CHAPTER XIII.
A BACHELOR’S “DEN.”
After leaving the Sherman House Wycherley has the driver take him down Michigan Avenue. He produces a cigar, one of Aleck’s choice weeds. Then comes a match.
“Ah! this is solid comfort,” he muses, stretching his legs out on the front seat as if eager to fill the whole vehicle; “it is my dream realized: a private carriage, a fine weed—perfect happiness. When my million comes home, I’ve got it all laid out. It won’t take me long to spend it. I can shut my eyes and imagine I’m a McCormick or a Cereal going home to my palatial abode. It’s just elegant, you know.”
Thus he chuckles and interviews himself after a habit peculiarly his own, until suddenly the vehicle draws up to the curb.
“Twenty-first Street, sir,” says John, who is especially good-natured after receiving the fat fee from the young roysterer.
Wycherley alights with great dignity.
“Good-night, my man,” he says, and thedriver, impressed with his air, answers respectfully.
The ex-actor saunters along the avenue until the hack has vanished. Then he turns on his heel and retraces his steps to the corner. Along Twenty-first Street he walks. At this hour of the night, the dividing line between two days, there are few people abroad, and Wycherley meets no one on his tramp.
As he advances the neighborhood grows more squalid, until he is in one of the poorest sections of the city, not far from the railroad.
At length he pauses in front of a dilapidated frame, evidently a tenement—pauses with a dramatic gesture, and mutters:
“Behold! the Hotel des Vagabonde, where thieves never break through and steal; where no one rolls and groans from an overloaded stomach; the home of the highway prince, the boot-black cavalier, and the jolly old bachelor. Waive all ceremony and enter, my dear boy. I’ll not arouse the janitor, poor fellow. And as I’m a wise man I’ll extinguish this cigar for a double reason—it’ll give me a morning smoke, and prevent a sensationin the princely hotel, for a Havana is unknown in this region of powerful clay pipes, and the odor might offend the fastidous nose of some lodger, when there would be the deuce to pay.”
No sooner said than done.
At the door no keeper challenges his entrance; day and night it is free to all. Wycherley climbs various flights of rickety stairs. It is very dark, but he seems to know from intuition just where every broken board lies, and the higher he gets, the lighter his spirits grow. He hums an operatic air and changes it to “After the Ball.” Really this man makes light of care—troubles sit upon him like bubbles.
Now he stops in front of a door, fumbles in his pocket, finds a key, and enters.
“Where the deuce is that electric button? very queer I fail to find it. Well, making a virtue of necessity I’ll have to fall back on Old Reliable.”
A match crackles, the flame shoots up. Then he applied it to the wick of a candle stuck in the neck of an old beer bottle.
The scene is a remarkable one! Rarely didcandlelight illumine a more destitute room. From the wall large pieces of plaster are gone, ditto the ceiling. A general survey of the place would result about as follows:imprimus:the lone bachelor himself;item:one trundle bed, scantily clad and sadly in need of smoothing;item:a carpet bag with a tendency to falling over on one side because of constitutional leanness;items:a piece of looking-glass fastened to the wall, a single wooden chair, a tin basin, a bare table on which the candle holds full sway.
That is the sum total.
Wycherley, merry dog that he is, glances around him with the air of a king. He has a faculty of seeing luxury behind misery, of making much out of little.
“Ah! Aleck was a shrewd one to guess what comforts I enjoy. There is my luxurious armchair; this my heap of magazines and papers,”—picking up a penny afternoonNews—“and the whole scene one of comfort. Ah, this is living. Now for my meerschaum, my slippers. Hang the luck! I believe that valet has misplaced them again. Never mind, this will do.”
He kicks off his shoes, opens a drawer in the table and takes out a clay-pipe minus half the stem. This he fills with scrap tobacco, holds it to the candle and puffs away with an enjoyment that cannot all be assumed.
“A strange night it has been. To think I’d meet Aleck and Bob Rocket so near together—two fellows I regard so highly. It’s a queer world, and a mighty small one, too, when you come down to it. Heigho! my chances of wedding the heiress arenil. Upon the whole I must confess to a certain relief. How foolish for a man to give up the free life of a gay bachelor, with its delightful uncertainties, for double harness and the harassing cares of stocks and bonds. Ugh! deliver me. See how cozy I am! Who would care to change it?”
Then he consults his memorandum book and makes a few notes on the market, gaining his points from the closing sales as reported in the newspaper. After this he yawns.
“Heigho! I feel weary. My sumptuous couch invites repose. It calls not in vain. To sleep, to dream, perchance to discover in second sight how to-morrow’s market willjump. ’Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.”
His preparations for going to bed are simple indeed. He removes his coat and vest; his collar and necktie follow; then he crawls under the army blanket.
“The deuce! I forgot to douse that ten candle electric light. Shall I call Robert to press the button? Let the weary retainer sleep. Thus bright genius overcomes all obstacles.”
One of his shoes flies through space with unerring accuracy, over goes beer bottle and candle, and, rolling off the table, lands with a thump on the bare floor.
“Eureka! score one for Sir Claude de Wycherley. Must practice that little game; save immense amount of trouble. Hard on the bottle, though. Now to woo the gentle goddess of slumber. Think of the untold thousands rolling on feather beds and hair mattresses. Little they know of the genuine luxury of a shuck bed. This is comfort now, you bet.”
The night wind sighs through a hole in a window pane, and lulled by this music, supplementedby the ringing of engine bells, and an occasional shriek from a switching locomotive, Wycherley falls asleep.
For an hour or two only his stentorian breathing can be heard in the tenement room.
Then the man on the cot suddenly sits up. His room is no longer in darkness.
“Jove! that was a beastly dream I had. What a pleasure to awaken and find it was only a dream. Can it be morning? What the devil is all that racket outside, people shouting? Bless me! I believe it’s the engines pumping. There must be a fire in the neighborhood. I’m sorry for the poor wretches; never took any enjoyment seeing a house burn. Tchew! bless my soul, the room’s half full of smoke. Think I’ll get up and investigate. Too bad to have a gentleman’s slumbers disturbed in this way, but I’m interested now, because, you know, it might be the Hotel des Vagabonde that is ablaze.”
While he thus communes with himself he gropes around for the lost shoe, and draws it on. Then he goes to the door. As he opens it a volume of smoke pours in. He instantly closes the door again.
“I declare, it is this house, after all. Another experience, my boy. My palatial mansion is doomed, I fear. Ho! for the salvage corps. Is my account book, the repository of millions, safe? Then let the fire demon do his worst.”
He even stops to button his collar; then seizing the lean grip, he waves his hand around him in a majestic way.
“The best of friends must part. Many happy hours have I spent here. Alas! that it should end thus. Farewell, farewell, and if forever, then forever fare thee well.”
He opens the door and steps into the hall.
“Great Scott!” he exclaims.
Dense smoke fills the hallway. The crackling of flames makes mad music, and when this is supplemented by the shrieks of terrified women, shouts of firemen, the throbbing of engines, and a dull roar from the dense crowd that collected like magic under such circumstances, the result is a combination that once heard can never be forgotten.
Wycherley looks down the stairway and immediately draws back again. Even his remarkable nerve is shaken by the sight. Besides,he hears cries near by that tell him he is not the only one imprisoned in the upper story of this old tenement, now in flames—cries that can only come from a terrified woman.
“Think, old boy, and if ever you cudgeled your brains, do so now. It’s useless trying to get out below—rather too warm for comfort. How about the other way?”
The flames are roaring up the stairway, and whatever is done must be done quickly, or else it will be too late. He remembers some sort of ladder leading to a trap in the roof. It offers a chance. Whether the situation will be improved or not, who can say?
Groping his way through the terrible smoke, he lays hold on the ladder. Just then from a room near by comes the wail:
“Oh, God! help me, save me, and I will undo the past. I swear it. Help! help!”
Wycherley recognizes a woman’s voice. He is not a hero, lays no claim to be such, but if death is the inevitable consequence he cannot try to save himself and desert a fellow creature. Down goes his carpet bag, and in five seconds he is at the door of the other room in the upper story of the burning tenement.
“Who’s here?” he shouts.
A figure at the small window, almost in the act of casting herself out, turns to him.
“Oh, save me, sir! It is too horrible! I am not fit to die. Save me!” she pleads wildly.
“Be quiet! I’ll do the best I can, but you must obey orders. Come with me,” he says.
“Not down there! no, no. I looked—it was like the fires of hell!”
“To the roof! we must get out of this smoke or we’ll suffocate before the fire touches us. Come, and I will save you or we’ll die trying.”
His cheering words reassure the poor woman, and she clings to his coat. They reach the stairs leading upward, and Wycherley mounting, opens the trap. What a blessed relief—here they can at least get a breath of air.
Once upon the roof of the tenement the ex-actor casts about him for some means of escape, some method by which to cheat the hungry flames that must speedily burst through and envelop the whole tenement in their rapacious maw.
The case seems desperate; no friendly roof offers a refuge. On one side a great warehouse,fire-proof and grim, rears itself; on the other lies a smaller building, with the roof far below. If he had a rope Wycherley can see how he might escape. Without one the case is almost hopeless. Already ladders have rested against the building, but none are long enough to reach to the top. They see him. Shouts in the street below announce this fact—encouraging cries that give him hope. A stream of water breaks above and showers them. Wycherley turns up his coat.
“Pardon—it is my last collar,” he says calmly.
They have placed a ladder against the smaller house. Brave firemen are bringing another which will be carried up the sloping roof, and used to reach those above.
All that now may be considered is the question of time. Will they succeed, or be too late? The fire is having everything its own way. These old tenements burn like match wood. Already the flames have eaten a hole through the roof, and curl and twist wickedly as though stretching out eager hands for new victims.
The heat is growing unbearable, and yet theladder is not in position. He realizes that the case is desperate, and casts about for a chance to lessen it. The woman lies there groaning. They are dragging the ladder up the roof, and in a couple of minutes it will be in place, but that time is an eternity under such conditions. Just now, to remain means death. He sees one chance, takes the woman—she is a slight creature—in his arms, slips over the edge of the roof, and with feet braced on a ledge, exerts his whole strength to maintain his position, while the encouraging shouts of the firemen below give him hope. It is a picture for an artist—the race between life and death, between the greedy flames and the uplifting ladder, but the ladder wins.