It was a highly gratifying idea the incommunicability of one stratum of animal life with another,-though Hedger pretended it was only an experiment in unusual lighting. He was absorbed in a study of paradise fish at the Aquarium, staring out at people through the glass and green water of their tank. He would have to be more careful to see that Caesar didn't leave bones about the hall, too and she might object when he cooked steak and onions on his gas burner.Īs soon as the talking ceased and the women left, he forgot them. The only bath-room on the floor was at the top of the stairs in the front hall, and he would always be running into her as he came or went from his bath. All the same, it would be very annoying to have a woman in there. When Hedger first moved in, these rooms were occupied by a young man who tried to write plays,-and who kept on trying until a week ago, when the nurse had put him out for unpaid rent.Ī few days after the playwright left, Hedger heard an ominous murmur of voices through the bolted double doors: the lady-like intonation of the nurse-doubtless exhibiting her treasures-and another voice, also a woman's, but very different young, fresh, unguarded, confident. Meanwhile, she sub-let her rooms, with their precious furniture, to young people who came to New York to "write" or to "paint"-who proposed to live by the sweat of the brow rather than of the hand, and who desired artistic surroundings. She went to auction sales and bought up mahogany and dirty brass and stored it away here, where she meant to live when she retired from nursing. The rooms had been leased, long before he came there, by a trained nurse who considered herself knowing in old furniture. His studio was shut off from the larger of these rooms by double doors, which, though they were fairly tight, left him a good deal at the mercy of the occupant. Hedger, as often as not, was hunched up in an old striped blanket coat, with a shapeless felt hat pulled over his bushy hair, wearing black shoes that had become grey, or brown ones that had become black, and he never put on gloves unless the day was biting cold.Įarly in May, Hedger learned that he was to have a new neighbour in the rear apartment-two rooms, one large and one small, that faced the west. His pink skin showed through his mottled coat, which glistened as if it had just been rubbed with olive oil, and he wore a brass-studded collar, bought at the smartest saddler's. When he and his master went out to prowl about University Place or to promenade along West Street, Caesar III was invariably fresh and shining. His name was Caesar III, and he had taken prizes at very exclusive dog shows. The dog was a Boston bull terrier, and Hedger explained his surly disposition by the fact that he had been bred to the point where it told on his nerves. There, too, in the perpetual dusk, was the dog's bed, and often a bone or two for his comfort. In the front corner, the one farther from the window, was a sink, and a table with two gas burners where he sometimes cooked his food. In one of the corners was a clothes closet, built against the partition, in another a wide divan, serving as a seat by day and a bed by night. His room was very cheerless, since he never got a ray of direct sunlight the south corners were always in shadow. He occupied one big room with no outside exposure except on the north, where he had built in a many-paned studio window that looked upon a court and upon the roofs and walls of other buildings. This online edition was created and published by Global Grey on the 20th November 2021.ĭon Hedger had lived for four years on the top floor of an old house on the south side of Washington Square, and nobody had ever disturbed him.
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