The House Part 13

XXIII

ALICE'S NIGHT WATCHMAN

From what I have already told you it is likely that you have gathered that Alice and I had good reason to conclude that being a householder was by no means as cheap an enjoyment as could be conceived of. We recalled the words of the sagacious and prudent Mr. Denslow. "When you get a place of your own," said that wise man, "you will find that there will be a thousand annoying little demands for your money where now there is one." Our other friend, Mr. Black, had expressed the same idea when he told us that "a house-owner never gets through paying out." If Alice and I had had any thought upon the matter at all it was to the effect that when we had a home of our own we got rid forever of the monstrous bugaboo of house-rent at sixty dollars a month. We supposed that all our spare time could be devoted to counting the money we were going to save by getting out of a grasping, avaricious landlord's clutches. Experience is a severe teacher; Alice and I have found out a great many things since we began to have direct dealings with builders, masons, plumbers, painters et id omne genus, as well as with sprinklers, day laborers, landscape gardeners, fruit-tree peddlers, lightning-rod agents, and others of that ilk.

We duly became aware that we were losing a good deal at the hands of nocturnal depredators. Our flower beds were despoiled with amazing regularity; the broken lath and old lumber which had been piled up in the back yard, and which Alice intended to use eventually for kindling, disappeared mysteriously, and the carpenters reported finding evidences every morning that some person or persons had been tramping through the house the night before.

We were all at once possessed of the paralyzing fear that this nocturnal trespa.s.ser, or these nocturnal trespa.s.sers, might set our house on fire. The floors were strewn with shavings; a spark would precipitate a conflagration, and the old Schmittheimer place would burn like so much tinder. I read over the fire-insurance policies which we had taken out with our genial friends, Doller, Jeems, and Teddy, and I found out that the companies represented by those gentlemen were not responsible for losses upon unoccupied premises, or for losses resulting from incendiarism. It occurred to me that it would be wise to invite the police to keep an eye on the place at night, but this plan seemed impracticable for the reason that I wanted to keep the lawn-sprinklers running all night in defiance of the ordinance, and this could not be done if the police were to be mousing about the premises.

While I was still worrying over this distressing problem one of the carpenters came to me with a harrowing tale about a tramp whom he had caught sleeping in the barn. This tramp had gained access to the barn by means of a window. He quietly removed the sash, after breaking the panes of gla.s.s, and crawled in. The carpenter caught the impudent rogue early next morning in flagrante delicto--that is to say, found him snoozing upon a mattress which Alice had stored away in the barn for safe-keeping. An argument ensued, but the tramp finally beat a retreat.

Upon the evening of that same day the carpenter remained after working hours to see whether the tramp would come back for another night's lodging in the nice, warm barn on that nice, clean mattress. Surely enough, as evening shadows fell the tramp made his reappearance and sought to effect an entrance to the barn. Thereupon the belligerent carpenter emerged from his hiding and bade the trespa.s.ser be gone. The tramp complied with this demand, but not until he had signified his intention of returning later at night for the purpose of squaring accounts with the carpenter.

This dark threat filled the carpenter with gloomy forebodings and he hastened to Alice and me for advice. Of course we a.s.sured him that we would support him in any line of action he would take, and we promised to pay him one dollar if he would stay and guard the premises that night. The carpenter was not insensible to the soothing influences of lucre, and he consented to watch and defend our property, provided we furnished him with a weapon of one kind or another, for he had a conviction that the tramp fully intended to come back that very night to cut his heart out.

My acquaintance with weapons is limited to that circle which includes my collection of antique armor and several old flintlocks picked up at different times in New England and in the South. I confessed to the carpenter that I had in the house nothing suited to his bellicose purposes, unless he was willing to put up with a mediaeval battle axe or a Queen Anne musket. The carpenter seemed disinclined to place any reliance upon these means of defence, and he suggested that perhaps I might borrow a pistol of some one of the neighbors. I had not thought of that before; the idea impressed me favorably, and I proceeded to act upon it. It was no easy task, however, finding what I wanted. At the Denslows an axe was the only weapon to be had, and at the Baylors', the Crowes', the Sissons', and the Ewings' I found that the spears had been beaten into plowshares and the swords into pruning-hooks. I felt that it would be folly to apply at the Tiltmans', for Jack Tiltman is the mildest man in seven States, and he is descended from a line of Quakers religiously opposed to war and strife. However, meeting with Tiltman, I ventured to confide to him the dilemma I was in, and I was surprised when he told me that he could provide me with any kind or size of revolver I wanted. Presently he brought out of his house a machine which, had he not a.s.sured me to the contrary, I should at first sight have mistaken for a one-inch aperture telescope.

"Is it loaded?" I asked.

"Yes, seven times," said he.

"And will it go off seven times all at once?" said I.

"Once will be enough," said he; and then he added that the bore was so large that if the bullet once struck a man it would let daylight clean through him, even in the night time.

You can well understand that, by the time the carpenter was equipped for defensive operations, the whole neighborhood was worked up to a condition of great excitement. The children were enthusiastic over the prospect of bloodshed, and from the chatter that was indulged in by these innocents you might have supposed that a murderous tramp lurked at every corner. Alice and I walked over to the Schmittheimer place with the carpenter, and we were accompanied by several of our neighbors and their offspring. The evening was now advanced to the degree of darkness, and our heated fancies transformed every shadow into a living creature. Little Annie Ewing was on the verge of hysterics and declared she saw things behind every tree and stump, and Mr. Denslow contributed to the general excitement by recalling that he had read that very day of several mysterious murders down in a remote corner of Arizona by unknown tramps.

I admit that I, too, was much perturbed. I contemplated with indignation the lawless impudence of the fellow who had broken into our barn, and who had subsequently threatened violence to the carpenter for expostulating against this act of trespa.s.s. At the same time I could not stifle a feeling of pity for the homeless being who doubtless found the bed upon our barn floor as grateful as the downy couch of a Persian potentate. Nor could I stifle the conviction that it was a piece of miserable greediness on my part to deny this friendless and penniless wanderer the humble shelter he craved.

In fact I presently became so ashamed of the part I was taking in these proceedings that but for my regard for Alice's feelings I would have packed the carpenter off home and left the barn open to the tramp and all his kind. As it was my conscience gave me no rest until I had induced neighbor Tiltman to extract the cartridges from the pistol, which service he did so cleverly that the carpenter knew nothing about it, and continued to bl.u.s.ter and bloviate like a dragoon on dress parade.

The tramp did not return that night, and I was glad he did not, for it would have spoiled our new premises for me had any act of violence been committed thereupon. The experience, however, alarmed Alice to such an extent that she determined to employ a private watchman to guard the premises by night until we occupied them. She told me at supper the next evening that for this purpose she had secured the services of a poor but honest man who had called that day seeking employment.

"You don't mean to tell me, my dear," said I, "that you have intrusted this responsible duty to a person who is in the habit of travelling from house to house, asking alms!"

"I guess I know an honest man when I see him," said Alice, "and I know this man is honest, if there is such a thing as an honest man."

Alice went on to say that her protege was an old soldier; that he had wept when he told of his unrequited services for his country, and of the ingrat.i.tude which he had experienced when his application for a pension was denied by the unfeeling authorities at Was.h.i.+ngton. Alice said she had never met with a more civil-spoken person, and he must indeed have impressed her most favorably, for she advanced him fifty cents on account.

We slept securely that night, for Alice's a.s.surances made me confident that under the new watchman's sleepless vigilance all would be safe on the Schmittheimer premises. But about seven o'clock next morning there was a rude outcry, and there came a terrible banging at our front door.

Looking out into the street we saw the carpenter with a very sorry specimen of manhood in custody. The carpenter was flouris.h.i.+ng neighbor Tiltman's unloaded pistol and threatening to blow his prisoner's brains out.

"I caught him asleep in the barn!" cried the carpenter, excitedly.

"Stop! Stop!" shrieked Alice. "Don't shoot him! Don't harm a hair of his head! He is the night watchman I hired to guard the place!"

"He 's the tramp!" insisted the carpenter. "He 's the very tramp who broke into the barn and slept there once before. I 've caught him now and I won't let him go!"

The prisoner protested that the carpenter was mistaken, that he was, indeed, the night watchman, and that he was ent.i.tled to "the kind lady's protection."

The fellow's voice sounded familiar and I recognized his form and face.

Yes, there could be no mistake; I had seen and dealt with this person before.

"My friends," said I, addressing Alice and her carpenter and the crowd of neighbors that had a.s.sembled, "you are right, and yet you are wrong.

I know this man, and I identify him as the base ingrate who stole my new wheelbarrow and my garden utensils. Your name, sir," I continued, sternly, transfixing the quaking wretch with a glance of commingled anger and scorn, "your name is Percival Wax!"

XXIV

DRIVEWAYS AND WALL-PAPERS

Had we been so disposed we could have given the wretched Percival Wax a great deal of trouble. Lawyer Miles was anxious to prosecute the fellow, and I dare say he felt that he had missed the greatest opportunity of his life when Alice and I concluded to let the matter drop. We were moved to this decision by the consideration that, while we owed Percival Wax only our resentment and vengeance, a prosecution of him for his numerous misdemeanors would put us to no end of trouble.

The exposure and punishment of vice would doubtless prove much more popular among the virtuous, did not these proceedings involve so great an expenditure both of time and of labor. Alice and I were not long in making up our minds that we had plenty of other unavoidable troubles to engage our attention; so we let the tramp go, but not, however, until I had lectured him seriously upon the propriety of his abandoning his evil ways and until Alice had given him a clean s.h.i.+rt and an old pair of shoes with which to start out afresh upon the pathway of reform, which he solemnly promised to follow.

If you have ever pa.s.sed the old Schmittheimer place--and doubtless you have, for it is the pride and ornament of a most aristocratic section--you must have noticed the roadway that leads from the street to the residence that looms up majestically two hundred feet back from the street. Perhaps you have wondered why grounds in other respects so attractive should be defaced by a feature so unsightly and so impracticable as this identical roadway.

And yet, as I told Alice, this roadway was actually the most natural feature of the place; there was absolutely no touch of artificiality about it; it was originally a stretch of sand, and such it had remained from time immemorial, by which I mean from that remote date--presumably eighteen centuries ago--when the receding waters of Lake Michigan left the spot subsequently to be known as the old Schmittheimer place high and dry in section 5, range 16, towns.h.i.+p 3. The genius of man had wrought wondrous and beautiful changes elsewhere, converting marshes into boulevards and transforming sandy wastes into blooming gardens; but never had it expended a touch or a thought upon that bald prehistoric streak which served as a driveway for all vehicles that dared invade the old Schmittheimer place.

How many vehicles had in the lapse of years been hopelessly maimed or totally wrecked while trying to traverse that roadway I shall not presume to say, for as a man of science I glory in exactness and I eschew surmise. This much I know, for I have seen it time and again during the last four months: nothing that moves on wheels has ventured upon that roadway that it did not sink slowly but surely up to the hubs of its wheels in the unresisting sand. The Pusheck grocery cart broke a spring the first time it drove in, and the wagon that hauled the steam fixtures was stalled for three hours in one of those treacherous depressions in which the roadway abounds, depressions which, as I am told, are known to dwellers in hilly country places as "thank-ye-marms."

Until I became acquainted with this particular roadway I never fully comprehended the nicety and the force of the phrase "to drive in." I had heard people say that they had driven into such and such places, and I had wondered why they employed this figure of speech when, it seemed to me, it would have been more exact to say that they entered upon or drove over. But I know now that it is no figure of speech when one says that he drives into the old Schmittheimer place. No other phrase could more exactly express an actuality.

If we were going to retain the driveway in all its unhampered prehistoric simplicity, just as the glacial period found and left it, it would really be the proper thing for us to found and to maintain a rescue station in its vicinity, for we have been called upon to hasten to the relief of every vehicle that has "driven into" the premises since we took possession. And a very serious theological aspect of this matter is had in a consideration of the fact that this prehistoric driveway not only breaks spokes and tires and hubs and springs, but also incites human beings to break the third commandment. I have overheard the young man who drives Pusheck's grocery cart indulging in expletives which I am sure he never learned as a member of Alice's Bible cla.s.s.

So, taking one consideration with another, Alice and I determined to have a new road. Undoubtedly this was a wise determination; if we had gone ahead from that wise beginning and built the road as we had planned, all would have been well. The serious error we made was in seeking the counsel of our neighbors--the very same error we have made and kept on making over and over again ever since we entered upon this scheme of the new house.

I take it for granted that you know as well as I do that when it comes to roads, there are as many different kinds of roads as there are planetoids in the solar system. Furthermore, paradoxical as it may appear, each of these different kinds is better than any of these others, for each possesses not only all the advantages of the others, but also certain distinct and paramount advantages of its own. Alice and I had decided upon a dirt road, because we believed that a dirt road would conform in appearance to the other rustic and farmlike features of the place, and because we fancied that a dirt road could be constructed cheaply.

I use the term "dirt road" under protest. I am aware that what is called a dirt road is, properly speaking, an earth road. Dirt is filth, but earth is not; so when we call an earth road a dirt road we commit a vulgar error by employing a wrong epithet. All this I know, and yet, conforming to a custom, because it is a custom followed by all except a smattering of purists, I humiliate my sense of integrity, and I prost.i.tute the virtue of my native speech.

In an unguarded moment, as I have intimated, we confided to our neighbors the precious secret that the stretch of sand from our front gate to our backyard was to make way for a modern, safe, and comfortable driveway. Immediately we were overwhelmed with suggestions and advice as to the particular kind of driveway we really ought to have. You may have noticed that whenever a friend (a dear, good friend) advises, he or she invariably tells you what you really _ought_ to have--putting much emphasis on the "ought." This clinches and rivets the advice. When one says to you that you really ought to have such or such a thing, he means, of course, that you would have it if you were not either too poor or too stupid (or both) to get it. Alice and I are poor in purse, but I deny that we are idiots.

Not to consume your time with further discourse upon this subject (although I will concede that it has its fascinations and its importance), I will say that the primitive roadway (ill.u.s.trative of the pre-glacial period) still winds its Saharan course through our premises. For Alice and I are undetermined whether to follow our own instincts and have a dirt road (there it is again!) or whether to concede to neighborly influence in the matter of this driveway, just as we have conceded upon nearly every other detail that has come up for consideration within the last four months. I dare say we shall eventually come back to our original plan, for it is already as clear as the noonday sun that if we adopt the suggestion of any one neighbor we shall have all the rest of our neighbors down on us for the rest of our lives.

We had an unpleasant experience of this character in the matter of wall-paper. It seems that Alice and Adah consulted all the women-folks in their acquaintance, and after much agitation made such selections of wall-paper as they believed would serve as a felicitous compromise between all parties consulted and all tastes expressed. The result is that n.o.body is suited--n.o.body but me. As for me, I am too much of a philosopher and too busy with my philosophy to spend any time worrying about the color or the pattern of the paper on the walls. If the paper is not so prepossessing as it might be, I should be glad that it is upon my walls rather than upon the walls of those whom it would vex much more than it does me.

I do not mind telling you that my favorite color in wall-paper (as well as in everything else) is red, and it was a delicate concession upon Alice's part to cover the walls of my study over the kitchen with paper of undeniably red hue, upon which appear tracings of yellowish white in a pattern particularly pleasing to my uneducated eye. Little Josephine's room (which is shared by Alice's sister Adah) is decorated with wall-paper in which red is also the predominant color. The pattern is of bunches of roses in full bloom, and these counterfeit presentments are so true to the life that when little Josephine first entered the apartment she reached out her tiny hands in rapture and sought to pluck the beautiful flowers. Adah, too, is delighted with this floral design; the rose is her favorite flower, and by a charming coincidence it happens to be also the favorite flower of Adah's friend Maria--of course you remember Maria; married Johnnie Richardson, and lives at St. Joe, Missouri. So, you see, there are several tender sentiments attaching Adah to that rose-bedecked apartment.

And yet (will you believe it?) there are those who do not at all approve of the wall-paper in which I and little Josephine and Adah (to say nothing of Maria) take so great delight. Some of these people have been ill-mannered enough to laugh aloud and long when they beheld the impa.s.sioned hue of the covering of the walls in my study! There was one person (I forbear mention of her name) who seriously said she thought we 'd be afraid to let little Josephine sleep in that rose-garlanded room; that the glaring colors would be likely to give the dear child the "w.i.l.l.i.e.s." I do not know what the "w.i.l.l.i.e.s" are, but I do know that little Josephine sleeps well, eats well, and is happy, and this is all that we could hope for in one of her tender years.

Now while I cannot do otherwise than defend the choices in wall-papers which Alice and Adah have made, I distinctly recognize and I regret two very unpleasant facts: first, that by not complying with their advice upon the subject we have grievously offended a number of our neighbors, and, second, that Alice and Adah are prepared to set down in the list of their active and malignant foes every woman who presumes to disparage either by word or by look the wall-paper they have picked out as most pleasing to their tastes.