The House Part 2

"But it is after dark already," said Alice. "Wouldn't it seem rather burglarious to make a descent upon the old lady at this hour?"

"And what is more to the point," said I, "the detail (trifling as it may appear) of planking down one hundred dollars is one which I happen just at this moment to be unprepared to provide for."

"The matter should be closed at once," said Mr. Denslow. "In a deal of this kind delay is too often disastrous. As for the one hundred dollars, I will lend you that amount, for a small cash payment is really necessary to bind the bargain."

My heart went out in grat.i.tude to this n.o.ble gentleman. Never before had I felt more keenly the value of neighborly friendship.

"As this business is to be transacted in Mrs. Baker's name," said Mr.

Denslow to me, "it would be better for you not to go with us to see Mrs. Schmittheimer. The presence of too many strangers might make the old lady shy of doing what we want her to do. See?"

Yes, I comprehended the intent of the suggestion, and I approved it.

While it was far from my desire to take any advantage of the Widow Schmittheimer or of anybody else, I recognized the propriety of conserving our own interests to the extent of suffering no rights of our own to be either lost or jeoparded. So while Mr. Denslow and Alice went upon their business mission I remained with Mrs. Denslow and her interesting children and elucidated my theory of the ice-caps of the planet Mars. In less than an hour Mr. Denslow and Alice returned and exhibited with delight a receipt signed by Katherine Elizabeth Schmittheimer, which receipt, I was glad to see, was practically a contract to sell the property upon the terms specified in her original talk with Alice.

"The terms are certainly exceptionally advantageous!" said Mr. Denslow.

"It will take some time--perhaps a week or ten days--to investigate the t.i.tle; when this detail is satisfactorily disposed of you can pay down your one thousand dollars and take possession of the premises."

Pay down one thousand dollars? Ah, I had quite forgotten about that.

In my enthusiasm over the prospect of a home of our own, and in the delirium induced by the delightful chatter about the paradise into which that front lawn and that old rookery (as Adah called it) were to be transformed, I had suffered all thought of the essential and inevitable first payment of one thousand dollars to slip quite out of my mind. Now this awful consideration, from which there could be no escape, took complete and exclusive possession of me. Where in the wide, wide world was I to get the one thousand dollars?

This was the question I put to Alice on the way home from the Denslows'

that memorable evening. Alice knew as well as I did that my salary was sufficient only to cover the current expenses of the family. She knew as well as I did that the royalties from my books the last year were as follows:

"The Star Gamma in Leo and Its Satellite" . . . . . $1.60 "Mars and Its Ice-Caps" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .75 "Probable Depth of the Bottle-Neck Seas as Indicated by the Spectroscope" . . . . . . . . . .30 "Logarithms for the Nursery" . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.15 "Alphabetical Catalogue of Binary Stars" . . . . . . .65 ----- Total $4.45

Alice knew, too, as well as I did, that the whole amount of money I received from my lectures before the West Side Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge did not exceed seventy dollars last year. She knew all these things, and I told her so, and then I asked her where or how she fancied we were going to raise the one thousand dollars for the first payment on "our house." To my surprise, Alice was prepared--or at least she seemed to be prepared for this question.

"Reuben," said she, "I remember having heard Mr. Black say one day during his visit to us last summer that we ought to have a home, and that if we ever decided to buy one he would try his best to help us."

Now that Alice spoke of it I, too, recalled that friendly remark of Mr.

Black's. A man who is drowning will catch at a straw. A man who has bought a house with nothing to pay for it is also predisposed to clutch. Our old friend Mr. Black now loomed up as my only sure salvation.

Mr. Black is upward of seventy years of age. He and my father went to school together in Maine, and subsequently they lived near each other in Cincinnati. Mr. Black had been a merchant; he had retired from business rich. After my father's death, while I was still a boy, this kind old friend was good to me, taking an interest in my work and my welfare. He had no children of his own, and, if he did not regard me almost as a son, I certainly grew to regard him almost as a father.

Mr. Black knew the value of money and respected it. He gave freely, but only where he was a.s.sured it was deserved and would do actual good.

A prudent, careful, economical man himself, he encouraged prudence and thrift in others. He never quite condoned what he regarded as extravagance upon my part in buying my fifty pieces of mediaeval armor, although it is to his munificence that I am indebted for the six-foot telescope with which I am wont to scan the face of the heavens.

The upshot of talks with Alice and Adah and the Denslows--to say nothing of other neighbors with whom I confidentially consulted--the upshot of these talks was that I determined to go to Cincinnati to confer with Mr. Black upon the propriety of his advancing to me the money wherewith Alice should make the first payment upon her--I mean our house. To make short of a long story (for if there is one thing that I despise above all others it is prolixity), I went to Cincinnati and unfolded my business to my aged friend. Mr. Black appeared to be in no indecent haste to satiate my craving. He is not, and never was, a man of exuberant enthusiasms. I was rather pained when, upon learning of the unparalleled bargain we had secured in the Schmittheimer place, he did not go into raptures as did Mrs. Denslow, and Mrs. Baylor, and Mrs. Tiltman and the rest of our neighbors at home. So far from being carried away by any whirlwind of enthusiasm, Mr. Black maintained a placidity of demeanor amounting to stoicism; he plied me with questions about "t.i.tles," and "abstracts," and "indentures," and "mortgages," and "liens," and "inc.u.mbrances," and other things that I actually knew no more about than the veriest Bushman knows about the theory of Nebulae.

To add to my embarra.s.sment he solicited explicit information about the Schmittheimer place, in what subdivision it was located, and in what township. Had I been a veritable human encyclopaedia I could hardly have satisfied that man's greed for information touching that particular spot. What knew I of tracts, of townships, of quarter sections or of subdivisions? Were I filled with a knowledge of these humdrum commonplaces, should I know aught of that enthusiasm which thrills the being who, after many and long years of weary hoping and waiting, sees the object of his desires just within his grasp? Should Moses just in sight of the promised land be expected to give the dimensions of that delectable spot, and to locate it and bound it and map it off with the accuracy of a Rand & McNally township guide?

I suppose that this conservatism is natural with some people--this lack of fervor, this absence of enthusiasm. Still I will admit Mr. Black's tranquillity--nay, his glacial composure--under the circ.u.mstances surprised and grieved me. I did not understand why the prospect and the promise of "our house" did not set Mr. Black--and, for that matter, all the rest of humanity--into the selfsame transports of delight which I experienced. Mind you, now, I am not complaining of nor am I finding fault with Mr. Black. I am simply chronicling happenings and observations. Mr. Black is a benevolent and beneficent man. He said to me at last: "Well, you can tell Alice that I will send her a draft for the money she needs, and within a fortnight I shall run up to take a look at your purchase."

I was in Cincinnati three days. I should have been there but two. A curious happening detained me. As I was going to the railway station from Mr. Black's house the evening of the second day I saw a man with a reflector telescope selling views of the moon at five cents apiece.

The night was so auspicious for this diversion that I could not resist the temptation. Thus seduced, the time sped so quickly and the intoxication of the enjoyment was so complete that two hours slipped away before I awakened to a realization of my folly, which cost me somewhat over a dollar and a half, and compelled me to postpone my departure for home to the next day.

V

WE NEGOTIATE A MORTGAGE

Alice and I supposed that as soon as we made that first payment upon the old Schmittheimer place we should take possession of it. We had hastened negotiations because naturally enough we were anxious to share the delights of the Eden which was to be ours. It transpired all too early in the proceedings, however, that the processes of the law are exceedingly exacting and provokingly tedious. With the one thousand dollars which Mr. Black gave us we fancied that we should be able to say to the widow Schmittheimer: "Here is your money; now let us move in."

It seems that the business is not done in that business-like way. As soon as the widow Schmittheimer contracted to part with her property at a stated price and upon stated terms she awoke to a realization of the fact that she ought to have the cooperation and counsel of a lawyer--although for the life of me I cannot see what there was left for a lawyer to do. With a magnanimity and generosity which bespoke the largeness of his nature, Mr. Denslow volunteered his services as counsellor to the wary widow, and I confess that I should have interposed no objection to having this versatile friend serve in this capacity. But the widow chose to decline the gratuitous services of Mr. Denslow, and to pay fifty dollars for the professional advice of a certain Lawyer Meisterbaum, not a bad fellow, but one of those carping, superficial people who pretend to a conscientiousness and a prudence and a zeal which they actually do not possess.

After repeated meetings and the most annoying delays, Alice plainly told this Lawyer Meisterbaum that he had more than earned his fee by his puerile interferences with a prompt and amicable adjustment of the affair. Alice and Mr. Denslow and I agreed that, if we had been left to ourselves, we could have settled the business with the widow Schmittheimer in half a day. However, I suppose that the lawyers must have a chance to make a living, and I can readily understand how a really conscientious lawyer might have the lingering remnant or suggestion of a desire to impress his client with the suspicion that he was earning his fee.

For fully a fortnight after my return from Cincinnati we were hara.s.sed by the delays of the law, or, more exactly speaking, by the exasperating crochets of the lawyer. Meanwhile there came letters of anxious inquiry from our munificent friend Mr. Black, for that estimable person, being aware of my predilection for ancient armor and other curios, found it difficult to disabuse his mind of the suspicion that his one thousand dollars might have been diverted from its original purpose, and misappropriated to what he esteemed the uses of folly. So it was with a feeling of great relief that finally I apprised our generous friend by telegraph that the transaction had been closed.

This end had not been reached, however, until Alice had put her signature and her seal to a curiously-phrased doc.u.ment which served (as I was told) as security to the widow Schmittheimer in case of "default in payment of interest or princ.i.p.al." This instrument is called, as I remember, a deed of trust, which seems to be another and a more polite name for a mortgage.

I protested against Alice's putting her signature to this doc.u.ment, which I still recognize as a covert foe to our happiness and prosperity. But Mr. Denslow a.s.sured us that the proceeding was wholly proper and businesslike, and Alice paid no heed to my expostulations.

Never before had I had any experience in matters or with instruments of this kind, and I will admit that I have not even now any idea of what the purport of the doc.u.ment in question is, further than a distinct intuition that its involved syntax and complex and cloudy phraseology bode no good.

As soon as the transaction was closed the widow Schmittheimer burst into tears and loudly bewailed having parted with her home. I then learned that for the last ten days she had been almost constantly besieged by old friends of hers--the same who had been wont to consume her coffee and her kuchen and who now regaled her (in compensation, as it were, for her past hospitality) with reproachful a.s.surances that she had been virtually swindled out of her beautiful property. The grief of this lonely and amiable woman touched me to the core, and I sought to a.s.suage her melancholy by telling her that we should expect her to visit us, to which she replied amid tears and seeming grat.i.tude that she would be sure to call every September and March, these being the months (as I afterward learned) in which the semi-annual interest, so called, fell due.

As you may suppose, while Alice and I, under the direction of Mr.

Denslow, were worrying ourselves nearly to death over the miserable details of "closing" this transaction, our neighbors and Adah (Alice's sister) busied themselves with planning improvements in and for our new home. It was during this period that Adah met with one of those sorrows which benumb the sensitive feminine heart. In a moment of vandalism ever to be deprecated, little Erasmus discovered and took possession of that copy of "The National Architect" which contained the picture of the plutocratic villa at Narragansett Pier. This precious relic was put by the heedless boy to the base use of serving as a tail to a kite, and during one of the high winds the kite blew away, and there was an end to Adah's most precious possession! Thus perished the link that united Adah to the sweetest dream of her maturer years.

However, this mishap did not wholly abate Adah's interest in our affairs. In answer to Adah's solicitation a long letter had come from Maria, bearing the blissful promise that a carefully made plan of Maria's house of St. Joe (drawn by Maria herself upon a fly leaf excerpted from Maria's favorite volume, "The Life of Mary Lyon") would soon be forwarded for our enlightenment and delectation. Maria felt kindly toward us, and her sympathies had been awakened to their very depths by a tender souvenir Adah had sent her--a leaf plucked from one of the lilac bushes on the old Schmittheimer place. Both Adah and Maria belong to that old-school cla.s.s of proper feminine folk who never pick but always pluck flowers.

Well, Adah and the neighbors kept as busy as a bee in a bottle planning changes that they deemed necessary in our house. When we got through with that dilly-dallying, shilly-shallying Lawyer Meisterbaum, Alice and I found out that Adah and the neighbors had left little for us to do except to approve their plans and pay for the execution thereof.

There had been a kind of tacit understanding all along that such changes as we made in the Schmittheimer house should be superintended by an architect-carpenter who was cordially recommended by Mrs.

Denslow. This important person's name was Silas Plum, and he had a shop in Osgood Avenue, opposite one of our most fashionable and most prosperous cemeteries. Mrs. Denslow always called him Uncle Si, and this circ.u.mstance rather prejudiced me in favor of him. The facts, too, that Uncle Si was not overcrowded with business, that he was considerate in his charges, and that he was of so great versatility that he could boss the plumbing as well as the carpentering--these facts confirmed us in the opinion that Uncle Si was just the man for our needs.

I went with Mrs. Denslow to call upon this gifted and honest son of toil. His modest place of business was indicated to the pa.s.ser-by by this insinuating sign:

SILAS PLUM, CARPENTER & BUILDER.

COFFIN BOXES A SPECIALITY.

I am not a superst.i.tious person. I think I have already told you so.

Still I have instincts and intuitions; and you, who are not wholly dead to the subtle influences of the more delicate sentiments, will probably sympathize with me when I admit that Mr. Plum's sign did not inspire me with that enthusiasm which is at least comforting to the possessor.

The reference to Mr. Plum's "speciality" was what cast a temporary gloom over me, but Mrs. Denslow was not one of those who suffer a detail so insignificant as this to stand in her way; so I was bounced into Uncle Si's shop and presented to Uncle Si in propria persona.

Uncle Si impressed me as being a very trustworthy man. He looked not unlike myself; his gaunt, sinewy frame betokened severe practicability, and his calm blue eyes and large straight mouth combined to give his face an unmistakable and convincing expression of candor. Of speech he was monosyllabic, and this peculiarity pleased me, for I have always admired and always cultivated directness and terseness, there being nothing else more distasteful to me than the prolixity, diffuseness, pleonasm, amplification, redundance, and copia verborum of some people.

I told Uncle Si all about the new purchase we had made, and I drew upon a pine board a fairly correct plan of the Schmittheimer house as it now stood. I gave him to understand that numerous and important changes were required, and that I desired to secure from him an estimate as to the cost of those changes.

"I can't tell how much it will be till I know what you want," said Uncle Si.

I recognized the justness of this remark, yet at the same time I felt bitter toward Uncle Si for not knowing without being told. To tell the truth, _I_ didn't know. I had heard Alice and Adah talking in a general way about "closets" and a "new hall," and "hardwood floors"

and--and--and things of that kind; I remembered having heard some discussion of a prospective "addition," and--yes--I now recalled that the front porch would have to be rebuilt. Hoping to conceal my utter ignorance, I told Uncle Si that we wanted "lots of changes," but this would not satisfy the exasperating man; he insisted upon particulars, upon "specifications," as he termed them.

Of course I was unable to give them; so was Mrs. Denslow. The only really distinct idea Mrs. Denslow had of the transformation contemplated by Alice was one concerning the front lawn, and involving gravel walks between flower beds and under umbrageous trees; exotics perennially in bloom; Swiss tree boxes, from which the lark carolled by day and the nightingale warbled at night; an artificial lake, in which goldfishes swam and upon whose translucent bosom majestic swans glided gracefully--I a.s.sure you that Mrs. Denslow has the soul of a poet!

But these delightful fancies did not interest Uncle Si, because they did not concern him or his trade. So we compromised the matter by appointing an hour that evening for Uncle Si to call and talk it all over with Alice. This was, seemingly, the only way out of the dilemma.

All I knew was what I didn't want, or, rather, what _we_ didn't want.