the elevator shaft give out.”

MRS. ROBERTS: “And what then?”

LAWTON: “Then the elevator stops more abruptly. I had a friend who tried it when this happened.”

MRS. ROBERTS: “And what did he do?”

LAWTON: “Stepped out of the elevator; laughed; cried; went home; got into bed: and did not get up for six weeks. Nervous shock. He was fortunate.”

MRS. MILLER: “I shouldn’t think you’d want an air-cushion on YOUR elevator, Mrs. Roberts.”

MRS. ROBERTS: “No, indeed! Horrid!” The bell rings. “Edward, YOU go and see if that’s Aunt Mary.”

MRS. MILLER: “It’s Mr. Miller, I know.”

BEMIS: “Or my son.”

LAWTON: “My voice is for Mrs. Roberts’s brother. I’ve given up all hopes of my daughter.”

ROBERTS, without: “Oh, Curwen! Glad to see you! Thought you were my wife’s aunt.”

LAWTON, at a suppressed sigh from MRS. ROBERTS: “It’s one of his jokes, Mrs. Roberts. Of course it’s your aunt.”

MRS. ROBERTS, through her set teeth, smilingly: “Oh, if it IS, I’ll make him suffer for it.”

MR. CURWEN, without: “No, I hated to wait, so I walked up.”

LAWTON: “It is Mr. Curwen, after all, Mrs. Roberts. Now let me see how a lady transmutes a frown of threatened vengeance into a smile of society welcome.”

MRS. ROBERTS: “Well, look!” To MR. CURWEN, who enters, followed by her husband: “Ah, Mr. Curwen! So glad to see you. You know all our friends here—Mrs. Miller, Dr. Lawton, and Mr. Bemis?”

CURWEN, smiling and bowing, and shaking hands right and left: “Very glad—very happy—pleased to know you.”

MRS. ROBERTS, behind her fan to Dr. Lawton: “Didn’t I do it beautifully?”

LAWTON, behind his hand: “Wonderfully! And so unconscious of the fact that he hasn’t his wife with him.”

MRS. ROBERTS, in great astonishment, to Mr. Curwen: “Where in the world is Mrs. Curwen?”

CURWEN: “Oh—oh—she’ll be here. I thought she was here. She started from home with two right-hand gloves, and I had to go back for a left, and I—I suppose—Good heavens!” pulling the glove out of his pocket. “I ought to have sent it to her in the ladies’ dressing-room.” He remains with the glove held up before him, in spectacular stupefaction.

LAWTON: “Only imagine what Mrs. Curwen would be saying of you if she were in the dressing-room.”

ROBERTS: “Mr. Curwen felt so sure she was there that he wouldn’t wait to take the elevator, and walked up.” Another ring is heard. “Shall I go and meet your aunt NOW, my dear?”

MRS. ROBERTS: “No, indeed! She may come in now with all the formality she chooses, and I will receive her excuses in state.” She waves her fan softly to and fro, concealing a murmur of trepidation under an indignant air, till the portiere opens, and MR. WILLIS CAMPBELL enters. Then MRS. ROBERTS breaks in nervous agitation “Why, Willis! Where’s Aunt Mary?”

MRS. MILLER: “And Mr. Miller?”

CURWEN: “And Mrs. Curwen?”

LAWTON: “And my daughter?”

BEMIS: “And my son?”

MR. CAMPBELL, looking tranquilly round on the faces of his interrogators: “Is it a conundrum?”

MRS. ROBERTS, mingling a real distress with an effort of mock-heroic solemnity: “It is a tragedy! O Willis dear! it’s what you see—what you hear; a niece without an aunt, a wife without a husband, a father without a son, and another father without a daughter.”

ROBERTS: “And a dinner getting cold, and a cook getting hot.”

LAWTON: “And you are expected to account for the whole situation.”

CAMPBELL: “Oh, I understand! I don’t know what your little game is, Agnes, but I can wait and see. I’M not hungry.”

MRS. ROBERTS: “Willis, do you think I would try and play a trick on you, if I could?”

CAMPBELL: “I think you can’t. Come, now, Agnes! It’s a failure. Own up, and bring the rest of the company out of the next room. I suppose almost anything is allowable at this festive season, but this is pretty feeble.”

MRS. ROBERTS: “Indeed, indeed, they are not there.”

CAMPBELL: “Where are they, then?”

ALL: “That’s what we don’t know.”

CAMPBELL: “Oh, come, now! that’s a little too thin. You don’t know where ANY of all these blood-relations and connections by marriage are? Well, search me!”

MRS. ROBERTS, in open distress: “Oh, I’m sure something must have happened to Aunt Mary!”

MRS. MILLER: “I can’t understand what Ellery C. Miller means.”

LAWTON, with a simulated sternness: “I hope you haven’t let that son of yours run away with my daughter, Bemis?”

BEMIS: “I’m afraid he’s come to a pass where he wouldn’t ask MY leave.”

CURWEN, re-assuring himself: “Ah, she’s all right, of course. I know that” -

BEMIS: “Miss Lawton?”

CURWEN: “No, no—Mrs. Curwen.”

CAMPBELL: “Is it a true bill, Agnes?”

MRS. ROBERTS: “Indeed it is, Willis. We’ve been expecting her for an hour—of course she always comes early—and I’m afraid she’s been taken ill suddenly.”

ROBERTS: “Oh, I don’t think it’s that, my dear.”

MRS. ROBERTS: “Oh, of course you never think anything’s wrong, Edward. My whole family might die, and”—MRS. ROBERTS restrains herself, and turns to MR. CAMPBELL, with hysterical cheerfulness: “Who came up in the elevator with you?”

CAMPBELL: “Me? I didn’t come in the elevator. I had my usual luck. The elevator was up somewhere, and after I’d pressed the annunciator button till my thumb ached, I watched my chance and walked up.”

MRS. ROBERTS: “Where was the janitor?”

CAMPBELL: “Where the janitor always is—nowhere.”

LAWTON: “Eating his Christmas dinner, probably.”

MRS. ROBERTS, partially abandoning and then recovering herself: “Yes, it’s perfectly spoiled! Well, friends, I think we’d better go to dinner—that’s the only way to bring them. I’ll go out and interview the cook.” Sotto voce to her husband: “If I don’t go somewhere and have a cry, I shall break down here before everybody. Did you ever know anything so strange? It’s perfectly—pokerish.”

LAWTON: “Yes, there’s nothing like serving dinner to bring the belated guest. It’s as infallible as going without an umbrella when it won’t rain.”

CAMPBELL: “No, no! Wait a minute, Roberts. You might sit down without one guest, but you can’t sit down without five. It’s the old joke about the part of Hamlet. I’ll just step round to Aunt Mary’s house—why, I’ll be back in three minutes.”

MRS. ROBERTS, with perfervid gratitude: “Oh, how GOOD you are, Willis! You don’t know how MUCH you’re doing! What presence of mind you have! Why couldn’t we have thought of sending for her? O Willis, I can never be grateful enough to you! But you always think of everything.”

ROBERTS: “I accept my punishment meekly, Willis, since it’s in your honor.”

LAWTON: “It’s a simple and beautiful solution, Mrs. Roberts, as far as your aunt’s concerned; but I don’t see how it helps the rest of us.”

MRS. MILLER to MR. CAMPBELL: “If you meet Mr. Miller ” -

CURWEN: “Or my wife” -

BEMIS: “Or my son” -

LAWTON: “Or my daughter” -

CAMPBELL: “I’ll tell them they’ve just one chance in a hundred to save their lives, and that one is open to them for just five minutes.”

LAWTON: “Tell my daughter that I’ve been here half an hour, and everybody knows I drove here with her.”

BEMIS: “Tell my son that the next time I’ll walk, and let him drive.”

MRS. MILLER: “Tell Mr. Miller I found I had my fan after all.”

CURWEN: “And Mrs. Curwen that I’ve got her glove all right.” He holds it up.

MRS. ROBERTS, at a look of mystification and demand from her brother: “Never mind explanations, Willis. They’ll understand, and we’ll explain when you get back.”

LAWTON, examining the glove which CURWEN holds up: “Why, so it IS right!”

CURWEN: “What do you mean?”

LAWTON: “Were you sent back to get a LEFT glove?”

CURWEN: “Yes, yes; of course.”

LAWTON: “Well, if you’ll notice, this is a right one. The one at home is left.”

CURWEN, staring helplessly at it: “Gracious Powers! what shall I do?”

LAWTON: “Pray that Mrs. Curwen may NEVER come.”

MR. CURWEN, dashing through the door: “I’ll be back by the time Mr. Campbell returns.”

MRS. MILLER, with tokens of breaking down visible to MRS. ROBERTS: “I wonder what could have kept Mr. Miller. It’s so very mysterious, I” -

MRS. ROBERTS, suddenly seizing her by the arm, and hurrying her from the room: “Now, Mrs. Miller, you’ve just got time to see my baby.”

MR. ROBERTS, winking at his remaining guests: “A little cry will do them good. I saw as soon as Willis came in instead of her aunt, that my wife couldn’t get through without it. They’ll come back as bright as” -

LAWTON: “Bemis, should you mind a bereaved father falling upon your neck?”

BEMIS: “Yes, Lawton, I think I should.”

LAWTON: “Well, it IS rather odd about all those people. You can say of one or two that they’ve been delayed, but five people can’t have been delayed. It’s too much. It amounts to a coincidence. Hello! What’s that?”

ROBERTS: “What’s what?”

LAWTON: “I thought I heard a cry.”

ROBERTS: “Very likely you did. They profess to deaden these floors so that you can’t hear from one apartment to another. But I know pretty well when my neighbor overhead is trying to wheel his baby to sleep in a perambulator at three o’clock in the morning; and I guess our young lady lets the people below understand when she’s wakeful. But it’s the only way to live, after all. I wouldn’t go back to the old up-and-down-stairs, house-in-a-block system on any account. Here we all live on the ground-floor practically. The elevator equalizes everything.”

BEMIS: “Yes, when it happens to be where you are. I believe I prefer the good old Florentine fashion of walking upstairs, after all.”

LAWTON: “Roberts, I DID hear something. Hark! It sounded like a cry for help. There!”

ROBERTS: “You’re nervous, doctor. It’s nothing. However, it’s easy enough to go out and see.” He goes out to the door of the apartment, and immediately returns. He beckons to DR. LAWTON and MR. BEMIS, with a mysterious whisper: “Come here both of you. Don’t alarm the ladies.”

 

II.

 

In the interior of the elevator are seated MRS. ROBERTS’S AUNT MARY (MRS. CRASHAW), MRS. CURWEN, and MISS LAWTON; MR. MILLER and MR. ALFRED BEMIS are standing with their hats in their hands. They are in dinner costume, with their overcoats on their arms, and the ladies’ draperies and ribbons show from under their outer wraps, where they are caught up, and held with that caution which characterizes ladies in sitting attitudes which they have not been able to choose deliberately. As they talk together, the elevator rises very slowly, and they continue talking for some time before they observe that it has stopped.

MRS. CRASHAW: “It’s very fortunate that we are all here together. I ought to have been here half an hour ago,