Harper's Round Table, January 7, 1896

CRESSY'S NEW-YEAR'S RENT.

BY L. A. TEREBEL.

Fred Hallowell was sitting at his desk in the Gazette office, looking listlessly out into the City Hall Park, where the biting wind was making the snowflakes dance madly around the leafless trees and in the empty fountain, and he was almost wishing that there would be so few assignments to cover as to allow him an afternoon in-doors to write "specials." The storm was the worst of the season, and as this was the last day of December, it looked as if the old year were going out with a tumultuous train of sleet and snow. But if he had seriously entertained any hopes of enjoying a quiet day, these were dispelled by an office-boy who summoned him to the city desk.

"Good-morning, Mr. Hallowell," said the city editor, cheerfully. "Here is a clipping from an afternoon paper which says that a French family in Houston Street has been dispossessed and is in want. Mr. Wilson called my attention to it because he thinks, from the number given, the house belongs to old Q. C. Baggold. We don't like Baggold, you know, and if you find he is treating his tenants unfairly we can let you have all the space you want to show him up. At any rate, go over there and see what the trouble is; there is not much going on to-day."

Fred took the clipping and read it as he walked back to his desk. It was very short--five or six lines only--and the facts stated were about as the city editor had said. The young man got into his overcoat and wrapped himself up warmly, and in a few moments was himself battling against the little blizzard with the other pedestrians whom he had been watching in the City Hall Park from the office windows.

When he reached Houston Street he travelled westward for several blocks, until he came into a very poor district crowded with dingy tenement-houses that leaned against one another in an uneven sort of way, as if they were tired of the sad kind of life they had been witnessing for so many years. The snow that had piled up on the window-sills and over the copings seemed to brighten up the general aspect of the quarter, because it filled in the cracks and chinks of material misery, and made the buildings look at least temporarily picturesque, just as paint and powder for a time may hide the traces of old age and sorrow. Fred found the number 179 painted on a piece of tin that had become bent and rusty from long service over a narrow doorway, and as he stood there comparing it with the number given in his clipping, a little girl with a shawl drawn tightly over her head and around her thin little shoulders came out of the dark entrance and stopped on the door-sill for a moment, surprised, no doubt, at the sight of the tall rosy-cheeked young man so warmly clad in a big woollen overcoat that you could have wrapped her up in several times, with goods left over to spare.

"Hello! little girl," said Fred, quickly. "Does Mr. Cressy live here?"

The child stared for a few seconds at the stranger, and then she answered, bashfully, "Yes, sir. But he has got to go away."

"But he hasn't gone yet?" continued Fred; and then noticing that the child, in her short calico skirt, was shivering from the cold, and that her feet were getting wet with the snow, he added, "Come inside a minute and tell me where I can find Mr Cressy."

The two stepped into the dark narrow hallway that ran through the house to the stairway in the rear, where a narrow window with a broken pane let in just enough light to prove there was day outside. The little girl leaned against the wall, and looked up at the reporter as if she suspected him of having no good intentions toward the man for whom he was inquiring. Very few strangers ever came into that house to do good, she knew. Most of them came for money--rent money--and sometimes they came, as a man had come for Mr. Cressy, to tell him he must go.

"What floor does he live on?" asked Fred.

"On the fifth floor, sir," answered the child. "In the back, sir. But I think he is really going away, sir."

"Well, no matter about that," said Fred, smiling. "I will go up and see him. I hope he won't have to go out in the storm. It is not good for little girls to go out in the storm, either," he added. "Does your mamma know you are going out?"

"Oh yes, sir! She has sent me to the Sisters to try to get some medicine."

"Is she sick?" asked Fred, quickly.

"Yes, sir," continued the child.

"What floor does she live on? I will stop in and see her."

"Oh, you'll see her! She's in the room, too."

"Then you are Mr. Cressy's little girl?"

"Yes, sir."

So Fred patted her on the head and told her to hurry over to the Sisters in Eleventh Street, and gave her ten cents to ride in the horse-cars; and then he opened the door for her, and as soon as she had left he felt his way back to the staircase and climbed to the fifth floor.

There he knocked upon a door, which was soon opened by a man apparently forty years of age, a man of slightly foreign appearance, with a careworn look, but with as honest a face as you could find anywhere.

"Is this Mr. Cressy?" asked Fred.

"Yes, my name's Cressy," replied the man. He spoke with so slight an accent that it was hardly noticeable.

"I am a reporter from the Gazette," continued Fred.

"Oh!" said the man. "Come in," and as he spoke he looked somewhat embarrassed and anxious, for this was doubtless the first time he had had any dealings with a newspaper. Lying on a bed in an alcove was a woman who looked very ill, and piled in a corner near the door were a couple of boxes and a few pieces of furniture. The stove had not yet been taken down, and some pale embers in it only just kept the chill off the atmosphere. Fred took off his hat, and led the man across the room toward the window.

"Have you been dispossessed?" he asked.

"Yes," said the man, "we must leave to-night."

"Why?" asked the reporter.

Cressy smiled in a ghastly sort of way.

"Because," he replied--"because I have not a cent to my name, sir, and the landlord has got it in for me--and I must go."

"Who is your landlord?" asked the reporter.

"Baggold--Q. C. Baggold, the shoe-man."

"How much do you owe?"

"Twenty dollars--two months' rent."

"Were you ever in arrears before?"

"Never."

"What's the trouble? Out of work?"

"Yes, sir, I have been. But I've got a job now, and I'll have money on the tenth of the month. But that is not it."

"What is 'it,' then?" continued Fred.