COLD weather and the pork-packing season had arrived, and the lower
floor of Somerton's warehouse was a busier place than the store. At
one side "dressed" hogs, unloaded from farmers' wagons, were piled
high; in the centre a man with a cleaver lopped the heads and feet
from the carcasses, and divided the remainder into hams, shoulders,
and sides, which another man trimmed into commercial shape; a third
packed the product in salted layers on the other side. At the rear
of the room two men cut the trimmings, carefully separating the lean
from the fat, and with the latter filled, once in two or three hours,
some huge iron kettles which sat in a brick furnace in the corner. At
similar intervals the contents of the kettles were transferred to the
hopper of a large press, not unlike a cider press, and soon an odorous
wine-colored fluid streamed into a tank below, from which it was ladled
through tin funnels into large, closely hooped barrels. The room
was cold, despite the furnace; the walls, windows, and ceiling were
reminiscent of the dust and smell of many pork-packing seasons. Early
in the season Philip had dubbed the pork-packing floor "Bluebeard's
Chamber," and warned his wife never to enter it. After a single glance
one day, through the street door of the warehouse, Grace assured her
husband that the prohibition was entirely unnecessary. She also said
that she never had been fond of pork, but that in the future she would
eschew ham, bacon, sausage, lard, and all other pork products.
When the sound of rapid, heavy hammering was audible in the Somerton
sitting room and parlor, and when Grace asked where it came from,
Philip replied, "The pork-house;" the cooper was packing barrels of
sides, hams, or shoulders for shipment, or tightening the hoops of
lard-barrels which were inclined to leak. When Grace wondered whence
came the great flakes of soot on table-linen which had been hung out
of doors to dry, Philip replied, "The pork-house;" probably the fire
in the furnace was drawing badly and smoking too much. Frequently,
when she went to the store and asked Caleb where her husband was, the
reply would be, "The pork-house." If Philip reached home late for a
meal, and Grace asked what had kept him, he was almost certain to
reply, "The pork-house," and if, as frequently occurred later in the
season, he retired so late that Grace thought she had slept through
half the night, he groaned, in answer to her inevitable question, "The
pork-house."
Then came a day when Grace detected an unfamiliar and unpleasing odor
in the house. She suspected the napkins, then the tablecloth, and
examined the rug under the dining-room table for possible spots of
butter. Next she inspected the kitchen, which she washed and scoured
industriously for a full day. Occasionally she detected the same odor
in the store, as if she had carried it with her from the house, so she
examined her dresses minutely, for the odor was reminiscent of cookery
of some kind, although she had but a single dress for kitchen wear,
and never wore it out of the house. She mentioned the odor to Philip,
but he was unable to detect it in the air. One day it inflicted itself
upon her even in church, and became so obnoxious that she spoke of it,
instead of the sermon, as soon as the congregation was dismissed.
"I'm very sorry, dear girl, that you're so tormented," said Philip. "I
wish I could identify the nuisance; then possibly I could find means
to abate it. I know an odor is hard to describe, but do try to give me
some clew to it."
"It reminds me somewhat of stale butter," Grace replied slowly, "and
of some kinds of greasy pans, and of burned meat, and of parts of some
tenement-house streets in the city, and some ash-cans on city sidewalks
on hot summer mornings--oh, those days!--and of--I don't know what
else."
"You've already named enough to show that 'tis truly disgusting and
dreadful, and I do wish you and I could exchange the one of the five
senses which is affected by it, for I never had much sense of smell."
By this time they were at home. Philip was unclasping his wife's cloak
when Grace exclaimed suddenly:--
"There it is!"
"There what is?"
"That dreadful odor! Why, Phil, 'tis on your coat-sleeve! What, in the
name of all that's mysterious--"
"That was my best coat in the city last winter, and I've never worn it
here, except on Sundays."
"Then it must have taken the odor from some other garment in your
closet."
Philip hurriedly brought his ordinary weekday coat to the sitting
room, Grace moved it slowly, suspiciously, toward her nose, and soon
exclaimed:--
"There it is--ugh! But what can it be?"
At that instant a well-known knock at the door announced Caleb, who had
been invited to Sunday dinner.
"Don't be shocked, Caleb," said Philip; "we're not mending clothes on
Sunday. 'Twill scarcely be an appetizer, apparently, but won't you pass
this coat to and fro before your face a moment, and detect an odor, if
you can, and tell us what it is?"
Caleb took the coat, did as requested, touched the cloth with his nose,
and replied:--
"The pork-house."
"What do you mean?" Philip asked, while Grace turned pale.
"It's the smell of boilin' fat, from the lard-kettles. It's powerful
pervadin' of ev'rythin', specially woollen clothes, an' men's hair,
when the pork-house windows an' doors are shut. It makes me mortal sick
sometimes, when the malary gets a new grip on me; at such times I know
a pork-house worker when I pass him in the street in the dark. To save
myself from myself I used to wear an oilcloth jacket an' overalls when
I worked in the pork-house--your uncle an' I used to have to put in a
good many hours there. There was somethin' else I used to do too, when
I got to my room, though I never dared to tell your uncle, or he'd
never ha' stopped laughin' at me."
"What was it? Tell me--quick!" said Philip.
"Why, I bought a bottle of Floridy water out of the store,--it's a
stuff that some of the gals use,--an' I sprinkled a little ev'ry day,
mornin' an' evenin', on the carpet."
Philip hurried to a bed-chamber, and came back with Grace's
cologne-bottle, the contents of which he bestowed upon the rug under
the dining table.
"That ort to kill the rat," said Caleb, approvingly.
The dinner was a good one, but Grace ate sparingly, though she talked
with animation and brilliancy unusual even for her, Philip imagined.
For himself, he felt as he thought a detected criminal, an outcast,
must feel. Excusing himself abruptly, he relieved his feelings somewhat
by throwing out of doors the offending coat and the garments pertaining
to it; then he threw out all the woollen garments of his wardrobe.
Caleb was not due at Sunday school until three o'clock, but he excused
himself an hour early. As he started, he signalled Philip in a manner
familiar in the store, to follow him, and when both were outside the
door, he said:--
"I reckon she needs quinine, or somethin'. Touchiness 'bout smells is a
sign. I'd get Doc Taggess to come down, if I was you."
Philip thanked him for the suggestion; then he hurried to the
bath-room, washed his hair and mustache, and exchanged his clothes
for a thinner suit which he exhumed from a trunk. It was redolent of
camphor, which he detested, but it was "all the perfumes of Araby"
compared with--the pork-house. Then he rejoined Grace and made haste to
officiate as assistant scullion, and also to ejaculate:--
"That infernal pork-house!"
"Don't talk of it any more to-day," Grace said, with a piteous smile.
"How can I help it, when--"
"But you must help it, Phil dear. Really you must."
Philip made haste to change the subject of conversation, and to cheer
his wife and escape from his own thoughts he tried to be humorous, and
finally succeeded so well that he and Grace became as merry in their
little kitchen as they ever had been anywhere. Indeed, Grace recovered
her spirits so splendidly that of her own accord she recalled the
pork-house, and said many amusing things about "Bluebeard's Chamber,"
and told how curious and jealous Philip's prohibition had made her, and
Philip replied that it contained more trunkless heads than the fateful
closet of Bluebeard, and that it was a treasure-house besides; for
through it passed most of the store's business that directly produced
money. Then he dashed at the piano and played a lot of music so lively
that it would have shocked the church people had they heard it, and
Grace lounged in an easy-chair, with her eyes half closed, looking the
picture of dreamy contentment. Later she composed herself among the
pillows of a lounge, and asked Philip to throw an afghan over her,
and sit beside her, and talk about old times in the city, and then
to remind her of all their newer blessings, because she wished to be
very, fully, reverently grateful for them. Philip was not loath to
comply with her request; for though the month's work had been very
exacting and hard, he had been assured by Caleb, within twenty-four
hours, that it was the largest and most profitable month of business
that the Somerton store had ever done, and that beyond a doubt the new
proprietor had "caught on," and held all the old customers, and of his
own ability secured several new ones, which proved that the people of
the town and county "took to" him.
All this Philip repeated to Grace, who dreamily said that it was very
good, and a satisfaction to have her husband prominent among men,
instead of a nobody--a splendid, incomparable, adorable one, but still
really a nobody, among the hundreds of thousands of men in New York.
Then both of them fell to musing as the twilight deepened. Musing,
twilight, and temporary relief from the strain of the week's work
combined to send Philip into a gentle doze, from which he suddenly
roused himself to say:--
"What are you laughing at, Miss Mischief?"
"I'm--not--laughing," Grace replied.
"Crying? My dear girl, what is the matter?"
"I'm--not--crying. I'm--merely--shivering. I'm cold."
"That's because you've a brute of a husband, who has been so wrapped
up in his affairs and you that probably he has let the fire go out."
He made haste to replenish the stove and to throw over his wife a
traveller's rug. Then he lighted a shaded candle, looked at the
thermometer, and said:--
"How strange! The mercury stands at seventy-two degrees."
But Grace continued to shiver, and, stranger still, she felt colder as
the fire burned up and additional covers were placed upon her. Finally
she exclaimed:--
"Oh, Phil! I'm frightened! This is something--different from--ordinary
cold. It must be some--something like--paralysis. I can't move my arms
or feet."
"I'll run for Doctor Taggess at once!" said Philip; but as he started
from the room, Grace half screamed, half groaned:--
"Don't leave me, if you--love me! Don't let me--die--alone!"
"At least let me go to the door and raise a shout; some one will hear
me, and I'll send him for the Doctor."
As he opened the door he saw a light in the window of Caleb's room,
over the store. Quickly seizing the cord of the alarm signal, of which
Caleb had previously told him, he pulled several times, and soon Caleb,
finding the door ajar, entered the room.
"Won't you get the Doctor, Caleb--quick?" said Philip. "We're awfully
frightened; my wife has a strange, dreadful attack of some kind. It
acts like paralysis."
Caleb, glancing toward the lounge, saw the quivering covers and Grace's
face.
"Poor little woman!" he said, with the voice of a woman. "But don't be
frightened. 'Tisn't paralysis. It's bad enough, but it never kills. I
know the symptoms as well as I know my own right hand, an' Doctor'll do
more good later in the evenin' than now."
"But what is it, man?"
"Malary--fever an' ager. She's never had a chill before, I reckon?"
"No--o--o," said Grace, between chattering teeth.
"Don't wonder you was scared, then. If religion could take hold
like an ager-chill, this part of the country would be a section o'
kingdom-come. The mean thing about it is that it takes hardest hold
of folks that's been the healthiest. Try not to be scared, though;
it won't kill, an' 'twon't last but a few minutes. Then you're likely
to drop asleep, an' wake pretty soon with a hot fever an' splittin'
headache; they ain't pleasant to look forward to, but they might seem
worse if you didn't foresee 'em. I'll go for Doc Taggess right off;
if he ain't home, his wife'll send him as soon as he comes. Taggess
himself is the best medicine he carries; but if he's off somewhere,
I'll come back an' tell your husband what to do. Don't be afeared to
trust me; ev'ry man o' sense in this section o' country knows what to
do for fever and ager; if he didn't, he'd have to go out o' business."
Caleb departed, after again saying "Poor little woman!" very tenderly.
As for Philip, he took his wife's hands in his own and poured forth
a torrent of sympathetic words; but when the sufferer fell asleep,
he went out into the darkness and cursed malaria, the West, and the
impulse which had made him become his uncle's heir. He cursed many
things else, and then concentrated the remainder of his wrath into an
anathema on the pork-house.