I pushed open the door, and entered the little hall; it was lighted, as below, by a narrow mullioned window, — only half-lighted at that hour of a winter’s afternoon.
A lonely, dismal place. The ceiling, instead of showing a tidy baldness under recent combings by a housemaid’s broom, was all hairy with cobwebs. I was surprised that no spider had slung himself across the doorway, making the lobby a cave of Adullam.
There were two doors on the right. Each was labelled “To Let.” The light was so faint by this time that I was obliged to approach close to satisfy myself that “To Let” was not the name of a tenant.
On the left the same unprofitable nonentity occupied the room over Densdeth’s. The fourth door, corresponding to my own, remained. I inspected that in turn.
An ordinary visiting-card was tacked to the door. It bore a name neatly printed by hand.
I deciphered it with difficulty by the twilight through the grimy window: —
CECIL DREEME,
PAINTER.
A modest little door-plate. Its shyness interested me at once. Some men force their name and business on the world’s eye, as the vulgar and pushing announce their presence by a loud voice and large manner. A person of conscious power will let his works speak for him. Take care of the work, and the name will take care of itself.
“Mr. Cecil Dreeme,” I said to myself, “is some confident genius, willing to have his name remain in diminutive letters on a visiting-card until the world writes it in big capitals in Valhalla. Here he lurks and works, ‘like some poet hidden in the realm of thought.’ By and by a great picture will walk out through this cobwebby corridor.
“Cecil Dreeme,” I repeated. “My neighbor overhead has a most musical, most artistic name. Dreeme, — yes; the sound, if not the spelling, fits perfectly. A painter’s life, if common theories be true, should be all a dream. Visions of Paradises and Peris should always be with him. No vulgar, harsh, or cruel realities should shatter his placid repose. Cecil, too, — how fortunate that those liquid syllables were sprinkled upon him by the surplice at the font. Tom or Sam or Peter would have been an unpardonable discord.”
Cecil Dreeme! The melodious vagueness of the name gently attracted me. It was to mine what the note of a flute is to the crack of a rifle.
Cecil Dreeme — Robert Byng.
“There is a contrast to begin with,” I thought. “Our professions, too, are antagonistic. Chemistry — Art. Formulas — Inspirations. Analysis — Combination. I work with matter; he with spirit. I unmake; he makes. I split atoms, unravel gases; he grafts lovely image upon lovely image, and weaves a thousand gossamers of beauty into one transcendent fabric.”
As these fancies ran through my brain, I began to develop a lively curiosity in my neighbor overhead.
Remember that I was a ten years’ absentee, without relatives, without sure friends, wanting society, and just now a thought romanticized by the air and scenery of Rubbish Palace.
I began to long to be acquainted with this gentleman above me, this possible counterblast to Densdeth, this possible apparition through my ceiling at the heel of a breakdown.
“Does he, then, dance breakdowns?” I thought. “Is he perhaps a painter of the frowzy class, with a velvet coat, mop of hair and mile of beard, pendulous pipe and a figurante on the bowl, and with a Düsseldorf, not to say Bohemian, demeanor. Is he a man whose art is a trade, who paints a picture as he would daub the side of a house? Or is he the true Artist, a refined and spiritualized being, Raphael in look, Fra Angelico in life, a man in force, but with the feminine insight, — one whose labor is love, one whose every work is a poem and a prayer? Which? Shall I knock and discover? An artist generally opens his doors hospitably to an amateur.
“No,” I decided, “I will not knock. We shall meet, if Destiny has no objection. Two in the same Chrysalis, we cannot dodge each other without some trouble. If I am lonely by and by, and yearn for a friend, and he does not dance through my centre-piece, I will fire a pistol-ball through his floor. Then apology, laugh, confession, and sworn friendship, — that is, of course, if he is Raphael-Angelico, not Bohemian-Düsseldorf.”
These fancies, so long in the telling, flashed rapidly through my mind.
I turned away from the door, with its quiet announcement of the name and business of a tenant, not precisely evading, but certainly not inviting notice.
I made my way down, and up again by the other staircase to the same floor. Here I found the same arrangement of rooms, but more population and fewer cobwebs. The southern exposure was preferred to the northern, in that chilly structure.
I knocked at Mr. John Churm’s door in the southwest corner of the building.
No “Come in.” I must dine alone at the Chuzzlewit.
As I stepped from Chrysalis, I gave a look to Ailanthus Square in front.
“This will never do!” I exclaimed.
It was a wretched place, stiffly laid out, shabbily kept, planted with mean, twigless trees, and in the middle the basin of an extinct fountain filled with foul snow, through which the dead cats and dogs were beginning to sprout at the solicitation of the winter’s sunshine.
A dreary place, and drearily surrounded by red brick houses, with marble steps monstrous white, and blinds monstrous green, — all destined to be boarding-houses in a decade.
“This will never do!” I exclaimed again. “Outdoor life offers no temptation. I am forced inward to indoor duties and pleasures. Objects in America are not attractive. I must content myself with people. And what people? My first day wanes, Stillfleet is off, and I have made no acquaintance but a musical name on a door in a dusty corner of Chrysalis.’’
Churm Against Densdeth
I had hardly taken my first spoonful of lukewarm mock soup at the long, crowded dinner-table of the Chuzzlewit, when General Blinckers, a fellow-passenger on the Arago, caught sight of me. He bowed, with a burly, pompous, militia-general manner, and sent me his sherry. It was the Chuzzlewit Amontillado, so a gorgeous label announced, and sunshine, so its date alleged, had ripened it a score of years before on an aromatic hill-side of Spain. But the bottle was very young for old wine, the label very pretentious for famous wine, and my draught, as I expected, gnawed me cruelly.
In a moment came a bow from Governor Bluffer, also fellow-passenger, and his bottle of the Chuzzlewit champagne, — label prismatic and glowing, bubbles transitory, wine sugary and vapid.
Bluffer was of Indiana, returning from a trip to Europe as a railroad-bond placer. He had placed his bonds, second mortgages of the Muddefontaine Railroad, with great success. His State would now become first in America, first in Christendom. He was sure of it. And by way of advancing the process, he had proposed to me to become “Professor of Science” in the Terryhutte University, — salary five third mortgages of the Muddefontaine per annum.
Blinckers was of Tennessee, wild-land agent. He had been urgent all the passage that I should take post as Professor in the Nolachucky State Polytechnic School, — salary a thousand acres per annum of wild land in the Cumberland Mountains.
Both of these offers I had declined; but I was obliged to the two gentlemen. I bowed back to their bows, and sipped the liquids they had sent me without mouthing.
Presently, as I glanced up and down the table, I caught sight of Densdeth’s dark, handsome face. He had turned from his companion, and was looking at me. He lifted his black moustache with a slight sneer, and pointed to untasted glasses