“Well, if Densdeth is well bolted out of my quarters, I will not pry into his. And now I’ll look about a little at your treasures.”
“Do; while I finish packing. I cannot quite decide about taking clean shirts to Washington. In a clean shirt I might abash a Senator.”
“Abash without mercy! the country will thank you,” said I. “But, old fellow, what a wealth of art, virtu, and rococo you have here!”
“I have sampled all the ages of the world. No era has any right to complain of neglect,” says Stillfleet, patronizingly. “You will find specimens of the arts from Tubal Cain’s time down. One does not prowl about Europe ten years without making a fair bag of plunder. How old Churm enjoys my old books, old plates, and old objets!”
“I hope he will not desert the place when its proper master is gone. Where are his quarters in Chrysalis?”
“Story above, southwest corner, with an eye to the sunset. Odd fellow he is! He lurks here in a little hermit cell, when he might live in a gold house with diamond window-panes.”
“Is he so rich?”
“Crœsus was a barefooted pauper to him.”
“Not a miser, — that I know.”
“No; he spends as a prairie gives crops. But always for others. He would be too lavish, if he were not discretion itself. Only his personal habits are ascetic.”
“Perhaps he once had to harden himself sternly against a sorrow, and so asceticism grew a habit.”
“Perhaps. He is a lonely man. Well, here I am, packed, abashing shirts and all! Come down now. I must exhibit you, as my successor, to Locksley, the janitor of Chrysalis, — and a capital good fellow he is.”
The Palace and Its Neighbors
Stillfleet and I passed out into the chilly marble-paved corridor.
The young Chrysalids in the class-room seemed to be in high revolt. They were mobbing their lank professor. We could see the confusion through the open door.
“He takes it meekly, you see,” said Stillfleet. “He knows that the hullabaloo isn’t half punishment enough for his share in the fiction of calling the place a college.”
We descended the main stairway. The white-washed fan-tracery snowed its little souvenir on us as we passed. On the ground floor, a few steps along the damp corridor, was the door marked “Janitor.”
Stillfleet pulled the bell. A cheerful, handsome, housewifely woman opened.
“Can we come in, Mrs. Locksley?” said my friend.
“You are always welcome, Mr. Stillfleet.”
We entered a compact little snuggery. There was something infinitely honest and trusty in the effect and atmosphere of the place.
Three junior Locksleys caught sight of Stillfleet. They rushed at him, with shouts and gambols enough for a dozen.
I love to see children kitten it securely about a young man. They know friends and foes without paying battles and wounds for the knowledge. They seem to divine a sour heart, a stale heart, or a rotten heart, by unerring instinct. If a man is base metal, he may pass current with the old counterfeits like himself; children will not touch him.
“The world has smoked and salted me,” said Stillfleet, “and tried to cure me hard as an old ham. But there is a fresh spot inside me, Byng, and juveniles always find it. I’ve come to say good-bye, children,” he continued; “but here’s Mr. Bob Byng, he’ll take my place. His head is full of fairy stories for Dora. His fingers make windmills and pop-guns almost without knowing it. Think of that, Hall!”
Dora, a pretty damsel of twelve, and Hall, a ten-year-old male and sturdy, inspected me critically. Was I bogus? Their looks said, they thought not.
“As for Key Locksley here,” said Harry, “all he wants is romp and sugar-plums. This is Mr. Byng, Key. ‘Some in his pocket and some in his sleeve, he’s made of sugar-plums I do believe.’”
So Master Key, a toddler, accepted me as his Lord Chief Confectioner.
“Now, children,” said Stillfleet, with mock gravity, “be Mr. Byng’s monitors. Require him to set you a good example. Tell him young men generally go to the bad without children to watch over them.”
“Many a true word is spoken in jest,” said Mrs. Locksley.
“But where is your husband?” my friend asked. “I must exhibit his new tenant to him.”
“Coming, sir!” said a voice from the bedroom adjoining.
I had heard a rustling and crackling there, as if some one was splitting his way into a starchy clean shirt.
At the word, out came Locksley, a bristly little man. His hair and beard were so stiff that I fancied at once he could discharge a volley of hairs, as a porcupine shoots quills at a foe. This bristliness and a pair of keen black eyes gave him a sharp, alert, and warlike look, as if he were quick to take alarm, but not likely to be frightened. No danger of the hobbledehoys of Chrysalis, the College, riding roughshod over such a janitor.
I detected him as a man who had seen better days, and hoped to see them again, by his shirt-collars. They were stiff as Calvinism and white as Spitzbergen. Such collars are the badge of men who, though low in the pocket, are not down in the mouth. So long as there is starch in the shirt, no matter how little nap the coat wears; but limp linen betokens a desponding spirit, and presently there will be no linen and despair.
“Locksley,” said Stillfleet, in his rattling, Frenchy way, “here’s my friend Byng, Robert Byng, Esquire, of Everywhere and Nowhere. I pop out and he pops in to Rubbish Palace. He’s been a half-century in Europe and knows no more of America than the babe unborn. Protect his innocence in this strange city. Save him from Peter Funk. Don’t let him stay out after curfew. He must not make any low acquaintances in Chrysalis. He has a pet animal, the Orgie, picked up in Paris, very noisy and bites; don’t allow him to bring it into these quiet cloisters. Well, I trust him to you and Mrs. Locksley. I’m off for Washington. Good-by, all!”
He shook hands with janitor and janitress, kissed Dora, tweaked the boys, and fled riotously.
I saw him and his traps into a carriage and off, — off and out of the era of my life which I describe in these pages. With him I fear the merry element disappears from a sombre story.
I perceived what a lonely fellow I was, as soon as I lost sight of Stillfleet.
“Every man has his friends, if he can only find them,” I said to myself. “But here I am, a returned absentee, and not a soul knows me, except Densdeth. Exit Harry Stillfleet; manet Densdeth. I believe I will look him up. Why should I make a bête noir of such an agreeable fellow? He won’t bite. He’s no worse than half the men I’ve known. But first I must transfer myself bag and baggage to Chrysalis.”
The Chuzzlewit unwillingly disgorged me and my traps, after so short a period of feeding upon us. The waiter, specially detailed to keep me waiting if my bell rang, handled his clothes-broom, when he saw me depart, as if he would like to knock me down, lock me up, and make me pay a princely ransom for my liberty.
I escaped, however, without a skirmish or the aid of a policeman, and presently made my formal entry into Rubbish Palace.
“Great luck!” thought I, beginning to unpack and arrange, “to find myself at home the first day.”
“Dreadful bore, to beat through