第5章 II.(1)

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 hotel in London where they called it the Ascending Room."

MISS LAWTON: "Oh, how amusing!"

MILLER, looking about: "This is a regular drawing-room for size and luxury. They're usually such cribs in these hotels."

MRS. CRASHAW: "Yes, it's very nice, though I say it that shouldn't of my niece's elevator. The worst about it is, it's so slow."

MILLER: "Let's hope it's sure."

YOUNG MR. BEMIS: "Some of these elevators in America go up like express trains."

MRS. CURWEN, drawing her shawl about her shoulders, as if to be ready to step out: "Well, I never get into one without taking my life in my hand, and my heart in my mouth. I suppose every one really expects an elevator to drop with them, some day, just as everybody really expects to see a ghost some time."

MRS. CRASHAW: "Oh, my dear! what an extremely disagreeable subject of conversation."

MRS. CURWEN: "I can't help it, Mrs. Crashaw. When I reflect that there are two thousand elevators in Boston, and that the inspectors have just pronounced a hundred and seventy of them unsafe, I'm so desperate when I get into one that I could--flirt!"

MILLER, guarding himself with the fan: "Not with me?"

MISS LAWTON, to young MR. BEMIS: "How it DOES creep!"

YOUNG MR. BEMIS, looking down fondly at her: "Oh, does it?"

MRS. CRASHAW: "Why, it doesn't go at all! It's stopped. Let us get out." They all rise.

THE ELEVATOR BOY, pulling at the rope: "We're not there, yet."

MRS. CRASHAW, with mingled trepidation and severity: "Not there?

What are you stopping, then, for?"

THE ELEVATOR BOY: "I don't know. It seems to be caught."

MRS. CRASHAW: "Caught?"

MISS LAWTON: "Oh, dear!"

YOUNG MR. BEMIS: "Don't mind."

MILLER: "Caught? Nonsense!"

MRS. CURWEN: "WE'RE caught, I should say." She sinks back on the seat.

THE ELEVATOR BOY: "Seemed to be going kind of funny all day!" He keeps tugging at the rope.

MILLER, arresting the boy's efforts: "Well, hold on--stop! What are you doing?"

THE ELEVATOR BOY: "Trying to make it go."

MILLER: "Well, don't be so--violent about it. You might break something."

THE ELEVATOR BOY: "Break a wire rope like that!"

MILLER: "Well, well, be quiet now. Ladies, I think you'd better sit down--and as gently as possible. I wouldn't move about much."

MRS. CURWEN: "Move! We're stone. And I wish for my part I were a feather."

MILLER, to the boy: "Er--a--er--where do you suppose we are?"