 Chapter 6 of The Cliff Dwellers This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Cliff Dwellers by Henry Blake Fuller Chapter 6 Ogden had been balked in his first social advance by the inconsiderate and unwarranted demands of the Brainerds. He failed on Proposition Number 1, but its attendant, Corollary, he disposed of after the proper interval. He had missed the dinner, but he accomplished the dinner call. He was moving around his room in his shirt sleeves. He had the leisurely air of one whose social orbit was so small as to involve no relations with the courses of cabs and of streetcars. To set himself right with the Floyds, he had but to step around the corner. His room was rather small and cramped, but he had preferred indifferent accommodations in a good house to good accommodations in an indifferent house, just as he would have chosen an indifferent house in a good neighborhood to a better house in a poorer one. His quarters, however, were well enough for a single young man of moderate pretensions. He had space for a three-quarter bed, a bureau, a wash stand which displayed a set of pink flowered crockery and two towels, a cane seated chair, and a pair of bookshelves on the wall. And by means of a good deal of dexterous maneuvering, he contrived to extract some comfort from an undersized rocker. His decorations were principally photographs, which showed to the extent common under the circumstances. Some of these were grouped in twos and threes in frames faced with Chinese silk. They helped to achieve the disordered and overcrowded effect that the present taste in house furnishing aims at, and can always accomplish in a backhaul bedroom. The photograph stood in the position in which he had first placed them a month and a half ago, although the recent arrival of several of the originals had given their shadows an altered importance. Everybody knows of the inertia that overtakes decorative detail, even when portable. There were the pictures of his father and his mother, arranged in a pair. His father offered a placid, gray-bearded face. It seemed rather force-less, though that effect may have been due to retouching. Yet, independent of any practical processes, it was the face of a man who obviously could not have risen in advance to any adequate conception of the Western metropolis. The face of his mother was serious, strenuous. She had, in some degree, the semi-countryfied aspect of one who has run a quiet course in a quiet quarter of a minor town. His sister's picture had been taken in the East just before her starting for her new home. It was now in the hands of Ogden's next-door neighbor, who had come in carrying a choice of white ties, and who now wove around it a contemplative cloud of tobacco smoke from his briar wood pipe. He was a young man with a high forehead and a pair of shrewd but kindly brown eyes. A mighty pretty girl, Brower said, heartily, get the right kind of a New England face, and you can't do much better. I must haul out my own photographs and fix them up sometime. Brower kept his collection in his trunk, along with his shirts and underwear generally. He used his bureau drawers for collars and cuffs, and for a growing accumulation of newspapers, magazines, and novels. He had been in the house two years, yet his trunk had never been unpacked and put away. He was an adjuster for an insurance company, and was subject to sudden calls to remote localities, in accordance with the doings of the busy monster that the press knows as the fire fiend. If Isaac Sobrinsky, often Des Moines, had the misfortune to be burned out at the close of a dull seasoner in the face of brisk and successful competition, then Des Moines was the place to which Brower immediately posted. He estimated the damage on the building, figured the salvage on socks and ulsters, and endeavored to decide, so far as lay in his powers, whether the catastrophe had been inflicted by Providence or had been precipitated by Sobrinsky's own matchbox. However, he never carried anything except his valise on such excursions. The general state of his trunk is to be accepted simply as the mental index of a constant and hurried traveler. Yes, she's a mighty pretty girl, he repeated thoughtfully. Where have they gone? Oh, not far. There's been a good deal of traveling done already. They just went up to Milwaukee. Eugene had something to see about there. They'll be back tomorrow, I expect. Milwaukee, A, that's come to be quite the fashion, hasn't it? Some folks go there after they're married, and some of them to be married. We had one in our office a week or two ago. Vibert, have you met him? It's in your office, he is. Then, is it? No, I've never met him. I've seen him and heard about him. Is he much thought of? Well, the office doesn't have a great deal to say to a man as long as he keeps ours and attends to his work when the position isn't responsible, I mean. What are you looking for, whisk broom? Here, I'm sitting on it, I guess. I suppose he does attend to his work. Oh, so-so. But a little break like that doesn't help a man any. He's struck high, didn't he? Yes, wonder what he's got to keep her on. Great question. All that, ain't it? She's a rich girl, I hear. Subject for debate. Is it safer to marry a rich girl or a poor girl? For a young man in moderate circumstances, I mean. Oh, dear, said Ogden, sitting down on the edge of the bed helplessly. If you're going back to that chestnut, well, it's timely. Rejoin, Brower, knocking the ashes of his pipe into the cover of the soak dish and always will be. Pro, if the girl's rich, she'll have had things and got used to them and perhaps tired of them. If the girl's poor, she'll be ravenous after her long starve out and will expect her husband to feed her with everything. Lay on Khan if the girl's rich. She'll expect all the comforts and luxuries. She has been used to at home. If she's poor, she'll have had some sense ground into her. She'll know how to manage and contrive. So there it is. What's your idea? No general rule. Depends on circumstances. What does the girl to begin with? The girl depends on circumstances. And after? After? Oh, then circumstances depend on the girl. Hmm, can't lay down any general law. Same as with little Johnny. Pshaw, you go to the foot. But they both agreed on one point. As young men always do when they discuss this standard subject, they stood together on the assumption that such a venture concerned only the two people primarily involved. Brower proceeded Ogden into the hallway. He stood with the toe of one slipper on the heel of the other. Well, remember me to the swells. Oh, shucks. Said George, turning back and laughing, he walked down and out rather sedately and picked his way over the muddy sidewalks with his thoughts fixed on the two recent marriages that in his own family had just occurred under such disadvantages as must prevail in a disorganized household and with the infliction of such discomforts as will sometimes be undergone by people who, while not in society, still feel impelled to have such a function proceed after the fashion that society prescribes. Kitty Ogden was duly married then with a certain regard to cards, carriages, caterers, and the rest. And the feast was graced by a number of McDowell's family and friends, people of afferish sort, who called for a little comment in either way. At least little comment was bestowed by Ogden whose principal thought was that his sister was now the wife of a fellow of some means and ability and who felt that it would not come amiss to have a good businessman in the family. At the Floyd's he found the other wedding the subject of much comment, more or less discreet. On the other hand, the affair in his own family received a mere civil mention. The Ogden's, he felt, must be only an insignificant little group. After all, must they? Must he? Always remain so. The Floyd's occupied a snug little house which filled a chink between two bigger and finer ones and commanded a view of the backyard of a third which was bigger and finer still. Mrs. Floyd had lately begun to fill a chink in the social world as well by having an evening. She had approached the idea with a good deal of deliberation and she had achieved something very small and quiet. She overcame her husband's weakness for knowing people and inviting them to the house. She was not after a deluge, but a drop. And if her tardy distillation did not equal the perfumes of the fragrant east, still it was the best result to be arrived at under the circumstances. He found the Fairchilds there and he came upon Fairchild and Floyd smoking, subrosa, in a secluded corner of the library, which was furnished in a somber and solid fashion. In the Floyd family, the household divinity was the lace curtain whose susceptibility to offense from the fumes of tobacco was well-known. Her high priestess was Mrs. Floyd and her chief victim was Wallworth. Associated with the two smokers was young Freddie Pratt, whose solicitude regarding Brainerd's mental state on the occasion of his daughter's call at the bank has been already touched upon and who was now puffing a cigarette with a learned and expert air. This attitude was displeasing to Ogden who was perhaps over-disposed to feel official differences on social occasions, but no oppressive sense of his own subordinate rank troubled Freddie Pratt, who had but a feeble and intermittent realization of the orders of the business hierarchy or indeed of anything else. It was a matter that concerned just her and him. Fairchild was saying as Ogden entered with a contemplative regard fastened on the lengthening ash of his cigar. It was nobody else's business. He stopped. He had spoken in a low, quiet voice. But he had conveyed unmistakably the presence of quotation marks. I called on him the other night. Volunteered Freddie Pratt unabashedly. His perky little nose was tipped in the air and his eyes were closed to the two fine slits that denote the complete enjoyment of the smoker. I wasn't going to stand off. They're at the Northumberland, big name, but not much else, ragged matting in the halls and the janitor didn't look very slick. I guess they've rented ready furnished. Mamie was real glad to see me, but he was rather grumpy, I thought. Everybody ought always to be glad to see you, Freddie, smiled Walworth with a caressing irony. I suppose, resumed Fairchild, thoughtfully that the human family while I was gone considering a wedding as a joyous occasion. It always has. It always must. Hope springs eternal. Ogden wondered what other view there might be to take. Everybody had seemed lively and happy enough when Kitty was married. But there's the other side, the side that turns to view with a consideration of the complicated relations of a good many new and diverse elements, new people coming in. We had a case in our own family some years ago when my young cousin married poor Lizzie. She is dead now. Her father died six months before her and left a good deal to be divided up. Her husband was trustee for the boy after she herself went and he made us a good deal of trouble. He had his eye on the estate from the start and more than a share in the handling of it. There were a good many meetings in lawyers' offices, more trying than the courts themselves. There was a good deal of money lost and there is a good deal of feeling that will never be got over. He traded on his wife's memory all through. Yet the family welcomed him very cordially and trustfully. We thought the poor girl was going to be so happy. She was, she never knew. Ogden sighed. This was dismal matter. Oh well, continued Fairchild, resuming his cigar with an air of passing to lighter topics. This can't apply here. All of us are happily married or are going to be. Freddie Pratt nonchalantly blew an ineffable smoke ring across the room. Walworth slipped around the table to close the last inch of crack in the door. Oh dear, yes, he exclaimed. And none of us are being troubled through relations by marriage. The door was shut, but the penetrating voice of Ann Wilde came through it clearly and Walworth winced. Oh dear, no, he protested. I should say not, chimed in Freddie Pratt. With his self-satisfied little ba-uh, the cigars were ending. Come, let us go out to the others, said Floyd. In the drawing room Ogden presently encountered Jesse Bradley and her parents. The girl herself appeared as dressed as the occasion could warrant. But her father and mother wore the everyday of elements in which he had first seen them. A fortnight before, on the occasion of a call at Hinsdale, they had an easygoing aspect, as if they hardly cared to put themselves out greatly. They were present in the triple capacity of relatives of the hostess of suburbanites and a bodyguard to escort their daughter back home after another of her frequent visits in town. And their effect was quite provisional and transitory. Mrs. Bradley was a pleasant woman whose face was full of the fine lines of experience and whose hair had thinned greatly without changing its dry. Sandy Brown. She wore an old-fashioned tortoise-shell comb. She met Ogden here precisely as she had met him in her own house. He noticed presently that she treated everybody else in exactly the same fashion and he learned subsequently that she had, practically, one invariable manner for all times, places, and people. It was a manner that he found very quiet, simple, straightforward, and friendly. It showed that she valued herself and was also disposed to accord a good value to anybody else. It seemed to say, as plainly as words, The Lord is the maker of us all, so let's have no more fuss about it. It was the good American manner in full bloom. Her husband had a jovial eye, a grizzled mustache, a rotund, polished forehead, and cheeks that hung downward fatally into his big, round, short neck. He appeared to have valued his peace of mind sufficiently to preserve it and to be satisfied with the moderate success that comes from moderate effort. He wore a short-waisted, double-breasted frock coat, and there were no wrinkles in it, either front or back. He would have found it impossible to thrust his plump hand in between any two of the buttons. He was given in the directory as Bradley, Dannell, H, Secretary, and Treasurer. Daryl and Bradley printing and lithograph company. He had been one of the organizers of the corporation, but had since yielded the lead to others a more push and means. He had a moderate salary in a small block of the stock since he was assisting the business as an officer, rather than directing it as an individual. He had little personal annoyance from typographical unions and from the paper manufacturers' trusts as for pie and proofreaders' errors, matters which have a power to make some men agonize. He merely laughed at them. The concern, besides its central establishment, had a few retail branches placed here and there through the business district. One of them, on the ground floor of the Clifton, supplied the LaSalle Street banks and insurance offices with ledgers, ink, and blotting pads. He had an acre of ground and a two-story framehouse at Hinsdale, and Ogden remembered the small greenhouse where he fed his craze for chrysanthemums. We have come to take our girl back home, he said to Ogden as he laid his plump hand, lightly on his daughter's shoulder. That is, if she can make up her mind to go with us. Just as two all alone in the house, added her mother with a humorous pathos, no chick nor child. Jesse laughed and shook out a bit of her frivolous finery. Her face had a tired look, but motion seemed more restful to her than rest itself. Ogden canvassed the three. Wins, could this girl have got her suppleness, her like, gay, rapid, in size of air, her aspen-like quiverings of nervous force, not from her parents, from the March winds, perhaps, that sweep down from Mackinaw over the limy and choppy expanse of Lake Michigan from the varied breezes, hot and cold, that scour the prairies on their way from scorched up Texas or from the snow fields beyond Manitoba, not even a relative pursued her father, not one in all the country round except Francis. All our people are down east, he continued, addressing Ogden more directly. They write every so often to learn if we are millionaires yet. We always have to say no, and that discourages them. They stay where they are. But Jesse goes around to look after them, contributed her mother with combined complacency and reproach. She goes to Pittsfield and Nantucket and everywhere. People are beginning now to ask her up to Wisconsin summers. And sometimes Florida. The girl shrugged her shoulders in a fidgety fashion. Oh, well, Mama, she said, I have to circulate. Let's circulate some now. She suggested turning to Ogden. I'll be ready to go when you are. She called back to her father. End of chapter six. Chapter seven of The Cliff Dwellers. This is a labor box recording. All labor box recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit laborbox.org. The Cliff Dwellers by Henry Blake Fuller. Chapter seven. We have been expecting to see you out at the house again. She said to the young man, as they settled on the stairs, they were seated just below the landing. Her dress, trimmed with silver braid and little groups of flaunting bows, grazed his knees. He could number every stone in the rings that crowded her long, thin fingers. We didn't suppose a matter of 18 miles would scare you. It doesn't. But you're never home. Oh, yes, I am. Once in a while. When you do favor us again, get a timetable for the next time after. I never heard of the queue charging anything for them. I will. Awfully sudden about Mamie, wasn't it? She said, with a suddenness of her own. I didn't suppose it was going to end like that. At least, not right away. I dare say you have been noticing how Cousin Francis looks at me every now and then. You might think I was the one to blame. She's been talking to Mother about it tonight. And me. I guess I'm going home all right enough. Don't you want to? Oh, I don't mind. But what's the diff? Far as Mamie is concerned, I mean. She was bound to have him. She wouldn't have anybody else. It was their affair, wasn't it? Well, then, why not let them manage it? I suppose so, assented George dubiously. Her father won't see her, I hear. I'd like such a father. Her sister can't do anything with him. Her sister? Yes. She's got about as much influence as anybody. Have you seen her? Yes. Are you very well acquainted with her? Not very. She belongs to the next older generation. How much older? Two or three years. Twenty or thirty. She's about the age as her mother. But more useful. Mamie thinks everything of her. She's a good, steady, plodding stay at home. She ought to have been let out and given a show. She's buried there. He makes her do lots of work. Her father? Yes. She writes and figures a good deal of the time. She keeps the grocers and butchers books for one thing. Mamie says she knows how to telegraph. They've got their own wire right up to the house. When she wants dissipation, she goes to her friendly. And she belongs to a club over there where they read papers and discuss. She was a good deal upset. Earn, said Ogden, abstractedly. He recalled the girl's appearance and her little ordeal of having to face a complete stranger at so distressful a juncture. Yet she had borne herself with dignity and composure. Nor was he able to deny that she had been as perfectly courteous as her brief appearance permitted. How that he understood, he had less cause for complaint against her brother and none at all against her. He dwelt lingering lay on the idea of a complete stranger. He did not feel that it would have been infinitely more trying to face a curious neighbor. He had begun to idealize the ordeal and the victim of it. A penny for your thoughts. He presently heard his companion saying, he came out of a study and looked through the stair rail at the little throng below. Two gentlemen had just come out of the dining room. I was wondering who they were. He replied, at a venture. Who, those two? The pair was followed by Walbirth, whose pleasure it was to pour libations whenever the gathering of two or three together gave a pretext for that ceremony. One of the two sucked in his upper lip with due caution and both united in a pretense, decent but slight and futile, that the ladies knew nothing of these hospitable doings. The tall, brown one is Mr. Ingles. Haven't you met him here before? She indicated a man of 40, whose face was shaven except for a small pair of snuff-colored whiskers and whose mouth made a firm, straight, thin line. Ingles? Arthur J. I don't know. I guess so. He owns the building. The Clifton. He is no dude, murmured Ogden to himself. A. Who said he was? Oh, nobody. Who is the other? That's Mr. Atwater. Mr. Ingles' architect, their chums, were in college together. Isn't he the most fascinating looking man you ever saw? I jove. He is distinguished. For a fact, was he born here? Don't you think it's lovely for a man of his age to have gray hair? Gray that's almost white. I shall do all I can to make my husband gray-haired before he is middle-aged. She laughed at her own audacity. He turned about and stared at her. And she laughed more heartily yet. And don't you like the twirl of his mustache? Or would you have preferred him with whiskers? Cut in a straight line right across his cheeks with the corners near his mouth rounded off. But not too formally. And do you notice the bridge of his nose and the air gives him and his eyes wait till he turns around? There. Did you ever see such a hazel? He seems to have everything. Youth. Experience. Style. Family. Why did you ask if he was born here? She demanded suddenly. Did I? I must have meant. Is he going to die here? Why not? You don't suppose that men of talent are going to leave Chicago after this. Do you expect to provide them with careers? I don't see why we shouldn't. We're on the crest of the wave. And we're going higher yet. From now on anybody who leaves us is likely to be sorry for it. Ogden looked back at Ingalls. He stood in a doorway between Fairchild and Jesse's father. Is his wife here? Oh, he isn't married. I don't believe. Not married? Ingalls, I mean. Oh yes, he's married. Is his wife here? Dear, no. You have to speak weeks ahead to get her. He's the one. Then Ogden assured himself, which one? Her husband. Do you know her? I've met her here. She leaned over the railing. What are they all laughing about? Down there. Do you want to go and see? Mrs. Floyd and her sister had appeared in the doorway. Between them was a little girl of five. She had one hand and her mother's. And with the other she clutched a dilapidated doll. The child wore a Guimpy and a prim little frock with puff sleeves. She had long, smooth brown hair that turned thickly at her shoulders and a pair of big, brown, wondering brown eyes. It's Claudia, said Jesse Bradley. Yes, let's go down. Atwater had placed himself before the child. Half crouching, half kneeling. He had the persuasive and ingratiating manner proper to a fashionable architect whose clients were largely women and wealthy ones. And he seemed willing enough to bring his batteries to bear on the tiny woman before him. Isn't it pretty late for Dolly? Aught in she to be put to bed in her own little house. The child looked at him soberly. She hasn't got any house. Hasn't got any house. He glanced at her father. Oh, it is pitiful. In a whole city full. But if I were to say that I would make you one, he went on one with four rooms and windows in each room. The child pondered, fixing a bashful look on his handsome face. Would there be stairs? Yes, and closets? Mama says we never have enough closet room. That's right, Claudia, said Ingles, commandingly. Score the profession. Yes, closets, if you insist. And glass in the windows? Yes, dear me, they get more exacting with us every year. And she rolled her eyes around the group, as if wondering whether any important detail had been overlooked. Gas fixtures? Would there be one in every room with four globes on it? Perhaps. But don't charge the poor child a full commission on them, said Ingles grimly. Ah, murmured at water with a world of meaning. And if I were to promise to put a nice little red chimney on the roof, what would you say? The child clasped her doll firmly and looked down at the carpet. I should know whether to belive you, she said shyly. There was a burst of laughter. You dear little tot, cried Mrs. Fairchild, gathering her up on no very definite grounds for a kiss. Her father laughed loudest of all, but her mother contracted her eyebrows into stress. That dreadful horror, whimpered the poor woman, she must go. Don't dismiss your bone. Laughed at water. Thankful for the diversion. She'll produce a beautiful accent in time. Well, after that, said her father, I think our little legintums had better retire. Say good night, Claudia. Not yet, said Ingles. Not before she has learned that she may have her doubts about a contractor. Perhaps, but about an architect? Never. Remember that great truth. Good night, my child. Won't you kiss me? He lowered his face, but Claudia drew back. I don't like wish-key, she said solemnly. For heaven's sake, my pet, cried Floyd. Are you trying to start a panic? There's horror. Go, go. Good night, Claudia, called at water. We won't forget your house. Upon my word, Ingles, he went on rapidly, and with a face still slightly flushed. I believe I shall have to reconsider that determination of mine I spoke to you about the other day. What's that? Asked Walworth. To give up skyscrapers and to do nothing but colonial houses for the nobility and gentry. Skyscraping is bad enough, but the demands of the modern house builder are worse. Ingles, you're not as evil as I said you were. I'm sorry I ever called you a Philistine. Why did you do that? Asked Fairchild, amused. Because, answered Ingles, I took two weeks to consider whether I could afford to let the Clifton have four good street fronts. Didn't you say, demanded at water, that you wanted to put up an architectural monument that would be a credit to the town? Would an 18-story flank of bare brick have been a pleasant object? Or, rather, is it? For you see that sort of business all over the city. Heavens, he went on. We're doing some horrible things here. But we are not the ones who are altogether to blame. Who says you haven't done well with the Clifton? Demanded Anne Wilde. Most of the ladies had retired from these masculine topics and were huddled in a gossipy little group at the foot of the stairs. Anne had remained behind as an owner of real property. That system of elevators is the most magnificent thing I ever saw. At waterground, that's all a building is nowadays. One mass of pipes, pulleys, wires, tubes, shafts, shoots, and whatnot running through an iron cage of from 14 to 20 stages. Then the artist comes along and is asked to apply the architecture by festooning on a lot of tile, brick, and terracotta. And over the whole thing hovers incessantly the demon of 9%, a slap at me, setting those. It's enough to make you wonder whether Pericles ever lived. I doubt if he did, concluded Atwater. Are you the only sufferer? asked his client. How many of our subcontractors failed? Two, how many times were we set on fire by salamanders? Three, how many drunk and night watchmen were discharged? Four, or five, how much of the ten work did you condemn? Lots. How many of the contractor suffered a penalty for overtime? Too many. How many times did Carpenter's wreck plaster work? Fifty. How many times did plasterers ruin woodwork? A hundred. How many men were killed or injured? Thirteen. Thirteen? cried Anne Wilde. How horrible! Then you don't encourage building? commented Bradley. And Mr. Atwater wouldn't encourage young men to go into architecture? As engineers, not as architects, replied Atwater. Or shall I say, as constructionists? Good word, murmured Ingles. Thanks. I've got 15 draftsmen up under the roof of the Clifton. When a new one comes, I say, my dear boy, go in for mining or dredging or build bridges or put up railway sheds, if you must. But don't go on believing that architecture nowadays has any great place for the artist. There won't be another fair until long after you are dead and gone. I think I've had one of your young men with me lately. Bradley said, he told us that he had been designing labels out at the stockyards but had been in your office before that. Art may cover a wide range, you see. He said, laughing. Yes, what is his name? Brainard, I think. He was a dark young fellow. He looked a little dissipated. It seemed to me. That's the one, said Atwater. Now there's a case. That boy's father has treated him shamefully. He might have been made something of. He had decided taste for drawing and hardly any other. I won't say he had any great ability, but that wouldn't have mattered so much with training. However, he had no training to speak of and we couldn't use him. He hasn't got the slightest faculty for business. They wouldn't have made a teller out of him in 20 years. But that was what they tried to do. And when it failed, Fairchild gave a delicate little cough. You don't have to listen, Fairchild, said Atwater. Neither does Mr. Pratt, unless he chooses. Fairchild withdrew a little from the group and stood with his hands behind his back. While the toe of his boot moved the corner of a rug to and fro over the polished floor. Freddie Pratt held his place, but moderated his show of interest. Ogden followed this new recital with a curious concern. His father lost all patience with him. Atwater went on. Naturally, such a father would with such a son. He's all together out of the family now. Is he with you yet? He asked Bradley. We had him for a while, but he was pretty irregular and unreliable. I never knew why until now. He was pretty shabby, too. I guess he was about grazing bottom most of the time. I never knew what brainered he was. Anyway, he seems to have made a good try, said Ingalls. I suppose he'll live on post-obits now and go to the dogs as fast as possible. If he's let go of his hole lately, declared Atwater, it's on account of his brother. Everything's done for him. He has just run right ahead. Do you know, he continued, dropping his voice and glancing aside towards Fairchild, that brainered has just pushed that burt of his into the vice presidency right over everybody. I don't see how Fairchild can stand it. And what could be better calculated to infuriate the other one? What is his name, Marcus? I take to drink myself. I didn't listen to all this and was swayed accordingly. His brief, fluttering attempt to idealize Abbey brainered ended and he saw her only in the cold, garish light of crass reality that was beating down so fiercely on the rest of the family. He had been meditating on calling upon her at her father's house, moved by the kind of sympathy that anticipates an invitation or does without one. This project he now determined to abandon. End of Chapter 7 Chapter 8 of The Cliff Dwellers This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Campbell Schelp. The Cliff Dwellers by Henry Blake Fuller. Chapter 8 MacDowell had not quartered himself on the twelfth floor of the Clifton as distinguished from the eleventh or the thirteenth or any other by a mere chance. He had not been influenced by any finicky consideration of light, prospect, ventilation, or nearness to the elevators. His sole reason for selecting Room No. 1262 was that Room No. 1263 was occupied by Arthur J. Ingalls, the owner of the building. Ingalls occupied a very small room upon whose door was his name, his name and nothing more, in very small letters. The next door beyond was lettered, Office of the Building, and this second room had communication with the first by a door between. None of these three doors, however, had as much interest for MacDowell as the one between his own office and the private office of Ingalls. This door was closed, but it was MacDowell's dream and ambition to see it open. And his thoughts he constantly saw it standing ajar in an intimate and friendly fashion, while he and Ingalls and other magnets of Ingalls' ilk circulated through it freely and all did business together. Up to the present time this door had never been opened, nor had MacDowell ever had access to the other suite except by the farther door, through which tenants passed to request repairs or to pay their monthly rent. Ingalls was enough of a lawyer to be a real estate man, and enough of a real estate man to need to be a lawyer. He supervised the drawing of his own deeds and leases and seldom took counsel and matters between landlord and tenant. As a landlord, he had found it advantageous to divest himself of his soul by making the Clifton into a stock company. He himself held all the shares but five. He had an extraordinary faculty for keeping himself out of the papers, but this did not prevent MacDowell from knowing that he was constantly engaged in enterprises of the first magnitude, and he felt that association with this great capitalist would be immensely to his own advantage. But he had accomplished only one step that might be reckoned in advance. He had undertaken the financial arrangements connected with St. Assef's Choir. This was a large, well-trained body and was provided with all the expensive paraphernalia of a high service. It included four or five tenors and bases who commanded rather good salaries, as well as an expert organist and an experienced choir master who commanded larger ones. The management had been by committee, and several of the pillars of the church, Ingles among them, had learned the difficulty of mediating between music, money, and ritualism. A member of a previous committee had delighted in translating and adapting Latin hymns for Christmas and Easter, and then putting his hands into his pockets now and then to make good a small deficit in the budget. Ingles and his computers were ready enough to put their hands into their pockets, but they were glad, one and all, to escape the details of administration. It was here that MacDowell stepped forward. He cynically acknowledged that religion must be made to play into the hands of business, and he justified himself to himself by many good arguments. The details of the new dispensation were arranged in a downtown office. MacDowell had tried to contrive that that the office should be Ingles' own, but the meeting was held after all, in another tall tower, a block or two down the street, and Ingles himself was not present more than ten minutes. MacDowell regretted this. He felt very well disposed towards Ingles. He would have done almost anything for him, for a commission. But MacDowell did not push this choir matter to the neglect of his own proper business. He was engaged at about this time with a new subdivision out beyond the South Parks. He had bought up a ten acre tract, which he himself acknowledged to be rather low-lying, and which his rivals with an unusual disregard of the courtesies of the profession did not hesitate to call and out an out swamp. He had mended matters somewhat by means of a dam in dislewis, which drained off a part of his moisture onto grounds lying lower still, other men's grounds, and on the driest and most accessible corner of his domain, he had placed a portable one-story frame shanty, which had already done duty on other subdivisions, and alongside of it stood a tall flagpole which flaunted a banner with his own name and number on it. This tract, by the way, had absorbed some moderate portion of Anne Wilde's hoarded savings. A week of rainy weather now and then would lay a complete embargo on MacDowell's operations in this quarter. His plank walks would float off in sections, the trees along his avenues would sag deeply into the slush and would sway sideways in spite of their networks of rusty wire, and the cellars of the three or four unfinished houses that he had artfully scattered through this promising tract would show odds and ends of Carpenter's refuse floating around in muddy water a foot deep. It was an appalling spectacle to one who realized the narrow margins upon which many of these operations were conducted, or who failed to keep in mind the depths that human folly and credulity may sound. Oh, it's all right enough, MacDowell would say, and it's going to dry up before long. Occasionally it did dry up and stay still for several weeks. Then on bright Sunday afternoons folly and credulity in the shape of young married couples who knew nothing about real estate, but who vaguely understood that it was a good investment, would come out and would go over the ground, or try to. They were welcomed with a cynical effrontery by the young fellow who MacDowell paid $50 a month to hold the office there. He had an insinuating manner and frequently sold a lot with the open effect of perpetrating a good joke. MacDowell sometimes joked about his customers, which never about his lands. He shed upon them the transfiguring light of the imagination, which is so useful and necessary in the envions of Chicago. Land generally, that is, subdivided and recorded land, he regarded as a serious thing, if not indeed as a high and holy thing, and his view of his own landed possessions mortgaged though they might be, and so partly unpaid for, was not only serious, but idealistic. He was able to ignore the pools whose rising and falling befell the supports of his sidewalks with the green slime, and the tufts of reeds and brushes, which appear here and there, spread themselves out before his gaze in the similitude of a turkey lawn. He was a poet, as every real estate man should be. We of Chicago are sometimes made to bear the reproach that the conditions of our local life draw us towards the sordid and the materialistic. Now, the most vital and typical of our human products is the real estate agent. Is he commonly found tied down by earthbound pros? New fellows, said Floyd to McDowell during one of sister Anne's sessions, are the greatest thought I ever struck. He spoke in a half quizzical, half admiring way, and showed some effort to handle the language with the western ease and freedom of those to the man are born. Do you know, when I had been here three or four months, some fellows took me with them to the banquet of the Dela State Board. Well, it was an eye opener. I never saw anything like it. It was Chicago. Oh, Chicago. Heavens. How the town was hymned and celebrated. It was personified. That's right, said McDowell and glorified, of course, and died of fight. Why not? Why not indeed? cried Aim White. I haven't been around much yet, but you strike me as the most imaginative lot of people I ever saw. Never Chicago is involved, amended Walworth. How you idealize it, cried Anne enthusiastically. How you? It needs to be idealized and badly, said her sister. But McDowell's interests in the Southern suburbs as well as at St. Assaf's were soon set aside by another matter. Domestic interests claimed his attention. His father-in-law had now passed some two or three months in Chicago. He had entered the city without any conception of its magnitude, and he had remained in it without rising to any conception of its metropolitan complexities. He had made a change that was too great and too late. He made but an ineffectual attempt to connect and identify himself with the great rush of life going on all about him. He came downtown almost every day to spend an hour or more in McDowell's office, where he took a certain satisfaction in following out the intricacies of the local topography by passing a thin, blue-veined hand over McDowell's maps and his canvas-bound books of plats. McDowell treated him with considerable patience and with as much respect as was due to a man who had no great experience in real estate and little aptitude for learning. One day, old Mr. Ogden, who apprehended the lake winds little better than the local lay of the land, took his light cold and returning home from the office. Two days after, pneumonia developed, and within a week he died. George undertook the charge of such arrangements as recognized the old New Englander as a dead man merely, and McDowell subsequently took charge of those which recognized him as a dead property owner. First, the funeral, afterwards the probate court. A funeral is more disagreeable than a wedding, chiefly because its multifarious details make their demands with but a scanty notice in advance. All of these details George was now called upon to face and to dispose of. He squared his jaw, set his eyes, put a cold, heavy paving-stone in place of his heart, and met these details one by one. It was a man's privilege. Brower went with him to the undertakers and mediated between grief and rapacity. Be careful here, Brower said to him in an undertone. They were in a room where sample casket stood on end against opposite walls and were let down one by one for the inspection of purchasers. They always show the most expensive ones first. Don't look at these. You don't need to pay a hundred and fifty dollars. You can select a suitable one for eighty or ninety. Perfectly good and no loss of respect. How about the outside box? Asked the man in due course. He was in his shirt-sleeves and wore a high-sale-cat. Here, whispered Brower, you'll have to take the most expensive. It's chestnut, fifteen dollars. Nothing else but plain pine for a dollar fifty. Shameful, isn't it? Brower arranged for the handles in the plates. He also met the family at the railway station next day and saw the casket put on board the Eastbound Express. He and George were walking slowly up and down the platform alongside the train when a man in blue overalls leaned out of the door of the baggage car and called to them. He held a paper in his hand. They seemed quite regular, he said. Our road is pretty strict. The airtight casket is all right for interstate travel, but the doctor hasn't signed the certificate. George turned on Brower with a look of anguish. Here, cried Brower, stretching up his hand. How forgetful of me. He'll sign it now. Go along, Ogden. The man hesitated. Not contagious. Certainly not handed down. Got a pencil. There, here's a two. Take extra care. The dead man's son paid for the music and flowers. His wife and daughter folded away his clothes and his son-in-law undertook to see his estate through the courts. I don't believe you'd better pay the doctors and undertaker yet, he counseled. Let them file their claims with the probate people. It doesn't cost but a dollar. And if you pay without, you might be liable over again. You are on other claims. I'll keep a general eye on matters, of course, but questions will be coming up all the time. I don't know but what we'd better have a lawyer first as last. The probate arrangements are different now from what they used to be. More expensive for one thing. Now there's freeze and freeze. They're as good as any, and they're right there in the Clifton, George, only five floors above you. Have we got to go into this thing right away? Ask George as if in physical pain. Oh, no, wait a few weeks. Wait a month if you like. Yes, we'll wait, he sighed. McDowell made no opposition to his wife's suggestion that her mother now come and live with them. He had not anticipated his mother-in-law as a member of his own household, but he liked her well enough and he generally treated her with a dry and sapless sort of kindness. Besides, he looked on domestic arrangements as a mere incident in business life anyway. George, who for some time had been anticipating a home with his parents, could not find an equivalent in a home with the McDowells and he remained with Brower on Busch Street. There was no will. The recasting and consolidation of the small estate had required too much time and attention to leave much for any thought of its redistribution. Mrs. Ogden went into court after the proper time and qualified as administrative tricks. She was a figurehead, of course. She signed various documents at George's instance. George himself was guided by McDowell principally and McDowell got a point now and then from the attorneys. However, the legal labors of freeze and freeze on the Ogden State were chiefly clerical. This did not prevent them from charging like chancellors and chief justices. These charges and others were paid by McDowell who began informally by giving checks on his own private account. He came to receive too. Most of the rents and other payments, which were more conveniently made to him in his own office than to George in the office of the bank and since he paid the estate charges out of his own private account, it seemed natural enough that his own account, which was with the underground, should receive the sums coming in. This arrangement came about gradually without receiving any formal acquiescence, but George appeared satisfied with the business capacity of his sister's husband while his mother was an inmate of her son-in-law's house where inquiry and explanation were easily enough made. These details, once in hand, appeared to give little hindrance to the course of McDowell's regular business. His acquaintances in his own line noticed its increasing speed and agreed among themselves that he was flying a little high for a man of his limited resources. He had more work for the surveyors and sign painters and he presently added a clerk or so to his office force. Various small claims were filed in the probate court and were allowed. I think, said George to McDowell, that will use Casner's rent for them. Today is the third. He has been in, I suppose. He'll have to be punched out, replied McDowell. It doesn't do to give them any leeway. He has always been prompt on the first, said George, somewhat annoyed. The next morning he entered the paying teller's pen for a moment, as occasionally happened, his eye chanced to a light on the balance sheet that ran from L to Z. McAvoy, Lewis M. 81.98. McCloud, Peters and Co. 1187.25. McDowell, E.H. .0. How's this, Joe? Asked Ogden. What's the matter with McDowell? Pulled out yesterday, responded the payer briefly. END OF CHAPTER VIII. CHAPTER IX. OF THE CLIFFDWELLERS. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org THE CLIFFDWELLERS by Henry Blake Fuller CHAPTER IX. McDowell's defection from the underground was presently followed by an addition to its working force. One morning, a month or so later, Ogden, in an interval of leisure, glanced across to the window before which Burton Brainerd had railed in his desk and saw a young woman within the enclosure. She sat there alone, before a desk of the peculiar kind that has been contrived for the typewriter, and her effect at the moment was that of leisure. Finally, and elegantly achieved, he was at once struck by her peculiar facial expression. She had one eye open and the other shut. All at once, she affected an instantaneous change which closed the open eye and opened the closed one. Then she opened both and gave out a smile of recognition, surprise, and pleasure, which he now perceived to be the work of the features of Cornelia McNabb. Here we are, she seemed to say. She had followed Bert's elevation to the Vice Presidency, along with the new desk and the handsome rail work enclosing it. Bert's concerns, despite his rise in rank, were now, as here to fore, largely outside the bank proper. He did something in stocks now and then, and he kept the run of things on the board of trade. But he was like his father in looking upon the bank as a personal and family matter, a point of view which the action of the body of stockholders somewhat justified. As a general thing, they made up a chorus that huddled in the wings, several of them declining to come on even for the election that advanced Brenner Jr. to the second place. So he saw no very good reason why the bank generally should not foot the bill for his own clerk hire. Why can't you use the man we've got here already? His father had asked him, however. Ain't one enough? No, somebody else has always got him. If I could have one for myself just for an hour or so, it would be a great help. Why don't you get one of those girls that circulate around upstairs? I hear there's one or two of them. I believe I will. And thus Cornelia McNabb came in for a brief daily attachment to the Underground. She sat in her place quite unoccupied for an hour or so, looking about inquiringly, fidgeting a little and watching the clock. Ogden glanced over in her direction once or twice. He saw that she had contrived to express her rive by several subtle alterations in her dress and that she had succeeded in enveloping herself in a promising atmosphere of gentility. She, in her turn, kept an eye on him and contrived to time her own luncheon along with his. She thrust her hatpin into place just as he buttoned on his cuffs and she drew a black dotted veil across the tip of her nose just as he was reaching up for his hat. They sauntered out separately but came together in the hallway. Do I look nice or don't I? She asked him as she passed one of her gloves over the smooth surface of the massive marble ball astrade. You'd needn't think the Milwaukee girls are Jays. They're too near Lakeside and Waukesha for that. You do indeed, but where are the chains and rings? Fiddle. I hope I know better than that now. The elevators were sliding up and down behind their gilded grills with great rapidity and hundreds of hungry helpers were stepping out of them in search of brief refreshment. Some of these stopped in the basement vestibule and our young people looking over the ball astrade saw them buying packages of cigarettes or the noon papers. There came to them to the voice of the man who stood at the foot of the elevator shafts and who regulated the movements of the various cabs by calling out their numbers with a laconic yop. He wore a blue uniform with guilt buttons and he had a gold band on his cap. He was as important as Ingles himself, perhaps more so. I believe I'll go up to the restaurant today, said Cornelia with a precious little intonation. Her mincing tone intimated a variety of things, altered conditions among them. I go up there occasionally myself, said Ogden. You've entertained me several times downstairs and you ought to give me my chance now, don't you think? Quite happy, I'm sure, she murmured demurely. Up called Ogden and up they went. Well, said Cornelia, a few minutes later, taking off her gloves with a self-conscious grace and pushing aside her tumbler so as to find a place to lay them. I can't say I've been overworked this morning. I haven't seen my new man at all. He's out a good deal. But the old one was on deck. In what way? Oh, he put me through a regular drill, had quite a number of remarks. I shouldn't care to take him down. May have to, though, if he gets too bossy. Eh? Oh, well, I don't know that I care for so very much. Thank you. What are you going to have? Chicken soup? All right. Yes, chicken soup, John. She leaned back in her chair with a genteel grace and looked out of the window down on the snowpiled roofs below. Do you know I used to think I was a pretty smart girl, but I begin to believe I'm a good deal of a dummy after all. That man has been in the building all this time, and I have just found it out. Ogden's eye and voluntarily followed the waiter. Not that black man, Nix. But how could I be expected to spot his name among all the steen-hundred on that bulletin by the door? I did see it there this morning, though, just by accident. Who's? Oh, Ingles's. Arthur J. Ingles. Think of his being in this very building all this time. She put the rim of her tumbler up under the edge of her veil. In it, repeated Ogden, he owns it. He does? Great Scott! She choked and spluttered, setting her glass down suddenly. Well, I'll be switched. She gave another gulp. I suppose his father willed it to him. No, he put it up for himself. I heard him say so. And you know him? A new light shone in her brimming eyes. Yes. Well, she declared with emphasis. Now I see my way. He's got to have me do shorthand for him. And then I shall see her. Ah. Yes. Can't you tell Mr. High and Mighty that you know a respectable girl who is trying to make her own living? She ran her fingers over the edge of one of her cuffs, which was slightly frayed. You see how poor I am. George laughed. The laundries are pretty rough for a fact. How mean of you, she exclaimed, and laughed too. She thrust back her soup. I don't want it. I don't want anything. I can't eat a mouthful. Then I was wrong about his being a society dude completely. And how is she? Supposing I've made a mistake about her too? I don't know. I'm sure. I've never seen her. You're telling me a fib. Oh, truly, I never have. I don't believe there's any such person. I think she's somebody that the papers have just made up. How many people have you found to work for? Oh, three or four, but time for more. Rhyme ain't it? I'm trying for the Massachusetts brass, but I'd rather get Ingles. She gave a dance at Kinsley's night before last. How many words can you do? About ninety, enough for business. Of course, I couldn't manage courts or banquets or sermons. I expect she comes down to his office for a check every now and then. Why don't she ever have her picture in the Sunday papers? Oh, Lord, I hope they're above that. What's the objection? I'd have mine there quicker and scared if I could. I will sometime, bet you, and not in any office togs either. But don't dream of rivalry. She isn't real. She's only a beautiful myth. What will you take next, roast beef? I don't mind. Yes. When I'm alone, I usually skip right from soup to pie or pudding. But I guess I will take something a little solider this time. Nothing makes me tireder than sitting still and fidgeting. She tapped her toes on the mosaic pavement and gave a hitch and a pat to the dimity curtain alongside her. I squirmed around for an hour with a whole book full of other people's notes that I might have been writing out. What sort of a young fellow is he? He has his own way. Only child, I suppose? No. Only son? No. Yes. I don't know. How do you like your work? Middling. I'm terribly enterprising, but I guess I was never meant for a drudge. Say, what does a patroness really do? Oh, nothing much. She just has her name on the list. Sometimes they don't even go. I noticed that your Mrs. Floyd is beginning to be one. I've seen her in the papers two or three times. She doesn't like it, though. Sometimes names get put on just to fill up. My dear Mrs. Floyd, we thought you wouldn't mind. You don't do you, they say. But my name is in the papers, she objects. You are too sensitive, they reply. You've had your name in the papers at home, her husband reminds her. Yes, she answers. But here, she hates the town. Well, if I was a patroness, I guess I'd have some say. No figurehead for me. I wouldn't be put on either. I'd put the others on. I see you were cut out for a society career. I guess you've about struck it. I went to a dance a week ago tonight. Periclean pleasure party. Like it? T'want much. And I was invited to a fireman's ball, such impudence. Right, don't cheapen yourself. I guess I understand that. Meanwhile, a new name of a different character was going on in the director's room of the underground. This is not to be taken as indicating that the Green Bay's plane of the Long Center Table was littered with reports in memoranda and that the high-backed, leather-seated chairs were filled with the solid figures of a dozen solid men. No, the aspect of the room was that of Sunday-like desoccupation and the only people in it were an appealing young woman and a stubborn old man. Let her come in, Father, please do. Take care, Abby. You know what I think of you, but you make a mistake when you try this. Abby Brainer'd passed her handkerchief across her tearful face. Her father stood before her with his legs spread wide and his feet firmly planted. He had his hands thrust deeply into his trousers' pockets. His jaw was set and his shaggy brows were drawn down over eyes that glared fiercely at nothing. Then meet her out in the hall somewhere just for a minute. She laid her hand tremblingly upon the old man's arm. He moved, as if to shake it off. Then just walk by outside. She can see you from the cab. He turned his eyes upon her, half an ex-postulation and half in threat. Abby! Then, Father, just step here to the window. She'll see you and know it's all right. Come. She caught hold of a fold of a sleeve. You won't keep her waiting out there such a cold day as this. Brainer'd moved his feet, but he turned his back on the window and fixed his eye on the fireplace. His daughter's light touch was quite powerless on his huge bulk. Father, you know Bert says. Abby! He interrupted sharply. Don't you say a word to set me against Bert? I won't hear it. Don't drag him in or you'll be sorry for it. But, Father, don't you understand? He struck her. There's a mark on her face now. Brainer'd's great frame shook, but he made no other sign. This quiet she took is a favourable symptom. She would have done better in perceiving that he was between two contending forces so nearly equal as to hold him almost in equilibrium. The wretch had struck his daughter, a brutal, hateful thing as regarded his daughter, or any daughter, or any other woman. But his daughter had defied him, overridden him, and the man whom she had chosen for a master was now the instrument of her punishment. The accounts appeared to balance. However, figures do lie, and his own agitation indicated that the X of human emotion had not been completely eliminated from his problem. He cleared his throat. She has made her bed, Abby, he said in a husky tone, and now she must lie on it. No, Father, you must hear what Bert says. He has had to go up there and... Bert? Is that where he has been this morning? Has he turned against me to good God? What have I done to deserve such treatment as this? First it's Mark with his drawing and is trying to play the fiddle, and then it's this pen pusher that puts on those things Sundays and marches around singing songs. And now it's Bert, who's had every chance to make a good businessman of himself and everything done for him. It's too bad. It's too almighty bad. Abby steadied herself against the corner of the table, her breast heaved with fearfulness. She had never before openly protested to her father, against himself. Why haven't you done anything for the others? Why didn't you give Mark an education? The kind I mean that would have helped him, and the only kind. Why haven't you taken this, Mr. Mame's husband, this man, and made the best of it and found something for him to do? He can work in an office. Oh, Father, she moaned, with a softening note of depreciation. You have made it pretty hard for all of us. Abby, he gasped, are you turning against me too? Abby, I've always thought so much of you and I've done well by you. But I want you to go away. I won't see her. I won't. She must go away and you too. He caught her by the arm and tried to move her towards the door, gently, as if she might go of her own accord. Ogden, on coming in from lunch, found himself intercepted by Freddie Pratt. This youth had a few moments leisure and he assailed Ogden between the wardrobe and the wash stand. I went over to see the vibrates again last night, he communicated. Poor Mame. I wasn't going back on her if others did. She was sitting there all alone in the dark. I guess she had been crying. Anyway, when I lit the gas, her eyes looked red. She wouldn't say much. Good plan. And after he came in, she wouldn't say hardly anything at all. Slow work talking to him. He wasn't drunk exactly, but he had been drinking. Didn't need a light to tell that. I wasn't doing anything at all and all of a sudden he blurted out, I say you young fellow you, what do you mean by coming here and destroying the peace of a man's family? You can bet I was taken back. Then he got up and came towards me. He looked big too. You get out of here. That's what he said. And did you? Oh, yes. I got out. Responded Freddie Pratt with a meat complacency. You surprised me. You showed sense. Freddie looked at him doubtfully. I heard this morning that he had just lost his place with those insurance people. He resumed cautiously. That was what was the matter, I guess. Possibly said George, who had heard from Brower that something of the kind was likely to occur. The fellow's work had been done indifferently of late and he was far from being worth the increased salary he had asked for. As Ogden passed up to the other end of the office, Brainerd appeared in the doorway of the director's room and beckoned to him. His face was pale and disturbed. The veins in the end of his nose showed redly. His eyes burned with an appealing fierceness. Ogden, he said in a loud, hoarse whisper. Where's that typewriter girl? Tell her to bring some water here as quick as she can. She isn't here, sir. She has gone back upstairs. Then you get some yourself. Here, take this tumbler. Be quick and don't make any fuss. Ogden hastened to the wash stand near which Freddie Pratt had detained him. Returning again, he saw through the half-open door that Abby Brainerd was lying back in one of the big chairs with her face pallid and her eyes closed. Her father dipped two of his great clumsy fingers into the glass and made an awkward attempt to sprinkle her face. My poor girl has fainted, he said. The girl's eyes half-opened. She seemed to see Ogden standing just outside. She clutched both arms of the chair and raised herself half-up. Her bosom heaved. Her mouth was drawn tensely. Fainted, she tried to say. Not at all. She gasped once or twice and rose to her feet. I never fainted in my life, she said grandly. I never should think of doing such a thing. She reeled. Her eyes closed. George rushed forward to catch her. Her hand dropped numb on his arm and her head fell heavily on his shoulder. End of Chapter 9 Chapter 10 of The Clip Developers This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org recording by Dwarka. The Clip Developer by Henry Black Fuller. Chapter 10 Ogden and his mother were now beginning to have frequent conferences with regard to the management of the property and to McDowell's connection with the matter. Perhaps the word conference puts, however, too set and a formal stamp on the brief haphazard interchangeings of ideas that took place as transponder with McDowell's own house, a few words after a Sunday dinner or at the front door late at night. And besides being handicapped as to occasion, they were further hampered by McDowell's new relation to them and by their own presence under his roof. Besides, Mrs. Ogden, with a multitude of small experiences, had no ability for grasping things in a large and general way. While George, with a broader and more comprehensive outlook was embarrassed by a lack of experience in the actual details of a business fund sections. Added to this, he was a newcomer. Under all newcomer's disadvantages, he hardly knew where to turn for the proper agents, legal financial, that might have been employed. While many of the agencies and courts, for instance, were different in procedure and even in a name from anything he had known. On the same, though, he said to his mother, things ought to be in a different shape for you. Unbound hand and foot in that bank. No time or thought for anything outside. I don't know, but what you had better put everything with some good real estate from and let them look after repairs and collections and taxes. His mother fixed a pair of anxious eyes upon him and the wrinkles of her perplexity appeared on her forehead. Eugene is real estate. All those lawyers he went on. Anyway, you ought to have an account as administrators with some bank. I believe I'll open one tomorrow. Something has got to be done to make things quicker and clearer. He presently took upon himself the delicate task of intimating to McDowell that a simpler and more regular way of doing things was desired. He went up to McDowell's office in the later part of the afternoon. As he entered at all, that man was standing in the middle of the room. There was a sinister look in his eyes and a contemptuously sarcastic smile on his heavy red lips. He gave a last fold to a small piece of paper that he held in his hands and thrust it into his wrist pocket. It was wider. It's pretty near four now. He was saying to McDowell, so I can't try again today, but I expect to find this all right after 10 tomorrow morning. He gave his hand a hard flip across one side of her fist, dark moustache and passed out. McDowell looked after him solely, damned the brute. He murdered. As Wilder's word implied, he had been in McDowell's office once before on the same day. His salary at San Ezeb now meant more to him than it had meant a month ago and he had called the reference to it and to the delay in his payment. He said to the financial arrangements of the church had gone on with the same precision as its anthems and its processionals. In the present conditional things delayed to Margaret were more than a surprise. More than an embarrassment. It was an exasperation. I don't think for glory. He had declared with an offensive briskness. It's the here and not the hereafter, but I'm busy with. Meadow looked at him uneasily. I'm going to fix up all the salaries next week in one batch. I don't see why any particular man should be favorite favorite repeated vibrate with a loud insolence. I should say not. I don't feel favorite in running my legs off for money three weeks over the week. Can't live on air. We have bills to pay. We ain't singing for the pleasure of it. McDonald contracted his eyes to a critical narrowness. You may not be singing much longer for anything else either. That's another matter. It isn't you that put the corner together. McDonald tap his fingers on the yellow one is office desk. I don't know about that for what I hear. You're not making the sort of record for yourself. That's useful in a church. My private life is nobody's business. I think I'm worth the money. That may work on the stage. It won't work quite so close to the pulpit. Come now. I know a little something of your daily doings. Plenty of men sing who don't hang around rack tracks and moves in cool rooms. And from what I hear, you're helping that young brainer along at a good day too. You'd better wait along with the others. Waitings may hang. I'm here for money. Money, that's mine. If I can't work it with the men who pays out the laws and pressures, I'll try one of the men that contributed them in the first place. It tosses head, insulting it towards the door that led to Ingalls office. McDonald's elbow rested on the edge of his desk. His thumb on the tip of his ear and his middle finger rubbing his father's eyebrow. As he looked out steadily on the wide bird from under his hand. Joseph, he called to his clerk, bring me that checkbook. The man opened a lower drawer and brought out a book whose covers enclose a number of stubs and three or four banks checks. McDonald wrote and passed the check to wide bird who went out with no further words on either side. McDonald did some figuring and saw some people and somewhat later wide bird to return. He threw his check on McDonald's desk contemptuously. That's no good. How's that? No, I can't with him. No, oh, I see. We have changed banks and I forgot to change the name in the check. He picked up a ruler and read the red ink bottle a little nearer. I'll fix it. Sorry to have troubled you. We want to look out for this, Joseph. Why would we do speaking the words that all of them had heard on his entrance words that would have been the reverse of his shorting if they had fully understood them? Bad egg, said my daughter, waiting his head in the direction of just close door. Josh looked at him studiously. He appeared to be in the state of extreme nervous irritation. His widely mustached move up and down stiffly as he filled about with his teeth for the inner membrane of his lips. His long, lean fingers were interlaced and a clicking sound came from his snapping his fingernails together. It was clearly no occasion for more than a partial statement of olden's matter. And this was the most that he permitted himself. But McDonald was in the sensitive state of mind. When one word does the work of three and in the editable state of mind when talk is such a relief that three words he worked 30 in reply. He met George Belief and mortgaged suggestion with the pitching of his shoulders and answered them in a harsh and strident tone. The first thing in doing business, he said, is to have an office to do it in. He looked about his own, his desk, his cashier's window, his letterpress. And the second is to know how to do it. He looked out of the window in a wholly impersonal way, but his words had a more to small slang than he would have given them at almost any other time. Deb knows I've got enough to do already, but the kitty's affairs are mine. She has equal interests with the others and she seems to feel that I'm able and willing to look after them. He spoke with some show of reason and George was of light, so to conceive. There's taxes for one thing or take special assessment alone. There's taxes for one thing or take special assessments alone. They are almost a business by themselves. Say you got 10 acres or so just beyond the limit. Some finally it's a $600 or more for a half a mile of sidewalk, a sidewalk that won't be walked on by seven people a week. What's the reason? Someone of those township politicians or other has got a friend that's a carpenter. Now who's going to tackle the boards and stuff of such things? George looked at him silently. There's tax sales. I guess you never went to one of them. You'd strike a bloodthirsty crew if you did. Supposing you've got a mortgage and a mortgage don't come to a time with his taxes. You've got to buy them out to protect yourself and you've got to get there first. Lastly, I fought this point for a week with one of those tech sharks and so it goes. Real estate is no kindergarten business, I can tell you. The truth of this view was becoming more and more apparent to all of them. He withdrew after some further parlings in a confusing and inconclusive state of mind, well convinced, however, of McDonald's abilities and more fully conscious of McDonald's position as the husband of his father's daughter. Never did the town of his adoption seem less indeed like a kindergarten than when he took his way northward to dinner or when later in the early evening, he made his way over to the west side to call at the Reynard. The thousands of acres of a ramshackle that made up the bulk of the city and the tens of thousands of a row and ugly and half built prairie that composites and want seem together to constitute a great checkerboard over whose squares of the section and township, keenness and repacity played their daring and ready game. And through the middle of the board ran a line, a hinge, a crack, the same line that loomed up in at those various deeds and abstracts of his with the pretentiousness and his capability of equator and through the middle of the board ran a line, a hinge, a crack, the same line that loomed up in at those various deeds and abstract of his with the pretentiousness and in his capability of the equator, the line of a third principle meridian. The brain and house reared itself in the same frivolous uglyness that we have already built. But an excess of light came through the front parlor windows and often was prepared to find that at least four of the eight burners in the brick chandeliers were lightened. This turned out to be the case. It was as great a tribute as the family ordinarily paid to society. The family he found represented by brain and his wife and his elder daughter. Society was a present in the shape of a young couple who were called Mr. and Mrs. Wellington. The elder daughter was seen here with a quiet and simple quality. He could not help looking about fertility for the possible presence of the younger. He had not remained ignorant of a half hour week in a cab outside the bank, but he might have some eyes the inflexibility of a father's will. The old man had refused to see her or to let her see him. The most that he would yield was a species of not coming, coming to communication through word. Mrs. Brennan presented herself to order as a peculiarly faded and ineffective person. It was easy enough to grant her an invisible incapacity. My husband, in fact, had fallen upon her, crushed her, absorbed her as a heavy blotting pad falls on the page of light and delicate writing. Except for one thing, she had no aim, no occupation, no diversion beyond her ills and remedies. This was a pinchant for chess to those who object that chess is an intellectual game. When we simply put the question, have we ever seen it taken up by elderly, invalidated female who has rested content with the mere learning of the rooms? It was thus with Mrs. Brennan, she played a good many games with herself every day and they really suited and rested her on the social board. However, she had hardly learned the first opening and the entertainment of a brilliant young couple, now in her house, fell almost altogether on every for the girl's mother sent back into a passive silence while her father tore through the rooms occasionally and throughout her mouth, more or less apropos in a gruff and abrupt fashion peculiar to himself. His manner with young man had simply closed the house to them. To him, it was an inexplicable and harrassing thing that a young fellow of 325 should not possess the capacity, experience and accumulation of a man of a 35 or 40. He regarded every intruder in the light of a potential son-in-law and no more potential than undesirable. Most of these callers will go down once with its smile as they could master the old man's abrupt ways and disconcerting comments. Then they got out of the house in good order and never came back. However, at the present juncture, he did not appear to resent Orton's appearance, notwithstanding the young man's share in the episode at the bank, perhaps elude upon him as a serviceable proc in another bad quarter of an hour. Yes, Mr. Brenner, Mrs. Valentine was saying as George entered, it's just as I have been telling Abby, you ought to move over on the north side too. Rainel happened to be passing through the room. It had occurred to him that he might turn down one of the sideburners in the back parlor. No, he said in an offhand way too near the lake for them. Romanticism and pneumonia too, perhaps his wife suggested people unrisk it cried Mrs. Valentine voraciously. She had an expansive and affluent effect. She appeared meddlesome, deceasive, confident. It seemed to me that so long as I was going to build, I might as well make a complete swing and out and out break. I always had a fancy for the part of town. So I sent a train around to the different offices. She threw a look of passing reference with her husband who made a little vote in return. And I had the good luck to get a lot on a valuable place. One of the last left and the only a block from Lake Shore Drive. Then I went to Mr. at Water and he has made my house a perfect little dream. I thought it best to have him to dinner once or twice. And I'm glad I did. He's been so interested all through. There hasn't been the least hitched to speak of and I expect to get in within a fortnight. This she went on turning to Olden with an undiminished diversity. Is really my PPC. Holding glance at the husband of the lady whose use of the first person singular was so frank and continuous. He was a young man with a pleasant and unable face and that face was set in the middle of his mind from whose force line the element of the deception was most pitifully lacking. He has a bad air. Mrs. Valentine went on. I'm afraid it's goodbye or nearly the same thing. She took the girl's hand within her own and gave it a repeated pass in a rather careless and self-absorbed way. I shall try to see you often, of course, but it will be so far. How nice it would be if you could only come up there and settle down right next door to me. I've done sign unconsciously. He had fancied the first ray of social elimination as falling upon this benighted family. But it was only the last thing though of a speeding twilight after all. Every withdrew her hand with a quiet dignity. She seemed to put but a moderate value on these protestations. I believe we are satisfied where we are funny. She said in a low and even tone. We have always lived here. We feel more at home in this house than we could anywhere else. All are all our friends are near us. And there's only a little blush came in here. And then there's a church and everything. I have heard my sis I'm told that Northside is very pleasant on some count. But I don't think we are likely able to change change for her father suddenly. I wouldn't leave anywhere else if you paid me to. What's better than this? So attached. Mama her mother wiggling. Mrs. Wellentine continue for some time further to flutter her hands her clothing and her conversation. But she was very slow about getting up and fluttering away. She was a neighbor and her return home was a matter of three minutes. Orton's return was a matter of nearly an hour and he left first. He carried away the discontented feeling of a young man whose aim in the direction of a young woman is frustrated by the presence of and congenial elders and irrelevant outsiders. He had been quite certain of his ability to meet every brain and after the bank episode without any particular embarrassment or restraint. Certainly he had come to view with the more interest a girl whose hand had laid in his and whose head had rested on his shoulder. There had been no embarrassment in her reading of him. A man had been as straightforward and sensible as it always was. But never mind. We should try again. There was only two certain of soon finding her alone. It was against our through the Clemore and the slime of the public ways. He escaped from these by his talismanic night key and stumbled up thoughtfully to his room. There was a light burning in it and the fireplace showed the faint red of the time course a release open and half impact stood in the middle of the floor and sitting up in the bed was a blower busy with the last volume of a Monte Cristo. They now occupy the large front room together, which often had to himself a good half of the time. Back are you said your when did you get in about seven house misery where they were eating back heading all this time went to theater. What did you say? Prattling of thoughts. Any good hot much one pretty girl. Where have you been? Westside brain it's anyway there. The old people and some friends well in times well in time. I used to know well in time. Nice. Quite fellow like complexion. His name was Elvis. No. Add rain. That's the one. Poor fellow. He deserves a better fate. What's the matter with him? His wife owns him. George mine. Brova hitch himself on his pillow and put his finger into the book to keep the place. He was a first rate fellow. Good all through and kind of capable that is. It was a water salary of for 1800 a year or 2000. He married a girl with 2000 a month. No head bookkeeper. No cashier. No secretary could she let him be after that. No. Johnny must be his own master except is regarded. Today his oral hangs on the outskirts of business and picks up a little here and little there. He has desk room somewhere in the Clifton. I believe he does the best he can to preserve his self respect. But I don't see how he can pay the bills and the house rent to house rent. They're building. I mean she is. Oh yeah. Cryed Lord with the deep meaning at what was doing the house for them for her at water. Brower gave a second hash to the pillow and threw the book to the foot of the bed is another is had a trip in the same boat. Why he isn't married. I guess he is just about as hard as any man ever was. But he has fought through gallantly. I say that for him. What's his story begins in the same way. She was a rich to and a high flyer. He had education and family and his profession and no money. He struggled up for 10 years and now now he stand on his own legs. His wife has her own money for her clothes and amusements. He saw he had got to stroke society and he struck it hard because like smoke but he snatched victory from defeat. It was a great act. Speaking of that what do you think I saw there in the stage box tonight. But Brandon just kick that release out of the way if you want to. All alone hope girl with him one of the Clifton type writer the one who used to be down in the lunch room. Hallie Mackman. And of chapter 10. Recording by Dwarka. Chapter 11 of the Cliff Twillers. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Campbell Shelp. The Cliff Dwellers by Henry Blake Fuller. Chapter 11. McDowell second check to Vibert proved good on the opening of business next morning. It was paid in the usual mechanical and impersonal fashion that gives no possible clue to the amount of the balance remaining after but paid it was all the same and Vibert anticipated opportunity for further invective an opportunity which he considered quite possible and would have been by no means sorry to embrace came to not McDowell's friendly intimation that Saint Assif's might presently dispense with Vibert services was soon found to have a solid backing as his signature within less than a fortnight Vibert was dismissed. The one grounds not altogether the same as those that McDowell had figured upon if Vibert after descending to the ground floor had immediately crossed the great court of Clifton instead of lingering there for a moment the outcome might have been quite different but he paused in the midst of its mosaic expanse to pull out the check from his pocket and to take another look at it. He projected his vision so far into the future as the next forenoon and saw the check again rejected this time by the teller of the High Flyers by reason of no account or perhaps by reason of no funds. He dramatized a perceptuous visit to McDowell's office and improvised the scene of denunciation and vigorous action that was to accompany it. It had better be good this time. He muttered with his eyes on the pavement. I'll strangle him if it ain't. He tossed up his head and sent a fierce and frowning glance through one of the great plates of French glass that shut in the court. His eye darted forward on its own level, but it's on nothing save McDowell in his office ten or twelve floors above. Most of the pains that enclosed this central space were of great height and breath and were lettered with the silvered styles and titles of various railroad and mining companies. Others smaller gave light and some ventilation to a few booth like shops a few others immovable half lights admitted a little daylight and no air at all to certain closets like crannies that had a squeezed and crowded role in the Clifton's general economy. One of these last looked out from under a kind of secondary stairway. It lighted the scollery of the Acme lunch room and it commanded a view of that side of the court on which Vibart was standing. Vibart's heel gave a vicious dig into the mosaic pavement and made a quick and rasping turn towards the exit. He crossed the court with a heavy yet rapid stride and passed out into the street. He was quite unconscious of observation but he had been seen. Through the half pain under the stairway a young woman had noted his presence and witnessed his departure. She was a thin faded creature in the forlorn garments of an undisguisable poverty. All but the faintest traces of good looks seem to have been taken from her by a long experience with illness and suffering. She stood close against the pain. Her thin fingers red and chapped showed as they pressed against the cringled puffiness that comes from long immersion in hot water and she stared through with a look of mingled fear in treaty and agony. At the glance which vibrates indignation over McDowell's trickery sent in her direction she started and cowered like one who had encountered that glance before and when he turned to go she recovered herself and flung her bosom and her hands against the pain as if bent upon breaking through and following him. A moment later she appeared in the court. He put on a shabby hat and a flimsy faded shawl. She crossed over hastily and approached the head of the elevator squad. The tall dark man who just went out you saw him. She inquired hurriedly. She spoke in two quick expulsions of the breath and seemed left without a third. Hmm? The man opposed his gold band and guilt buttons to her forlorn and the dragold shabbiness his brief inquiry made an official indifference. But it caused his questioner to feel some of the disadvantage that comes to a young woman from a public and impulsive inquiry after a young man. You saw him standing over there. He had a paper in his hand. Tell me does he work in this building? She was panting and all a tremble but she found breath for these words and well to use it. Yes I saw him. The man answered with the slow reluctance of his kind to be interested in individuals as individuals. Use to work here I believe. Haven't seen much of him lately. Where can I find him? The man turned towards the elevators. One had just that minute come down. Chicago its youthful conductor had called with an airy drawl. Pete set his superior a tall dark man who's been standing around here. He threw his them over towards had on a soft brown hat. Yes I've seen him said the boy used to be in one of them insurance offices didn't he by Burt was that his name by by Burt said the man impatiently come come don't block the way seven he cried in his professional tone and the boy at once slammed his door to and started roof wards. The man retired into himself with a resumption of his idol dignity. The girl at a short remove stood looking at him with an anxious face. She made a timid attempt to approach him again and presently stole away. Vibert was followed down from McDowell's office in the course of half an hour by Ogden. McDowell's dissertation on tax matters with its pointed presentation of extreme cases had left him as we have seen in a state more or or less stirred up and he might find some legal sedative in the office of freeze and freeze. But the hour was now rather late. Freeze and freeze were being locked up by the last of their junior clerks and Ogden was left to ramble through the corridors in a confused and disconsolate state. He was presently accosted by a young woman who appeared to be roaming through the building in a state even more dazed and for lower than his own. She approached him with a peel so plainly written on her features that his hand went instinctively to his pocket for the ready dime. He was used to addresses of this sort. Brower had told him many times that he was a soft mark. He soon ascertained however that what she wanted was not alms but information an appeal which is more familiar still in the great downtown buildings. It comes frequently enough from simple inexperienced creatures who know what they want but not at all how to get it. The girl thrust back a straggling lock and gave him a glance both wild and timid. Please sir. She said. Do you know anyone in this building named Vibert in an insurance office? She pronounced the name with an effort of overcoming it strangeness. There was a certain primitiveness in her speech. It was provincial rustic a fine ear might have called it on pooth. Ogden was struck with her plaintive. Please sir. He had never before heard that literary form of speech in actual use. Well, he said with the unceremonious kindness proper to the occasion and person I think you can learn something about him in the office of the Vesuvian next floor below. Oh thank you sir. She made a moment suggestive of an abbreviated curtsy. It was as much in the way of acknowledgement as her sense of strangeness and confusion of mind appeared to permit. Not that way called Ogden after her adding script. Here come along down these stairs with me. I'll show you where it is. She stumbled after him down the marble steps with a heavy-footed clatter that could hardly have been expected from her slightest and with a timorous hold on the bronze of the handrail. There indicated Ogden the sixth door along on the right Vesuvian fire insurance company it says and he himself continued an abstracted descent by the stairway. His nearest way home lay through the court and out of the door that's led into the asphalt a dally just within the archway of this door two men stood the one was Vibert and the other was a dark young fellow of twenty or more who mugged in by a brief glimmer of fancy made to be brainyards younger son Vibert was in the act of receiving a roll of bills from him. The youth had a pinched and slender aspect. There was a furred of tremulousness in his hands. His eyes were reddish and the people swam I didn't know mark but what you'd gone back on me to Vibert was saying to him if you'd managed to get around a little sooner you'd have saved a certain party from the grand rezu he smiled grimly it's pretty close sailing 30 40 45 he ran over the bills rolled them up and thrust them into his pocket the boy looked at him with some doubt and with a shade of fear and the hardy hood of the other it's all right mark Vibert presently went on with a dog at vagueness I'm his son too why wouldn't he give me any show why wouldn't he let me have a chance to show him what I am why did he go and shut down on me at the very start you cried the boy what can you expect after the way he's treated me his own son they're up there now towards the corner of the underground but they can never make things right with me if it hadn't been for Abby she's about the only one that's turned a hand for me haven't I done well by you too don't forget that well you don't shh I say you don't let the executor settle and give him plenty to settle to they'll good enough for doing it Vibert glanced up at the underground windows he can't live back to the boy you've got to live yourself though and so have I you've got some rights haven't you the boy did not accept this cue perhaps he had already followed it more than once he studied Vibert with eyes that seemed to indicate a change of thought say Russ he hinted deprecatingly you're going to be a little more patient with me Vibert scowled come now Marcus that's what I like is a cheerful house and an orderly one less sniffing and better meals I guess you won't deny that for a housekeeper your sister is a good deal of a fizzle she doesn't have to wash her own dishes does she and that girl I got her does the scrubbing and takes up the ashes doesn't she and we always take our dinners out don't we well then I don't see what else we can do but well so long he said carelessly to his companion better not to take anything more this afternoon do I see you on the track tomorrow Ogden of course heard next to nothing of this talk and his own preoccupations left him no opportunity to scandalize over the relations between Vibert and the young woman of the corridors even if his inclinations had run that way but it need not be denied that so close a grouping of these and his feet later in the direction of the Brainerd house he had lately been cultivating a more sympathetic apprehension of Abby Brainerd's position it seemed possible that an hour's talk would offer opportunity for the delicate insinuation of his friendly interests he rehearsed the number of suitable phrases they took felicitous advantage of remarks on her side remarks which he himself constructed and left her as she thought them over in no doubt of his feeling and of his desire to make his sympathies known and operative that all these pretty paces would have been gone through in the absence of the Valentine's is by no mean certain which their presence excluded the least attempt to try them and it was with lagging feet indeed that he made his late return home to Brower and Monte Cristo end of chapter 11 recording by Campbell Shelp