THE next morning Millington came over bright and early, and his face was
aglow with joy.
“Get ready as quickly as you can,” he said, “for I will be ready to
start for Port Lafayette in a few minutes. The automobile is in perfect
order, and we should have a splendid trip. She isn't knocking at all.”
This knocking, which was located in the motor-case, or hood, was one of
the most reliable noises of all those for which Millington listened when
he started the engine of his automobile. He was very fond of it, and it
was one of the heartiest knockings I ever heard in an automobile. It was
like the hiccoughs, only more strenuous. It was as if a giant had been
shut in the motor by mistake and was trying to knock the whole affair
to pieces. The knock came about every eight seconds, lightly at
first, getting stronger and stronger until it made the fore-end of the
automobile bounce up a foot or eighteen inches at each knock.
Millington loved all the sounds of trouble, but this knocking gave him
the most pleasure and put him in his pleasantest mood, for he could
never quite discover the cause of it. When everything else was in
perfect order the knock remained. He would do everything any man could
think of to cure it, but the machine would continue to knock. I remember
he even went so far as to put a new inner tube in a tire once, to see
if that would have any effect, but it did not. But there were plenty
of other noises, too. Millington once told me he had classified and
scheduled four hundred and eighteen separate noises of disorder that
he had heard in that one automobile, and that did not include any that
might be another noise for the same disorders. And some days he would
hear the whole four hundred and eighteen before we had gone a block.
Those were his happy days.
But this morning Millington came over bright and early. Isobel was just
putting a cake in the oven, and she only took time to tell Jane, or
Sophie, or whoever happened to be our maid that week, that she would be
back in time to take the cake out, and then we went over to Millington's
garage.
Mrs. Millington, was already in the automobile, and Isobel and I got in,
and Millington opened the throttle and the machine ran down the road to
the street as lightly and skimmingly as a swallow. It glided into the
street noiselessly and headed for Port Lafayette like a thing alive. I
noticed that Millington looked anxious, but I thought nothing of it at
the time. His brow was drawn into a frown, and from moment to moment
he pulled his cap farther and farther down over his eyes. He leaned far
over the side of the car. He listened so closely that his ears twitched.
Mrs. Millington and Isobel were chatting merrily on the rear seat, and
I was just turning to cast them a word, when the car came to a stop.
I turned to Milllington instantly, ready to catch the pleasant bit of
humour he usually let fall when he began to dig out his wrenches and
pliers, but his face wore a glare of anger. His jaws were set, and
he was muttering low, intense curses. I have seldom seen a man more
demoniacal than Millington was at that moment. I asked him, merrily,
what was the matter with the old junk shop this time, but instead of his
usual chipper repartee, that “the old tea kettle has the epizootic,” he
gave me one ferocious glance in which murder was plainly to be seen.
Without a word he began walking around the automobile, eyeing it
maliciously, and every time he passed a tire he kicked it as hard as
he could. Then he began opening all the opening parts, and when he had
opened them all and had peered into them long and angrily he went over
to the curb and sat down and swore. Isobel and Mrs. Millington politely
stuffed their handkerchiefs in their ears, but I went over to Millington
and spoke to him as man to man.
“Millington,” I said severely, “calm down! I am surprised. Time and
again I have started for Port Lafayette with you, and time and again we
have paused all day while you repaired the automobile. Much as I have
wished to go to Port Lafayette I have never complained, because you have
always been better company while repairing the machine than at any other
time. But this I cannot stand. If you continue to act this way I shall
never again go toward Port Lafayette with you. Brace up, and repair the
machine.”
Millington's only answer was a curse.
I was about to take him by the throat and teach him a little better
manners when he arose and walked over to the machine again. He got in
and started the motor, and listened intently while I ran alongside.
Then, with a great effort he controlled his feelings and spoke.
“Ladies,” he said between his teeth, “we shall have to postpone going
to Port Lafayette. I am afraid to drive this car any farther. There is
something very, very serious the matter with it.”
Then, when the women had disappeared, my wife walking rapidly so as to
arrive at home before her cake was scorched, Millington turned to me.
“John,” he said with emotion, “you must excuse the feeling I showed.
I was upset; I admit that I was overcome. I have owned this car four
years, but in all that time, although I have started for Port Lafayette
nearly every day, the car has never behaved as it has just behaved. I am
a brave man, John, and I have never been afraid of a motor-car before,
but when my car acts as this car has just acted, I _am_ afraid!”
I could see he was speaking the truth. His face was white about the
mouth, and the tense lines showed he was nerving himself to do his duty.
His voice trembled with the intensity of his self-control.
“John,” he said, taking my hand, “were you listening to the car?”
“No,” I had to admit. “No, Millington, I was not. I am ashamed to say
it, but at the moment my mind was elsewhere. But,” I added, as if in
self defence, “I am pretty sure I did not hear that knocking. I remember
quite distinctly that I was not holding on to anything, and when the
engine knocks--But what did you hear?”
A shiver of involuntary fear passed over Millington, and he lowered his
voice to a frightened whisper. He glanced fearfully at the automobile.
“Nothing!” he said.
“What?” I cried. I could not hide my astonishment and, I am afraid,
my disbelief. I would not, for the world, have had Millington think I
thought he was prevaricating.
“Not a thing!” he repeated firmly. “Not a sound; not one bad symptom.
Every--everything was running just as it should--just as they do in
other automobiles.”
“Millington!” I said reproachfully.
“It is the truth!” he declared. “I swear it is the truth. Nothing seemed
broken or about to break. I could not hear a sound of distress, or a
symptom of disorder. Do you wonder I was overcome?”
“Millington,” I said seriously, “this is no light matter. I shall not
accuse you of wilfully lying to me, but I know your automobile, and I
cannot believe your automobile could proceed four hundred feet without
making noises of internal disorder. It is evident to me that your
hearing is growing weak; you may be threatened with deafness.” At this
Millington seemed to cheer up considerably, for deafness was something
he could understand. I proposed that we both get into the automobile
again, and I, too, would listen. So we did. It was almost pathetic, it
was most pathetic, to see the way Millington looked up into my face to
see what verdict I would give when he started the motor.
My verdict was the very worst possible. We ran a block at low speed
and I could hear no trouble. We ran a block at second speed, and no
distressful noise did I hear. We ran two blocks at high speed, with
no noise but the soft purring of motors and machinery. As Millington
brought the automobile to a stop we looked at each other aghast. It
was true, too true, _nothing was the matter with the automobile!_ It
sparked, it ignited, it did everything a perfect automobile should do,
just as a perfect automobile should do it. We got out and stared at the
automobile silently.
“John,” said Millington at length, “you can easily see that I would
not dare to start on a long trip like that to Port Lafayette when my
automobile is acting in this unaccountable manner. It would be the most
foolhardy recklessness. When this machine is running in an absolutely
perfect manner, almost anything may be the matter with it. My
own opinion is that a spell has been cast over it, and that it is
bewitched.”
“I never knew it to come as far as this without stopping,” I said, “and
to come this far without a single annoying noise makes me sure we should
not attempt Port Lafayette to-day in this car. I shall take a little
jaunt into the country behind my horse, and--”
“But don't go to Port Lafayette,” pleaded Millington. “Perhaps the
automobile will be worse to-morrow. If she only develops some of the
noises I am familiar with I shall not be afraid of her.”
One of the pleasures of being a suburbanite is that you can have a
horse, and one of the pleasures of having a horse is that you keep off
the main roads when you go driving, lest the automobiles get you and
your horse into an awful mess. In driving up cross roads and down back
roads you often run across things you would like to own--things the
automobilist never sees--and Isobel and I had heard of a genuine Windsor
chair of ancient lineage. I imagine the chair may have been almost as
old as our horse. When Mr. Millington told me we could not go to Port
Lafayette in his automobile that day, I hurried home and had Mr. Prawley
harness Bob, and it was that day, when we were hunting the Windsor
chair, that we ran across Chesterfield Whiting. Since Isobel had begun
to like suburban life, she liked it as only a convert could, and the
moment she saw Chesterfield Whiting she declared we must, by all means,
keep a pig, and that Chesterfield Whiting was the pig we must keep.
Personally I was not much in favour of keeping a pig. I like things that
pay dividends more frequently. I would not give much for a vegetable
garden that had to be planted in the spring, worked all summer,
tended all fall, and that only yielded its product in the winter.
I prefer a garden that gives a vegetable once in awhile. Mine does
that--it gives a vegetable every once in awhile. But a pig is a slow
dividend payer.
I had noticed that Mr. Rolfs and Mr. Millington had never urged me to
get a pig. Whenever I mentioned pig they mentioned various deadly and
popular pig diseases. They had urged me to garden, and to keep chickens,
and a horse, and a cow, and even an automobile--Millington urged me to
keep his--but never a pig! I would not hint that Rolfs and Millington
were selfish, or that they hoped to receive, now and then, milk from my
cow, eggs from my chickens, or radishes from my garden, but a neighbour
may profit in that way. On the other hand, the neighbour never profits
from the suburban pig. I believe now, however, that Rolfs and Millington
wished me to have things that would pay as they went.
But the moment Isobel saw the pig she said we must have him, because he
was so cute. I had never thought of buying a pig because it was cute
any more than I would have thought of buying a spring bonnet because it
would fatten well for winter killing, but I yielded to Isobel.
Isobel said the idea of a pig being a nuisance was all nonsense, for she
had been reading a magazine that was largely devoted to pigs and similar
objects loved by country gentlemen, and that modern science proved
beyond a doubt that the cleaner the pig the happier it was. She said a
pig could not be too clean, and that if a pig was kept perfectly tidy no
one could object to it.
“John,” she said, “there is no reason in the world why a pig should not
be as clean as a new pin. The magazine says that if a pig is usually of
a coarse, disgruntled nature, it is only because it is kept in coarse,
brutalizing surroundings, and treated like a pig. If a pig is put amidst
sweetness and light, the pig's nature will be sweet and light, and the
pig will be sweet and light.”
I suggested gently that a pig, all things considered, was usually
counted a failure if it was a light pig, and that experts had decided in
favour of the pig that became heavy and soggy.
“What I mean,” said Isobel, “is light in spirit, not light in weight.”
We were looking over the fence of a farm when we held this little
conversation, and Chesterfield Whiting was sporting on the clean, green
clover, amidst his brothers, quite unconscious that he was so soon to be
separated from them and lose their companionship. We had been attracted
to him by a very hand-made sign that announced “Pigs for Sale.”
Chesterfield was an extremely clean pig, and I must admit that I was
rather taken by his looks myself, and when we drove around to the farm
house I was surprised to learn how inexpensive a pig of tender years
is, and I bought the pig. It is hard for me to deny Isobel these little
pleasures.
On our way home Isobel and I talked of the future of Chesterfield, and
we resolved that his life should be one grand, sweet song, as the
poet says, and we had hardly started homeward than it appeared as if
Chesterfield meant to attend to the song feature of his life himself. I
never imagined a pig would feel his separation from his native place
so keenly. He began to mourn in a keen treble key the moment the farmer
grabbed him, uttering long, sharp wails of sorrow, and he kept it up.
Automobiles with siren horns stopped in the road as we passed, and the
chauffeurs took off their goggles and stared at us. It was very hard for
Isobel to sit up straight in the carriage and look dignified and cool
with Chesterfield wailing out his little soul sorrows under the seat.
As we neared the outskirts of Westcote, I began to keep an eye out for
pig houses. It seemed to me that in these days of uplift the pig keepers
of a suburb such as ours, peopled by intelligent men and women, would
have the most modern improvements in pig dwellings, and I desired to
make a few mental notes of them as I passed by. If I saw a very modern
pig palace I meant to get out of the carriage and examine minutely the
conveniences installed for the pig's comfort, so that I might reproduce
them.
Isobel had mentioned casually that a pig dwelling with tile floors and
walls and a shower bath would be quite sanitary, provided the tiles of
the wall met the tiles of the floor in a concave curve, leaving no sharp
angles; but as we journeyed into the village we saw no pig houses of
this kind. In fact we saw no pig houses of any kind. At first this only
annoyed me, then it surprised me, and by the time we were well into the
village it worried me.
“Isobel,” I said, “I don't like this absence of pigs in this village.
I am afraid there is something wrong here. I don't know what to make of
it. It may be that hog-cholera is epidemic here the year 'round, just as
San José scale kills all the apple trees. Have you seen a single pig?”
“Not one,” she admitted. “It looks as if there was a law against pigs.”