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LIFE'S MINOR COLLISIONS
BY
FRANCES AND GERTRUDE WARNER
AUTHORS (RESPECTIVELY) OF "ENDICOTT AND I"
AND "HOUSE OF DELIGHT"
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1921
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
TO OUR GRANDMOTHER
MARCIA JANE CHANDLER CARPENTER
WHO NEVER COLLIDES
WHY MINOR?
Collisions are measured by what they will smash. Potentially, all
collisions are major. A slight blow will explode a bomb. But since most
of us do not commonly carry dynamite through the busy sections of this
life, we can take a good many brisk knocks and still survive.
The collisions, though dealt with in separate chapters by two of us, are
seldom between two people alone. They are collisions, mostly minor,
between the individual and the group, the individual and circumstances,
the individual and the horse he rides on.
All the chapters are for those kindred spirits who try to be easy to
live with--and find it difficult.
F. L. W.
G. C. W.
CONTENTS
Love's Minor Frictions 1
Boston Streets 27
To Horse 37
Wheels and how they go round 55
The Will to boss 73
More to it than you'd think 97
Trio Impetuoso 111
The Return of A, B, C 134
Understanding the Healthy 146
Carving at Table 162
The Feeling of Irritation 175
NOTE
Acknowledgment of permission to reprint certain of these papers is made
to the editors of _The Atlantic Monthly_, _Education_, _The Ladies' Home
Journal_, _The Outlook_, _Scribner's Magazine_, and _The Unpartizan
Review_.
LIFE'S MINOR COLLISIONS
LOVE'S MINOR FRICTIONS
Minor friction is the kind that produces the most showy results with the
smallest outlay. You can stir up more electricity in a cat by stroking
her fur the wrong way than you can by dropping her into the well. You
can ruffle the dearest member of your family more by asking him twice if
he is _sure_ that he locked the back door than his political opponents
could stir him with a libel. We have direct access to the state of mind
of the people with whom we share household life and love. Therefore, in
most homes, no matter how congenial, a certain amount of minor friction
is inevitable.
Four typical causes of minor friction are questions of _tempo_, the
brotherly reform measure, supervised telephone conversations, and tenure
of parental control. These are standard group-irritants that sometimes
vex the sweetest natures.
The matter of _tempo_, broadly considered, covers the whole process of
adjustment between people of hasty and deliberate moods. It involves
alertness of spiritual response, alacrity in taking hints and filling
orders, timely appreciations, considerate delays, and all the other
delicate retards and accelerations that are necessary if hearts are to
beat as one. But it also includes such homely questions as the time for
setting out for places, the time consumed in getting ready to set out,
and the swiftness of our progress thither. When a man who is tardy is
unequally yoked with a wife who is prompt, their family moves from point
to point with an irregularity of rhythm that lends suspense to the
mildest occasions.
A certain architect and his wife Sue are a case in point. Sue is always
on time. If she is going to drive at four, she has her children ready at
half-past three, and she stations them in the front hall, with muscles
flexed, at ten minutes to four, so that the whole group may emerge from
the door like food shot from guns, and meet the incoming automobile
accurately at the curb. Nobody ever stops his engine for Sue. Her
husband is correspondingly late. Just after they were married, the choir
at their church gambled quietly on the chances--whether she would get
him to church on time, or whether he would make her late. The first
Sunday they came five minutes early, the second ten minutes late, and
every Sunday after that, Sue came early, Prescott came late, and the
choir put their money into the contribution-box. In fact, a family of
this kind can solve its problem most neatly by running on independent
schedules, except when they are to ride in the same automobile or on the
same train. Then, there is likely to be a breeze.
But the great test of such a family's grasp of the time-element comes
when they have a guest who must catch a given car, due to pass the white
post at the corner at a quarter to the hour. The visit is drawing to a
close, with five minutes to spare before car-time. Those members of the
family who like to wait until the last moment, and take their chances of
boarding the running-board on the run, continue a lively conversation
with the guest. But the prompt ones, with furtive eye straying to the
clock, begin to sit forward uneasily in their chairs, their faces drawn,
pulse feverish, pondering the question whether it is better to let a
guest miss a car or seem to hurry him away. The situation is all the
harder for the prompt contingent, because usually they have behind them
a criminal record of occasions when they have urged guests to the curb
in plenty of time and the car turned out to be late. The runners and
jumpers of the family had said it would be late, and it was late. These
memories restrain speech until the latest possible moment. Then the
guest is whisked out to the white post with the words, "If you _could_
stay, we'd be delighted, but if you really _have_ to make your train--"
Every punctual person knows the look of patronage with which the
leisured classes of his family listen to this old speech of his. They
find something nervous and petty about his prancing and pawing, quite
inferior to their large oblivion. As Tagore would say, "They are not too
poor to be late."
The matter of _tempo_ involves also the sense of the fortunate moment,
and the timing of deeds to accord with moods. In almost every group
there is one member who is set at a slightly different velocity from the
others, with a momentum not easily checked. When the rest of the
household settles down to pleasant conversation, this member thinks of
something pressing that must be done at once.
The mother of three college boys is being slowly trained out of this
habit. Her sons say that she ought to have been a fire-chief, so brisk
is she when in her typical hook-and-ladder mood. Whenever her family
sits talking in the evening, she has flitting memories of things that
she must run and do. One night, when she had suddenly rushed out to see
if the maid had remembered to put out the milk tickets, one of the boys
was dispatched with a warrant for her arrest. He traced her to the door
of the side porch, and peered out at her in the darkness. "What's little
pussy-foot doing now?" he inquired affectionately. "Can she see better
in the dark? Come along back." But her blood was up. She thought of
several other duties still waiting, and went at once to the kitchen and
filled the dipper. With this she returned to the room where sat the
waiting conversationalists, and systematically watered the fern. It was
like wearing orange to a Sinn Fein rally. At the chorus of reproach she
only laughed, the scornful laugh of the villain on the stage. Six
determined hands seized her at once. The boys explained that, when they
wanted to talk to her, it was no time to water ferns. As habitual
breaker-up of public meetings, she was going to be reformed.
But the reform measure, a group-irritant second to none, is generally
uphill business in the home. Welfare work among equals is sometimes
imperative, but seldom popular. Any programme of social improvement
implies agitation and a powerful leverage of public opinion not wholly
tranquillizing to the person to be reformed.
There is one family that has worked for years upon the case of one of
its members who reads aloud out of season. When this brother William
finds a noble bit of literature, he is fired to share it with his
relatives, regardless of time and circumstances. He comes eagerly out of
his study, book in hand, when his public is trying on a dress. Or he
begins to read without warning, when all the other people in the room
are reading something else. Arguments and penalties never had the
slightest effect, until one of the company hit upon a device that proves
a defensive measure in emergencies.
Brother William started suddenly to read aloud from a campaign speech.
His youngest sister was absorbed in that passage in "Edwin Drood" called
"A Night With Durdles," where Jasper and Durdles are climbing the
cathedral spire. In self-defence she also began to read in a clear tone
as follows: "Anon, they turn into narrower and steeper staircases, and
the night air begins to blow upon them, and the chirp of some startled
jackdaw or frightened rook precedes the heavy beating of wings in a
confined space, and the beating down of dust and straws upon their
heads."
The idea spread like wildfire. All the others opened their books and
magazines and joined her in reading aloud from the page where they had
been interrupted. It was a deafening medley of incongruous material--a
very telling demonstration of the distance from which their minds had
jumped when recalled to the campaign speech. Brother William was able to
distinguish in the uproar such fragments as these: "Just at that moment
I discovered four Spad machines far below the enemy planes"; "'Thankyou
thankyou,' cried Mr. Salteena--"; "Thomas Chatterton Jupiter Zeus, a
most dear wood-rat"; and "'It is natural,' Gavin said slowly, 'that you,
sir, should wonder why I am here with this woman at such an hour.'"
This method did not work a permanent cure, because nothing ever cures
the reader-aloud. His impulse is generosity--a mainspring of character,
not a passing whim. But at a crisis, his audience can read aloud in
concert.
The reform measure is more hopeful when directed, not at a rooted trait,
but at a surface phase or custom. Even here success is not without its
battles. My sister Barbara and I were once bent upon teaching our
younger brother Geoffrey to rise when ladies entered the room. Geoffrey,
then at the brigand age, looked at this custom as the mannerism of an
effete civilization. He rose, indeed, for guests, but not as to the
manner born. One day he came home and reported that the lady next door
had introduced him to an aunt of hers who had just arrived on a visit.
"And," said he, with speculative eye upon his sisters, "_I didn't get up
to be introduced._"
The effect was all that heart could wish. Tongues flew. Geoffrey
listened with mournful dignity, offering no excuse. He waited until our
sisterly vocabulary was exhausted.
"Why didn't you ask me where I was when she introduced me?" he asked at
length. "I was crawling along the ridgepole of her garage catching her
cat for her, and I couldn't get up."
But we were not easily diverted from our attempts to foster in him the
manly graces. We even went so far as to invite Geoffrey to afternoon
tea-parties with our friends. But a Tea-Lion, he said, was one thing
that he was not. On such occasions he would be found sitting on the
kitchen table dourly eating up the olives and refusing to come in. We
were too young in those days to know that you cannot hurry a certain
phase. But now, when we meet our brother at receptions, we smile at our
former despair. Reformers often find their hardest tasks taken out of
their hands by time.
Few brothers and sisters, however, are willing to trust to time to work
its wonders. There is a sense of fraternal responsibility that goads us
to do what we can for each other in a small way. The friction that
ensues constitutes an experience of human values that the hermit in his
cell can never know. Whenever people of decided views feel personally
responsible for each other's acts, a type of social unrest begins to
brew that sometimes leads to progress and sometimes leads to riots.
For this reason, in any home that aspires to peace at any price, the
telephone should be installed in a sound-proof box-office with no glass
in the door. There is nothing that so incenses a friendly nature as a
family grouped in the middle-distance offering advice when a telephone
conversation is going on. The person at the receiver looks so idle;
there seems to be no reason why he should not listen with his unoccupied
ear; and, when he is so evidently in need of correct data, it seems only
kind to help him out. It is the most natural thing in the world to
listen. The family listens, in the first place, to find out which one of
them is wanted, and they continue to listen to find out what is said.
When the wrong thing is said, all loyal relatives feel responsible.
The person telephoning is unfairly handicapped by necessary politeness,
because he can be heard through the transmitter and his advisers cannot.
Only extreme exasperation can unleash his tongue, as happened once when
Geoffrey, in our father's absence, undertook to answer a telephone call
while Barbara, in the next room, corrected his mistakes.
Geoffrey, pricking both ears, was doing very well, until the lady at the
other end of the line asked a question at the exact moment when Barbara
offered a new thought. "What did you say?" inquired Geoffrey. Both
Barbara and the lady repeated. "What is it?" said Geoffrey, waving one
foot at Barbara. Barbara, not seeing the foot, repeated, and so did the
lady, this time more distinctly. "I beg your pardon," said Geoffrey
anxiously, "but what did you say?" Like an incredible nightmare the
thing happened again. "Shut up!" roared Geoffrey; "what did you say?"
Barbara, recognizing instantly that part of the message directed to her,
wrote her suggestion on the telephone pad and stole prudently away.
Minor friction, she had learned, can sometimes lead to action on a large
scale. Only after some such experience as this do we allow a kinsman to
conduct his own telephone conversations, taking his own
responsibilities, running his own dark risks.
But the sense of mutual responsibility is, after all, the prime
educational factor in family life. Every good parent has a feeling of
accountability for the acts of his children. He may believe in
self-determination for the small States about him, but after all he
holds a mandate. The delightful interweaving of parental suggestion with
the original tendencies of the various children is the delicate thing
that makes each family individual. It is also the delicate thing that
makes parenthood a nervous occupation. When parental suggestion is going
to interweave delightfully as planned, and when it is not going to
interweave at all, is something not foretold in the prophets.
The question of parental influence becomes more complex as the family
grows older and more informally organized. Sometimes a son or daughter
wants to carry out a pet project without any advice or warning or help
from anybody. There is nothing rash or guilty about his plan. He simply
happens to be in the mood to act, not in committee, but of himself. To
achieve this, surrounded by a united and conversational family, becomes
a game of skill. To dodge advice, he avoids the most innocent questions.
At such times as these, the wisest parents wonder what they have done to
forfeit confidence. They see this favorite son of theirs executing the
most harmless plans with all the secrecy of the young poisoning princes
of the Renaissance.
When this happens, the over-sensitive parent grieves, the dictatorial
parent rails, but the philosophical parent picks up whatever interesting
morsels he can on the side, and cocks a weather eye.
"Robert seems to have a good many engagements," wrote the mother of a
popular son in a letter to an absent daughter, "but whether the nature
of the engagements is social, athletic, or philanthropic, we can only
infer from the equipment with which he sets out. I inferred the first
this morning when he asked me to have his dress-suit sent to be pressed;
but I could not be certain until Mrs. Stone said casually that Robert
was to be a guest at Mrs. Gardiner's dinner next week. Don't you love to
see such tender intimacy between mother and son?"
Secrecy of this kind is not the monopoly of sons. Excellent young women
have chopped ice and frozen sherbet behind closed doors because they did
not want to be told again not to get the ice all over the back piazza.
Certain warnings go with certain projects as inevitably as rubbers with
the rain. The practised mother has so often found the warnings
necessary, that the mere sight of the act produces the formula by rote.
Model sons and daughters should accept these hints with gratitude, thus
avoiding all friction, however minor. But rather than be advised to do
that which they were planning to do already, the most loyal of daughters
will resort to clandestine measures, and go stealthily with the ice-pick
as with a poniard beneath a cloak. This annoys an affectionate and
capable mother very much. And she has a right to be annoyed, has she
not? After all, it is her ice-pick.
There is something of spirited affection about the memory of all these
early broils. They were heated enough at the time, for the most violent
emotions can fly out at a trifling cause. Remarks made in these
turbulent moments are often taken as a revelation of your true and
inward self. The sentiments that you express in your moment of wrath
sound like something that you have been repressing for years and are now
turning loose upon an enlightened world. There is an air of desperate
sincerity about your remarks that makes your hearers feel that here, at
last, they have the truth.
With friends, after such an outburst, you could never feel quite the
same again. But with your relatives, such moments can be lived down--as
once occurred in our own family when our father one hot summer day sent
Geoffrey back to town to perform a forgotten errand. I had not heard of
the event until I took my place at table.
"Where's Geoffrey?" said I.
"I sent him back to get a letter he forgot," said my father.
"In all this heat?" I protested. "Well, if I had been in his place, I'd
have gone away and stayed away."
"Well, you could," said my father serenely.
"Well, I will," said Little Sunshine, and walked out of the door and up
the street in a rage.
After you have left your parental home as suddenly as this, there comes
a moment when you have the sensation of being what is termed "all
dressed up with no place to go." You feel that your decision, though
sudden, is irrevocable, because going back would mean death to your
pride. You try to fight off the practical thought that you can hardly go
far without hat or scrip. Therefore, when Geoffrey met his eloping
sister at the corner, it was with some little diplomacy that he learned
my history and took me back to the table under his wing. The
conversation barely paused as we took our places. Our father went on
affably serving the salad to the just and the unjust alike. If, at this
point, I had been treated with the contumely that I deserved, the memory
would be unpleasant in the minds of all. As it is, the family now
mentions it as the time when Margaret ran away to sea.
The only thing that can make minor friction hurtful is the
disproportionate importance that it can assume when it is treated as a
major issue, or taken as an indication of mutual dislike. It is often an
indication of the opposite, though at the moment the contestants would
find this hard to believe. Kept in its place, however, we find in it
later a great deal of humorous charm, because it belongs to a period
when we dealt with our brethren with a primitive directness not possible
in later years. An intricate ambition, this matter of harmony in the
home. Ideally, every family would like to have a history of
uninterrupted adorations and exquisite accord. But growth implies
change, change implies adjustment, and adjustment among varied
personalities implies friction. Kept at the minimum, kept in its place,
such friction does not estrange. Instead, it becomes a means to an
intimate acquaintance with one another's traits and moods--an intimacy
of understanding not far remote from love.
BOSTON STREETS
I am trying to learn how to get from the Majestic Theatre to the South
Station. I am convinced that in time I might be able to learn this, if I
were not also trying at the same time to learn how to get from the
Hollis Street Theatre to the Dennison Manufacturing Company on Franklin
Street.
I suppose that trying to solve two problems simultaneously is always
confusing. A student trying to compute problems with both hands at the
same time--problems dealing respectively with yards and pounds--might
ultimately confuse his inches with ounces. Similarly, I confuse Eliot
Street and Essex, Kneeland and Otis.
My brother Geoffrey who goes with me to Boston thinks that this is
funny; that is, he thinks it something appalling that should be
remedied. In consequence of this, he draws for me a series of beautiful
little sketches on an envelope he has about him. He letters the roads
meticulously with a fountain pen, traces our route-to-be with little
arrows, and then flings me heartlessly into the Boston Streets.
Boston Streets, and Boston Streets on an envelope, are not alike at all.
On the envelope, the streets are simple lines, all related to each
other; in reality, each street is an individual personality, distracting
you from a noble grasp of the Whole, by presenting the sole gigantic
unit of itself, further complicated by detail. Geoffrey is not bothered
by a unit, or by a detail. He branches from one street into another with
as sure an instinct as a cat who retraces on foot a journey once
traversed in a bag.
This is not because he _knows_ Boston, but because he has a _capacity_
for Boston. He leads me patiently over one route a great many times,
verifying our position at intervals with reference to his map. After a
day at my books, I am faint-heartedly supposed to have comprehended a
fact. When this actually takes place, it is very hard for me to conceal
my pride in any trifling bit of erudition which I may have accidentally
picked up about Boston. Once I distinctly remember saying to Geoffrey,
"Do you want to walk down to the Colonial Theatre or shall we go by
Subway?" Since we were at that time near the entrance of a suitable
subway, my good brother stared at me in radiant expectation. I fear that
he hoped that I was at last laying a slight hold on a working knowledge
of his favorite city. But his hope was unfounded, for this glimmer of
mine was one of only four facts that I have actually been able to learn
about the crooked miles in Boston.
The remaining three truths are here recorded for the curious.
I know the Public Library, from any angle, without map or guide, by its
fair face alone, and how to reach it from the station at Back Bay.
(This, in such a meagre description of Boston, might perhaps qualify as
two distinct facts.) I know that if one walks far enough past the
Library, in the direction in which the lady with the black ball is
looking, one will eventually come to Commonwealth Avenue, where eozoic
cabbies may be seen. And now that we have unearthed, on our way back to
the station, the Copley Theatre, I am sure that I could go to Boston,
friendless, find this theatre, lunch across the street, and retrace my
steps to some proper railway.
It may seem to the observer that I am abnormally interested in finding
my way to the theatres. I am. This is my primary reason for going to
Boston at all; and surely it is a quiet wish to do a little shopping and
get a lunch before the play begins. Therefore, our main interest lies in
locating, on each trip, one theatre and one depot. Then, if time
permits, I am supposed to articulate a shop of some kind from the tangle
of Butterfly Boxes, Corner Book Stores, and Florist windows, and some
sort of hostelry where we can eat. If my guide is less obdurate than
usual about compelling me to find my way without his assistance, he
shows me the front steps of a Department Store _once_. Then I am
supposed to know that store for all time, when viewing it from all
angles--from its front door, its back door, its basement, and from its
roof. I am supposed to know what store I am in from the looks of the
elevator boys. It always gives me acute pain to disappoint a valued
friend. Hence, in a department store, I suffer. Once inside the store, I
can find my way about very easily. I merely do not know what street I am
on.
There are certain things in Boston about which even Geoffrey inquires.
This concession on his part, instead of bringing him down to my fallible
human level, instantly elevates him to a still higher caste. He makes
his inquiries of policemen, and he understands what they say. When a
policeman directs _me_--solitary--to go up one street and down another,
and mixes in a little of the Public Garden or the Common, I cannot carry
his kind words in my mind, even with the aid of a mnemonic. He cannot
direct me from the known to the unknown, because I know nothing. He
cannot explain to me; he has to go with me. I do not know the Common
from the Public Garden. They both look like gardens to me, both equally
public, and neither, common. "But," protests my brother, "the Public
Garden is regular--a rectangle. And the Common is irregular--a
trapezium." This is perfectly true on the envelope (now dirty). But when
you are in the park itself, you are not especially aware of its shape.
Individual pigeons are more obvious. The park is too big to look square.
In just this same way, Washington Street is too big to look parallel.
When you are on Washington Street, and it alone, it is not blindingly
parallel to anything, unless, perhaps, the other side of itself. And if
my policeman, on his pretty horse, should tell me that that was Tremont
Street, I should believe him. Boston has done as bad. It would be no
stranger than it is to spring miraculously from Summer Street into
Winter, simply by following it across the road. In fact, I was not aware
that we had changed streets at all, when on my maiden trip through this
section. I preserved to the end an hallucination that I was still on
Summer Street.
Perhaps a few will do me the magnificent honor of absolving me from
boasting, when I say that I am capable of apprehending really nice bits
of information in other walks of life;--other than Boston walks. I can
pick you out a pneumonia germ from under the microscope, and count your
red corpuscles for you. I can receive the Continental Code by wireless,
and play on a violoncello. I can get a baby to sleep.
But I cannot tell you where you are in Boston. There are people who
would not admit this. They would set themselves, with their faces
steadfastly toward the Hub, to learn. Geoffrey is one of these. But I
have neither the time nor the proper shoes. I readily admit that Boston
is too much for me at my age. So I take my brother with me. Then I
placidly relegate Boston Streets to that list of things which I am
constitutionally unable to learn:--how to tat, just what is a Stock, and
what a Bond, and the difference between a Democrat and a Republican.
TO HORSE
"A duck," we used to read in the primer at school, "a duck is a long low
animal covered with feathers." Similarly, a horse is a long high animal,
covered with confusion. This applies to the horse as we find him in the
patriotic Parade, where a brass-band precedes him, an unaccustomed rider
surmounts him, and a drum-corps brings up his rear.
In our own Welcome Home Parade, after the boys returned from France, the
Legion decided to double the number of its mounted effectives: all the
overseas officers should ride. All the overseas officers were instantly
on their feet. Their protests were loud and heated. A horse, they said,
was something that they personally had never bestridden. They offered to
ride anything else. They would fly down the avenue in Spads, or do the
falling leaf over the arch of triumph. They would ride tanks or
motor-cycles or army-trucks. But a horse was a thing of independent
locomotion, not to be trifled with. It was not the idea of getting
killed that they objected to, it was the looks of the thing. By "the
thing," they meant not the horse, but the rider.
In spite of the veto of the officers, the motion was carried by
acclamation. The mediaeval charm of a mounted horse-guard instantly
kindled the community imagination. The chaplain, fresh from the navy,
was promised a milk-white palfrey for his especial use, if he would wear
his ice-cream suit for the occasion.
There was no time to practise before the event, but the boys were told
to give themselves no anxiety about mounts. Well-bred and competent
horses would appear punctually just before the time for falling in. The
officers were instructed to go to a certain corner of a side street,
find the fence behind the garage where the animals would be tied, select
their favorite form of horse from the collection they would see there,
and ride him up to the green.
When Geoffrey came home and said that he was to ride a horse in the
procession, our mother, who had been a good horsewoman in her girlhood,
took him aside and gave him a few quiet tips. Some horses, she said, had
been trained to obey certain signals, and some to obey the exact
opposite. For instance, some would go faster if you reined them in, and
some would slow down. Some waited for light touches from their master's
hand or foot, and others for their master's voice. You had to study your
horse as an individual.
Geoffrey said that he was glad to hear any little inside gossip of this
sort, and made his way alone to the place appointed, skilfully dodging
friends. We gathered that if he had to have an interview with a horse,
he preferred to have it with nobody looking on.
The fence behind the garage was fringed with horses securely tied, and
the top of the fence was fringed with a row of small boys, waiting.
Geoffrey approached the line of horses, and glanced judicially down the
row. Books on "Reading Character at Sight" make a great point of the
distinctions between blond and brunette, the concave and the convex
profile, the glance of the eye, and the manner of shaking hands.
Geoffrey could tell at a glance that the handshake of these horses would
be firm and full of decision. As one man they turned and looked at him,
and their eyes were level and inscrutable.
"Which of these horses," said he to the gang on the fence-top, "would
you take?"
"This one!" said an eager spokesman. "He didn't move a muscle since they
hitched 'im."
This recommendation decided the matter instantly. Repose of manner is an
estimable trait in the horse.
Geoffrey looked his animal over with an artist's eye. It was a slender
creature, with that spare type of beauty that we associate with the
Airedale dog. The horse was not a blond. The stirrups hung invitingly at
the sides. Geoffrey closed the inspection with satisfaction, and
prepared to mount.
In mounting, does one first untie one's horse and then get on, or may
one, as in a steam-launch, get seated first and then cast off the
painter? Geoffrey could not help recalling a page from "Pickwick
Papers," where Mr. Winkle is climbing up the side of a tall horse at the
Inn, and the 'ostler's boy whispers, "Blowed if the gen'l'man wasn't for
getting up the wrong side." Well, what governs the right and wrong side
of a horse? Douglas Fairbanks habitually avoids the dilemma by mounting
from above--from the roof of a Mexican monastery, for instance, or the
fire-escape of an apartment house. From these points he lands,
perpendicularly. With this ideal in mind, Geoffrey stepped on from the
fence, clamped his legs against the sides of the horse, and walked him
out into the street.
When I say that he walked him out into the street, I use the English
language as I have seen it used in books, but I think that it was an
experienced rider who first used the idiom. Geoffrey says that he did
not feel, at any time that afternoon, any sensation of walking his
horse, or of doing anything else decisive with him. He walked, to be
sure, dipping his head and rearing it, like a mechanical swan. But on a
horse you miss the sensation of direct control that you have with a
machine. With a machine, you press something, and if a positive reaction
does not follow, you get out and fix something else. Not so with the
horse. When you get upon him you cut yourself off from all accurately
calculable connection with the world. He is, in the last analysis, an
independent personality. His feet are on the ground, and yours are not.
We bow to literary convention, therefore, when we say that Geoffrey
walked his horse.
Far ahead of him, he saw the khaki backs of two of his friends who were
also walking their horses. One by one they ambled up to the green and
took places in the ranks. Geoffrey discovered that his horse would stand
well if allowed to droop his long neck and close his eyes. Judged as a
military figure, however, he was a disgrace to the army. If you drew up
the reins to brace his head, he thought it a signal to start, and you
had to take it all back, hastily. With the relaxed rein he collapsed
again, his square head bent in silent prayer.
With the approach of the band, however, all this changed. He reared
tentatively. Geoffrey discouraged that. Then he curled his body in an
unlovely manner--an indescribable gesture, a sort of sidelong squirm in
semi-circular formation. His rider straightened him out with a fatherly
slap on the flank.
It was time to start. The band led off. Joy to the world, thought the
horse, the band is gone. The rest of the cavalry moved forward in docile
files, but not he. If that band was going away, he would be the last
person to pursue it. Instead of going forward, he backed. He backed and
backed. There is no emergency brake on a horse. He would have backed to
the end of the procession, through the Knights of Columbus, the Red
Cross, the Elks, the Masons, the D.A.R., the Fire Department, and the
Salvation Army, if it had not been for the drum-corps that led the
infantry. The drum-corps behind him was as terrifying as the band in
front. To avoid the drum-corps, he had to spend part of his time going
away from it. Thus his progress was a little on the principle of the
pendulum. He backed from the band until he had to flee before the drums.
The ranks of men were demoralized by needless mirth. Army life dulls the
sensibilities to the spectacle of suffering. They could do nothing to
help, except to make a clear passage for Geoffrey as he alternately
backed from the brasses and escaped from the drums. Vibrating in this
way, he could only discourse to his horse with words of feigned
affection, and pray for the panic to pass off. With a cranky automobile,
now, one could have parked down a side street, and later joined the
procession, all trouble repaired. But there was nothing organic the
matter with this horse. Geoffrey could not have parked him in any case,
because it would have been no more possible to turn him toward the
cheering crowds on the pavement than to make him follow the band. The
crowds on the street, in fact, began to regard these actions as a sort
of interesting and decorative manoeuvre, so regular was the advance and
retirement--something in the line of a cotillion. And then the band
stopped playing for a little. Instantly the horse took his place in the
ranks, marched serenely, arched his slim neck, glanced about. All was as
it should be.
Geoffrey's place was just behind the marshal, supposedly to act as his
aide. During all this absence from his post of duty, the marshal had not
noticed his defection or turned around at all. Now he did so, hastily.
"Just slip back, will you," he said, "and tell Monroe not to forget the
orders at the reviewing stand."
Geoffrey opened his mouth to explain his disqualifications as courier,
but at that moment the band struck up, and his charger backed
precipitately. The marshal, seeing this prompt obedience to his request,
faced front, and Geoffrey was left steadily receding, no time to
explain--and the drum-corps was taking a vacation. There was, therefore,
no reason for the horse ever to stop backing, unless he should back
around the world until he heard the band behind him again. As he backed
through the ranks of infantry, Geoffrey shouted the marshal's message to
the officer of the day. He had to talk fast--ships that pass in the
night. But the message was delivered, and he could put his whole mind on
his horse.
He tried all the signals for forward locomotion that he could devise.
Mother had told him that some horses wait for light touches from their
master's hand or foot. Geoffrey touched his animal here and there, back
of the ear--at the base of the brain. He even kicked a trifle. He jerked
the reins in Morse Code and Continental, to the tune of S O S. The horse
understood no codes.
They were now in the ranks of the Knights of Columbus, and the marching
boys were making room for them with shouts of sympathetic glee. Must
they back through the Red Cross, where all the girls in town were
marching, and into the Daughters of the Revolution float where our
mother sat with a group of ladies around the spinning-wheel? Geoffrey
remembered that the Red Cross had a band, if it would only play. It
struck up just in time. The horse instantly became a fugitive in the
right direction. On they sped, the reviewing stand almost in sight. The
drum-corps had not begun to play. Could they reach the cavalry before it
was too late? Geoffrey hated to pass the reviewing stand in the guise of
a deserter, yet here he was cantering among the Odd Fellows, undoubtedly
A.W.O.L.
But Heaven was kind. The drums waited. Through their ranks dashed
Geoffrey at full speed, and into the midst of his companions. The
reviewing stand was very near. At a signal, all bands and all drums
struck up together. The horse, in stable equilibrium at last, daring not
to run forward or to run backward, or to bolt to either side, fell into
step and marched. Deafening cheers, flying handkerchiefs; Geoffrey and
his horse stole past, held in the ranks by a delicate balance of
four-cornered fear. If you fear something behind you and something in
front of you, and things on both sides of you, and if your fear of all
points of the compass is precisely equal, you move with the movements of
the globe. Geoffrey's horse moved that way past the stand.
People took their pictures. Our father, beaming down from the galaxy on
the stand, was pleased. Later he told Geoffrey how well he sat his
horse.
But that evening Geoffrey had a talk with his mother, as man to man. He
told her that, if these Victory Parades were going to be held often, he
should vote for compulsory military training for the horse. He told her
the various things his horse had done, how he went to and fro, going to
when urged fro, and going fro when urged not to.
"Probably he had been trained to obey the opposite signals," said our
mother. "You must study your horse as an individual."
That horse was an individual. Geoffrey studied him as such. He is quite
willing to believe that he had been trained to obey the opposite
signals. But Geoffrey says that he still cannot stifle one last question
in his mind:--signals opposite to what?
WHEELS AND HOW THEY GO ROUND
It is a simple matter, I have been told, to keep a locomotive running
smoothly on its track, once it is well coaled-up and started. In an
artistic moment in a summer vacation, Margaret and I likened our house
and all its simple well-oiled machinery to a locomotive--Mother and
Carrie being the engineer.
Therefore, we accepted rather blandly the charge of the house and
grounds while the engineer took a vacation. I rather think we had it in
mind to look in occasionally upon the house as it ran along, and to save
the bulk of the day for other things. We were already accustomed to the
complexities of a house; we had officiated at each separate complexity.
But I am not sure that we did not plan to run the house a trifle more
nonchalantly than the average anxious housewife, and welcome both our
daily duties and any unexpected guests with a minimum of morbid
foreboding.
The first thing we noticed after we were left alone was a little steady
drip in the back room. This was the refrigerator leaking. When this fact
had once been agreed upon, Margaret and I began to see with eyes of the
mind fragments of motion pictures in which the refrigerator was being
fixed. It is queer what vague remnants of a scene will stay with you,
when at the time of the scene you were not responsible for the outcome.
Margaret, from her ever-active and interesting memory, called up
Mother's dream-shape at the silcock, all ready to turn on the
garden-hose. I dimly remembered Carrie with her arm under the
refrigerator holding the hose and calling respectfully from the back
room--"All ready, mum." So we hatched a plot and proceeded to act it.
We had to assume the pipe at the rear of the ice-box, for we could not
see it. We assumed also that it was plugged up. I had chanced once upon
Carrie, lying prone on a rug in the back room, directing the nozzle of
the hose into this inaccessible pipe-hole near the farther wall. I
elected to plumb for the hole, with Margaret to run about alternately
holding matches for me and working the spray. My arms are the longer;
her fear of fire is somewhat less. After I had found the hole, Margaret
attached the hose to the silcock outside the house, threaded it through
the screen door, passed the nozzle to me, and went back to turn on the
water. Hose in hand, face averted,--prone,--I waited. Prone means on
your face. If you turn your head to look under the refrigerator, your
arm is not long enough. I directed the water almost wholly by the
Braille system. Why it should have entered into the heart of man to
construct a refrigerator so deep that the arm of man is not long enough
to reach its drain, will have to be explained to us when we reach the
city four-square. But a good workman never finds fault with his tools,
Margaret said, so we set to work with what Nature offered us.
I soon found that no cue was needed for some of my lines. My manner of
shouting, "Turn it off!" was extremely unstudied;--art disguising art.
Twice the back room was inundated. I became a saturated solution. I felt
like the brave boy of Haarlem. Margaret came in and advanced the theory
that, when you have reached a certain stage of wetness, it does not
matter at all how much more water you lie in. Acting on this
supposition, and with my consent, she turned on all the city's
water-power with great suddenness. I shall always think that this did
make a difference in my wetness, but it dislodged the obstruction. We
could hear the glad water leaping and gurgling through the pipe out of
doors.
Why this pipe should have had any connection with the boiler and
attendant pipes behind the stove remains forever shrouded in mystery.
These pipes began to leak on the morning of the second day, and we sent
for a plumber. He pronounced us unpatchable, unsolderable. Margaret and
I convened. We decided, in committee of the whole, to be re-piped and
re-boilered. We did not know then that the plumbers were going to find
still more serious trouble with the pipes that led to the main. Were we
justified in ordering complete repairs? Our eternal query of Life
became, "What would Mother do?" We went the whole figure--well up into
three figures.
It was not until the third day that we succeeded in making our
nonchalance at all prominent. We invited a guest to supper,
nonchalantly. She was not the type of guest that you take into the
kitchen and tie an apron around. In her honor, we decided to have, among
other things, popovers and cherry pie. We decided that we could
conventionally have popovers because the hour was really a supper hour;
that we might have cherry pie because the meal was really a dinner. To
make this strange plan at all intelligible, I shall have to state that,
as far as our names are known, we are famous for our popovers and our
cherry pie. We were at our nonchalant best.
Our cherry tree is a unique specimen among the vegetables. It has a
curious short, gnarled trunk just as a cherry tree should; but, aside
from that, it runs along the general lines of a spirea. Each main
branch, nearly six inches in diameter at the point of departure,
sprangles instantly into showers of fragile twigs. These in turn branch
gracefully higher and higher, occasional cherries on the outskirts. To
pick our cherries, one really ought to be a robin. Each cherry has an
exquisite red cheek and a black ant running to and fro across it.
We chose Margaret to pick the cherries. We chose her because she is
lighter than I by half a stone; and we thought the fewer stone on the
twigs, the better. Then it was going to be her pie.
The cherries which could be reached from the ground were satisfactory in
the extreme. They rattled into the pail, just as other people's cherries
rattle. It would have been my instinct to leave these till the last. But
I was not picking the cherries. I found it impossible, however, to stay
away from the cherry-picking. Margaret is rather quick in some of her
mannerisms. And her mannerism of mounting our cherry tree was little
short of lightning. She was wearing white silk hose and white canvas
slippers. Personally I did not consider these correct climbing shoes,
but Margaret is accustomed, when far from home, to choose her own boots
for all occasions, and to pay for new ones when her choice proves
disastrous. So I watched her rise above me without remark.
I freely admit that it always seems less dangerous to one whose feet can
feel the crotches on the tree, and on whose arm the tin pail is, than to
the anxious relative on the ground below. As Margaret's manoeuvres
transmitted unpleasant little cracks along the tree, I recalled bits of
sage advice that I had on a time given to my mother concerning her
attitude when Geoffrey was climbing trees. I had told Mother that
Geoffrey was just as safe in a tree as in his bed. But Margaret did not
give this reassuring appearance. Perhaps I like Margaret better than I
do Geoffrey. Certainly I was more afraid she would fall out of the
cherry tree.
She finally passed out of my sight. After a prolonged interval of
silence, I suggested to Margaret that she come down.
"My foot is caught," returned my sister, her tone of voice wholly
explanatory. "It won't come out."
"The shoe tapers to a point," I called encouragingly. "Try to turn it
sideways and pull backwards at the same time."
"Barbara," said my sister tonelessly, "I just said it wouldn't come
out."
"Then you'll have to take your foot out, and leave the slipper up
there," I responded with finality.
"What would Mother do?" called Margaret from her lady's bower.
It was so obvious, even to me, that Mother would not have been up a tree
at this hour that I could only repeat my original project of abandoning
the slipper. I learned afterwards that it is not an entirely
uncomplicated process to buckle in the centre when swinging in a
tree-top with one foot stationary and a tin pail on one's arm, and untie
a slipper-strap without tipping the pail or falling out of the tree.
Margaret soon appeared within my line of vision, listing dangerously,
chastened, dignified, and stocking-footed. She reminded me
simultaneously, as she descended, of a mystic Russian premiere danseuse,
a barefooted native swinging down his cocoanut grove, and High Diddle
Dumpling my son John.
I was rash enough later to inquire into the mechanics of retrieving the
slipper, but Margaret, as she finished her tart, replied so
appropriately in the words of the Scriptures as to be too sacrilegious
to repeat.
As our nonchalant day wore on, I lighted the gas-oven for popovers.
Popovers are casuals. They are not supposed to be a _chef d'oeuvre_.
They are the high-grade moron of the hot-bread family. A guest expects
the popovers to be good, just as he expects the butter to be good. I
expected mine to be good.