The Elevator | Page 8

They profess to deaden these floors
so that you can't hear from one apartment to another. But I know pretty
well when my neighbor overhead is trying to wheel his baby to sleep in
a perambulator at three o'clock in the morning; and I guess our young
lady lets the people below understand when she's wakeful. But it's the
only way to live, after all. I wouldn't go back to the old
up-and-down-stairs, house-in-a-block system on any account. Here we

all live on the ground-floor practically. The elevator equalizes
everything."
BEMIS: "Yes, when it happens to be where you are. I believe I prefer
the good old Florentine fashion of walking upstairs, after all."
LAWTON: "Roberts, I DID hear something. Hark! It sounded like a
cry for help. There!"
ROBERTS: "You're nervous, doctor. It's nothing. However, it's easy
enough to go out and see." He goes out to the door of the apartment,
and immediately returns. He beckons to DR. LAWTON and MR.
BEMIS, with a mysterious whisper: "Come here both of you. Don't
alarm the ladies."

II.

In the interior of the elevator are seated MRS. ROBERTS'S AUNT
MARY (MRS. CRASHAW), MRS. CURWEN, and MISS LAWTON;
MR. MILLER and MR. ALFRED BEMIS are standing with their hats
in their hands. They are in dinner costume, with their overcoats on their
arms, and the ladies' draperies and ribbons show from under their outer
wraps, where they are caught up, and held with that caution which
characterizes ladies in sitting attitudes which they have not been able to
choose deliberately. As they talk together, the elevator rises very
slowly, and they continue talking for some time before they observe
that it has stopped.
MRS. CRASHAW: "It's very fortunate that we are all here together. I
ought to have been here half an hour ago, but I was kept at home by an
accident to my finery, and before I could be put in repair I heard it
striking the quarter past. I don't know what my niece will say to me. I
hope you good people will all stand by me if she should be violent."
MILLER: "In what a poor man may with his wife's fan, you shall
command me, Mrs. Crashaw." He takes the fan out, and unfurls it.
MRS. CRASHAW: "Did she send you back for it?"
MILLER: "I shouldn't have had the pleasure of arriving with you if she
hadn't."
MRS. CRASHAW, laughing, to MRS. CURWEN: "What did you send
YOURS back for, my dear?"
MRS. CURWEN, thrusting out one hand gloved, and the other

ungloved: "I didn't want two rights."
YOUNG MR. BEMIS: "Not even women's rights?"
MRS. CURWEN: "Oh, so young and so depraved! Are all the young
men in Florence so bad?" Surveying her extended arms, which she
turns over: "I don't know that I need have sent him for the other glove. I
could have explained to Mrs. Roberts. Perhaps she would have forgiven
my coming in one glove."
MILLER, looking down at the pretty arms: "If she had seen you
without."
MRS. CURWEN: "Oh, you were looking!" She rapidly involves her
arms in her wrap. Then she suddenly unwraps them, and regards them
thoughtfully. "What if he should bring a ten-button instead of an eight!
And he's quite capable of doing it."
MILLER: "Are there such things as ten-button gloves?"
MRS. CURWEN: "You would think there were ten-thousand button
gloves if you had them to button."
MILLER: "It would depend upon whom I had to button them for."
MRS. CURWEN: "For Mrs. Miller, for example."
MRS. CRASHAW: "We women are too bad, always sending people
back for something. It's well the men don't know HOW bad."
MRS. CURWEN: "'Sh! Mr. Miller is listening. And he thought we
were perfect. He asks nothing better than to be sent back for his wife's
fan. And he doesn't say anything even under his breath when she finds
she's forgotten it, and begins, 'Oh, dearest, my fan'--Mr. Curwen does.
But he goes all the same. I hope you have your father in good training,
Miss Lawton. You must commence with your father, if you expect your
husband to be 'good.'"
MISS LAWTON: "Then mine will never behave, for papa is perfectly
incorrigible."
MRS. CURWEN: "I'm sorry to hear such a bad report of him. Shouldn't
YOU think he would be 'good,' Mr. Bemis?"
YOUNG MR. BEMIS: "I should think he would try."
MRS. CURWEN: "A diplomat, as well as a punster already! I must
warn Miss Lawton."
MRS. CRASHAW, interposing to spare the young people: "What an
amusing thing elevator etiquette is! Why should the gentlemen take
their hats off? Why don't you take your hats off in a horse-car?"

MILLER: "The theory is that the elevator is a room."
YOUNG MR. BEMIS: "We were at a