Elbow-Room: A Novel Without a Plot Read online

  CHAPTER XIX.

  _AN UNRULY METER.--SCENES IN A SANCTUM_.

  During one of the cold spells of last winter the gas-meter in mycellar was frozen. I attempted to thaw it out by pouring hot waterover it, but after spending an hour upon the effort I emerged from thecontest with the meter with my feet and trousers wet, my hair full ofdust and cobwebs and my temper at fever heat. After studying how Ishould get rid of the ice in the meter, I concluded to use forcefor the purpose, and so, seizing a hot poker, I jammed it througha vent-hole and stirred it around inside of the meter with aconsiderable amount of vigor. I felt the ice give way, and I heard thewheels buzz around with rather more vehemence than usual. Then I wentup stairs.

  I noticed for three or four days that the internal machinery of themeter seemed to be rattling around in a remarkable manner; it couldbe heard all over the house. But I was pleased to find that itwas working again in spite of the cold weather, and I retained myserenity.

  About two weeks afterward my gas bill came. It accused me of burningduring the quarter about one million five hundred thousand feet ofgas, and it called on me to settle to the extent of nearly threehundred and fifty thousand dollars. I put on my hat and went down tothe gas-office. I addressed one of the clerks:

  "How much gas did you make at the Blank works last quarter?"

  "I dunno; about a million feet, I reckon."

  "Well, you have charged me in my bill for burning half a million morethan you made; I want you to correct it."

  "Less see the bill. Hm--m--m! this is all right. It's taken off of themeter. That's what the meter says."

  "S'pose'n it does; I _couldn't_ have burned more'n you made."

  "Can't help that; the meter can't lie."

  "Well, but how d'you account for the difference?"

  "Dunno; 'tain't our business to go nosing and poking around afterscientific truth. We depend on the meter. If that says you burned sixmillion feet, why, you _must_ have burned it, even if we never made afoot of gas out at the works."

  "To tell you the honest truth," said I, "the meter was frozen, and Istirred it up with a poker and set it whizzing around."

  "Price just the same," said the clerk. "We charge for pokers just aswe do for gas."

  "You are not actually going to have the audacity to ask me to paythree hundred and fifty thousand dollars on account of that poker?"

  "If it was seven hundred thousand dollars, I'd take it with a calmnessthat would surprise you. Pay up, or we'll turn off your gas."

  "Turn it off and be hanged," I exclaimed as I emerged from the office,tearing the bill to fragments. Then I went home; and grasping thattoo lavish poker, I approached the meter. It had registered anothermillion feet since the bill was made out; it was running up a score ofa hundred feet a minute; in a month I would have owed the gas companymore than the United States Government owes its creditors. So I beatthe meter into a shapeless mass, tossed it into the street and turnedoff the gas inside the cellar.

  Then I went down to the _Patriot_ office to persuade Major Slottto denounce the fraud practiced by the company. While I was in theeditorial room two or three visitors came in. The first one behavedin a violent and somewhat mysterious manner. He saluted the major bythrowing a chair at him. Then he seized the editor by the hair, bumpedhis head against the table three or four times and kicked him. Whenthis exhilarating exercise was over, the visitor shook his fist veryclose to the major's nose and said, "You idiot and outcast, if youdon't put that notice in to-morrow, I'll come round here and murderyou! Do you hear me?" Then he cuffed the major's ears a couple oftimes, kicked him some more, emptied the ink-stand over his head,poured the sand from the sand-box in the same place, knocked over thetable and went out. During all this time the major sat still with asickly kind of a smile upon his face and never uttered a word. Whenthe man left, the major picked up the table, wiped the ink and sandfrom his face, and turning to me said,

  "Harry will have his little fun, you see."

  THE SHERIFF IS MAD]

  "He is a somewhat exuberant humorist," I replied. "What was the objectof the joke?"

  "Well, he's going to sell his furniture at auction, and I promised tonotice the fact in to-day's _Patriot_, but I forgot it, and he calledto remind me of it."

  "Do all of your friends refresh your memory in that vivid manner? IfI'd been in your place, I'd have knocked him down."

  "No, you wouldn't," said Slott--"no, you wouldn't. Harry is thesheriff, and he controls two thousand dollars' worth of officialadvertising. I'd sooner he'd kick me from here to Borneo and backagain than to take that advertising away from the _Patriot_. What area few bumps and a sore shin or two compared with all that fatness? No,sir; he can have all the fun he wants out of me."

  The next visitor was less demonstrative. He was tall and slender andclad in the habiliments of woe. He entered the office and took achair. Removing his hat, he wiped the moisture from his eyes, rubbedhis nose thoughtfully for a moment, put his handkerchief in his hat,his hat upon the floor, and said,

  "You didn't know Mrs. Smith?"

  "I hadn't that pleasure. Who was she?"

  "She was my wife. She's been sick some time. But day before yesterdayshe was took worse, and she kep' on sinking until evening, when shegave a kinder sudden jump a couple of times, and then her spiritflickered. Dead, you know. Passed away into another world."

  "I'm very sorry."

  "So am I. And I called around to see if I couldn't get some ofyou literary people to get out some kind of a poem describing herpeculiarities, so that I can advertise her in the paper."

  "I dunno; maybe we might."

  MR. SMITH'S GRIEF]

  "Oh, you didn't know her, you say? Well, she was a sing'lar kinderwoman. Had strong characteristics. Her nose was the crookedest in theState--all bent around sideways. Old Captain Binder used to say thatit looked like the jibsail of an oyster-sloop on the windward tack.Only his fun, you know. But Helen never minded it. She said herselfthat it aimed so much around the corner that whenever she sneezedshe blew down her back hair. There were rich depths of humor in thatwoman. Now, I don't mind if you work into the poem some picturesqueallusion to the condition of her nose, so her friends will recognizeher. And you might also spend a verse or two on her defective eye."

  "What was the matter with her eye?"

  "Gone, sir--gone! Knocked out with a chip while she was splittingkin'ling-wood when she was a child. She fixed it up somehow with aglass one, and it gave her the oddest expression you ever saw. Thefalse one would stand perfectly still while the other one was rollingaround, so that 'bout half the time you couldn't tell whether she wasstudying astronomy or watching the hired girl pare potatoes. And shelay there at night with the indisposed eye wide open glaring at me,while the other was tight shut, so that sometimes I'd get the horrorsand kick her and shake her to make her get up and fix it. Once I gotsome mucilage and glued the lid down myself, but she didn't like itwhen she woke in the morning. Had to soak her eye in warm water, youknow, to get it open.

  "Now, I reckon you could run in some language about her eccentricitiesof vision, couldn't you? Don't care what it is, so that I have themain facts."

  "Was she peculiar in other respects?"

  "Well, yes. One leg was gone--run over by a wagon when she was little.But she wore a patent leg that did her pretty well. Bothered hersometimes, but most generally gave her a good deal of comfort. She wasfond of machinery. She was very grateful for her privileges. Althoughsometimes it worried her, too. The springs'd work wrong now and then,and maybe in church her leg'd give a spurt and begin to kick andhammer away at the board in front of the pew until it sounded like aboiler-factory. Then I'd carry her out, and most likely it'd kick atme all the way down the aisle and end up by dancing her around thevestibule, until the sexton would rebuke her for waltzing in church.Seems to me there's material for poetry in that, isn't there? She wasa self-willed woman. Often, when she wanted to go to a sewing-bee orto gad about somewhere, maybe, I'd stuff that leg up
the chimney orhide it in the wood-pile. And when I wouldn't tell her where it was,do you know what she'd do?"

  "What?"

  "Why, she'd lash an umbrella to her stump and drift off down thestreet 'sif that umbrella was born there. You couldn't get ahead ofher. She was ingenious.

  "So I thought I'd mention a few facts to you, and you can just throwthem together and make them rhyme, and I'll call 'round and pay youfor them. What day? Tuesday? Very well; I'll run in on Tuesday and seehow you've fixed her up."

  Then Mr. Smith smoothed up his hat with his handkerchief, wiped theaccumulated sorrow from his eyes, placed his hat upon his head,and sailed serenely out and down the stairs toward his desolatedhearthstone.

  The last caller was an artist. He took a chair and said,

  "My name is Brewer; I am the painter of the allegorical picture of'The Triumph of Truth' on exhibition down at Yelverton's. I called,major, to make some complaint about the criticism of the work whichappeared in your paper. Your critic seems to have misunderstoodsomewhat the drift of the picture. For instance, he says--Let me quotethe paragraph:

  "'In the background to the left stands St. Augustine with one footon a wooden Indian which is lying upon the ground. Why the artistdecorated St. Augustine with a high hat and put his trousers insidehis boots, and why he filled the saint's belt with navy revolvers andtomahawks, has not been revealed. It strikes us as being ridiculous tothe very last degree.'

  "Now, this seems to me to be a little too harsh. That figure does_not_ represent St. Augustine. It is meant for an allegorical pictureof Brute Force, and it has its foot upon Intellect--_Intellect_, mindyou! and _not_ a cigar-store Indian. It is a likeness of Captain Kidd,and I set it back to represent the fact that Brute Force belonged tothe Dark Ages. How on earth that man of yours ever got an idea that itwas St. Augustine beats me."

  "It is singular," said the major.

  "And now let me direct your attention to another paragraph. He says,

  "'We were astonished to notice that while Noah's ark goes sailingin the remote distance, there is close to it a cotton-factory, thechimney of which is pouring out white smoke that covers the whole ofthe sky in the picture, while the ark seems to be trying to sail downthat chimney. Now, they didn't have cotton-factories in those days;the thing don't hang. The artist must have been drunk.'

  "Now, this insinuation pains me. How would you like it if you painteda picture of the tower of Babel, and somebody should come along andinsist that it was the chimney of a cotton-factory, and that theclouds with which the sky is covered were smoke? Cotton-factory! Yourman certainly cannot be familiar with the Scriptures; and when hetalks about the ark sailing down that chimney, he forgets that thereason why it is standing on one end is that the water is so rough asto make it pitch. You know the Bible says that arks did pitch 'withoutand within.' Now, don't it?"

  "I think maybe it does," said the major.

  "But that's not the worst. I can stand that; but what do you thinkof a man that goes to criticising a work of art, and says--Now justlisten to this:

  "'On the right is a boy who has his clothes off and has apparentlybeen in swimming, and has been rescued by a big yellow dog just as hewas about to drown. What this has to do with the Triumph of Truth wedon't know, but we do know that the dog is twice as large as the boy,and that he has the boy's head in his mouth, while the boy's hands aretied behind his back. Now, for a boy to go in swimming with his handstied, and for a dog to swallow his head so as to drag him out, appearsto us the awfulest foolishness on earth.'

  "You will probably be surprised to learn that your critic is herereferring to a very beautiful study of a Christian martyr who has beenthrown among the wild beasts of the arena, and who is engaged in beingeaten by a lion. The animal is not a yellow dog; that human being hasnot been in swimming; and the reason that he is smaller than the lionis that I had to make him so in order to get his head into the lion'smouth. Would you have me represent the lion as large as an elephant?Would you have me paste a label on the Christian martyr to inform thepublic that 'This is not a boy who has been treading water withhis hands tied'? Now, look at the matter calmly. Is the _Patriot_encouraging art when it goes on in this manner? Blame me if I think itis."

  "It certainly doesn't seem so."

  "Well, then, what do you say to this? What do you think of a criticwho remarks,

  "'But the most extraordinary thing in the picture is the group inthe foreground. An old lady with an iron coal-scuttle on her head ishanding some black pills to a ballet-dancer dressed in pink tights,while another woman in a badly-fitting chemise stands by them brushingoff the flies with the branch of a tree, with a canary-bird restingupon her shoulder and trying to sing at some small boys who are seenin the other corner of the field. What this means we haven't theremotest idea; but we do know that the ballet-dancers' legs have theknee-pans at the back of the joint, and that the canary-bird looksmore as if he wanted to eat the coal-scuttle than as if he desired tosing.'

  "This is too bad. Do you know what that beautiful group reallyrepresents? That old lady, as your idiot calls her, is Minerva, thegoddess of War, handing cannon balls to the goddess of Love as a tokenthere shall be no more war. And the figure in what he considers thechemise is the genius of Liberty holding out an olive branch withone hand, while upon her shoulder rests an American eagle screamingdefiance at the enemies of his country, who are seen fleeing in thedistance. Canary bird! small boys! ballet-girl! The man is crazy, sir;stark, staring mad. And now I want you to write up an explanation forme. This kind of thing exposes me to derision. I can't stand it, and,by George! I won't! I'll sue you for libel."

  Then the major promised to make amends, and Mr. Brewer withdrew in acalmer mood.