In this delightful way of living, only one thing troubled us. We didn't
save any money. There were so many little things that we wanted, and so
many little things that were so cheap, that I spent pretty much all
I made, and that was far from the philosophical plan of living that I
wished to follow.
We talked this matter over a great deal after we had lived in our new
home for about a month, and we came at last to the conclusion that we
would take a boarder.
We had no trouble in getting a boarder, for we had a friend, a young man
who was engaged in the flour business, who was very anxious to come
and live with us. He had been to see us two or three times, and had
expressed himself charmed with our household arrangements.
So we made terms with him. The carpenter partitioned off another room,
and our boarder brought his trunk and a large red velvet arm-chair, and
took up his abode at “Rudder Grange.”
We liked our boarder very much, but he had some peculiarities. I suppose
everybody has them. Among other things, he was very fond of telling us
what we ought to do. He suggested more improvements in the first three
days of his sojourn with us than I had thought of since we commenced
housekeeping. And what made the matter worse, his suggestions were
generally very good ones. Had it been otherwise I might have borne his
remarks more complacently, but to be continually told what you ought to
do, and to know that you ought to do it, is extremely annoying.
He was very anxious that I should take off the rudder, which was
certainly useless to a boat situated as ours was, and make an
ironing-table of it. I persisted that the laws of symmetrical propriety
required that the rudder should remain where it was--that the very name
of our home would be interfered with by its removal, but he insisted
that “Ironing-table Grange” would be just as good a name, and that
symmetrical propriety in such a case did not amount to a row of pins.
The result was, that we did have the ironing-table, and that Euphemia
was very much pleased with it. A great many other improvements were
projected and carried out by him, and I was very much worried. He made
a flower-garden for Euphemia on the extreme forward-deck, and having
borrowed a wheelbarrow, he wheeled dozens of loads of arable dirt up
our gang-plank and dumped them out on the deck. When he had covered
the garden with a suitable depth of earth, he smoothed it off and then
planted flower-seeds. It was rather late in the season, but most of
them came up. I was pleased with the garden, but sorry I had not made it
myself.
One afternoon I got away from the office considerably earlier than
usual, and I hurried home to enjoy the short period of daylight that I
should have before supper. It had been raining the day before, and as
the bottom of our garden leaked so that earthy water trickled down at
one end of our bed-room, I intended to devote a short time to stuffing
up the cracks in the ceiling or bottom of the deck--whichever seems the
most appropriate.
But when I reached a bend in the river road, whence I always had the
earliest view of my establishment, I did not have that view. I
hurried on. The nearer I approached the place where I lived, the more
horror-stricken I became. There was no mistaking the fact.
The boat was not there!
In an instant the truth flashed upon me.
The water was very high--the rain had swollen the river--my house had
floated away!
It was Wednesday. On Wednesday afternoons our boarder came home early.
I clapped my hat tightly on my head and ground my teeth.
“Confound that boarder!” I thought. “He has been fooling with the
anchor. He always said it was of no use, and taking advantage of my
absence, he has hauled it up, and has floated away, and has gone--gone
with my wife and my home!”
Euphemia and “Rudder Grange” had gone off together--where I knew
not,--and with them that horrible suggester!
I ran wildly along the bank. I called aloud, I shouted and hailed each
passing craft--of which there were only two--but their crews must have
been very inattentive to the woes of landsmen, or else they did not hear
me, for they paid no attention to my cries.
I met a fellow with an axe on his shoulder. I shouted to him before I
reached him:
“Hello! did you see a boat--a house, I mean,--floating up the river?”
“A boat-house?” asked the man.
“No, a house-boat,” I gasped.
“Didn't see nuthin' like it,” said the man, and he passed on, to his
wife and home, no doubt. But me! Oh, where was my wife and my home?
I met several people, but none of them had seen a fugitive canal-boat.
How many thoughts came into my brain as I ran along that river road! If
that wretched boarder had not taken the rudder for an ironing table he
might have steered in shore! Again and again I confounded--as far as
mental ejaculations could do it--his suggestions.
I was rapidly becoming frantic when I met a person who hailed me.
“Hello!” he said, “are you after a canal-boat adrift?”
“Yes,” I panted.
“I thought you was,” he said. “You looked that way. Well, I can tell you
where she is. She's stuck fast in the reeds at the lower end o' Peter's
Pint.”
“Where's that?” said I.
“Oh, it's about a mile furder up. I seed her a-driftin' up with the
tide--big flood tide, to-day--and I thought I'd see somebody after her,
afore long. Anything aboard?”
Anything!
I could not answer the man. Anything, indeed! I hurried on up the river
without a word. Was the boat a wreck? I scarcely dared to think of it. I
scarcely dared to think at all.
The man called after me and I stopped. I could but stop, no matter what
I might hear.
“Hello, mister,” he said, “got any tobacco?”
I walked up to him. I took hold of him by the lapel of his coat. It was
a dirty lapel, as I remember even now, but I didn't mind that.
“Look here,” said I. “Tell me the truth, I can bear it. Was that vessel
wrecked?”
The man looked at me a little queerly. I could not exactly interpret his
expression.
“You're sure you kin bear it?” said he.
“Yes,” said I, my hand trembling as I held his coat.
“Well, then,” said he, “it's mor'n I kin,” and he jerked his coat out of
my hand, and sprang away. When he reached the other side of the road, he
turned and shouted at me, as though I had been deaf.
“Do you know what I think?” he yelled. “I think you're a darned
lunatic,” and with that he went his way.
I hastened on to Peter's Point. Long before I reached it, I saw the
boat.
It was apparently deserted. But still I pressed on. I must know the
worst. When I reached the Point, I found that the boat had run aground,
with her head in among the long reeds and mud, and the rest of her hull
lying at an angle from the shore.
There was consequently no way for me to get on board, but to wade
through the mud and reeds to her bow, and then climb up as well as I
could.
This I did, but it was not easy to do. Twice I sank above my knees
in mud and water, and had it not been for reeds, masses of which I
frequently clutched when I thought I was going over, I believe I should
have fallen down and come to my death in that horrible marsh. When
I reached the boat, I stood up to my hips in water and saw no way of
climbing up. The gang-plank had undoubtedly floated away, and if it had
not, it would have been of no use to me in my position.
But I was desperate. I clasped the post that they put in the bow of
canal-boats; I stuck my toes and my finger-nails in the cracks between
the boards--how glad I was that the boat was an old one and had
cracks!--and so, painfully and slowly, slipping part way down once or
twice, and besliming myself from chin to foot, I climbed up that post
and scrambled upon deck. In an instant, I reached the top of the stairs,
and in another instant I rushed below.
There sat my wife and our boarder, one on each side of the dining-room
table, complacently playing checkers!
My sudden entrance startled them. My appearance startled them still
more.
Euphemia sprang to her feet and tottered toward me.
“Mercy!” she exclaimed; “has anything happened?”
“Happened!” I gasped.
“Look here,” cried the boarder, clutching me by the arm, “what a
condition you're in. Did you fall in?”
“Fall in!” said I.
Euphemia and the boarder looked at each other. I looked at them. Then I
opened my mouth in earnest.
“I suppose you don't know,” I yelled, “that you have drifted away!”
“By George!” cried the boarder, and in two bounds he was on deck.
Dirty as I was, Euphemia fell into my arms. I told her all. She hadn't
known a bit of it!
The boat had so gently drifted off, and had so gently grounded among
the reeds, that the voyage had never so much as disturbed their games of
checkers.
“He plays such a splendid game,” Euphemia sobbed, “and just as you came,
I thought I was going to beat him. I had two kings and two pieces on the
next to last row, and you are nearly drowned. You'll get your death of
cold--and--and he had only one king.”
She led me away and I undressed and washed myself and put on my Sunday
clothes.
When I reappeared I went out on deck with Euphemia. The boarder was
there, standing by the petunia bed. His arms were folded and he was
thinking profoundly. As we approached, he turned toward us.
“You were right about that anchor,” he said, “I should not have hauled
it in; but it was such a little anchor that I thought it would be of
more use on board as a garden hoe.”
“A very little anchor will sometimes do very well,” said I, cuttingly,
“when it is hooked around a tree.”
“Yes, there is something in that,” said he.
It was now growing late, and as our agitation subsided we began to be
hungry. Fortunately, we had everything necessary on board, and, as it
really didn't make any difference in our household economy, where we
happened to be located, we had supper quite as usual. In fact, the
kettle had been put on to boil during the checker-playing.
After supper, we went on deck to smoke, as was our custom, but there was
a certain coolness between me and our boarder.
Early the next morning I arose and went upstairs to consider what had
better be done, when I saw the boarder standing on shore, near by.
“Hello!” he cried, “the tide's down and I got ashore without any
trouble. You stay where you are. I've hired a couple of mules to tow the
boat back. They'll be here when the tide rises. And, hello! I've found
the gang-plank. It floated ashore about a quarter of a mile below here.”
In the course of the afternoon the mules and two men with a long rope
appeared, and we were then towed back to where we belonged.
And we are there yet. Our boarder remains with us, as the weather is
still fine, and the coolness between us is gradually diminishing. But
the boat is moored at both ends, and twice a day I look to see if the
ropes are all right.
The petunias are growing beautifully, but the geraniums do not seem to
flourish. Perhaps there is not a sufficient depth of earth for them.
Several times our boarder has appeared to be on the point of suggesting
something in regard to them, but, for some reason or other, he says
nothing.