She found that there was an east and west line beyond which they could not go if they wished to keep their self-respect,and that within the region to which they had restricted themselves there was a choice of streets.At first all the New York streets looked to them ill-paved,dirty,and repulsive;the general infamy imparted itself in their casual impression to streets in no wise guilty.But they began to notice that some streets were quiet and clean,and,though never so quiet and clean as Boston streets,that they wore an air of encouraging reform,and suggested a future of greater and greater domesticity.Whole blocks of these downtown cross-streets seemed to have been redeemed from decay,and even in the midst of squalor a dwelling here and there had been seized,painted a dull red as to its brick-work,and a glossy black as to its wood-work,and with a bright brass bell-pull and door-knob and a large brass plate for its key-hole escutcheon,had been endowed with an effect of purity and pride which removed its shabby neighborhood far from it.
Some of these houses were quite small,and imaginably within their means;but,as March said,some body seemed always to be living there himself,and the fact that none of them was to rent kept Mrs.March true to her ideal of a fiat.Nothing prevented its realization so much as its difference from the New York ideal of a flat,which was inflexibly seven rooms and a bath.One or two rooms might be at the front,the rest crooked and cornered backward through in creasing and then decreasing darkness till they reached a light bedroom or kitchen at the rear.
It might be the one or the other,but it was always the seventh room with the bath;or if,as sometimes happened,it was the eighth,it was so after having counted the bath as one;in this case the janitor said you always counted the bath as one.If the flats were advertised as having "all light rooms,"he explained that any room with a window giving into the open air of a court or shaft was counted a light room.
The Marches tried to make out why it was that these flats were go much more repulsive than the apartments which everyone lived in abroad;but they could only do so upon the supposition that in their European days they were too young,too happy,too full of the future,to notice whether rooms were inside or outside,light or dark,big or little,high or low.
"Now we're imprisoned in the present,"he said,"and we have to make the worst of it."In their despair he had an inspiration,which she declared worthy of him:
it was to take two small flats,of four or five rooms and a bath,and live in both.They tried this in a great many places,but they never could get two flats of the kind on the same floor where there was steam heat and an elevator.At one place they almost did it.They had resigned themselves to the humility of the neighborhood,to the prevalence of modistes and livery-stablemen (they seem to consort much in New York),to the garbage in the gutters and the litter of paper in the streets,to the faltering slats in the surrounding window-shutters and the crumbled brownstone steps and sills,when it turned out that one of the apartments had been taken between two visits they made.Then the only combination left open to them was of a ground-floor flat to the right and a third-floor flat to the left.
Still they kept this inspiration in reserve for use at the first opportunity.In the mean time there were several flats which they thought they could almost make do:notably one where they could get an extra servant's room in the basement four flights down,and another where they could get it in the roof five flights up.At the first the janitor was respectful and enthusiastic;at the second he had an effect of ironical pessimism.When they trembled on the verge of taking his apartment,he pointed out a spot in the kalsomining of the parlor ceiling,and gratuitously said,Now such a thing as that he should not agree to put in shape unless they took the apartment for a term of years.
The apartment was unfurnished,and they recurred to the fact that they wanted a furnished apartment,and made their escape.This saved them in several other extremities;but short of extremity they could not keep their different requirements in mind,and were always about to decide without regard to some one of them.
They went to several places twice without intending:once to that old-fashioned house with the pleasant colored janitor,and wandered all over the apartment again with a haunting sense of familiarity,and then recognized the janitor and laughed;and to that house with the pathetic widow and the pretty daughter who wished to take them to board.They stayed to excuse their blunder,and easily came by the fact that the mother had taken the house that the girl might have a home while she was in New York studying art,and they hoped to pay their way by taking boarders.Her daughter was at her class now,the mother concluded;and they encouraged her to believe that it could only be a few days till the rest of her scheme was realized.
"I dare say we could be perfectly comfortable there,"March suggested when they had got away."Now if we were truly humane we would modify our desires to meet their needs and end this sickening search,wouldn't we?""Yes,but we're not truly humane,"his wife answered,"or at least not in that sense.You know you hate boarding;and if we went there I should have them on my sympathies the whole time.""I see.And then you would take it out of me.""Then I should take it out of you.And if you are going to be so weak,Basil,and let every little thing work upon you in that way,you'd better not come to New York.You'll see enough misery here.""Well,don't take that superior tone with me,as if I were a child that had its mind set on an undesirable toy,Isabel.""Ah,don't you suppose it's because you are such a child in some respects that I like you,dear?"she demanded,without relenting.
