_"This is my story, sir; a trifle, indeed, I assure you._
_"Much more, perchance, might be said; but I hold him, of all men, most
lightly Who swerves from the truth in his tale."_
Bret Harte.
When the new family moved into, and we were told had bought, the cottage
nearest our own, we were naturally interested in finding out what kind
of people they were, and whether we had gained or lost by the change of
neighbors.
In a summer place like this it makes a good deal of difference just what
kind of people live so near to you that when you are sitting on your
veranda and they are swinging in hammocks on theirs, the most of the
conversation is common property, unless you whisper, and one does not
want to spend three or four months of each year mentally and verbally
tiptoeing about one's own premises. Then, on the other hand, there
are few less agreeable situations to be placed in than to be forced to
listen to confidences or quarrels with which you have nothing whatever
to do, or else be deprived of the comforts and pleasures of out-door
life, to secure which you endure so many other annoyances.
Our new neighbors were, therefore, as you will admit, of the utmost
interest and importance to us, and I was naturally very much pleased, at
the end of the first week, when I returned one day from a fishing party,
from which my wife's headache had detained her, by the report she gave
me of their attitude toward each other. (From her glowing estimate, I
drew rose-colored pictures of their probable kindliness and generosity
toward others.) Up to this time they had been but seldom outside of
their house, and we had not gathered much information of their doings,
except the fact that a good deal of nice furniture had come, and they
appeared to be greatly taken up in beautifying and arranging their
cottage. This much promised well, so far as it went; but we had not
lived to our time of life not to find out, long ago, that the most
exquisitely appointed houses sometimes lack the one essential feature;
that is, ladies and gentlemen to occupy them.
"They are lovely!" said my wife, the moment I entered the door, before
I had been able to deposit my fishing-tackle and ask after her headache.
"They are lovely; at least he is," she amended. "I am sure we shall
be pleased with them; or, at least, with him. A man as careful of, and
attentive to, his wife as he is can't help being an agreeable neighbor."
"Good!" said I. "How did you find out? And how is your headache?--Had
a disgusting time fishing. Glad you did not go. Sun was hot; breeze
was hot; boatman's temper was a hundred and twenty in the shade; bait
wouldn't stay on the hooks, and there weren't any fish any way. But how
did you say your head is?"
"My head?" said my wife, with that retrospective tone women have, which
seemed to indicate that if she had ever had a head, and if her head had
ever ached, and if headache was a matter of sufficient importance to
remember, in all human probability it had recovered in due time. "My
head? Oh, yes--Oh, it is all right; but you really never did see any one
so tractable as that man. And adaptable! Why, it is a perfect wonder. Of
course I had no business to look or listen; but I did. I just couldn't
help it. The fact is, I thought they were quarrelling at first, and I
almost fainted. I said to myself, 'If they are that kind of people
we will sell out. I will not live under the constant drippings of
ill-temper.' Quarrelling ought to be a penitentiary offence; that is,
I mean the bickerings and naggings most people dignify by that name. I
could endure a good, square, stand-up and knock down quarrel, that had
some character to it; but the eternal differences, often expressed by
the tones of voice only, I can't stand." I smiled an emphatic assent,
and my wife went on.
"Well, I must confess his tones of voice are, at times, against him; but
I'm not sure that it is not due to the distance. _All_ of his tones may
not carry this far. I'm sure they don't, for when I first heard him,
and made up my mind that it was a horrid, common, plebeian little row,
I went to the west bedroom window--you know it looks directly into their
kitchen--and what do you suppose I saw?"
The question was so sudden and wholly unexpected, and my mental
apparatus was so taken up with the story that I found myself with no
ideas whatever on the subject Indeed I do not believe that my wife
wanted me to guess what she saw, half so much as she wanted breath; but
I gave the only reply which the circumstances appeared to admit of, and
which, I was pleased to see, in spite of its seeming inadequacy, was
as perfectly satisfactory to the blessed little woman as if it had been
made to order and proven a perfect fit.
"I can't imagine," said I.
"Of course you can't," she replied, pushing my crossed legs into
position, and seating herself on my knees.
"Of course you can't. A man couldn't. Well, it seems their servant left
last night, and that blessed man was washing the dishes this morning.
The difference of opinion had been over which one of them should do it."
"Why, the confounded brute!" said I. "He is a good deal better able to
do it than she is. She looks sick, and so long as he has no business
to attend to down here, he has as much time as she and a good deal more
strength to do that kind of work."
"Well, I just knew you'd look at it that way," said my wife, with an
inflection of pride and admiration which indicated that I had made a
ten strike of some kind, of which few men--and not many women--would be
capable.
"But that was not it at all," continued she.
I began laboriously to readjust my mental moorings to this seemingly
complicated situation, and was on the verge of wondering why my wife was
so pleased with me for simply making a mistake, when she began again,
after giving me a little pat of unqualified satisfaction and sympathy.
"They both wanted to do it. She said she wasn't a bit tired and could do
it alone just as well as not, and he'd break the glasses with his funny,
great, big fingers; and he said he'd be careful not to break anything,
and that the dish-water would spoil her hands."
"Good," said I, "I shall like the fellow. I------"
"Of course you will," my wife broke in, enthusiastically; "but that
isn't all. I went to sleep after that, and later on was awakened by a
loud--and as I thought at the time--a very angry voice. I went to
the window again only to see a laughing scuffle between them over the
potato-knife. She wanted to scrape them and he wanted to scrape them. Of
course he got the knife, and it really did look too comical to see him
work with those little bulbs. He put his whole mind on them, and he
didn't catch her picking over the berries until she was nearly done.
Then he scolded again. He said he did the potatoes to keep her from
getting her thumb and forefinger black, and here she was with her whole
hand covered with berry stain. He seemed really vexed, and I must say
his voice doesn't carry this far as if he was half as nice as he is.
I think there ought to be a chair of voices attached to every
school-house--so to speak--and the result of the training made one of
the tests of admission to the colleges of the country. Don't you?"
Again I was wholly unprepared for her sudden question, and was only
slowly clambering around the idea she had suggested, so I said--somewhat
irrelevantly, no doubt--"It may be."
She looked at me for a moment without speaking, and then said, as she
got up and crossed the room: "You didn't hear a word I said, and you
don't begin to appreciate that man anyway."
"I did hear you, dear," I protested; "I was listening as hard as I
could--and awfully interested--but a fellow can't skip along at that
rate and have well-matured views on tap without a moment's warning.
You've got to be like the noble ladies in the 'Lay of the Last
Minstrel,' 'and give me heart and give me time.' Now _they_ understood
men. We're slow."
She laughed and tied the last pink bow in the lace of a coquettish
little white gown and dragged me out on the veranda.
Our new neighbors were out ahead of us.
"I don't think so at all, Margaret," we heard him say, as we took our
chairs near the edge of the porch to catch any stray breeze that might
be wandering our way.
"Sh--," we heard her say; "don't talk so loud. They will think you are
going to scalp me."
"Oh, don't bother about the neighbors; let 'em hear," said he, "let 'em
think. Who cares? If they haven't got anything better to do than sit
around and think, they'd better move away from our neighborhood."
"Sh--said she again, looking at him with a good deal of emphasis in her
eyes.
"Well, it is too bad, isn't it?" acquiesced he, in a much lower voice,
and one from which every vestige of the tone of protest had vanished.
"It _is_ too bad that these summer cottages are built so close together
that you can't tie your shoes without being overheard by the folks next
door? It makes me nervous. I feel as if I had to sit up straight all
the time and smile like a crocodile, or else run the risk of being
misunderstood."
"It _is_ trying, dear," she said, "and destroys a good deal of the
comfort and ease of one's outing."
"Nothing of the kind," began he, so explosively as to make my wife jump.
"Sh--," whispered the lady next door, but he went on.
"Nothing of the kind. I don't let it bother me in the least. They can
attend to their own affairs, and I----"
"Sh--," said his wife; "suppose we walk down to the beach." She began to
adjust her wrap.
"It is a good deal more comfortable here," he protested, "and besides
I'm tired."
"So you are, of course," she said, regretfully. "I forgot. Such unusual
work for a man would tire him;" and she loosened the lace veil she had
drawn over her head and reseated herself.
"Well, are you ready?" questioned he, clapping on his hat and suddenly
starting down the steps.
"Ready for what?" asked she, in surprise.
"The deuce, Margaret. I thought you said that you were going to the
beach!"
She got up, readjusted her veil, took her wrap on her arm, and ran
lightly after him.
"I wonder if I shall need this wrap?" she said as she passed our gate.
"Heavens! no," he replied, "and it will heat you all up to carry it.
Here, give it to me. I don't see what on earth you brought it for. I'm
certainly hot enough without loading me up with this."
"I will carry it," she said, cheerfully; "I don't feel the heat on my
arm as you do--or I'll run back and leave it on the porch. You walk
slowly. I can easily catch up."
She started; but he took the shawl from her, threw it lightly over his
shoulder, and, pulling her hand through his arm, said gayly, and in the
most compliant tone: "It isn't very warm. I won't notice this little
thing and, besides, you'll need it down there, as like as not."
When they were out of hearing my wife drew a long breath and said: "I
wonder if we ever sound like that to other people?--and yet, they seem
to be devoted to each other," she added hastily.
"They are, no doubt," said I, "only he appears to be a chronic kicker."
"A comic what?" said my wife, in so loud a tone that I involuntarily
exclaimed "Sh--!"
We both laughed. Then she said: "But really, dear, I didn't understand
what you said he was. There doesn't seem to me to be anything comic
about him, though. And----"
"Comic! Well, I should think not," said I. "I should think it would be
anything but comic to that little woman to go through that sort of thing
every time she opened her mouth. What I said was that he seems to be
a chronic kicker, and I might add--with some show of fairness--that he
impresses me as the champion of Kicktown at that."
"Sh--," laughed my wife, "they're coming back."
"I don't agree with you at all. There is no need to do anything of the
kind," were the first words we heard from a somewhat distant couple, and
my wife concluded that our new neighbors were not very far off. "It
would be no end of trouble for you. You'd get all tired out; and
besides, what do we owe to the Joneses that makes it necessary for you
to disturb all our little comforts to ask them down here?" he continued.
We could not hear her reply; but his protest and evident deep
dissatisfaction with the whole scheme went bravely on.
She passed into the house and left him on the steps. When she came out
a few moments later he said, sweetly: "As I was just saying, it will be
quite a diversion for you to see the girls, and I'd enjoy the old man
hugely. He's a jolly old coon; and then we owe it to them after all they
did for you."
"What girls? What old man is a jolly coon?" asked she, in an utterly
bewildered tone.
"Margaret! The Joneses, of course. Whom have we been talking about for
the last half-hour?" exploded he.
"Oh," said she, having evidently quite given over asking the Joneses,
and become occupied with other thoughts, "I thought the idea did not
please you. But I'm so glad. It will do you good to have him here, and I
shall be delighted."
"Do me good!" exploded he. "Do me good! Tiresome old bore, if there ever
was one. Women are queer fish to deal with, but I'm sure I don't care
whom you invite here."
Our neighbors withdrew for the night and we sighed with relief. About
two o'clock my wife touched me to find if I was asleep. The movement
was so stealthy that I inferred at once that there were burglars in the
house. I was wide awake in an instant.
"What is it?" I whispered.
"Well, I'm glad you're awake. I want to know what that was you called
the man next door. I forgot what it was, and I couldn't sleep for trying
to remember."
I laughed. "I believe I said that he impressed me as one so addicted
to the reprehensible habit of protest--on general principles, as
it were--that it had now become the normal condition of his mental
constitution."
"You didn't say any such thing," said she. "You--"
"I believe that at the time of which you speak I allowed myself to be
guilty of a habit you do not wholly admire; but I really had no idea it
would keep you awake. I used slang. I said that he was a chronic kicker,
and--"
"That's it! That's it!" exclaimed she, with deep satisfaction. "He's a
'chronic kicker.' Well, if you'll believe me, he hasn't stopped kicking
long enough to say his prayers decently since we went to bed. First
about what time it was; then about which room they'd sleep in; then
there was too much cover; then the windows were wrong; then--oh,
heavens!--I wonder if he kicks in his sleep? He always comes around to
reason in time; but if there was ever anything more maddening to meet
than that constant wall of protest--for the sake of protest--I don't
know what it could be."
"Nor--I," said I, half asleep.
Presently her hand grasped mine vigorously, and I sprang up startled,
for I had been sound asleep again. "What's the matter?" I said, in a
loud tone.
"Sh--," whispered my wife. "Don't speak in that tone. I'd rather people
would think you stayed out nights, than to suppose you stayed at home
and nagged me. He's at it again. I'd most gone to sleep and his voice
nearly scared the life out of me. She wanted to close the window. He
objected, of course; said he'd smother--sh--"
Just then we heard our neighbor's wife ask sleepily: "What are you
doing, dear?"
"Closing this detestable window. Lets in too much salt air. 'Fraid
you'll get chilled. I am. Where's another blanket?"
The window went down with a bang, and we heard no more of our neighbors
that night. But the next morning the same thing began again, and I do
not believe that during that entire summer he ever agreed with his wife
the first time she spoke, nor failed to come around to her view after he
took time to think it over. I remember when I was introduced to him,
a week later, his wife said: "This is our nearest neighbor, you know,
Thomas, and--"
"No, he isn't, Margaret; the people back of us are nearer," he said.
Then to me: "Pleased to meet you. I believe our wives have become quite
good friends. I'm very glad for Margaret's sake, too. It's dull for her
with only an old fellow like me to entertain her, and she not very well.
And then, as she says, you are our nearest neighbor, and we really ought
not to be too ceremonious at such a place as this."
"I thought, Thomas," suggested his wife, "that you said one could not
be too particular. Why, you quite blustered when I first told you I had
made advances to some of the other--"
"Nonsense! I did nothing of the kind," broke in he. "What on earth ever
put such an idea into your head, Margaret? You know I always say that
without pleasant neighbors, and friendly relations with them, a summer
cottage is no place for a white man to live."
My wife hastened to change the subject. Nothing on earth is more
distasteful to her than a family contest, of even a very mild type,
especially when the tones of voice seem to express more of indignation
and a desire to override, than a mere difference of opinion. She thought
the surf a safe subject.
"Was not the water lovely to-day? You were in, I suppose?" she inquired
of our neighbor's wife.
"Yes, we were in," she began, enthusiastically. "It was perfect and--"
"I don't know what you call perfect," broke in he, "I called it beastly.
It was so cold I felt like a frog when I got out, and you looked half
frozen. The fact is, this is too far north to bathe for pleasure in the
surf. It may be good for one's health, but it is anything but pleasant.
Now at Old Point Comfort it is different. I like it there."
"Why, James," said his wife, "I thought you preferred this because of
the more bracing and exhilarating effect."
After a little more objection, which he seemed to think firmly
established his independence, he ended his remarks thus:
"Of course, as you say, it is more bracing. Yes, that's a fact,
Margaret. I couldn't help noticing when I came out this morning that I
felt like a new man, and you--why, 'pon my word, you looked as bright
and rosy as a girl of sixteen. Oh, the surf here is great. It really is.
I like it; don't you?"
This last he had addressed to me. I was so occupied in a study of, and
so astonished by, the facility with which he took his mental flops,
after enjoying his little "kick," that I was taken off my feet by his
sudden appeal to me, and was quite at a loss for a reply which would do
justice to the occasion, and at the same time put a stop to the contest
between husband and wife.
But, as usual, my wife hastened to my rescue and covered my confusion by
her gay little laugh and explanation.
"Ha, ha, ha," she laughed, "you have caught my husband napping already.
I know exactly where he was. He was lumbering along through an elaborate
speculation on, and a comparison of, the relative merits of--" here
she began telling them off on her fingers to the great amusement of our
neighbors--"first, fresh and salt water bathing; second, the method,
time, place, and condition of each as affected by the moon, stars,
and Gulf Stream. He was, most likely, climbing over Norway with
a thermometer, or poking a test-tube of some kind into the
semi-liquefaction which passes itself off as water to those unfortunates
who are stranded along the shores of the Mississippi. Just wait; one of
these days he will get down to our discussion and he'll agree with us
when he gets there. But don't hurry him."
We all joined in the laugh at my expense; and I remarked that I had
served so long as a target for my wife's fun that even if I could skip
around, mentally, at as lively a rate as she seemed to expect, I would
pretend that I couldn't, in order not to deprive her of her chief source
of amusement. At this point our neighbor's new cook came to the edge
of their porch and asked her mistress if she might speak to her for a
moment. She arose to go.
"Oh, thunder, Margaret, I hope you don't intend to allow that worthless
girl to call you home every time you go any place. Tell her to wait. It
can't be much she wants," said our neighbor.
"Jane," said his wife sweetly, reseating herself, "you can wait until I
come home. It won't be long."
"I wonder if you'd better do that, Margaret," said he, just as our wives
had begun to discuss something relative to housekeeping. "Jane is a
good girl, and she wouldn't call you if it were not something important,
Don't you think we had better go at once?"
"I did think so," said she, and bidding us goodnight our neighbors
crossed the lawn and re-entered their own door and closed it for the
night.
After a long pause my wife said, in a stage whisper: "I suppose it is
his way of showing that he is 'boss,' as the boys say--the final
appeal in his own household--his idea of the dignity of the masculine
prerogative."
A sudden stop. I thought she expected me to say something, so I began:
"I don't know. I doubt it. It looks to me like a case of--"
"Don't! don't!" exclaimed my wife, in tragic accents "oh, _don't_ catch
it. I really couldn't live with a chronic objector. Anything else. I
really believe I could stand any other phase of bullying better than
that--to feel that at any minute I am liable to run against a solid wall
of 'I don't agree with you!' If it were _real_ I wouldn't mind it so
much; but to hear that man 'kick,' as you say, just for the sake
of asserting himself, and then come around as he does, is perfectly
maddening. The very first symptom I see in you I shall look upon it as a
danger signal--I'll move."
At that moment, before our quiet little laugh, at their expense, had
died away, there floated out from the bedroom window of our neighbors'
cottage, this refrain:
"Well, goodness knows, Margaret, _I_ didn't want to come home. I knew it
was all perfect nonsense. If you--"
My wife suddenly arose, took me by the hand and said quite seriously:
"Come in the house, dear. This atmosphere is too unwholesome to endure
any longer."