Part 2 (1/2)
I haven't catalogued mine, I have just put them down ”higgledy-piggledy,”
as we used to say when we were children. J----'s having to work in town, too far to come home except for an occasional week-end, the neighbors'
dogs, servants, Bermuda gra.s.s, tenants, ants, the eccentricities of an adobe road during the rains, and the lapses of the delivery system of the village. Of course they are of varying degrees of unpleasantness.
J----'s absence is horrid but the common lot, so I have accepted it and am learning ”to possess, in loneliness, the joy of all the earth.”
Truth compels me to add that it isn't always loneliness, either, as, for example, one week-end that was much cheered by a visit from our architect friend, who rode down from Santa Barbara in his motor, and made himself very popular with every member of the household. He brought home the laundry, bearded the ice man in his lair, making ice-cream possible for Sunday dinner, mended the garden lattice, and drew entrancing pictures of galleons sailing in from fairy sh.o.r.es with all their canvas spread, for the boys. As we waved our handkerchiefs to him from the Good-by Gate on Monday, Joedy turned to me:
”I wish he didn't have to go!” A little pause.
”Muvs, if you weren't married to Father, how would you like--” but here I interrupted by calling his attention to a rabbit in the canyon.
One thing I do not consider a part of the joy of all the earth--the neighbors' dogs. On the next hill-top is an Airedale with a voice like a fog-horn. He is an ungainly creature and thoroughly disillusioned, because his family keep him locked up in a wire-screened tennis-court, where he barks all day and nearly all night. He can watch the motors on the coast road from one corner of his cage, and that seems to drive him almost wild. He ought to realize how much better off he is than the Lady of Shalott, who only dared to watch the highway to Camelot in a mirror!
Sometimes he has a bad attack of lamentation in the night--he is quite Jeremiah's peer at that--and then we all call his house on the telephone. You can see the lights flash on in the various cottages and hear the tinkle of the bell, as we each in turn voice our indignation.
Once I even saw a white-robed figure in the road across the canyon, and heard a voice borne on the night wind, ”For heaven's sake, shut that dog up.” We all bore it with Christian resignation when his family decided to take a motor camping trip, Prince to be included in the party. He is probably even now waking the echoes on Lake Tahoe, or barking himself hoa.r.s.e at the Bridal Veil Falls in the Yosemite, but thank goodness we can't hear him quite as far away as that.
I dare say that he might be a perfectly nice, desirable dog if he had had any early training. Our own ”pufflers,” as the boys call ”Rags” and ”Tags,” their twin silver-haired Yorks.h.i.+re terriers, could tell him what a restraining influence the force of early training has on them, even on moonlight nights.
Prince is the worst affliction we have had, but not the only one. The people on the mountain-slope above us acquired a yellowish collie-like dog to scare away coyotes. He ought to have been a success at it, though I don't know just what it takes to scare a coyote. At any rate, he used to bark long and grievously about dawn in the road across the canyon.
One morning I was almost frantic with the irregularity of his outbursts.
It was like waiting for the other shoe to drop. Suddenly a rifle shot rang out; a spurt of yellow dust, a streak of yellow dog, and silence!
I rushed to J----'s room, to find him with the weapon, still smoking, in his hands. I begged him not to start a neighborhood feud, even if we never slept after dawn. I even wept. He laughed at me. ”I didn't shoot at him,” he said. ”I shot a foot behind him, and I've given him a rare fright!” He had, indeed. The terror of the coyotes never came near us again.
As to servants, the subject is so rich that I can only choose.
Unfortunately, the glory of the view does not make up to them for the lack of town bustle and nightly ”movies,” so it isn't always easy to make comfortable summer arrangements. As you start so you go on, for changing horses in mid-stream has ever been a parlous business. A temperamental high-school boy who came to drive the motor and water the garden, though he appeared barefooted to drive me to town, and took French leave for a day's fis.h.i.+ng, pinning a note to the kitchen door, saying, ”Expect me when you see me and don't wait dinner,” afflicted me one entire summer. I tried to rouse his ambition by pointing out the capitalists who began by digging ditches--California is full of them--and a.s.suring him that there were no heights to which he might not rise by patient application, etc. It was no use. He watered the garden when I watched him; otherwise not. I came to the final conclusion that he was in love. Love is responsible for so much.
Another summer I decided to try darkies and carefully selected two of contrasting shades of brown. The cook was a slim little quadroon, with flas.h.i.+ng white teeth and hair arranged in curious small doughnuts all over her head. She was a gra.s.s widow with quite an a.s.sortment of children, though she looked little more than a child herself. ”Grandma”
was taking care of them while the worthless husband was supposed to be running an elevator in New Orleans. Essie had quite lost interest in him, I gathered, for I brought her letters and candy from another swain, who used such thin paper that I couldn't avoid seeing the salutation, ”Oh, you chicken!”
Mandy was quite different. She was a rich seal brown, large and determined, and had left a husband on his honor, in town. We had hardly washed off the dust of our long motor-ride before trouble began. A telegram for Mandy conveyed the disquieting news that George had been arrested on a charge of a.s.sault at the request of ”grandma.” It appeared that after seeing wifey off for the seash.o.r.e he felt the joy of bachelor freedom so strongly that he dropped in to see Essie's mother, who gave him a gla.s.s of sub rosa port, which so warmed his heart that he tried to embrace her. Grandma was only thirty-four and would have been pretty except for gaps in the front ranks of her teeth. She had spirit as well as spirits, and had him clapped into jail. Telegrams came in--do you say droves, covies, or flocks? Night letters especially, and long-distance telephone calls--all collect. The neighbors, the Masons, the lawyer, and various relatives all went into minute detail. Grandma, being the injured party, prudently confined herself to the mail. As we have only one servant's room and that directly under my sleeping-porch, it made it very pleasant! The choicest telegram J---- took down late one night. It was from one of Mandy's neighbors, and ended with the illuminating statement: ”George never had a gun or a knife on him; he was soused at the time!” Mandy emerged from bed, clad in a red kimono and a pink boudoir cap, to receive this comforting message. She wept; Essie, who had followed in order to miss nothing, scowled, while J---- and I wound our bath-robes tightly about us and gritted our teeth, in an effort to preserve a proper solemnity. Of course we had to let her go back to the trial, which she did with the dignity of one engaged in affairs of state. She and the judge had a kind of mother's meeting about George, and decided that a touch of the law might be just the steadying influence he needed.
The sentence was for three months, which suited me exactly, as I calculated that his release and our return to town would happily synchronize. Mandy really stood the gaff pretty well and returned to her job, and an armed neutrality ensued, varied by mild outbreaks. Essie was afraid of Mandy. She said that she would never stay in the house with her alone; Mandy wouldn't stay in the house alone after dark, so it became rather complicated. We apparently had to take them or else find them weeping on the hillside, when we came back from a picnic. In justice to the darky heart I must say that when Billie was taken very ill they buried the hatchet for the time, and helped us all to pull him through.
The summer was almost over when I began to suffer from a strange hallucination. I kept seeing a colored gentleman slipping around corners when I approached. As Mandy was usually near said corner, I certainly thought of George, but calmed myself with the reflection that he was safe in jail. Not so. George had experienced a change of heart and had behaved in so exemplary a manner that his sentence had been shortened two weeks, and what more natural than that he should join his wife? It wasn't that I was afraid of George; I was afraid for George. I did not want him to meet Essie, for if Grandma's smile had cost him so dearly, I hated to think of the effect of Essie's black eyes and unbroken set of white teeth. I needn't have worried, for George was apparently ”sick of lies and women,” and never let go his hold on the ap.r.o.n-string to which he was in duty bound.
This summer I am unusually fortunate, owing to a moment of clear vision that I had forty-eight hours before leaving town. I had a Christian Science cook, a real artist if given unlimited materials, and she didn't mind loneliness, as she said that G.o.d is everywhere; to which I heartily agreed. I know that He is on this hill-top. So far so good, but her idea of obeying Mr. Hoover's precepts was not to mention that any staple was out until the last moment. At about six o'clock she usually came p.u.s.s.y-footing to my door in the tennis shoes she always wore, to tell me that there wasn't a potato in the house, or any b.u.t.ter. Not so bad in Pasadena, with a man to send to the store, but very trying on a smiling hill-top, one mile from town, with me the only thing dimly suggestive of a chauffeur on the place. At 3 A.M. I resolved to bounce her, heavenly disposition and all. I did, and engaged a cateress for what I should call a comfortable salary, rather than wages. She can get up a very appetizing meal from sawdust and candle-ends, when necessary, and that is certainly what is needed nowadays. Also, she has launched a wonderful counter-offensive against the ants. There was a time when we ate our meals surrounded by a magic circle like Brunhilde, but ours was not of flames, but of ant powder. Not that they mind it much. I'm told that they rather dislike camphor, but do you know the present price of that old friend?
There are singularly few pests or blights in the garden itself. Bermuda or devil gra.s.s is one of our Western specialties, though it may have invaded the East, too, since we left. It is an unusually husky plant, rooting itself afresh at every joint with new vigor, and quite choking out the aristocratic blue gra.s.s with which we started our lawn. At first you don't notice it as it sneaks along the ground, some time above and some time below, as it feels disposed, and then suddenly you see it's cobwebby outlines as plainly as the concealed animals in a newspaper puzzle. If you begin to pull it out you can't stop. It reminds me of the German system of espionage, and that adds zest to my weeding. The other day I laboriously uprooted an intricate network of tentacles, all leading to one big root, which I am sure must have been Wilhelmstra.s.se itself. Being able to do so little to help win the war, this is a valuable imaginative outlet to me!
Everything about the place, as well as the lawn, seems to get out of order when we have tenants. No one likes tenants any more than we like ”Central.” There is a prejudice against them. They do the things they ought not to do and leave undone the things they ought to do, and there is no health in them. I have more often been one than had one, and I hate to think of the language that was probably used about us, though we meant well.
I am not going to tell all I know about tenants after all. I have changed my mind. I am also going to draw a veil over the adobe road during the rains, because we really do like to rent the place to help pay for the children's and the motor's shoes, and it wouldn't be good business.
The village delivery system enrages and entertains me by turns. I was frankly told by the leading grocery store that they did not expect to deliver to people who had their own motors, and when I occasionally insist on a few necessities being sent up to my house, they arrive after dark conveyed by an ancient horse, as the grocery manager is conservative. A horse doesn't get a puncture or break a vital part often (if he does, you bury him and get another) and it is about a toss-up between hay and gasoline.
Every now and then I am marooned on my hill, if the motor is ”hors de combat,” and then I get my neighbour to let me join her in her morning marketing trip, sometimes with disastrous results. One day the boys and I sat down to dinner with fine sea-air appet.i.tes, to be confronted by a small, crushed-looking fish. I sent out to ask the cook for more. She said there was no more, and as no miracle was wrought in our behalf, we filled up the void with mashed potatoes as best we could. Just as the plates were being removed the telephone rang, and my neighbor's agitated voice asked if I had her cat's dinner! Light flooded in on my understanding. We had just eaten her cat's dinner. She went on to say that the fish-man had picked out a little barracuda (our household fish in California) from his sc.r.a.ps and made her a present of it. I faintly asked if she thought it was a very old one, visions of ptomaine poisoning rising vividly. Oh, no, she said, ”it wasn't old at all, he had merely stepped on it.” My own perfectly good dinner was at her house. I told her to take off a portion for her cat, and I would send the boys for the rest. I heaved a sigh of relief--a fresh young fish, even if crushed, would not have fatal results.
I will pa.s.s rapidly on to my last thorn, which isn't on the list because I'm not quite sure that it is one. It is a small, second-hand, rather vicious little motor, which I have learned to drive as a war measure.