The House

by Eugene Field

  XXI

  WITH PLUMBERS AND PAINTERS

  It did not take me long to find out that, in the treatment of theinterior of the new house, Alice had fallen a victim to the influenceof the Denslow-Baylor-Maria schools. I was not much surprised by thisdiscovery, for I had known for some time that Alice regarded theDenslows and the Baylors as people of rare taste, and it was quitenatural (as every unprejudiced person will allow) that, associatingwith Adah continually and being bound to her by ties of consanguinity,Alice should be susceptible to Adah's hortations, incitements,impulsations, and instigations.

  At any rate, I found that our new house was to be a conspicuousintermingling and interblending of the Denslow, Baylor, and Mariastyles of architecture. The big front room downstairs, the library,was distinctly Denslowish, and so was the big front room up-stairs, aswell as the butler's pantry and the reception-room. The Baylorinfluence manifested itself in the spare bedroom and the dining-room,and the Maria influence (thanks to Adah) was clearly exhibited in thefront and side porches, in my bedroom, and in the several hallways.Alice insisted that the house was to be strictly old colonial and alsorequested me to speak of it as such in the presence of visitors,particularly in the hearing of her relatives from the country when theycame into the city next September to do their winter buying.

  In my fancy I can already picture the dear girl putting on airs withthose guileless rural folk who know no more about the architectural andthe decorative arts than an unclouted Patagonian knows of the fourhouses of the Jesuitical order. Nor do I know much about those things,and I am glad that I do not, for if I had devoted my early years ofstudy to plinths, architraves, columns, dados, friezes, pediments,sconces, wainscots, cornices, capitals, entablatures, and such like,how could I have originated my theory of star-drift and how wouldhumanity have been enlightened upon the all-important subjects of theasteroids, the satellites of the star Gamma in Scorpio, the atmosphereon the other side of the moon, the depth of the Martian bottle-neckseas, the probability of the existence of natural gas wells in Jupiter,etc., etc.? If I had been a Linnaeus or a Buffon instead of ReubenBaker, I should have never suffered myself to fall an innocent victimto poison ivy--yes, that is true, but at the same time my now famoustheory of double stars and my equally famous theory as to the severalelements in comets' tails would have been denied to the world. No oneman can combine within himself all human genius; in all modesty Ideclare myself satisfied with being simply Reuben Baker.

  While I devoted my attention to out-of-door affairs--by which I meancare of the lawn, of the flower-beds, and of the vegetable patches--Ihad a comparatively tranquil existence. Having transferred the base ofmy operations (or perhaps I should say my observations) indoors, Ifound numerous disagreements and misunderstandings to distract me. Iwas not long in finding out that there were two factions (so to speak)in charge of the department of the interior. Parties of the first partwere Alice and all our feminine neighbors; party of the second part wasUncle Si.

  You see, there had never been anything more explicit than a verbalunderstanding between Uncle Si and Alice; the two had talked the matterall over at the start, and they agreed upon every theory so nicely thatI do not wonder they decided that a written contract was not necessary.Uncle Si did some figuring which resulted in his saying that he wouldreconstruct the old house and build an addition for the even sum of twothousand dollars. Very few specifications were made, but there was apretty clear verbal understanding reached, and the consequence was asdistinct a misunderstanding as the work progressed. Most of thetrouble was over the detail of hardwood. Alice was sure that Uncle Sihad agreed to put in hardwood floors and trimmings throughout; Uncle Siexpostulated that he had never thought of so preposterous a project,since it would have bankrupted him as sure as his name was Silas Plum.

  The result was that Alice never went near the new house that she didnot groan and moan and declare that Georgia pine was simply thehorridest wood in all the world, while, upon the other hand, Uncle Sispeedily came to regard Alice as an arch enemy who was seeking to trickand impoverish him. The neighbors sided with Alice, of course. Theyfreely expressed the conviction that Uncle Si and all other contractorswould bear constant watching. It is perhaps needless for me to addthat Uncle Si regarded all neighbors as impertinent and mischievousintermeddlers.

  I will confess that of all the workmen about the place the plumbersinterested me most. They came late and quit early, and much of theintervening time was spent in asking one another questions and inordering one another about. No tool was at hand when it was required.If the pliers were needed the whole gang of plumbers stopped work tohunt for the missing instrument, which was sometimes found in oneremote spot and sometimes in another--never where it should have been.I have a theory that for reasons best known to themselves plumbers makea practice of mislaying and losing their tools.

  I supposed that having once begun their work these plumbers would pushit to completion. I never undertake anything that I do not keep at ituntil it is done and finished, and I think that this rule obtains amongmost of the professions and trades. Plumbers seem, however, to be aprivileged class. They come to your premises and spend an hour or twoexamining what is to be done; then they go away. When they get readyto come back they return--this time with a miniature furnace andwhatever tools they do not require. Then they go away to bring thetools they need, leaving the tools they do not require for a pretextfor another trip. Then they take turns at suggesting how the proposedwork should be done, and one after another they get down upon theirknees and peer into closets and holes and under floors and into darkplaces, after which some of them go back to the "shop," for morethings, while the others either sit around doing nothing or busythemselves at losing and mislaying the tools they have already at hand.

  Uncle Si, who is an authority on the subject, says that there never wasa plumber who died of overwork or in the poorhouse. He tells me thathe once knew of a plumber named Bilkins who fell dead of heart diseaseone day when he discovered that he had worked four minutes overtime.

  The boss painter was another individual who excited my astonishment. Inever knew another man so fertile in the art of prevarication. Mr.Krome would rather lie than eat--at any rate, he would rather lie thanpaint. He never neglected to come over twice a day and take a long andcareful survey of the house.

  "I reckon you 're about ready for us, eh?" he 'd ask.

  "We 're waiting on you," Uncle Si would say.

  "Then I 'll have to put my gang at work in the mornin'," he wouldanswer. This performance was repeated again and again, but the "gang"we looked for did not come. I remonstrated against this seemingneglect, but Mr. Krome blandly assured me that when his men did onceget to work they would push the job with incredible speed. I knew hewas a liar, yet I always believed the fellow.

  We gave him the glazing to do. We even accommodated him to the extentof sending the window frames to his shop instead of making him haulthem himself. We did this out of no special regard for Mr. Krome, for,aside from pure selfish considerations, Mr. Krome is no more to us thanwe are to Hecuba; but we desired to facilitate him in the work he hadengaged to do for us.

  After the window frames had been at the fellow's shop a fortnight, Ibegan to suggest that their return would gratify me to the degree ofrapture. Mr. Krome put us off with one excuse and another (all equallyplausible) and presently a month had rolled by. Like the man in thefable who tried brickbats when kind words were no longer of avail, Ithreatened to turn the work of glazing over to another glazier who wasnot so busy with his lying as to prevent him from attending to theduties of his legitimate trade. This served as a mild remedy, for thewindow frames presently began to arrive one at a time, and I actuallyfelt like calling upon our pastor for a special service of praise andthanksgiving when finally those windows were all in place.

  The one thing that Alice, the neighbors, Uncle Si, and I were amicablyagreed upon was the opinion that Mr. Krome, for a boss painter, was notworth the pow
der to blow him off the face of the earth. I felt temptedto tell him so, but he was at all times so amiable and so chatty that Ireally could not find the heart to mention a matter likely to interruptthe flow of his good nature. The chances are that Mr. Kromeentertained much the same opinion of Uncle Si that Uncle Si had of Mr.Krome. My somewhat intimate association with workingmen for the lastthree months enables me to say that, so far as I have been able toobserve, workingmen often have a precious poor opinion of one another.The plumbers talk of the carpenters as lazy and shiftless, the paintersspeak ill of the plumbers, the carpenters regard the tinners withderision, and so it goes through the whole category.

  Now that I come to think of it, I am compelled to admit that thispractice of setting a low estimate upon the endeavors andresponsibilities of others is not restricted to the workingman's class.I blush to recall how often I myself have envied the apparent ease withwhich Belville Rock and Bobbett Doller stem the tide of human affairswhile I labor on and on, barely eking out a subsistence. So far as Ican see, they toil not, neither do they spin.

  The chances are, on the other hand, that both Belville Rock and ColonelDoller regard me as the luckiest of lazy dogs, who has but to lie onhis back and look at sun, moon, and stars to earn both fame andfortune. The farmer's candid conviction is that the city man is afellow who does nothing and gets rich at it; the urban resident isquite as positive that the farmer habitually loafs around and lets Goddo the rest. The truth of this whole matter is that all humanity isprone to discontentment of that kind which not only denies happiness tooneself but also begrudges others the happiness they achieve.

  But of this frailty I shall speak no further; indeed, I do notunderstand how I happened to be led into this line of discourse, for itis quite at a tangent with the subject I had in mind--namely, thebutler's pantry.