Cave-Dwellers, or the Hall-Bedroom

AND yet it is not precisely about either of the historical extremes of civilization designated above that I am going to write. The abode which I celebrate has no name of generic import. Ignored by the masses, it plays its part humbly enough in the process of evolution, and few are they who discover its charms, though several are they who scorn it.

Three flights up it lies, always at the top of the house. On the second and third floors its use is perverted into closets, —curious mistake. It is patient and bides its time, climbing higher, determined on consummation. A closet quietly setting itself to become a room, —what else is the scheme of life ? Arrived at the fourth floor, it looks about. The fourth floor front and the fourth floor back and the two hall-bedrooms have appropriated all the windows. Now a window, of course, is the sine qua non of a room, its distinction from a closet. Have a window or fail. The dauntless closet! It settles itself in the midst of the house, lifts its firm intention one degree higher still, and breaks through the roof to the sky. There! Is not that a fine attainment ? Let the other rooms look forth if they will on narrow sections of city streets, dreary and confused; this little room will look up to the stars and have the heavens for boundary. It has not only won for itself the roomship which it desired; it has become a unique abode, full of peculiar charm.

When I took possession and closed the door, dropping my things upon the bed because there seemed at first sight to be no other receptacle, the room was noncommittal. I cannot say it stood back and waited; it was too small to stand back. But its effect was one of reserve. What was I ? Possible lover ? Or impecunious vagabond, taking up with a last resort? If the latter, antagonistic and dull, no single charm should I see; but rather I should be smothered at once and so gotten out of the way. Fine-spirited little room; excellent mettle there! I raised my eyes to the dangling ropes which controlled the skylight. One strong pull, and half the ceiling (which is not saying so much, after all) was lifted from above my head. Instantly I turned out the gas, and there was the moon looking in on me, and the quiet stars and the deep night sky, exactly as clear and untroubled as if I were viewing them from a meadow in the heart of the country. We were friends from that very moment, the little room and I.

As I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I smiled with satisfaction. Even in the country one cannot do this, unless one is painfully camping out. How still it was, moreover! City rooms with windows deafen one. Here there was only a faint, far sound of the murmur of the streets; the blowing of whistles, the ringing of bells, aerial noises of the city which must rise high to reach me. When I woke in the morning and again looked up, a fleecy cloud was sailing across the blue.

It was like a ship’s cabin, I decided, as I settled down to live,— so small, so compact; and that murmuring tide beyond and below was the sea. Fine! I set sail on voyages endless as those of Ulysses. There is, of course, no farthest port which one may not reach in a room like this. One may even touch the Happy Isles. One may see the great Achilles.

Sometimes the wind rose and blew a gale, hurtling over the reefed skylight. Then we plunged and flew; the stars went by us like sparks of fire, the moon reeled giddily. Foghorns and bell-buoys warned us, but we sailed steadily and safely. Through the stormy seas we held our way to the new port which we never failed to make, the new port of To-morrow.

All our sailing was done by night, contrary to nautical rules in general, save those perhaps of smugglers. By day we anchored, moored fast to, say, December 6, and went soberly to work. The sea was still there; we heard it washing beyond our little harbor; but it did not lure us forth. Shut in by our narrow boundaries of present time and space, we assorted the treasures of our voyages and made what use of them we could. Some of them we dropped overboard. Oh, yes. But never mind.

The first snow surprised me greatly. The rain made a noise and woke me up, so that I rose and reefed the skylight; but the snow fell unobtrusively on the foot of the bed. It was not until it began to melt and drip from the edge of the blanket that I stirred into damp consciousness. Again I had a feeling that the room was watching to see what I would do. It had been a catastrophe like this which had brought the despair of the last incumbent to a climax. But mariners must have courage and faith, loyalty unshaken. I repaired the damages as I could, with the help of all my towels; then I moved into the driest corner of the bed and went to sleep again.

In the morning it was apparent to me that I was not a mariner any more at all, not for to-day, at least. I had gone back several thousand years, and was a cavedweller. A cold, greenish light filled my room, struggling through the snow above me. How was I going to get out, I wondered, to hunt and kill my breakfast ? It had been clever of me, take it all in all, to contrive this snug abode in the heart of the earth, working at it from above, shaping and polishing it. How symmetrical it was, to be sure, how cosy and safe and warm! I snuggled down in my pile of skins and took another nap.

Adventurer bound on vast voyages into unknown seas, primitive man snowed under in the early wilderness, — can one make me believe that a little room which fosters such rôles as this in a modern New York boarding-house is not possessed of genius ? Country abodes have poetry enough as a matter of course. It is nothing to have the imagination stirred by a château, a rose-covered cottage, a picturesque farmhouse. But to find a hallbedroom— no, not even that, a closet just evolved — bestowing magnificent dreams upon you is a thing not lacking in greatness. Finer triumph than that of this room, mounting from its closet estate, I have not seen this year.

They took me to see the Hotel St. Regis. Sadder and sadder and more depressed I grew as the grandeur unrolled before me, the outrageous magnificence. Finally I stopped and fastened my eyes on a corner of red carpet. There were yards and acres of it besides, but that corner was all I wanted. “What is the matter ?" they asked me. “Go away; let me alone,” I answered; “this is like the carped in my room; I’ll stay and look at it.”

Ah, how glad I was to get back! I ran up the stairs, I burst in at the door, I dropped into the one chair, I looked up through the open skylight. The little room smiled inscrutably, closing its small space round me and shutting me in. We had a famous voyage that night. But that is our own affair.