The Adventures of a Suburbanite

by Ellis Parker Butler

  VII. CHESTERFIELD WHITING

  THE next morning Millington came over bright and early, and his face wasaglow with joy.

  "Get ready as quickly as you can," he said, "for I will be ready tostart for Port Lafayette in a few minutes. The automobile is in perfectorder, 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 ofthe most reliable noises of all those for which Millington listened whenhe started the engine of his automobile. He was very fond of it, and itwas one of the heartiest knockings I ever heard in an automobile. It waslike the hiccoughs, only more strenuous. It was as if a giant had beenshut in the motor by mistake and was trying to knock the whole affairto pieces. The knock came about every eight seconds, lightly atfirst, getting stronger and stronger until it made the fore-end of theautomobile bounce up a foot or eighteen inches at each knock.

  Millington loved all the sounds of trouble, but this knocking gave himthe most pleasure and put him in his pleasantest mood, for he couldnever quite discover the cause of it. When everything else was inperfect order the knock remained. He would do everything any man couldthink of to cure it, but the machine would continue to knock. I rememberhe even went so far as to put a new inner tube in a tire once, to seeif that would have any effect, but it did not. But there were plentyof other noises, too. Millington once told me he had classified andscheduled four hundred and eighteen separate noises of disorder thathe had heard in that one automobile, and that did not include any thatmight be another noise for the same disorders. And some days he wouldhear 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 justputting a cake in the oven, and she only took time to tell Jane, orSophie, or whoever happened to be our maid that week, that she would beback in time to take the cake out, and then we went over to Millington'sgarage.

  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 tothe street as lightly and skimmingly as a swallow. It glided into thestreet noiselessly and headed for Port Lafayette like a thing alive. Inoticed that Millington looked anxious, but I thought nothing of it atthe time. His brow was drawn into a frown, and from moment to momenthe pulled his cap farther and farther down over his eyes. He leaned farover the side of the car. He listened so closely that his ears twitched.

  Mrs. Millington and Isobel were chatting merrily on the rear seat, andI 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 ofhumour he usually let fall when he began to dig out his wrenches andpliers, but his face wore a glare of anger. His jaws were set, andhe was muttering low, intense curses. I have seldom seen a man moredemoniacal than Millington was at that moment. I asked him, merrily,what was the matter with the old junk shop this time, but instead of hisusual chipper repartee, that "the old tea kettle has the epizootic," hegave me one ferocious glance in which murder was plainly to be seen.

  Without a word he began walking around the automobile, eyeing itmaliciously, and every time he passed a tire he kicked it as hard ashe could. Then he began opening all the opening parts, and when he hadopened them all and had peered into them long and angrily he went overto the curb and sat down and swore. Isobel and Mrs. Millington politelystuffed their handkerchiefs in their ears, but I went over to Millingtonand spoke to him as man to man.

  "Millington," I said severely, "calm down! I am surprised. Time andagain I have started for Port Lafayette with you, and time and again wehave paused all day while you repaired the automobile. Much as I havewished to go to Port Lafayette I have never complained, because you havealways been better company while repairing the machine than at any othertime. But this I cannot stand. If you continue to act this way I shallnever again go toward Port Lafayette with you. Brace up, and repair themachine."

  Millington's only answer was a curse.

  I was about to take him by the throat and teach him a little bettermanners when he arose and walked over to the machine again. He got inand 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 goingto Port Lafayette. I am afraid to drive this car any farther. There issomething very, very serious the matter with it."

  Then, when the women had disappeared, my wife walking rapidly so as toarrive 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 fouryears, but in all that time, although I have started for Port Lafayettenearly every day, the car has never behaved as it has just behaved. I ama 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 themouth, 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 sayit, but at the moment my mind was elsewhere. But," I added, as if inself defence, "I am pretty sure I did not hear that knocking. I rememberquite distinctly that I was not holding on to anything, and when theengine knocks--But what did you hear?"

  A shiver of involuntary fear passed over Millington, and he lowered hisvoice 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 Ithought 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 inother automobiles."

  "Millington!" I said reproachfully.

  "It is the truth!" he declared. "I swear it is the truth. Nothing seemedbroken or about to break. I could not hear a sound of distress, or asymptom of disorder. Do you wonder I was overcome?"

  "Millington," I said seriously, "this is no light matter. I shall notaccuse you of wilfully lying to me, but I know your automobile, and Icannot believe your automobile could proceed four hundred feet withoutmaking noises of internal disorder. It is evident to me that yourhearing is growing weak; you may be threatened with deafness." At thisMillington seemed to cheer up considerably, for deafness was somethinghe could understand. I proposed that we both get into the automobileagain, and I, too, would listen. So we did. It was almost pathetic, itwas most pathetic, to see the way Millington looked up into my face tosee what verdict I would give when he started the motor.

  My verdict was the very worst possible. We ran a block at low speedand I could hear no trouble. We ran a block at second speed, and nodistressful noise did I hear. We ran two blocks at high speed, withno noise but the soft purring of motors and machinery. As Millingtonbrought the automobile to a stop we looked at each other aghast. Itwas true, too true, _nothing was the matter with the automobile!_ Itsparked, it ignited, it did everything a perfect automobile should do,just as a perfect automobile should do it. We got out and stared at theautomobile silently.

  "John," said Millington at length, "you can easily see that I wouldnot dare to start on a long trip like that to Port Lafayette when myautomobile is acting in this unaccountable manner. It would be the mostfoolhardy recklessness. When this machine is running in an absolutelyperfect manner, almost anything may be the matter with it. Myown opinion is that a spell has been cast over it, and that it isbewitched."

  "I never knew it to come as far as this without stopping," I said, "andto come this far without a single annoying noise makes me sure we shouldnot attempt Port Lafayette to-day in this car. I shall take a li
ttlejaunt into the country behind my horse, and--"

  "But don't go to Port Lafayette," pleaded Millington. "Perhaps theautomobile will be worse to-morrow. If she only develops some of thenoises I am familiar with I shall not be afraid of her."

  One of the pleasures of being a suburbanite is that you can have ahorse, and one of the pleasures of having a horse is that you keep offthe main roads when you go driving, lest the automobiles get you andyour horse into an awful mess. In driving up cross roads and down backroads you often run across things you would like to own--things theautomobilist never sees--and Isobel and I had heard of a genuine Windsorchair of ancient lineage. I imagine the chair may have been almost asold as our horse. When Mr. Millington told me we could not go to PortLafayette in his automobile that day, I hurried home and had Mr. Prawleyharness Bob, and it was that day, when we were hunting the Windsorchair, that we ran across Chesterfield Whiting. Since Isobel had begunto like suburban life, she liked it as only a convert could, and themoment 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 thatpay dividends more frequently. I would not give much for a vegetablegarden 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 doesthat--it gives a vegetable every once in awhile. But a pig is a slowdividend payer.

  I had noticed that Mr. Rolfs and Mr. Millington had never urged me toget a pig. Whenever I mentioned pig they mentioned various deadly andpopular 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 tokeep his--but never a pig! I would not hint that Rolfs and Millingtonwere selfish, or that they hoped to receive, now and then, milk from mycow, eggs from my chickens, or radishes from my garden, but a neighbourmay profit in that way. On the other hand, the neighbour never profitsfrom the suburban pig. I believe now, however, that Rolfs and Millingtonwished me to have things that would pay as they went.

  But the moment Isobel saw the pig she said we must have him, because hewas so cute. I had never thought of buying a pig because it was cuteany more than I would have thought of buying a spring bonnet because itwould fatten well for winter killing, but I yielded to Isobel.

  Isobel said the idea of a pig being a nuisance was all nonsense, for shehad been reading a magazine that was largely devoted to pigs and similarobjects loved by country gentlemen, and that modern science provedbeyond a doubt that the cleaner the pig the happier it was. She said apig could not be too clean, and that if a pig was kept perfectly tidy noone could object to it.

  "John," she said, "there is no reason in the world why a pig should notbe as clean as a new pin. The magazine says that if a pig is usually ofa coarse, disgruntled nature, it is only because it is kept in coarse,brutalizing surroundings, and treated like a pig. If a pig is put amidstsweetness and light, the pig's nature will be sweet and light, and thepig will be sweet and light."

  I suggested gently that a pig, all things considered, was usuallycounted a failure if it was a light pig, and that experts had decided infavour 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 littleconversation, and Chesterfield Whiting was sporting on the clean, greenclover, amidst his brothers, quite unconscious that he was so soon to beseparated from them and lose their companionship. We had been attractedto him by a very hand-made sign that announced "Pigs for Sale."Chesterfield was an extremely clean pig, and I must admit that I wasrather taken by his looks myself, and when we drove around to the farmhouse I was surprised to learn how inexpensive a pig of tender yearsis, and I bought the pig. It is hard for me to deny Isobel these littlepleasures.

  On our way home Isobel and I talked of the future of Chesterfield, andwe resolved that his life should be one grand, sweet song, as thepoet says, and we had hardly started homeward than it appeared as ifChesterfield meant to attend to the song feature of his life himself. Inever imagined a pig would feel his separation from his native placeso keenly. He began to mourn in a keen treble key the moment the farmergrabbed him, uttering long, sharp wails of sorrow, and he kept it up.Automobiles with siren horns stopped in the road as we passed, and thechauffeurs took off their goggles and stared at us. It was very hard forIsobel to sit up straight in the carriage and look dignified and coolwith Chesterfield wailing out his little soul sorrows under the seat.

  As we neared the outskirts of Westcote, I began to keep an eye out forpig houses. It seemed to me that in these days of uplift the pig keepersof a suburb such as ours, peopled by intelligent men and women, wouldhave the most modern improvements in pig dwellings, and I desired tomake a few mental notes of them as I passed by. If I saw a very modernpig palace I meant to get out of the carriage and examine minutely theconveniences installed for the pig's comfort, so that I might reproducethem.

  Isobel had mentioned casually that a pig dwelling with tile floors andwalls and a shower bath would be quite sanitary, provided the tiles ofthe wall met the tiles of the floor in a concave curve, leaving no sharpangles; but as we journeyed into the village we saw no pig houses ofthis kind. In fact we saw no pig houses of any kind. At first this onlyannoyed me, then it surprised me, and by the time we were well into thevillage 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 ofit. It may be that hog-cholera is epidemic here the year 'round, just asSan Jose 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 againstpigs! I do wish Chesterfield would stop yelling!"

  "John," said Isobel, "now that I come to think of it I do not believe Iever saw a pig in all Westcote. I wonder if we couldn't gag Chesterfieldsome 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 aroundChesterfield'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 inthe 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 seriousmatter. We will have to get rid of this pig, and we will have to do itquickly. I do not want to get into difficulties with the City of NewYork. Keeping a pig in the suburbs is evidently a crime, and it is adifficult crime to conceal. If I committed a murder and used ordinaryprecautions there might be no danger of detection, but a pig speaks foritself."

  "Chesterfield does," said Isobel. "Do you suppose they will put you injail?"

  "_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."