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Adventures of a Suburbanite

<h2> VII. CHESTERFIELD WHITING </h2> THE next morning Millington came over bright and early, and his face was aglow with joy. “Get ready as quickly as you can,” he said, “for I will be ready to start for Port Lafayette in a few minutes. The automobile is in perfect order, and we should have a splendid trip. She isn't knocking at all.” This knocking, which was located in the motor-case, or hood, was one of the most reliable noises of all those for which Millington listened when he started the engine of his automobile. He was very fond of it, and it was one of the heartiest knockings I ever heard in an automobile. It was like the hiccoughs, only more strenuous. It was as if a giant had been shut in the motor by mistake and was trying to knock the whole affair to pieces. The knock came about every eight seconds, lightly at first, getting stronger and stronger until it made the fore-end of the automobile bounce up a foot or eighteen inches at each knock. Millington loved all the sounds of trouble, but this knocking gave him the most pleasure and put him in his pleasantest mood, for he could never quite discover the cause of it. When everything else was in perfect order the knock remained. He would do everything any man could think of to cure it, but the machine would continue to knock. I remember he even went so far as to put a new inner tube in a tire once, to see if that would have any effect, but it did not. But there were plenty of other noises, too. Millington once told me he had classified and scheduled four hundred and eighteen separate noises of disorder that he had heard in that one automobile, and that did not include any that might be another noise for the same disorders. And some days he would hear the whole four hundred and eighteen before we had gone a block. Those were his happy days. But this morning Millington came over bright and early. Isobel was just putting a cake in the oven, and she only took time to tell Jane, or Sophie, or whoever happened to be our maid that week, that she would be back in time to take the cake out, and then we went over to Millington's garage. Mrs. Millington, was already in the automobile, and Isobel and I got in, and Millington opened the throttle and the machine ran down the road to the street as lightly and skimmingly as a swallow. It glided into the street noiselessly and headed for Port Lafayette like a thing alive. I noticed that Millington looked anxious, but I thought nothing of it at the time. His brow was drawn into a frown, and from moment to moment he pulled his cap farther and farther down over his eyes. He leaned far over the side of the car. He listened so closely that his ears twitched. Mrs. Millington and Isobel were chatting merrily on the rear seat, and I was just turning to cast them a word, when the car came to a stop. I turned to Milllington instantly, ready to catch the pleasant bit of humour he usually let fall when he began to dig out his wrenches and pliers, but his face wore a glare of anger. His jaws were set, and he was muttering low, intense curses. I have seldom seen a man more demoniacal than Millington was at that moment. I asked him, merrily, what was the matter with the old junk shop this time, but instead of his usual chipper repartee, that “the old tea kettle has the epizootic,” he gave me one ferocious glance in which murder was plainly to be seen. Without a word he began walking around the automobile, eyeing it maliciously, and every time he passed a tire he kicked it as hard as he could. Then he began opening all the opening parts, and when he had opened them all and had peered into them long and angrily he went over to the curb and sat down and swore. Isobel and Mrs. Millington politely stuffed their handkerchiefs in their ears, but I went over to Millington and spoke to him as man to man. “Millington,” I said severely, “calm down! I am surprised. Time and again I have started for Port Lafayette with you, and time and again we have paused all day while you repaired the automobile. Much as I have wished to go to Port Lafayette I have never complained, because you have always been better company while repairing the machine than at any other time. But this I cannot stand. If you continue to act this way I shall never again go toward Port Lafayette with you. Brace up, and repair the machine.” Millington's only answer was a curse. I was about to take him by the throat and teach him a little better manners when he arose and walked over to the machine again. He got in and started the motor, and listened intently while I ran alongside. Then, with a great effort he controlled his feelings and spoke. “Ladies,” he said between his teeth, “we shall have to postpone going to Port Lafayette. I am afraid to drive this car any farther. There is something very, very serious the matter with it.” Then, when the women had disappeared, my wife walking rapidly so as to arrive at home before her cake was scorched, Millington turned to me. “John,” he said with emotion, “you must excuse the feeling I showed. I was upset; I admit that I was overcome. I have owned this car four years, but in all that time, although I have started for Port Lafayette nearly every day, the car has never behaved as it has just behaved. I am a brave man, John, and I have never been afraid of a motor-car before, but when my car acts as this car has just acted, I am afraid!” I could see he was speaking the truth. His face was white about the mouth, and the tense lines showed he was nerving himself to do his duty. His voice trembled with the intensity of his self-control. “John,” he said, taking my hand, “were you listening to the car?” “No,” I had to admit. “No, Millington, I was not. I am ashamed to say it, but at the moment my mind was elsewhere. But,” I added, as if in self defence, “I am pretty sure I did not hear that knocking. I remember quite distinctly that I was not holding on to anything, and when the engine knocks—But what did you hear?” A shiver of involuntary fear passed over Millington, and he lowered his voice to a frightened whisper. He glanced fearfully at the automobile. “Nothing!” he said. “What?” I cried. I could not hide my astonishment and, I am afraid, my disbelief. I would not, for the world, have had Millington think I thought he was prevaricating. “Not a thing!” he repeated firmly. “Not a sound; not one bad symptom. Every—everything was running just as it should—just as they do in other automobiles.” “Millington!” I said reproachfully. “It is the truth!” he declared. “I swear it is the truth. Nothing seemed broken or about to break. I could not hear a sound of distress, or a symptom of disorder. Do you wonder I was overcome?” “Millington,” I said seriously, “this is no light matter. I shall not accuse you of wilfully lying to me, but I know your automobile, and I cannot believe your automobile could proceed four hundred feet without making noises of internal disorder. It is evident to me that your hearing is growing weak; you may be threatened with deafness.” At this Millington seemed to cheer up considerably, for deafness was something he could understand. I proposed that we both get into the automobile again, and I, too, would listen. So we did. It was almost pathetic, it was most pathetic, to see the way Millington looked up into my face to see what verdict I would give when he started the motor. My verdict was the very worst possible. We ran a block at low speed and I could hear no trouble. We ran a block at second speed, and no distressful noise did I hear. We ran two blocks at high speed, with no noise but the soft purring of motors and machinery. As Millington brought the automobile to a stop we looked at each other aghast. It was true, too true, nothing was the matter with the automobile! It sparked, it ignited, it did everything a perfect automobile should do, just as a perfect automobile should do it. We got out and stared at the automobile silently. “John,” said Millington at length, “you can easily see that I would not dare to start on a long trip like that to Port Lafayette when my automobile is acting in this unaccountable manner. It would be the most foolhardy recklessness. When this machine is running in an absolutely perfect manner, almost anything may be the matter with it. My own opinion is that a spell has been cast over it, and that it is bewitched.” “I never knew it to come as far as this without stopping,” I said, “and to come this far without a single annoying noise makes me sure we should not attempt Port Lafayette to-day in this car. I shall take a little jaunt into the country behind my horse, and—” “But don't go to Port Lafayette,” pleaded Millington. “Perhaps the automobile will be worse to-morrow. If she only develops some of the noises I am familiar with I shall not be afraid of her.” One of the pleasures of being a suburbanite is that you can have a horse, and one of the pleasures of having a horse is that you keep off the main roads when you go driving, lest the automobiles get you and your horse into an awful mess. In driving up cross roads and down back roads you often run across things you would like to own—things the automobilist never sees—and Isobel and I had heard of a genuine Windsor chair of ancient lineage. I imagine the chair may have been almost as old as our horse. When Mr. Millington told me we could not go to Port Lafayette in his automobile that day, I hurried home and had Mr. Prawley harness Bob, and it was that day, when we were hunting the Windsor chair, that we ran across Chesterfield Whiting. Since Isobel had begun to like suburban life, she liked it as only a convert could, and the moment she saw Chesterfield Whiting she declared we must, by all means, keep a pig, and that Chesterfield Whiting was the pig we must keep. Personally I was not much in favour of keeping a pig. I like things that pay dividends more frequently. I would not give much for a vegetable garden that had to be planted in the spring, worked all summer, tended all fall, and that only yielded its product in the winter. I prefer a garden that gives a vegetable once in awhile. Mine does that—it gives a vegetable every once in awhile. But a pig is a slow dividend payer. I had noticed that Mr. Rolfs and Mr. Millington had never urged me to get a pig. Whenever I mentioned pig they mentioned various deadly and popular pig diseases. They had urged me to garden, and to keep chickens, and a horse, and a cow, and even an automobile—Millington urged me to keep his—but never a pig! I would not hint that Rolfs and Millington were selfish, or that they hoped to receive, now and then, milk from my cow, eggs from my chickens, or radishes from my garden, but a neighbour may profit in that way. On the other hand, the neighbour never profits from the suburban pig. I believe now, however, that Rolfs and Millington wished me to have things that would pay as they went. But the moment Isobel saw the pig she said we must have him, because he was so cute. I had never thought of buying a pig because it was cute any more than I would have thought of buying a spring bonnet because it would fatten well for winter killing, but I yielded to Isobel. Isobel said the idea of a pig being a nuisance was all nonsense, for she had been reading a magazine that was largely devoted to pigs and similar objects loved by country gentlemen, and that modern science proved beyond a doubt that the cleaner the pig the happier it was. She said a pig could not be too clean, and that if a pig was kept perfectly tidy no one could object to it. “John,” she said, “there is no reason in the world why a pig should not be as clean as a new pin. The magazine says that if a pig is usually of a coarse, disgruntled nature, it is only because it is kept in coarse, brutalizing surroundings, and treated like a pig. If a pig is put amidst sweetness and light, the pig's nature will be sweet and light, and the pig will be sweet and light.” I suggested gently that a pig, all things considered, was usually counted a failure if it was a light pig, and that experts had decided in favour of the pig that became heavy and soggy. “What I mean,” said Isobel, “is light in spirit, not light in weight.” We were looking over the fence of a farm when we held this little conversation, and Chesterfield Whiting was sporting on the clean, green clover, amidst his brothers, quite unconscious that he was so soon to be separated from them and lose their companionship. We had been attracted to him by a very hand-made sign that announced “Pigs for Sale.” Chesterfield was an extremely clean pig, and I must admit that I was rather taken by his looks myself, and when we drove around to the farm house I was surprised to learn how inexpensive a pig of tender years is, and I bought the pig. It is hard for me to deny Isobel these little pleasures. On our way home Isobel and I talked of the future of Chesterfield, and we resolved that his life should be one grand, sweet song, as the poet says, and we had hardly started homeward than it appeared as if Chesterfield meant to attend to the song feature of his life himself. I never imagined a pig would feel his separation from his native place so keenly. He began to mourn in a keen treble key the moment the farmer grabbed him, uttering long, sharp wails of sorrow, and he kept it up. Automobiles with siren horns stopped in the road as we passed, and the chauffeurs took off their goggles and stared at us. It was very hard for Isobel to sit up straight in the carriage and look dignified and cool with Chesterfield wailing out his little soul sorrows under the seat. As we neared the outskirts of Westcote, I began to keep an eye out for pig houses. It seemed to me that in these days of uplift the pig keepers of a suburb such as ours, peopled by intelligent men and women, would have the most modern improvements in pig dwellings, and I desired to make a few mental notes of them as I passed by. If I saw a very modern pig palace I meant to get out of the carriage and examine minutely the conveniences installed for the pig's comfort, so that I might reproduce them. Isobel had mentioned casually that a pig dwelling with tile floors and walls and a shower bath would be quite sanitary, provided the tiles of the wall met the tiles of the floor in a concave curve, leaving no sharp angles; but as we journeyed into the village we saw no pig houses of this kind. In fact we saw no pig houses of any kind. At first this only annoyed me, then it surprised me, and by the time we were well into the village it worried me. “Isobel,” I said, “I don't like this absence of pigs in this village. I am afraid there is something wrong here. I don't know what to make of it. It may be that hog-cholera is epidemic here the year 'round, just as San José scale kills all the apple trees. Have you seen a single pig?” “Not one,” she admitted. “It looks as if there was a law against pigs.” I stopped Bob, and looked at Isobel in amazement. “Isobel!” I exclaimed. “You must be right! There must be a law against pigs! I do wish Chesterfield would stop yelling!” “John,” said Isobel, “now that I come to think of it I do not believe I ever saw a pig in all Westcote. I wonder if we couldn't gag Chesterfield some way? If he howls like that every one will know we have a pig.” I gagged the pig. I took Isobel's pink veil and wrapped it firmly around Chesterfield's nose, and brought the ends around his neck and tied them. Then I stuck his head into the sleeve of my rain coat and wrapped him in the coat, and tied it all in the linen dust robe. He was well gagged. “Isobel,” I said, as I took up the reins again, “this is a serious matter. We will have to get rid of this pig, and we will have to do it quickly. I do not want to get into difficulties with the City of New York. Keeping a pig in the suburbs is evidently a crime, and it is a difficult crime to conceal. If I committed a murder and used ordinary precautions there might be no danger of detection, but a pig speaks for itself.” “Chesterfield does,” said Isobel. “Do you suppose they will put you in jail?” “Me in jail?” I ejaculated. “He is your pig, Isobel.” “John,” she said generously, “I give Chesterfield to you.” “Isobel,” I said, “I cannot accept the sacrifice. He is your pig.” “Well,” she said, “we will go to prison together.” <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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