The Elevator | Page 7

cook." Sotto voce to her husband: "If I don't go somewhere and have a cry, I shall break down here before everybody. Did you ever know anything so strange? It's perfectly--pokerish."
LAWTON: "Yes, there's nothing like serving dinner to bring the belated guest. It's as infallible as going without an umbrella when it won't rain."
CAMPBELL: "No, no! Wait a minute, Roberts. You might sit down without one guest, but you can't sit down without five. It's the old joke about the part of Hamlet. I'll just step round to Aunt Mary's house--why, I'll be back in three minutes."
MRS. ROBERTS, with perfervid gratitude: "Oh, how GOOD you are, Willis! You don't know how MUCH you're doing! What presence of mind you have! Why couldn't we have thought of sending for her? O Willis, I can never be grateful enough to you! But you always think of everything."
ROBERTS: "I accept my punishment meekly, Willis, since it's in your honor."
LAWTON: "It's a simple and beautiful solution, Mrs. Roberts, as far as your aunt's concerned; but I don't see how it helps the rest of us."
MRS. MILLER to MR. CAMPBELL: "If you meet Mr. Miller " -
CURWEN: "Or my wife" -
BEMIS: "Or my son" -
LAWTON: "Or my daughter" -
CAMPBELL: "I'll tell them they've just one chance in a hundred to save their lives, and that one is open to them for just five minutes."
LAWTON: "Tell my daughter that I've been here half an hour, and everybody knows I drove here with her."
BEMIS: "Tell my son that the next time I'll walk, and let him drive."
MRS. MILLER: "Tell Mr. Miller I found I had my fan after all."
CURWEN: "And Mrs. Curwen that I've got her glove all right." He holds it up.
MRS. ROBERTS, at a look of mystification and demand from her brother: "Never mind explanations, Willis. They'll understand, and we'll explain when you get back."
LAWTON, examining the glove which CURWEN holds up: "Why, so it IS right!"
CURWEN: "What do you mean?"
LAWTON: "Were you sent back to get a LEFT glove?"
CURWEN: "Yes, yes; of course."
LAWTON: "Well, if you'll notice, this is a right one. The one at home is left."
CURWEN, staring helplessly at it: "Gracious Powers! what shall I do?"
LAWTON: "Pray that Mrs. Curwen may NEVER come."
MR. CURWEN, dashing through the door: "I'll be back by the time Mr. Campbell returns."
MRS. MILLER, with tokens of breaking down visible to MRS. ROBERTS: "I wonder what could have kept Mr. Miller. It's so very mysterious, I" -
MRS. ROBERTS, suddenly seizing her by the arm, and hurrying her from the room: "Now, Mrs. Miller, you've just got time to see my baby."
MR. ROBERTS, winking at his remaining guests: "A little cry will do them good. I saw as soon as Willis came in instead of her aunt, that my wife couldn't get through without it. They'll come back as bright as" -
LAWTON: "Bemis, should you mind a bereaved father falling upon your neck?"
BEMIS: "Yes, Lawton, I think I should."
LAWTON: "Well, it IS rather odd about all those people. You can say of one or two that they've been delayed, but five people can't have been delayed. It's too much. It amounts to a coincidence. Hello! What's that?"
ROBERTS: "What's what?"
LAWTON: "I thought I heard a cry."
ROBERTS: "Very likely you did. 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