Bizarre (version 2) — Bizarre, Part Five
MINIMS
THE NIGHT OF THE FLEECE
Wimley was the mildest man living.
Consequently, when Molly said, in her most decisive tone, "Nonsense!
I won't hear of your going back tonight, before you've even seen our new tennis-court," he realized that he would have to stay over the week-end.
Not that he didn't want to, in one way; for he liked Molly, and admired the way she bossed the servants and ran the house for her mother.
Then, too, the weather, which seemed to be growing hotter every minute, would be far more endurable out here in Avondale Manor than in the city.
What troubled him was the fact that he had not brought a handbag.
"I'll lend you some of Father's things," she went on.
"It will be no bother at all."
When the evening drew to a close and bed-ward migration began, he was shown to the guest-room.
"I hope you will find everything all right," said his hostess as she bid him good night.
He replied that he was sure he would.
Then he opened the door.
The heat met him like a solid wall.
Throwing off his coat, he went to the two windows to see if they could really be open.
Yes, they were; but the thick fly-screening kept out any air that might have desired to enter.
He glanced at the bed.
There was something blue and white lying folded on it.
As he drew nearer, he could see that this something was fuzzy.
Picking it up, he discovered it to be a pair of woolen pajamas.
Horrors!
Not even in the bitterest winter could his skin endure the feel of wool.
He wondered if Molly's father ever really wore such things.
Perhaps his wife had given them to him, and perhaps that was why the old gentleman was staying so long in South America.
Midnight found Wimley still looking the pajamas squarely in the fuzz.
An awful thought was in his mind: What would Molly and her mother think of him if they found them unrumpled and therefore unused?
He slid one leg into the proper section: the flannel drew like a mild mustard-plaster.
Then he pulled on the other: he was engulfed.
A
hippopotamus would have felt comfortable in them at the north pole.
He drew the fuzzy cord several feet before he tied it, then put on the ulster.
It had a huge pocket, capable of containing a tablecloth, that hung over the spot where his appendix would have been if he had been internally left-handed.
Noting that his feet had disappeared, he turned up the bottoms of the trousers four times, so that each ankle was neatly encircled with a doughnut-shaped buffer.
Then, after throwing back all the covers, he snapped out the light and got into bed.
It had one of those patent soft mattresses that, sinking in, hold the body in bas-relief.
He rolled and floundered on the thing, but at every flounder he sank deeper.
It was a quicksand of a bed.
He recalled Victor Hugo's account of the unfortunate traveler who perished in just such a way: how first his feet disappeared, then his knees, then his waist, till at last there was nothing but a waving hand, and then that went.
He was just preparing to wave when his attention was distracted by the realization that his whole body was tingling with the heat.
He seized the jacket by the middle button and pumped it in and out, trying to pump in some cool air.
There was none to pump.
Gasping for breath, he crawled to a window.
Still no air.
He decided to remove the fly-screening.
There was a little groove in the side of the frame where you were supposed to put in your fingers and pull.
He put in his fingers and pulled.
Nothing happened.
Then he did so again, considerably harder, and the screen went sailing out of the window.
He leaned out just in time to see it crash upon a row of potted plants.
His heart stood still.
Had any one heard the noise?
He listened for several minutes in agonizing suspense.
Here at the window it was a little cooler than in the bed.
Why not emulate the Japanese and sleep on the floor?
Splendid!
No more squashy, clinging mattress for him!
Fetching a pillow, he stretched out in true oriental style.
Quite right, the floor did not sink or yield in any manner.
It even gave prominence to certain bony places which the bed had kindly overlooked.
Resisting the thick woolen anklets, it complicated the disposal of his lower limbs.
Finally, however, a gentle sleep "slid into his soul."
But about an hour later the slippery thing slid out again at the mere announcement by a rooster that dawn had arrived.
Other roosters, wishing to remove all doubts on the subject, repeated with emphasis that joyous day was at hand.
Then a large fly buzzed in through the window to say good morning.
It perched sociably on his left temple, and began rubbing its two front legs together in a jovial manner.
But Wimley was in no mood for holding a levee.
He brushed the fly away.
It executed a boomerang trajectory, lit again on the same spot, and began rubbing its legs as before.
He brushed it away again.
It perched again in exactly the same spot.
He was indignant: was _he_ to be at the mercy of a miserable little _fly_?
It seemed he was.
He got up and paced the floor.
Happening to catch a glimpse of his face in the mirror, he beheld a flourishing crop of black bristles.
His whiskers stood ready to be harvested, and his faithful razor was fifty miles away!
Panic seized him.
He thought of the window-screen catastrophe, of the quicksand bed, of the hard floor; his heart sank.
But when he thought of a day in those whiskers, another night in those pajamas, and then _tomorrow's_ whiskers, he felt that instant flight was the only thing possible.
Hastily he pulled on his clothes, which felt sticky and moldy and spoke eloquently of yesterday's dust and heat.
Then he opened the door and peered out into the hall.
No one was in sight; but other doors were open, and out of one of these came a rumbling snore.
Could it be Molly's?
This ominous sound was more than he could bear; he retreated.
Back in the room once more, he tiptoed over to the screenless window to see what his chances would be in that quarter.
Ah, there, close by, was a vine-covered trellis that reached down to the ground!
With palpitating heart he swung himself over to it.
It oscillated slightly as it received his weight.
The thorny crimson rambler was decidedly cloying.
He no sooner succeeded in detaching himself from one twig, than two more just like it whipped out and hooked him.
He reached down with his right foot--down, down--where the devil was that next cross-piece?
At last he found it, together with about a dozen new thorns.
But when he started to bring down his left foot, the twigs from above insisted on escorting him to the lower perch; so that he was now in the clutches of the thorns of both levels.
His coat tails had soared to the middle of his back, and his side pockets were nestling under his armpits.
The air was full of perfume and profanity.
[Illustration: _The air was full of perfume and profanity_.
] All at once there was a crack and a tear, and something gave way.
The next instant he and the vine were descending rapidly in each other's embrace.
A clump of lofty hollyhocks suffered martyrdom in breaking his fall.
They gave their sap to save him and complete the ruin of his clothes.
Disentangling himself from the wreckage, he dashed off down the nearest path, under arbors and pergolas, around sun-dials and summer-houses, past marble seats with mottos that spoke of rest; till, just as he thought he had reached the edge of the labyrinth, he found himself at the end of a blind alley.
In front of him was a dribbling fountain, a vapid-faced female clad in dew and idiotically pouring water out of a parlor ornament.
On the pedestal was carved, "A garden is a lovesome spot, God wot."
A brown measuring-worm was measuring the lady for garments she needed but would never wear.
And the water dribbled and dribbled.
But Wimley wasn't thirsty.
Striding over a row of conch-shells and broad-jumping a plot of geraniums, he made for a six-foot hedge that appeared to be the boundary of the garden.
A desperate spring, followed by a frantic scramble, brought him to the top of it.
He wriggled there like a bareback rider on a bucking porcupine.
_Ping!
_ sounded a tennis-racket close beside him.
Lifting his face from the foliage, he beheld Molly enjoying an early morning game with her thirteen-year-old brother.
"My advantage!"
she called as she raised her racket to serve.
But catching an astonished look on the boy's face, she stopped short and glanced at the hedge.
"A tramp!"
she exclaimed, moving toward the spot.
The would-be fugitive struggled to tumble back on the other side.
His head and one shoulder disappeared from view.
"Grab him!
Don't let him get away!"
she cried excitedly.
The boy did so, seizing one foot while she seized the other.
Then, from the depths of the foliage came a voice as shy and as plaintive as that of the hermit thrush, murmuring, "It's Wimley!"
BLACK JITNEY
THE AUTO-BIOGRAPHY OF A FORD
(_A twentieth-century revision of "Black Beauty"_) [Illustration] The first thing I can remember was being shoveled out of a great incubator, called a factory, along with several hundred brothers and sisters.
All the men in that factory wore diamond shirt-studs.
While I was wondering at this, an old motor-truck named Mercury said to me with feeling: "Ah, if all the workmen in the world could be as well off as the ones here, there would be no more poverty, and no people so poor as to have to ride in fords!"
I was loaded on a freight-car and carried many, many miles.
The car jolted so terribly that I should have gone all to pieces had I not been built for jarring.
None of the train-crew showed me any sympathy.
They were wicked men, and used language that frequently sent a tinkle of shame to my mudguards.
I did not then know, as I do now, that the purest-minded automobile has to endure all its life words and tones of the most shocking sort.
My first master was a careful and conscientious man.
He had a large garage full of fords, and he always kept a sharp eye on the door to make sure that nobody who walked out carried off one of us.
One day a man came in with a twenty-dollar bill that he wanted changed.
"Sorry," said my master, "but all I have in my cash-drawer is . 69. I'll have to give you the rest in fords."
Whereupon he handed him me and one of my brothers and three extra tires, which just made up the amount.
This new master, whose name was Mr. Pious, was very good and humane.
He drove me with a gentle foot, and he would say to his children: "Be kind to Black Jitney.
Never scratch him or bend him."
The chubby little fellows grew so fond of me that before long they would trot sturdily beside me.
Their mother, however, was a cold, imperious woman.
She cared nothing for the feelings of a ford.
She would drive me at a heartless pace till my radiator was parched with thirst and my gears fairly cried out for oil.
Speed was her one desire, and naturally _I_ could not satisfy her.
Even when I ran so fast that the effort made me shake from top to tires and I was in danger of losing my lamps, she would call me "ice-wagon" and "rattle-trap" and other cruel names, and refer unkindly to the fact that she could count the palings of the fences that we passed.
Finally, this hard-hearted woman prevailed upon her husband to sell me and buy a big sixteen-cylinder Pope-Gregory.
This car, as I afterward learned, was so vicious that the very first time she took it out for an airing it assaulted three helpless chickens and a pig.
My next master was a young man whose private life was such as no well-brought-up automobile could have approved of.
Every evening, after he had kept me in the garage all day long fuming with impatience and spilled gasolene, he would make me carry him for hours and hours with some young woman who ought to have known better.
What sights and sounds I had to endure--I who had always kept the strictest decorum!
Worst of all, his deplorable conduct began to affect me.
I found myself thinking thoughts which I had never permitted to enter my mind before, and looking with more interest than I should at seductive, satin-trimmed limousines.
My morality was in danger of skidding.
One evening while my master was dining with a young woman at a roadside inn I was left to wait in the adjoining garage.
But I was not alone; for close beside me stood a little French landaulet, the most immorally alluring car I had ever seen.
Her lines were exquisitely shapely; she was a goddess on wheels.
"Good evening," she sparked enticingly.
"Aren't you the car that stood next to me at the country club last Thursday night?"
There was a daredevil gleam in her lamps which set my carbureter a-splutter.
"Yes," I answered, infatuated.
"I knew you, even though you tried to hide your name.
Wasn't it lovely--just us two in the moonlight, touching tires!"
A quiver ran through me.
I knew that unless I could back out in a hurry, I was lost.
I tried hastily to reverse; she had me completely short-circuited.
Heaven knows what might have happened had not my master entered at that moment and saved me.
The instant he laid hold of my crank I gave vent to my pent-up emotions in a way that nearly burst my muffler; and when he pressed down the pedal, I fairly leaped through the door in flight.
As it was, I was seething with nervousness.
My motor throbbed so violently that I could hardly hold still while the young woman climbed into her seat.
Off we sped down a dark and narrow road.
I had no control over myself, and neither did the people I was carrying seem to have control over me or over themselves.
All at once my left fore tire exploded violently, veering me aside into a mile-post.
My master and the young woman landed in a clump of bushes, but _I_ was maimed for life.
Bad example and bad association had ruined me.
Many an innocent, unsophisticated car is thus driven to destruction all because its owner fails to live up to his moral responsibility.
I lay there all the rest of the night, while my gasolene ebbed away drop by drop.
In the morning some men came out from the city and dragged me in.
They performed a most painful operation on me, amputating various shattered members and grafting on several feet of tin.
Then, before I was really convalescent, I was sold to a new master.
This person was a harsh-speaking, unfeeling man, who cared for nothing but money.
He drove up and down the streets all day, inviting people to get in and ride; and when they did get in, he forced each one of them to surrender a nickel.
He was very cruel to me.
Instead of showing any consideration for my broken health, he would say openly, "Well, I'll get what use I can out of this one, and then buy another."
Not once did he ever throw a blanket over my hood in cold weather or steady my slipping wheels with chains.
He was so penurious that whenever he drove me through a crowded street, he would shut off my gasolene, and make me run on what I could breathe in from the exhausts of other cars.
Wretched indeed is the old age of an automobile.
Bereft of the beauty it had when it was a new model, it declines into squalid neglect.
No amount of painting and enameling can restore its youthful bloom.
One day this master was driving me through an amusement park when I broke down completely.
He got out, and prodded me brutally in the magneto.
I had not the strength to budge.
He grew very angry, and the people in the tonneau demanded their money back.
A crowd of idlers gathered to witness my humiliation.
Becoming purple in the face, my master nearly twisted my crank off.
He heaped upon me the most insulting and unjust imprecations, as though it were my fault that my health was gone, even making distressing insinuations as to my ancestry.
Words failing him, he fell to belaboring me with a hammer and monkey-wrench.
The spectators looked on with indifference.
Some of them even urged him maliciously to the attack.
"I'd _sell_ the thing for fifty cents!"
he exclaimed, with a shocking oath.
Suddenly an elderly, kindly-faced man pushed his way forward through the crowd.
"I'll give you that for it," he said.
"Only stop battering it!"
My master left off hitting me.
He looked surlily at the speaker and then at the crowd.
"You can have it," he said between his teeth.
Hot tears of gratitude dropped from my cylinders as my deliverer pushed me to his nearby home.
From that moment to this I have never known anything but happiness.
For my dear old master is a retired gas-fitter whose hobby is landscape gardening.
Relieving me of my tired wheels, he has pastured me in the center of his front yard and planted me full of geraniums.
I am lovingly taken care of.
My kind master waters me regularly and curries me with a trowel.
My working days are over.
But what makes me happiest is the knowledge that I can never be sold.
LIGHT BREAKFAST
[Illustration] "Henry dear," said Mrs. Brush gently, without raising her pretty head from the pillow, "it's nearly half-past eight."
"What!"
exclaimed her husband, sitting up vehemently and staring at the clock.
"Where is Maria?
She's supposed to be here by seven, isn't she?"
"Perhaps she didn't come today."
"That good-for-nothing darky!
I'll go and investigate."
Plunging energetically into his bath-robe and slippers, he sallied forth on a tour of the apartment.
No Maria sweeping in the hall; no Maria straightening up the living-room or library; no Maria dusting in the dining-room; no Maria preparing breakfast in the kitchen.
"How provoking!"
sighed Mrs. Brush.
"Provoking?
I call it outrageous."
"Yes; I'm sorry, dear, that this will make you late to your office."
"Oh, I'm not bothered about _that_, for I've just put through some new efficiency systems which enable me to accomplish a tremendous amount of work in a very short time.
What I can't stand is having that darky _impose_ on us."
"But, dearest, maybe she's sick."
"Then she could have sent us word by telephone.
No; she's taking advantage of the fact that you are young and inexperienced.
But she'll be sorry for it.
I'll discharge her myself."
"Now, please don't get excited, dear.
If you discharged her, it might be days and days before we could get another."
"That wouldn't make any difference.
We'd simply take our meals out.
Except breakfast, of course.
_I'd_ get that."
"You?"
"Yes.
We'll start this morning.
If you'll attend to the dusting--later in the day, I mean--I'll bring you your coffee before you get up, just as you're used to having it."
"But, Henry--" "It won't be any trouble at all.
Nothing is, no matter how unfamiliar it may be to you, if you go at it intelligently, scientifically."
When Mr. Brush was obsessed with an idea, it was useless to oppose him.
The best policy was to let it take its course.
"As I have often told you," he continued, "housekeeping could be greatly simplified if you women would only--" Seeing that he was about to launch into a homily on efficiency, such as she had heard him deliver at least twenty times in the three months she had been married to him, she said: "If you're going to get breakfast, hadn't you better hurry and take your bath?"
"That's so," he admitted.
Shuffling briskly to the bathroom, he was soon foaming at the mouth with tooth-paste.
There was a loud buzzing sound from the direction of the kitchen.
"Henry!"
called Mrs. Brush, "there goes the dumb-waiter.
Shall I answer it?"
"No; I'll ho," he replied pastily out of the corner of his mouth.
Still busily agitating his tooth-brush, so as not to waste any time, he paddled to the dumb-waiter and called: "He'o!
Whash you wa'?"
"Garbage!"
replied a gruff voice.
A rattling of ropes announced that the car was on its way.
Mr. Brush opened the "sanitary garbage closet," and, screwing up his face and tooth-brush, seized something that was mighty unlike a rose.
He held the pail out at arm's-length as he carried it to the dumb-waiter.
_Buzz, buzz, buzz_, went the buzzer.
"Huh?"
gurgled Mr. Brush, nervously swallowing a generous amount of tooth-paste.
"Garbage!"
repeated the voice.
Mr. Brush looked helplessly at the can on the dumb-waiter and then at his incapacitated hands.
"Put your garbage on!"
roared the voice.
Mr. Brush sputtered; then, extracting the tooth-brush with the fourth and fifth knuckles of his left hand, he shouted back indignantly: "I 'id!"
"Then why didn't you _say_ so?"
And down went the dumb-waiter with a jerk.
Mr. Brush returned to the bathroom.
As he was in the midst of shaving, the buzzer sounded again.
This time he was on the alert and ready for any argument.
Leaving his razor, but not his lather, he hurried back to the kitchen in a combative mood.
"What do you want?"
he yelled defiantly as he opened the door of the dumb-waiter.
There was no answer; but facing him on the shelf of the car stood his empty pail, silent, stolid, indifferent to his bravado.
He snatched it off and returned to his ablutions.
On account of the extreme lateness of the hour, he decided to finish off with a quick shower-bath, first hot and then cold.
Just as he removed his last garment, the buzzer sounded again.
"Aw, go ahead and buzz!"
he said between his teeth.
As he stepped into the hot downpour, the door-bell rang.
"Whoever that is can wait."
But apparently the person in question had no desire to do so, for the bell sounded again and again.
To complete the symphony, the telephone chimed in with its merry tune.
"Gwendolyn!"
called Mr. Brush, distractedly amid the roar of waters.
But she, having fallen into a pleasant doze while waiting for her breakfast, did not hear him.
The bells and buzzer had by this time settled into a sustained chord like that of the whistles at New-year's. Bounding out of the tub to the mat, Mr. Brush wrapped his form, which still glistened with pearly drops, in his bath-robe, and slip slopped frigidly down the hall.
