The ADVENTURES of A MODEST MAN

CHAPTER I

CONCERNING TWO GENTLEMEN FROM LONG ISLAND, DESTINY, AND A POT OF BLACK PAINT

"Hello, old man!" he began.

"Gillian," I said, "don't call me 'Old Man.' At twenty, it flattered me; at thirty, it was all right; at forty, I suspected double entendre; and now I don't like it."

"Of course, if you feel that way," he protested, smiling.

"Well, I do, dammit!"—the last a German phrase. I am rather strong on languages.

Now another thing that is irritating— I've got ahead of my story, partly, perhaps, because I hesitate to come to the point.

For I have a certain delicacy in admitting that my second visit abroad, after twenty years, was due to a pig. So now that the secret is out—the pig also—I'll begin properly.

I purchased the porker at a Long Island cattle show; why, I don't know, except that my neighbor, Gillian Schuyler Van Dieman, put me up to it.

We are an inoffensive community maintaining a hunt club and the traditions of a by-gone generation. To the latter our children refuse to subscribe.

Our houses are what are popularly known as "fine old Colonial mansions." They were built recently. So was the pig. You see, I can never get away from that pig, although—but the paradox might injure the story. It has sufficiently injured me—the pig and the story, both.

The architecture of the pig was a kind of degenerate Chippendale, modified by Louis XVI and traces of Bavarian baroque. And his squeal resembled the atmospheric preliminaries for a Texas norther.

Van Dieman said I ought to buy him. I bought him. My men built him a chaste bower to leeward of an edifice dedicated to cows.

 

Here I sometimes came to contemplate him while my horse was being saddled.

That particular morning, when Van Dieman saluted me so suspiciously at the country club, I had been gazing at the pig.

And now, as we settled down to our morning game of chess, I said:

"Van, that pig of mine seems to be in nowise remarkable. Why the devil do you suppose I bought him?"

"How do I know?"

"You ought to. You suggested that I buy him. Why did you?"

"To see whether you would."

I said rather warmly: "Did you think me weak-minded enough to do whatever you suggested?"

"The fact remains that you did," he said calmly, pushing the king's knight to queen's bishop six.

"Did what?" I snapped.

"What you didn't really want to do."

"Buy the pig?"

"Exactly."

I thought a moment, took a pawn with satisfaction, considered.

"Van," I said, "why do you suppose I bought that pig?"

"Ennui."

 

"A man doesn't buy pigs to escape from ennui!"

"You can't predict what a man will do to escape it," he said, smiling. "The trouble with you is that you're been here too long; you're in a rut; you're gone stale. Year in, year out, you do the same things in the same way, rise at the same time, retire at the same hour, see the same people, drive, motor, ride, potter about your lawns and gardens, come here to the club—and it's enough to petrify anybody's intellect."

"Do you mean to say that mine——"

"Partly. Don't get mad. No man who lives year after year in a Long Island community could escape it. What you need is to go abroad. What you require is a good dose of Paris."

"For twenty odd years I have avoided Paris," I said, restlessly. "Why should I go back there?"

"Haven't you been there in twenty years?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Well, for one thing, to avoid meeting the entire United States."

"All right," said Van Dieman, "if you want to become an old uncle foozle, continue to take root in Long Island." He announced mate in two moves. After I had silently conceded it, he leaned back in his chair and lighted a cigarette.

 

"It's my opinion," he said, "that you've already gone too stale to take care of your own pig."

Even years of intimacy scarcely justified this.

"When the day comes," said I, "that I find myself no longer competent to look after my own affairs, I'll take your advice and get out of Long Island."

He looked up with a smile. "Suppose somebody stole that pig, for instance."

"They couldn't."

"Suppose they did, under your very nose."

"If anything happens to that pig," I said—"anything untoward, due to any negligence or stupidity of mine, I'll admit that I need waking up.... Now get that pig if you can!"

"Will you promise to go to Paris for a jolly little jaunt if anything does happen to your pig?" he asked.

"Why the devil do you want me to go to Paris?"

"Do you good, intellectually."

Then I got mad.

"Van," I said, "if anybody can get that pig away from me, I'll do anything you suggest for the next six months."

"À nous deux, alors!" he said. He speaks French too fast for me to translate. It's a foolish way to talk a foreign language. But he has never yet been able to put it over me.

"À la guerre comme à la guerre," I replied carelessly. It's a phrase one can use in reply to any remark that was ever uttered in French. I use it constantly.

That afternoon I went and took a good look at my pig. Later, as I was walking on the main street of Oyster Bay, a man touched his hat and asked me for a job. Instantly it occurred to me to hire him as night watchman for the pig. He had excellent references, and his countenance expressed a capacity for honest and faithful service. That night before I went to bed, I walked around to the sty. My man was there on duty.

"That," thought I, "will hold Van Dieman for a while."

When my daughters had retired and all the servants were abed, I did a thing I have not done in years—not since I was a freshman at Harvard: I sat up with my pipe and an unexpurged translation of Henry James until nearly eleven o'clock. However, by midnight I was asleep.

It was full starlight when I awoke and jumped softly out of bed. Somebody was tapping at the front door. I put on a dressing-gown and slippers and waited; but no servants were aroused by the persistent rapping.

After a moment I went to the window, raised it gently and looked out. A farmer with a lantern stood below.

"Say, squire," he said, when he beheld my head, "I guess I'll have to ask for help. I'm on my way to market and my pig broke loose and I can't ketch him nohow."

"Hush!" I whispered; "I'll come down."

Very cautiously I unbarred the front door and stepped out into the lovely April starlight. In the road beyond my hedge stood a farm-wagon containing an empty crate. Near it moved the farmer, and just beyond his outstretched hands sported a playful pig. He was a black pig. Mine was white. Besides I went around to the pen and saw, in the darkness, my Oyster Bay retainer still on guard. So, it being a genuine case, I returned to the road.

The farmer's dilemma touched me. What in the world was so utterly hopeless to pursue, unaided, as a coy pig at midnight.

"If you will just stand there, squire, and sorter spread out your skirts, I'll git him in a jiffy," said the panting farmer.

I did as I was bidden. The farmer approached; the pig pranced between his legs.

 

"By gum!" exclaimed the protected of Ceres.

But, after half an hour, the pig became over-confident, and the tiller of phosphites seized him and bore him, shrieking, to the wooden crate in the wagon, there depositing him, fastening the door, and climbing into his seat with warm thanks to me for my aid.

I told the Brother to the Ox that he was welcome. Then, with heart serenely warmed by brotherly love and a knowledge of my own condescension, I retired to sleep soundly until Higgins came to shave me at eight o'clock next morning.

"Beg pardon, sir," said Higgins, stirring his lather as I returned from the bath to submit my chin to his razor—"beg pardon, sir, but—but the pig, sir——"

"What pig?" I asked sharply. Had Higgins beheld me pursuing that midnight porker? And if he had, was he going to tell about it?

"What pig, sir? Why, the pig, sir."

"I do not understand you, Higgins," I said coldly.

"Beg pardon, sir, but Miss Alida asked me to tell you, that the pig——"

"What pig?" I repeated exasperated.

"Why—why—ours, sir."

I turned to stare at him. "My pig?" I asked.

"Yes, sir—he's gone, sir——"

"Gone!" I thundered.

 

"Stolen, sir, out o' the pen last night."

Stunned, I could only stare at Higgins. Stolen? My pig? Last night?

"Some one," said Higgins, "went and opened that lovely fancy sty, sir; and the pig he bolted. It takes a handy thief to stop and steal a pig, sir. There must ha' been two on 'em to catch that pig!"

"Where's that miserable ruffian I hired to watch the sty?" I demanded hotly.

"He has gone back to work for Mr. Van Dieman, sir. His hands was all over black paint, and I see him a-wipin' of 'em onto your white picket fence."

The calmness of despair came over me. I saw it, now. I had been called out of bed to help catch my own pig. For nearly half an hour I had dodged about there in front of my own house, too stupid to suspect, too stupid even to recognize my own pig in the disguised and capricious porker shying and caracolling about in the moonlight. Good heavens! Van Dieman was right. A man who helps to steal his own pig is fit for nothing but Paris or a sanitarium.

"Shave me speedily, Higgins," I said. "I am not very well, and it is difficult for me to preserve sufficient composure to sit still. And, Higgins, it is not at all necessary for you to refer to that pig hereafter. You understand? Very well. Go to the telephone and call up the Cunard office."

 

Presently I was in communication with Bowling Green.

That morning in the breakfast-room, when I had kissed my daughter Alida, aged eighteen, and my daughter Dulcima, aged nineteen, the younger said: "Papa, do you know that our pig has been stolen?"

"Alida," I replied, "I myself disposed of him"—which was the dreadful truth.

"You sold him?" asked Dulcima in surprise.

"N—not exactly. These grape-fruit are too sour!"

"You gave him away?" inquired Alida.

"Yes—after a fashion. Is this the same coffee we have been using? It has a peculiar——"

"Who did you give him to?" persisted my younger child.

"A—man."

"What man?"

"Nobody you know, child."

"But——"

"Stop!" said I firmly. "It is a subject too complicated to discuss."

"Oh, pooh!" said Dulcima; "everybody discusses everything in Oyster Bay. And besides I want to know——"

"About the pig!" broke in Alida.

"And that man to whom you gave the pig——"

 

"Alida," said I, with misleading mildness, "how would you like to go to Paris?"

"Oh! papa——"

"And you, Dulcima?"

"Darling papa!"

"When?" cried Alida.

"Wednesday," I replied with false urbanity.

"Oh! The darling!" they cried in rapture, and made toward me.

"Wait!" I said with a hideous smile. "We have not yet left Sandy Hook! And I solemnly promise you both that if either of you ever again ask me one question concerning that pig—nay, if you so much as look askance at me over the breakfast bacon—neither you nor I will ever leave Sandy Hook alive!"

They have kept their promises—or I should never have trodden the deck of the S. S. Cambodia, the pride of the great Cunard Line, with my daughter Dulcima on one side and my daughter Alida on the other side of me, and my old friend Van Dieman waving me adieu from a crowded pier, where hundreds of handkerchiefs flutter in the breeze.

"Au revoir et bon voyage!" he called up to me.

"Toujours la politesse," I muttered, nodding sagely.

"That was a funny reply to make, papa," said Dulcima.

 

"Not at all," I replied, with animation; "to know a language is to know when to use its idioms." They both looked a little blank, but continued to wave their handkerchiefs.

"À bien-tôt!" called Alida softly, as the towering black sides of the steamer slipped along the wooden wharf.

Van Dieman raised his hat on the pier below, and answered: "À bien-tôt? C'est la mort, jusqu'à bien-tôt! Donc, vîve la vie, Mademoiselle!"

"There is no necessity in chattering like a Frenchman when you talk French," I observed to Alida. "Could you make out what Van Dieman said to you?"

"Y—yes," she admitted, with a slight blush.

I glanced at Dulcima. There was a mischievous light in her blue eyes.

"Pooh!" I thought; "Van Dieman is forty if he's a day."

While the ship slid on past Castle William and poked her nose toward the forts at the Narrows, I watched the distant pier which we had left. It was still black with people, moving like ants. And, as I looked, I muttered ever: "Pooh! Van Dieman's forty. There's nothing in it, nothing in it, nothing whatever."

Off Fort Hamilton I noticed that Alida had a tear in one of her brown eyes. "There's nothing in it," I repeated obstinately.

Off Sandy Hook we ran into a sea-storm. In a few minutes many of the passengers went below; in a few more minutes the remainder of the passengers went below; and I was on the way below with my daughter Alida on one arm and my daughter Dulcima on the other.

"There is nothing in it," I reflected, as the ship shuddered, pitched, and we involuntarily began running down a toboggan slide, taking little timorous steps. Then the deck flew up and caught the soles of our shoes before we were ready to put our feet down. "Alida," I said, "do you feel bored?"

There was no mistaking the tears in her eyes now. "There's nothing in it. There's nothing in anything," I muttered faintly. And I was right as far as it concerned the passengers on the pitching Cambodia.