“You Never Know”
Life is full of surprises.
Virginia has always maintained that the motto of my house ought to be
“YOU NEVER KNOW,” simply because of the rapidity with which I change
my mind, and the complications and unexpected developments that follow
thereupon.
She begged me to have it carved in the wooden beams above the
mantelpiece. But as I didn’t, she brought me a Chinese tablet (her
brother is a persistent traveller, and I think she had unearthed
it from some of his effects), bearing on a red background three
imposing-looking Chinese symbols, in gold.
I asked her what they meant; though I have never embarked on any
language of China, Virginia has studied most things under the sun, and
I concluded she knew. She replied that it was the household motto: “You
never know”; and she placed it in a conspicuous position above the
fireplace in my London dining-room. And when guests asked its meaning,
of course I translated it for them, with the air of one who had spoken
Mandarin from her cradle; and they looked proportionately impressed.
One day, however, an Oriental scholar of unquestionable authority
chanced to be dining with us, and he suddenly raised his glasses and
studied the tablet with evident interest.
“May I ask why you have that above the mantelpiece?” he inquired
politely.
“Oh, it’s merely the family motto,” I answered airily, “but we have it
in Chinese to-night, in your honour.”
“Really! You do surprise me!! It seems so curious to be greeted with
that in your house!!!” And he looked at me in undisguised amazement.
Then I grew anxious, and wondered to myself what it did mean; and since
discretion is the better part of a good many things, I thought it would
be wisest to explain that I hadn’t the faintest idea what it stood for.
He smiled when I confessed. “Well, I can tell you,” he said, as he
proceeded to mumble a little in an unknown tongue to himself, reading
each collection of strokes in turn. “It means—er—let me see—well—to
translate it quite broadly, you understand, in the vernacular, the
nearest equivalent in English is ‘Beware of Pickpockets.’”
* * * * *
Truly, you never know!
Work was extra heavy in my office that week. Like every other business
house, we were understaffed, with the majority of our expert men at the
front. Moreover, I was trying to get things a little ahead, as I was
going away on the Friday.
I did not get home till nearly nine o’clock on the Tuesday following my
adoption of Eileen, and by that time I was too tired to trouble about
matters domestic. Nevertheless I noticed that the house seemed very
draughty; but I put it down to a very high wind that had set in earlier
in the day.
As I was going upstairs to bed about half-past ten, I noticed the
powerful draught again. I like plenty of air in the house, but after
all a line should be drawn somewhere when it is blowing a hurricane,
and I said so.
“_Well_, and to think I forgot to tell you!” said Abigail cheerfully.
“The skylight’s blown clean away, and rain’s been pouring in like
anything on the top landing!” Judging by her pleased expression, you
might have thought that the deluge was in gold.
If you have ever been fortunate enough to find yourself minus a
fair-sized skylight on a stormy night, and the man of the house away on
urgent business, and not expected back for a month, you will know what
my feelings were when I heard the news. It is useless for me to try to
describe them.
Virginia and Ursula, who live near me in London, were hastily
summoned. By the time we had all done exclaiming, “Well, I never!”
singly and in chorus, and had heard full details of the catastrophe
repeated for the eighth time by Abigail, it was eleven o’clock. And as
no self-respecting builder’s man can do any work after five o’clock
(and few seem able to do any before that hour), it was obviously
useless to hope for professional aid. So we took a step-ladder to the
top landing and piled it on a table, with me on top of all, domestics
clutching the step-ladder fervently as I balanced myself on its dizzy
height, and exclaiming, “Oh, do be careful, madam!” at frequent
intervals; with Virginia and Ursula offering unlimited advice in a
running duet.
At last I was high enough to get my head out of the space where the
skylight ought to have been, and there I saw it further down the roof.
I fished for it with the crook of an umbrella-handle, and got it up at
last, though it threatened to blow away again every moment. We managed
to secure it by putting some screws in the framework of the roving
skylight, and also in the woodwork to which that skylight was supposed
to be attached, but wasn’t; and then winding copper wire round and
round both sets of screws. In this way we kept the flighty creature
anchored till the morning. I was rather proud of the neat and effectual
job I had made of it, when I surveyed it from below.
The builder smiled politely but pitifully when he gazed at my efforts
next day. He then proceeded to explain to me that though, of course, he
was quite competent to refix that skylight as it ought to be fixed (and
as, indeed, it never had been fixed since the day the house was built),
nevertheless it would be an exceedingly awkward job. From what I could
gather from his technical conversation, and diagrams made with a stubby
bit of pencil on old envelopes from his pocket, that skylight had been
placed in absolutely the most inaccessible part of the whole roof; it
would take all sorts of ladders, to say nothing of scaffolding, to
get anywhere near it, etc. It would be a dangerous job, too, and of
course he must take every precaution and run no risks. All of which I
knew from past experience was by way of letting me know that (being
the unfortunate owner of the property) I should have the privilege of
settling a nice long bill presently.
I did feebly suggest that rather than imperil the lives of his most
valuable-looking assistants, he should simplify matters by dealing with
the skylight from the inside. But he only looked at me witheringly and
said, “Madam, the hinges are outside.”
Naturally, I was humiliated and effectually silenced.
When, finally, they had accomplished the well-nigh impossible, and
reached that skylight, the builder returned to report that never, in
all his life, had he seen a roof in worse condition than mine was. It
appeared to be simply a special providence that the whole covering to
the house had not blown clean away—or else tumbled in on top of us! He
said he just wished I would come up and see it; he didn’t ask anyone
merely to take his word for it; there it was for me to see; and I might
believe him when he said that if the roof needed three new slates it
needed three hundred.
Once again I got in a gentle word to the effect that it was strange
we had never had any trouble with the roof, nor a drop of rain come
through; but the look of injured, virtuous dignity he put on at the
mere hint of doubt on my part, made me hastily beg him to proceed with
the necessary work—otherwise I saw myself sitting up another night
sick-nursing a skylight!
The builder told me I needn’t worry about the gentleman being away;
lots of gentlemen he was in the habit of working for were away just
now; he would superintend the work his own self, and he went off
assuring me that he meant to make a _good_ job of it.
Then I sent a note to Eileen, asking her kindly to postpone packing
for a few days, as I was unavoidably detained in town.
The men got on the top of the roof most mornings at about half-past
six, and apparently started to play golf up there—judging by the
sounds overhead. But they always found it too windy, or too wet, or
too something, to stay up there, once they had awakened the whole
household. So they invariably went away again till about three-thirty
in the afternoon—by which time I suppose the roof was thoroughly well
aired, and it was safe for them to sit on it and smoke a pipe or two.
It was a fortnight before that roof was finished. Finally they left.
And the kitchen staff grew pensive.
But the very day after they had cleared their ladders away, I saw a
tiny stream oozing out of the sodden grass in the front garden. I knew,
even before the builder returned and looked wise, that it was a leak in
the pipe leading from the water-main.
The pipe-mending squad that arrived next morning was not the same
as the roof-mending squad; but the kitchen, being quite impartial,
recovered its spirits immediately.
These men, evidently most competent, started work in a business-like
manner, by removing the two sets of gates, that terminate the
semi-circular carriage drive, and blocking up the stable door with
them. Next they dug what looked like a network of trenches for giants.
They piled up the edging tiles from the beds, and the gravel from the
paths, on the front door step; they banked up turf and more gravel
under the windows; they uprooted laurels and privet, and the usual
array of evergreens that are the only things that will keep alive
in a London front garden, and laid them one on top of the other,
effectually barricading the tradesmen’s entrance. And when they had
made it delightfully impossible for anyone to get either in or out of
the house, they one and all came to a halt, and leant wearily on their
picks.
Just then a brilliant idea seemed to strike one of them whereby he
might make himself a still greater nuisance, and he hurriedly turned
off the water.
They spent the remainder of the day resting on their tools—save when
they were gallantly passing in cans and jugs of water (borrowed from my
neighbour) to smiling Cook or Abigail at the side door.
It rained hard all night, and by next morning we had quite a spacious
lake in the front garden. The squad returned to the post of duty, and
once more disposed themselves like guardian angels on its banks. When,
in sheer exasperation, I asked them how long they were going to leave
things like that, and the house without a drop of water, the foreman
replied, politely but non-committally, that he couldn’t exactly say,
but the Boss was coming round to see me shortly.
The builder arrived later, to inform me that this was a most serious
leak; he didn’t know when he had seen one precisely like it before. Of
course, it was partly due to the pipe; how any man could have called
himself a plumber, and put in such a pipe as _that_!—well, words failed
him! He himself was not a man to boast of his own doings, but he didn’t
mind telling me that I could take up any piece of ground I liked, where
he had laid a pipe, and see the sort _he_ put underground.
Then it transpired that the leakage was of such a character that he
dare not proceed an inch farther with it without calling in the water
company’s officials. Did I authorise him to do so? Of course they would
charge special fees for “opening up the ground.” I wondered where else
they would find any to “open up” on my premises, seeing that by this
time the whole estate was a gaping void! As I saw the turncock and
a variety of other gentlemen with gold letters embroidered on their
collars, propping themselves up against my holly hedge, I just said,
“Oh, yes; do anything you please.”
And they did.
Some of the embroidered ones then proceeded to dig up the whole
pavement, and right out into the middle of the road (the leak being
inside the garden, close beside my front door!). It does not take long
to write about it, but I don’t want to mislead you into thinking there
was any feverish haste about their methods. Oh, no! theirs was the calm
un-hurrying work of the true artist; and the builder’s squad stood
round admiringly, most careful not to interfere.
Once again the whole lot came to a standstill, and rested on any
available implement; and they now made a goodly crowd (I had no idea
there were so many non-khaki men still loose), which was further
supplemented by a policeman, one or two aged men who had discarded the
workhouse for the more leisurely life that modern business offers,
and a variety of languid young ladies who had been sent out on urgent
errands from sundry local shops.
In the lull, the chief official from the water company sought an
interview with me, when he broke the news that never, in all his life,
had he seen a more antiquated stop-cock (which, by the way, had been
made in Germany) than the one I had had placed (apparently out of sheer
perversity or malice) in the front of my premises. It seems that there
was no key in the whole of London that would turn that stop-cock; and
when finally it had turned it, that key could not be got out again.
However, or whenever, I had managed to evade the Eye of Authority so
far as to drop that stop-cock into the ground, he could not think; but,
at any rate, out it would have to come again.
Here I managed to get in a word sideways, and told him that the much
maligned article had been placed there by another squad of men from the
same water company (after a similar harangue), and then duly “passed”
by an inspector only two years ago.
Two years ago! he exclaimed, why, _that_ inspector had been called up
in the spring, and he was no loss to the company! Not that he (the
speaker) was one to say anything against another man’s work, but if I
would just come out and examine it for myself (it was raining torrents,
and the stop-cock was an island in a watery waste) I would see that
the whole affair was scandalous. He was the last to utter an ill-word
about any man, more especially behind his back, but conscientiousness
compelled him to state that the late inspector was about as fit to be
in the employ of a water company as—“as _you_ are, ma’am.” Evidently he
could think of no more hopelessly incapable specimen of humanity.
Then it transpired that the real object of his call on me was to ask
whether I authorised him to put in a new stop-cock (more special fees,
of course).
As I didn’t seem to be left much choice in the matter, and I wasn’t
sure whether, if I left it in, after being told to take it out, the
Defence of the Realm couldn’t come and have me shot at dawn, I told him
he had my full permission to put in twenty new stop-cocks if he liked;
he was at liberty to place them as a trimming outside my garden wall,
or as an edging at the kerb, or in a fancy zigzag design around the
drive—anything—everything—whatsoever and howsoever he pleased, so long
as it enabled him, conscientiously, _to turn on my water again_.
(The lady next door had already said that while she was delighted
to give me the water, and would even throw in all the jugs and cans
she possessed, she really couldn’t spare her coachman (aged 73) for
more than half-an-hour at each delivery, as he was the one ewe-lamb
left them, since war claimed the rest, and would I kindly see that my
kitchen limited their conversation to that extent, and returned him,
carriage forward, within that time.)
The Chief Official looked at me thoughtfully for half a moment, and
then retired in silence—to have the door-mat he had just vacated
immediately monopolised by the builder, who had been waiting
respectfully in the background. (I say background, because I can’t
think of any other comprehensive term that signifies a couple of
narrow, wobbly, muddy planks, laid across a well-filled moat; _ground_
there was none.)
He congratulated me on having been let off by the Official so
easily, and cited instances of owners of property he knew who had
been compelled to lay miles of fresh pipes (or it seemed to be
miles, judging by the time he took to describe it) as the result of
inattention to Official Rules and Regulations regarding Stop-cocks. But
he intimated that he had put in a good word for me, and besought them
to deal leniently with me, “Knowing, ma’am, how generous you and the
gentleman always are.”