



Produced by Clare Graham and Marc D'Hooghe at Free
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THE CLIFF-DWELLERS

A Novel

BY

HENRY B. FULLER

ILLUSTRATED BY T. DE THULSTRUP

THE GREGG PRESS / RIDGEWOOD, N. J.

1898


[Illustration: Cecilia Ingles]


ILLUSTRATIONS


CECILIA INGLES.

"'WE ARE LIVING UP ON PINE STREET'"

"TWO YOUNG GIRLS ENTERED"

"'I SHALL MARRY RUSSELL,' SHE DECLARED"

"A DOOR OPENED SUDDENLY, AND HER BROTHER BURT CAME IN"

"HE FOUND A PLACE IN A QUIET CORNER"

"'WE HAVE COME TO TAKE OUR GIRL BACK HOME'"

"'ISN'T IT PRETTY LATE FOR DOLLY?'"

"'HOW'S THIS, JO?' ASKED OGDEN"

"SHE LAID HER HAND TREMBLINGLY UPON THE OLD MAN'S ARM"

"HE LOOKED STEADILY ON VIBERT FROM UNDER HIS HAND"

"THE GIRL GATE HIM A GLANCE WILD AND TIMID"

"THE MATTER WAS ADJUSTED IN A SMALL AND COMPACT COURT-ROOM"

"'HERE WE GO,' SHE CRIED, 'SUNDAY OR NO SUNDAY. I HATE TO POKE'"

"THEY SAT OUT NOW ONLY AFTER DARK"

"HE SAT WITH HIS EYES FIXED ON THE BOTTOM OF THE BOAT"

"BURT LED CORNELIA DOWN THE AISLE"

"'HOW WELL IT'S DONE!' SHE SAID TO HIM"

"'GOODNESS, GEORGE, DON'T KNOCK THE FIRE ALL TO PIECES'"

"'IS HE DEAD?'"

"THEN SHE FELL BACK WEAKLY AND COUGHED LONG AND VIOLENTLY"

"'STOP!' CRIED OGDEN"

"'THREE TO ONE,' PANTED MARCUS"

"SHE PRESSED HIM BACK INTO THE DEPTHS OF HIS GREAT EASY-CHAIR"




THE CLIFF-DWELLERS


INTRODUCTION


Between the former site of old Fort Dearborn and the present site
of our newest Board of Trade there lies a restricted yet tumultuous
territory through which, during the course of the last fifty years, the
rushing streams of commerce have worn many a deep and rugged chasm.
These great canons--conduits, in fact, for the leaping volume of an
ever-increasing prosperity--cross each other with a sort of systematic
rectangularity, and in deference to the practical directness of local
requirements they are in general called simply--streets. Each of these
canons is closed in by a long frontage of towering cliffs, and these
soaring walls of brick and limestone and granite rise higher and higher
with each succeeding year, according as the work of erosion at their
bases goes onward--the work of that seething flood of carts, carriages,
omnibuses, cabs, cars, messengers, shoppers, clerks, and capitalists,
which surges with increasing violence for every passing day. This
erosion, proceeding with a sort of fateful regularity, has come to be
a matter of constant and growing interest. Means have been found to
measure its progress--just as a scale has been arranged to measure the
rising of the Nile or to gauge the draught of an ocean liner. In this
case the unit of measurement is called the "story." Ten years ago the
most rushing and irrepressible of the torrents which devastate Chicago
had not worn its bed to a greater depth than that indicated seven of
these "stories." This depth has since increased to eight--to ten--to
fourteen--to sixteen, until some of the leading avenues of activity
promise soon to become little more than mere obscure trails half lost
between the bases of perpendicular precipices.

High above this architectural upheaval rise yet other structures in
crag-like isolation. El Capitan is duplicated time and again both in
bulk and in stature, and around him the floating spray of the Bridal
Veil is woven by the breezes of lake and prairie from the warp of
soot-flakes and the woof of damp-drenched smoke.

The explorer who has climbed to the shoulder of one of these great
captains and has found one of the thinnest folds in the veil may
readily make out the nature of the surrounding country. The rugged
and erratic plateau of the Bad Lands lies before him in all its
hideousness and impracticability. It is a wild tract full of sudden
falls, unexpected rises, precipitous dislocations. The high and the
low are met together. The big and the little alternate in a rapid and
illogical succession. Its perilous trails are followed successfully
by but few--by a lineman, perhaps, who is balanced on a cornice, by
a roofer astride some dizzy gable, by a youth here and there whose
early apprehension of the main chance and the multiplication table has
stood him in good stead. This country is a treeless country--if we
overlook the "forest of chimneys" comprised in a bird's-eye view of
any great city, and if we are unable to detect any botanical analogies
in the lofty articulated iron funnels whose ramifying cables reach
out wherever they can, to fasten wherever they may. It is a shrubless
country--if we give no heed to the gnarled carpentry of the awkward
frame-works which carry the telegraph, and which are set askew on
such dizzy corners as the course of the wires may compel. It is an
arid country--if we overlook the numberless tanks that squat on the
high angles of alley walls, or if we fail to see the little pools of
tar and gravel that ooze and shimmer in the summer sun on the roofs
of old-fashioned buildings of the humbler sort. It is an airless
country--if by air we mean the mere combination of oxygen and nitrogen
which is commonly indicated by that name. For here the medium of
sight, sound, light, and life becomes largely carbonaceous, and the
remoter peaks of this mighty yet unprepossessing landscape loom up
grandly, but vaguely, through swathing mists of coal-smoke.

From such conditions as these--along with the Tacoma, the Monadnock,
and a great host of other modern monsters--towers the Clifton. From
the beer-hall in its basement to the barber-shop just under its
roof the Clifton stands full eighteen stories tall. Its hundreds of
windows glitter with multitudinous letterings in gold and in silver,
and on summer afternoons its awnings flutter score on score in the
tepid breezes that sometimes come up from Indiana. Four ladder-like
constructions which rise skyward stage by stage promote the agility of
the clambering hordes that swarm within it, and ten elevators--devices
unknown to the real, aboriginal inhabitants--ameliorate the daily
cliff-climbing for the frail of physique and the pressed for time.

The tribe inhabiting the Clifton is large and rather heterogeneous.
All told, it numbers about four thousand souls. It includes bankers,
capitalists, lawyers, "promoters"; brokers in bonds, stocks, pork,
oil, mortgages; real-estate people and railroad people and insurance
people--life, fire, marine, accident; a host of principals, agents,
middlemen, clerks, cashiers, stenographers, and errand-boys; and the
necessary force of engineers, janitors, scrub-women, and elevator-hands.

All these thousands gather daily around their own great camp-fire. This
fire heats the four big boilers under the pavement of the court which
lies just behind, and it sends aloft a vast plume of smoke to mingle
with those of other like communities that are settled round about.
These same thousands may also gather--in instalments--at their tribal
feast, for the Clifton has its own lunch-counter just off one corner of
the grand court, as well as a restaurant several floors higher up. The
members of the tribe may also smoke the pipe of peace among themselves
whenever so minded, for the Clifton has its own cigar-stand just within
the principal entrance. Newspapers and periodicals, too, are sold at
the same place. The warriors may also communicate their messages,
hostile or friendly, to chiefs more or less remote; for there is a
telegraph office in the corridor and a squad of messenger-boys in wait
close by.

In a word, the Clifton aims to be complete within itself, and it will
be unnecessary for us to go afield either far or frequently during
the present simple succession of brief episodes in the lives of the
Cliff-dwellers.




I


On the tenth floor of the Clifton is the office of the Massachusetts
Brass Company.

Those whose minds are attuned to an appreciation of upholstery
and kindred matters pronounce this little suite the gem of the
whole establishment. Even many who are not adepts in the matter of
house-furnishing, and who are much too rushed and preoccupied to become
such, have been known to pause in their course through the Clifton's
long corridors, on occasions when the ribbed glass door of the Brass
Company happened to be standing ajar, and to say to themselves, with
certain home offices in mind,

"Now, why can't our people do as much for _us_?"

Indeed, there is cause enough for envy in that small square of velvety
Axminster, in the harmonious tinting of the walls, in the padded
leather backs of the swivel chairs, in the polished brightness of
the cherry desk-tops, in the fresh blotting-pads and the immaculate
inkstands. To sit in this pleasant little apartment for half an hour is
to receive quite a new impression of the possible luxury of business,
the ultimate elegance of trade. This may be managed as easily as
not if you happen to have any dealings with "D. Walworth Floyd,
Agt."--according to the legend on the translucent pane of the door--who
is quite unlikely to hurry you out before you have finished.

"Don't be in such a drive," he will perhaps say to you; "stay and smoke
a cigar."

For business is not too exacting a consideration with the western
branch of the Massachusetts Brass Company. It is less a hive of
industry than a social exchange. The hours are easy, and the habitues
are as frequently callers as customers. They are often Jacks or Toms,
whose fathers are social pillars in Boston and large land-owners in
Wyoming and Dakota, and Jack and Tom--birds of passage in Scotch
cheviots and billycock hats--are given to alighting for a brief
breathing-spell on this lofty perch, where they reproach the slipshod
dress and careless, speech of their friend's small office force by the
trim neatness of their own clothes and conversation.

It may be guessed that this snug haven of refuge has been established
and maintained less to extend the Company's trade than to provide a
place for the Company's Walworth. I say _Company's_ Walworth, for
in this case "company" and "family" are interchangeable terms. The
Massachusetts Brass Company is the Floyd family, and the Floyd family
is the Massachusetts Brass Company. The Company pays no dividends, but
it is very generous in its salaries. It is liberal with Hosea G. Floyd,
who is its president, and with Winthrop C. Floyd, who is its treasurer,
and with H. Lovell Floyd, who is its New York agent, and with
Cadwallader P. Floyd, who looks after the Philadelphia interests; nor
does it quite forget D. Walworth Floyd, who holds up one end more or
less effectively in the West. But Walworth is the last and the youngest
of the Floyds; his marriage was not to the complete satisfaction of
his family, and his single independent venture before leaving home,
in the direction of coffee and spices, compelled his brothers to put
their hands into their pockets rather deeply. So, while the rest of the
Floyds think that, all considered, they have rather done the fair thing
by Walworth, yet Walworth, on the other hand, regards his assignment to
the West as a mild form of punishment and exile.

"It _does_ give me a little elbow-room, though."

This is the silent acknowledgment that Walworth sometimes makes to
himself--but grudgingly.

Walworth Floyd is a sleek, well-fed, prosperous-looking fellow of
thirty. His figure is a trifle too short and dumpy to be pronounced
absolutely good; but it is always strikingly well-dressed--for he has
lived in the West hardly a year as yet. His face is not handsome, but
it is gentlemanly quite. One might, indeed, complain of the retreating
lines of his forehead, and regret, too, that his chin, once perfect,
now shows leanings towards the duplex; but, on the other hand, his
well-bridged nose, you are sure, has been figuring in family portraits
for the last hundred years, and his plump hands, by reason of the fine
texture of the skin and the shapeliness of the nails, form a point that
is distinctly aristocratic. Yet penmanship, under his manipulations,
becomes a very crabbed and laborious affair, and this light species of
manual labor is usually performed, so far as he is concerned, by other
hands. He has a sort of general clerk, and he shares the services of a
stenographer with two or three of his neighbors. He employs, too, an
office-boy, who would idle away a good deal of time if Walworth were
not in the habit of sending frequent communications to the steward
of his club. Walworth, garmented in his plump placidity, has been
accustomed to fare sumptuously every day, and to worry his head about
as few things as possible. His dining he does for himself; his thinking
he has somebody else do for him: His book-keeping and auditing and so
on are done in the East, and a friend of his--he has no enemies--once
said that his stomach was in Chicago, while his brains were in Boston.

Walworth, considering his family training and traditions, is
inexplicably expansive. Even more than his limited capabilities for
business, even more than the exactions of a wife whose pinched girlhood
has helped her to a full appreciation of her present membership in a
wealthy family, has his own open-hearted bonhomie "kept him back." He
is just the man to whom one writes a letter of introduction without
any sense of imposing a burden, or to whom one may present it without
experiencing any great sense of embarrassment. And it is a letter of
introduction, in point of fact, which is now lying half folded on the
extended elbow-rest of his desk, and has been lying there for a quarter
of an hour.

Most of us know something about letters of introduction--promised so
thoughtlessly, written so glibly, presented so reluctantly, received so
grudgingly. But when the letter is merely a trifling and insignificant
line--a line which has no great importance for the bearer and can cause
no great annoyance to the recipient--and when its presentation here and
its accounting for there may be considered as but a minute item in the
general system of social book-keeping, then we have an episode that
passes quickly and lightly for all concerned. Such appears to be the
situation in the office of the Massachusetts Brass Company.

[Illustration: "'We are living up on Pine Street'"]

Walworth is tilted back comfortably in one of his handsome chairs
and sends out a casual glance through the nearest window. The sun
is struggling with a half-luminous haze, and through this haze a
hundred streaks of smoke are driving headlong towards the lake. A
tall clock-tower looms up three or four streets away, and one of its
faces--on the looker's own level--gives the hour as half-past ten.

"Well, we are living up on Pine Street, Mr. Ogden," he is saying; "just
this side of the Water Works--the place where the 'wheels go round,'
you know. You beat me here by a few minutes this morning, but I think I
can promise to be the first on the ground when you call on us there."

He is running his fingers over the edges of several little sheets of
brass. A few bunches of these, together with a set or two of brass
rings of varying diameters and thicknesses, are the only intimations of
merchandise that the office yields. Sometimes even these are bundled
away into a drawer, and then commerce is refined completely beyond the
ken of the senses.

"However, don't go. I am a little late in getting around this morning,
but the mail is light. Ferguson will look after it. Sit down again."

The visitor, thus urged, sank back into the chair from which he had
just risen. He was a slender young man, of good height, and his age was
perhaps twenty-four. His complexion was of the colorless kind that
good health alone keeps from sallowness. His hair was a light brown
and fine and thick, and it fell across his temples in the two smooth
wings that were made by an accurate parting in the middle. He had the
beginnings of a shadowy little moustache, and a pair of good eyes which
expressed a fair amount of self-reliance and any amount of hope.

"And how are you finding the West Side?" Walworth pursued. "I don't
know much about it myself. This is a big town and awfully cut up. A man
has to pick out his own quarter and stick to it. If you move from one
side of the river to another, you bid good-by to all your old friends;
you never see them again. You said you were somewhere near Union Park,
I believe?"

"Yes," George Ogden answered, "I have landed in a pretty good place,
and I want to stay there if I can. They're a sort of farming people
--or were, to start with. They came from New York State, I believe, and
haven't been here but a year or two. Is there anybody in this town who
hasn't come from somewhere else, or who has been here more than a year
or two?"

Walworth laughed. "_I_ haven't. But you go around some, and you may
find a few that have."

"The mother cooks, the father markets, the daughter helps to wait on
table. Nice, friendly people; make me think of those at home." He
smiled a little wistfully. "About the only people so far that do."

"Well, I