The House of All Sorts

Unmarried

PERHAPS the most awkward situation for the inexperienced young landlady was how to deal with "unweds." Every apartment house gets them. They are often undiscernible, even to the experienced. One learns in time to catch on to little indications....

The supposed husband makes all arrangements, the supposed wife approving of everything. A woman who does not nose into the domestic arrangements of the place she is going to occupy gives the first hint, for a woman indifferent to the heating, furnishing, plumbing, cooking utensils of her home is not wifely.

The woman returned. "Well?"

The man came to me.

The couple had not been in a week before Mrs. "Below" and Mrs. "Next Door" rushed simultaneously to the garden to "tell" and bumped nose to nose.

The House of All Sorts was in ferment. If I was going to cater to that class--!

My second experience of the same kind posed as brother and widowed sister, just out from the Old Country. They offered Old Country references which would have taken six weeks to verify, yet they wanted immediate possession. Things looked all right--I was unsuspicious. You can't ask to see people's marriage certificates. They had my studio flat. It had the required number of rooms and they were delighted with the studio. I had removed myself to a tent in the garden and a gas-ring in the basement for the summer months, ends being difficult to make meet.

My first experience of this sort was with a very prepossessing couple. Their tenancy was secured by an excessively moral old lady living in Lower West. I was out when the couple came seeking. The old lady next door showed them over. She was delighted at having made so good a "let" for me. Within a week it was put to me by the renters of the other suites, "Them or us?" The couple left.

Mrs. Doubtful was chatty, always running down to my garden to ask advice about cookery. Brother John was fond of this or that, and how was it made? She asked me queer questions too. Was it possible to get lost in British Columbia? To take a cabin in the far woods and disappear? It would be so amusing to vanish!

I went to the hotel the couple had stayed at before taking my flat. Here they had registered as man and wife. I took my perplexity to an experienced apartment-house landlady.

I told her I had been to the hotel and how the couple had registered. Again the experienced one said, "Mm." I went home. I could "Mm" there just as well myself.

Between the Doll's Flat and my studio was a locked door, a sofa backed up to the door. The Doubtfuls liked to sit on this sofa and converse. It appeared that Mrs. Doll's Flat's favourite chair was just the other side of the door. Sitting here her ear was level with the keyhole. The man said to the woman:

"She suspects."

"None."

"Mm.... We all get them."

"Mm...! If you can prove they are 'that kind' you need give no notice at all, but be sure--libel suits are ugly. Send your janitor into their suite on some pretext or other."

"Mm!"

"I am my own janitor."

"How long notice is required?"

"How are they got rid of? Must I wait until their month is up to serve the customary notice?"

"Go to the garden, darling. Chat casually with our landlady. Watch her face, her manner."

The man bowed. No one saw them go. They left no forwarding address.