People Like That.

by Kate Langley Bosher.

CHAPTER I

One of the advantages of being an unrequired person of twenty-six, with an income sufficient for necessities, is the right of choice as to a home locality. I am that sort of person, and, having exercised said right, I am now living in Scarborough Square.

To my friends and relatives it is amazing, inexplicable, and beyond understanding that I should wish to live here. I do not try to make them understand; and therein lies grievance against me. Because of my failure to explain what they are pleased to call a peculiar decision on my part, I am at present the subject of heated criticism.

It will soon stop. What a person does or doesn't do is of little importance to more than three or four people. By Christmas my foolishness will have ceased to cause comment, ceased to interest those to whom it doesn't matter really where or how I live.

I like living in Scarborough Square very much. After many years spent in the homes of others I am now the head of half a house, the whole of which is mine; and even though it is situated on the last square of respectability in a part of the town long forgotten by the descendants of its former residents, I am filled with a sense of proprietorship that is warm and comforting, and already I have learned to love it--this nice, old-fashioned house in which I live.

Until very recently Scarborough Square was only a name. There had been no reason to visit it, and had I ventured to it I would have seen little save a tiny park bounded on four sides by houses of shabby gentility, for the most part detached, and of a style of architecture long since surrendered to more undesirable designs. The park is but an open s.p.a.ce whose straggly trees and stunted shrubs and dusty gra.s.s add dejection to the atmosphere of shrinking respectability which the neighborhood still makes effort to maintain; but that, too, I have learned to love, for I see in it that which I never noticed in the large and handsome parks up-town.

As a place of residence this section of the city I am just beginning to know has become very interesting to me. No one of importance lives near it, and the occupants of its houses, realizing their social submergence and pecuniary impotence, have too long existed in the protection of obscurity to venture into the publicity which civic attention necessitates, and on first acquaintance it is not attractive. I agree with my friends in that. I did not come here because I thought it was an attractive place in which to live.

They cannot say, however, even my most protesting friends, that I am not living in a perfectly proper neighborhood. The front of my house faces, beyond the discouraged little park, a strata of streets which unfold from lessening degrees of dreariness and dinginess to ever-increasing expensiveness and unashamed architectural extravaganzas, to the summit of residential striving, called, for impressiveness, the Avenue, but behind it is a section of the city of which I am as ignorant as if it were in the depths of the sea or the wilds of primeval forest. I have traveled much, but I do not know the city wherein I live. I know but a part of it, the pretty part.

There was something Mrs. Mundy wanted to say to me to-night, and did not say. I love the dear soul. I could not live here without her, could not learn what I am learning without her help and sympathy and loyalty, but at times I wish she were a bit less fond of chatting.

She is greatly puzzled. She, too, cannot understand why I have come to Scarborough Square to live, and I am quite certain she thinks it strange I do not tell her. How can I tell that of which I am not sure myself--that is, clearly and definitely sure?

I am not trying to be sure. It is enough that I am here, free to come and go as I choose, to plan my day as I wish, to have time for the things I once had no time for, and why must there always be explanations and reasons and justifications for one's acts? The daily realization each morning, on awaking, that the day is mine, that there are no customs with which to comply, no regulations to follow, no conventions to be conformed to, at the end of two weeks still stirs and thrills and awes me a little, and I am constantly afraid it is not true that I am here to stay. And then again with something of fear and shrinking and uncertainty I realize my bridges are burned and I must stay.

"It's pleased you are with your rooms, I hope, Miss Dandridge?"

Hands on her hips, Mrs. Mundy had looked somewhat anxiously at me before going out. "If it's a home-looking place you're after, you've got it, but when you first come down to Scarborough Square it made me feel queer inside to think of your living here, really living. If you think you can be satisfied--"

"I am sure I can be satisfied. Why not?" I smiled and, going over to the window, straightened the curtain which had caught and twisted a fern-leaf growing in its box. "I am a perfectly uninc.u.mbered human being who--"

"But an uninc.u.mbered woman ain't much of a human being." Mrs. Mundy dropped the afternoon paper she had brought up and stooped to get it.

"I mean a woman is made for inc.u.mbrances, and if she don't have any--" She hesitated, and looked around the room with its simple furnishings, its firelight and lamplight, its many books and few pictures, its rugs and desk and tables, the gifts of other days, and presently she spoke again. "Being you like so to look out the windows, it's well this house has two front rooms opening into each other. If it's comfortable and convenient that you want to be, you're certainly that, but comforts and conveniences don't keep you company exactly."

"I don't want company yet. You and Bettina are all I need. I haven't said I was to live here a thousand years, or that I wouldn't get tired of myself in less time, but until I do--"

There was a ring at the front-door bell and Mrs. Mundy went to answer it. The puzzled look I often saw in her eyes when talking to me still filled them, but she said nothing more except good night, and when I heard her footsteps in the hall below I went to the door and locked it. This new privacy, this sense of freedom from unescapable interruption, was still so precious, that though an unnecessary precaution, I turned the key that I might feel perfectly sure of quiet hours ahead, and at my sigh of satisfaction I laughed.

Going into my bedroom, which adjoined my sitting-room, I hung in the closet the coat I had left on a chair, put away my hat and gloves, and again looked around, as if they were still strange--the white bed and bureau, the wash-rugs, the muslin curtains, the many contrasts to former furnishings--and again I sighed contentedly. They were mine.

The house I am now living in is indeed an old-fashioned one, but well built and of admirable design. The rooms are few--only eight in all--and four of them I have taken for myself--the upper four. The lower floor is occupied by Mrs. Mundy and Bettina, her little granddaughter. When I first saw the house its condition was discouraging. Not for some time had it been occupied, and repairs of all kinds were needed. To get it in order gave me strange joy, and the weeks in which it was being painted and papered and beautified with modern necessities were of an interest only a person, a woman person, can feel who has never had a home of her own before. When everything was finished, the furnishings in place, and I established, I knew, what I no longer made effort to deny to myself--that I was doing a daring thing. I was taking chances in a venture I was still afraid to face.

CHAPTER II

Kitty came to see me yesterday. Her mortification at my living in Scarborough Square is poignant. Not since she learned of my doing so has her amazement, her incredulity, her indignation and resentment, lessened in the least, but her curiosity is great and her affection sincere, and yesterday she yielded to both.

She was on her wedding journey when I left the house in which for many years we had lived together, and, knowing it would spoil her trip did I tell of what I had done, I did not tell. Two days ago she got back, and over the telephone I gave her my new address.

"But I can't understand--" During most of her visit Kitty was crying. She cries easily and well. "I can't take it in, can't even glimpse why you want to live in such a horrid old place. It's awful!"

"Oh no, it isn't. It's a very nice place. Look how the sun comes through those little panes of gla.s.s in those deep windows and chirps all over the floor. I never knew before how much company sunshine could be; how many different things it could do, until I came to Scarborough Square. This is a very interesting place, Kitty."

"It's fearful!" Kitty shuddered. "The sun shines much better on the Avenue, and you might as well be dead as live in this part of the town. When people ask me where you are I'm--"

"Ashamed to tell them?" I laughed. "Don't tell them, if the telling mortifies you. Those who object to visiting me in my new home will soon forget I'm living. Those to whom it does not matter where I live will find where I am without asking you. I wouldn't bother."

"But what must I say when people ask me why you've come down here?

why you've made this awful change from living among the best people to living among these--I don't know what they are. n.o.body knows."

"They are perfectly good people." I took a pin out of Kitty's hat and tried the latter at a different angle. "The man on the corner is named Crimm. He's a policeman. The girl next door makes cigarettes, and her friend around the corner works at the Nottingham Overall factory. The cigarette-girl has a beau who walks home with her every evening. He's delicate and can't take a job indoors. Just at present he's an a.s.sistant to the keeper of Cherry Hill Park."

Kitty stared at me as if not sure she heard aright. The tears in her big blue eyes disappeared and into them came incredulity. "Do you know them--the cigarette-girl, and the overall-girl, and the policeman?" Her voice was thin with dismay and unbelief. "Do you really know people like that?"

"I do." I laughed in the puzzled and protesting face, kissed it.

"To every sort of people other people not of their sort are 'people like that.' Our customs and characteristics and habits of thought and manner of life separate us into our particular groups, but in many ways all people are dreadfully alike, Kitty. To the little cigarette-girl you're a 'person like that.' Did you ever wonder what she thought of you?"

"Why should I wonder? It doesn't matter what she thinks. I don't know her, never will know her. I can't understand why you want to know her, to know people who--"

"I want to know all sorts of people." Again I tilted Kitty's hat, held her off so as to get a better effect. "You see, I've wondered sometimes what they thought of us--these people who haven't had our chance. Points of view always interest me."

"What difference does it make what they think? You're the queerest person I've ever known! You aren't very religious. You never did go to church as much as I did. Are you going in for slums?"

"I am not. I wouldn't be a success at slumming. I'm not going in for anything except--"

"Except what?"

"My dear Kitty," I picked up the handkerchief she had dropped and put it on the table, "I wouldn't try to understand, if I were you, why people do things. Usually it's because they have to, or because they want to, and occasionally there are other reasons. I used to wonder, for instance, why certain people married each other. Often now, as I watch husbands and wives together, I still wonder if, unmarried, they would select each other again. I suppose you went to the Bertrands'

dinner-dance last night?"

"I went, but I wish I hadn't. Billy didn't want to go, and we came away as soon as we could. Everybody asked about you. I haven't seen any one yet who doesn't think it very strange that you won't live with me. That beautiful little Marie Antoinette suite on the third floor is all fixed for you, and you could use the automobiles as much as you choose. It's wicked and cruel in you to do like this and not live with me. It looks so--"

"Peculiar." I nodded in the eyes as blue as a baby's. "But a person who isn't peculiar isn't much of a person. You see, I don't care for things which are already fixed for me. I like to do my own fixing.

And I don't want to live in anybody else's home, not even yours, though you are dear to want me. I am grateful, but I prefer to live here. My present income would make an undignified affair of life among the friends of other days. I'd feel continually as if I were overboard and holding on to a slippery plank. Down here I'm independent. I have enough for my needs and something to give--.

That's a good-looking hat you have on. Did you get it in Paris?"

Kitty shook her head. "New York." Otherwise she ignored my question. Hats usually interested her. She talked well concerning them, but to-day she would not be diverted from more insistent subjects.

"It must have cost a good deal to fix up this old house. Anywhere else it would look very well." Her eyes were missing no detail.

"You'd make a pig-sty pretty, but it takes money--"

"Everything takes money. I sold two or three pieces of Aunt Matilda's jewelry for enough to put the house in order. She expected me to sell what I did not wish to keep. In her will was a note to that effect."

"She had more jewelry than any human being I ever saw." Into Kitty's face came dawning understanding. "It was the only way she could leave you any of--"

"Your father's money," I nodded. "Not until after her death did I understand why she used to take all of your father's gifts in jewelry. I know now."

"It was a good investment. I wish she'd bought twice as much. She had so little else to leave you," Kitty was looking at me speculatively. "How on earth are you going to live on a thousand dollars a year? Our servants cost us twice that. Billy says it's awful, but--"