Kitabı oku: «That House I Bought», sayfa 2
THIRD PERIOD
I had always regarded the humorous paragraphs about the price of coal as mere pleasantries. I now deny that they are pleasantries, and they are far from "mere."
There are several grades of coal. Our furnace takes No. 3, and it's $6.60 a ton, April price. The man who dominates the situation told me by way of consolation that if it hadn't been for the big strike coal would be 50 cents a ton cheaper. I can't see how that sort of consolation helps a fellow.
Our house burns about ten or twelve tons, normal conditions. We figured that about eight tons now would be the proper caper, and we could pay the difference next winter if driven to it. From the way the furnace ate coal to take the chill off the house the first day, I could see the Board of Charities asking me my name, address, age, social condition and whether my parents ever went to jail.
Now $6.60 times eight tons is $52.80, and that's more than taxes, water rent and interest on a house and lot. So when the man backed up with a cartload and began to throw it in off-handedly, I was pained. A coal-heaver should treat $52.80 with more respect. I have seen men throw high-grade ore out of the Independence mine with the same callous indifference, without myself being shocked; but here was a new situation. It was my $52.80 he was throwing around like dirt, and I spoke to him about it.
"How," I said, "can you have the heart to dump $52.80 into my cellar without ceremony? You should at least remove your hat."
Do you know, I don't believe he appreciated the situation.
William made the first fire. I instructed him to lay on the coal as scarcely as possible, and to go slow with the draughts. So he threw on six shovelsful of my $52.80, opened everything and ran it up to 204 degrees F. Any man who sat ten minutes in our house and then dared to expose himself in a Turkish steam room would freeze to death in ten seconds.
We had a fire in the furnace two or three days. I got interested in (a) a newly patented ash sifter (b) and a process for mixing ashes with some chemical solution that would restore a ton of coal for twenty-five cents. If you have never sifted ashes, you've missed something. You take a couple of shovelsful of ashes and dump them in the sifter. Then you pick up the sifter and agitate it. If I were employing an ash sifter, I should get one addicted to chills and ague, or St. Vitus' dance, or something. Then I could be sure he wasn't loafing on the job! Well, after you've shivered the sifter, busted a suspender button, twisted your backbone into a pretzel, filled your eyes, ears, nose, and lungs with dust and cussed your patron saint, you've got the net result: One piece of half-burned coal, six clinkers, and the top of a tin can.
That chemical process to make coal out of ashes for a quarter a ton is a good thing—for the inventor. With childlike confidence I bought a bottle of it. After ruining a barrel of perfectly good ashes and backsliding from the church of Martin Luther I gave it up. Hereafter we will burn our coal as long as it will burn, and the ashes may go hang! I could have earned $50 at my profession in the time I was trying to beat an honest coal dealer out of $6.60.
Well, when we finally got the furnace working I hopped into the shower bath.
May good fortune attend the man who thought of putting a shower bath in That House I Bought! The water comes from overhead for one thing, and shoots into the delighted legs of the languorous for another, from the sides. It invigorates, cleanses, and tickles.
Ballington Booth says man is regenerated by soup, soap, and salvation. But I would say, at first blush, that no man can get the full effect of regeneration on anything short of a shower bath in his house.
I began by reducing my costume to a pleasant frame of mind and doing a few acrobatic stunts, deep breathing, setting-up exercises, and various liver-limberings. A free and easy perspiration set in. That, say all the doctors, is good for the system. Then I stepped blithely into the shower, drew the rubber curtain close and, commending my soul to all the gods I could call to mind, took a long breath and turned her on.
At first the water was icy cold, but as soon as that in the pipes had run out I was violently assaulted by a steaming deluge straight from the bowels of Hades. Calmly removing the first layer of skin as it was boiled off, I reached for the spigot and turned as per directions, to the right. Instantly some one threw an iceberg into the tank and at the first shower of Chilkootian damp I was converted into an icicle.
Boiled to a color that would excite the envy of an ambitious lobster, on one side, and frozen to a consistency that would inspire a Harlequin block on the other, my emotions ran correspondingly hot and cold to a delirium of despair, as I found that no matter how I turned I got either hot or cold, and never a happy medium. My wife, who was downstairs with the kitchen door shut, said she could hear my remarks distinctly, and added that she would have forever hung her head in shame had company been calling at the time.
Women are too sensitive.
It didn't occur to me, until I had been cooked and uncooked a dozen times that this thing might be done from the outside just as well. I stepped out and manipulated with a broom handle, poking it behind the curtain and jabbing, pushing, and pulling, hauling, twisting at those infernal mechanical devices with an energy born of insanity. Finally, by some accident or other, I got the water just right and stepped in again.
It was delicious. Never was there such a grateful sense of appreciation as that I felt as I recovered my temper and went back to my beneficent gods. The water was not too cold, not too hot.
Then it stopped altogether.
I looked up and around, tried all the valves, hammered on the wall, and then yelled to my wife:
"What's the matter with the water?"
She replied cheerily:
"The man has come to fix the pipes in the furnace, and it's turned off!"
With good things it were always thus. The minute a man really begins to enjoy life it's time to die. There is always a fly in the custard.
FOURTH PERIOD
Our porch is one of those accommodating porches with plenty of room, a standing invitation to company. Whenever company comes I have to convert myself into a moving van and tote all the furniture out from the parlor.
The Duke of Mont Alto, and the Duchess, dropped in one evening with the Purdys, and I began to move the parlor. What with spade pushing and furniture moving, I've got Sandow backed off the board. It's wonderful what a little regular training will do for a fellow! But what gets me is, how on earth did Murphy ever maneuver the big chair with the green upholstery into the house at all? It is exactly half an inch wider in every dimension than our door—but as Murphy got it in it was up to me to get it out. I was pushing and shoving and twisting, trying it sideways and upside down, straight ahead and backing like a mule, stealing a fraction of space by half-closing the screen door, when my wife took hold of a leg to help me. That settled it. We stuck, in such a position that I could neither get myself out nor the chair in again.
The Duke and the Duchess and the Purdys all volunteered to assist by suggesting various things that they thought I hadn't thought of thinking of. I kept my temper and formed my mouth into a counterfeit smile, to show how polite a Southern gentleman could be in trying circumstances. Then I gave one mighty heave, determined to push the chair through or the jam down, and stuck worse than ever.
"Can't you get through?" asked my wife sympathetically.
"Certainly I can get through," I replied; "I'm just doing this to make it look difficult!"
The Purdys laughed at that, and the Duke said I was a comical cuss. You see, he had an idea I was trying to amuse the company. That made me so mad that I dropped the chair to spit on my hands, and when I dropped the chair the stubborn thing fell right through the door of its own accord, and I straightened up like a General, and remarked:
"Now I suppose you'll make a pool among you and gobble all the credit for that!"
And hanged if they didn't!
To amble back to our muttons, it was a nice, quiet little visit.
During the evening my wife got out some grape-fruit, and in the stilly night, the stars twinkling overhead and the grass growing silently, hardly disturbing us at all, it was exceedingly pleasant to hear the spoons go slippety-slosh into the evasive juices that reluctantly gave up about half what the labor was worth.
But what I started to write about was the house party across the street. When you're sitting on the porch of your own house doing nothing but listening to the ebb and flow of grape-fruit juice, you can't help noticing the strings of Japanese lanterns over yonder, and listening to the gay laughter of young people as they madly hurl bean-bags into a hole in a plank, shrieking the while and guying each other apace. O, Postoffice! O, clap-in-an-clap-out! O, Puss-in-the-corner! O, Youth!
The Duke was saying something about the time when suburban streets would be two hundred feet wide to make landing places for aeroplanes, and when the human appetite would be regulated by push-buttons ranged along the diaphragm. But I didn't hear a word.
I yearned to be across the street. That was uncomplimentary to company, but nevertheless I yearned. So did all the rest, only they aren't telling about it. When a man has passed into the sere and yellow he has a right to the consolation of retrospect. Frankly, for a moment I wished I didn't have any house. I wanted to be over there where the young folks were, pitching bean-bags. And later, when they gathered around the piano and sang discordantly all the popular songs, I wanted to be there and join my voice in the music. It was awful music, but I wanted to howl right along with the young ones.
When the company had gone I wrestled the green chair back into the house by way of the widest window, but my mind was still full of the thought that had seized me—of the youth, and gaiety, and glory of green years. As I went to close the shutters, the last of the young people had just gone up the street singing. I gave one good night glance at the parlor windows of the house across the way. Then I started, called my wife, and we riveted our two noses to the pane.
"The Silhouettes!" I exclaimed hoarsely.
"Sshh!" she cautioned, and took my hand.
The Man Silhouette was talking earnestly to the Girl Silhouette, and she was shaking her head. But suddenly she leaned closer to him, and threw her arms about his neck, and he kissed her, and she ran from the room and left him standing there.
Presently the Girl Silhouette came back, leading by the hand a large, fat Silhouette with whiskers. I recognized him as the man I had seen mowing the lawn and working the garden hose. He shook hands with the Man Silhouette, and kissed the Girl on the forehead, and joined their hands, and seemed to call toward the hallway; whereupon a fourth Silhouette came in.
"It's the Girl's mother!" said my wife.
They all stood together, and bowed and nodded and that sort of thing for an unconscionably long time, until our noses were cold from the glass. And then the Silhouette with the whiskers pushed all the other Silhouettes in the direction in which we knew their dining room lay, and stepped back to turn off the lights.
When there was nothing to see but the blank curtain, we went upstairs; and after I had retired my wife crept away. I awoke and found her an hour later, sound asleep with her nose against the pane, her unseeing eyes turned toward the house across the way, and a smile on her lips. I lifted her and put her on the bed—and she didn't stir until morning.
"That Man Silhouette," I said at breakfast; "did you see him last night after the—er—incident on the blinds?"
"Certainly not!" she replied, almost indignantly. "You men all think women are curious."
I wondered if she had only dreamed, or could she be a somnambulist!
"But," she added, as she poured the coffee, "I'm going to see what he looks like to-night, if I never get to bed; and I'm going to see her if I have to go over there and borrow butter!"
There you go again, Youth! There you are at it, Romance!
What would I not give to be back myself, to the time when we, mayhap, were silhouettes for the entertainment of our neighbors! But come on, old man, come on! You must go straight ahead, day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year! Somewhere ahead there is a marble shaft, and a place with the roses; but your cradle is broken, your little tin wagon is rusted, your Noah's Ark is buried under the dust of years—and you have had your frivols!
