The Idiot at Home Page 14

  XIII

  A SUBURBAN COMPLICATION

  "Well, old chap," said the Poet some weeks later, when he happened to bespending the night off in the suburbs with his old friend, "how goes thenoble art of inventing? Has your horseless cauliflower bloomed as yet?"

  "Horseless cauliflower is good, but tautological," said the Idiot. "Thecauliflower is an automobile in itself, without the intervention of man.Who told you I was inventing instead of broking these days?"

  "Mr. Pedagog said something about it the last time I met him," said thePoet. "He's a mighty good friend of yours. He says you are the mostperfect Idiot he ever met."

  "He's a bully good fellow," said the Idiot, affectionately. "You know Iused to think Pedagog wasn't of any earthly use except to teach peoplethings, but as I look back upon my experience with him he has nevertaught me anything that was worth forgetting. So he told you I was goinginto invention, did he?"

  "Yes; and he said he thought you were going about it in the right way,"rejoined the Poet. "You weren't spending ten thousand dollars to get afour-dollar invention on the market, he said, but were inventing thingsthat you knew at the outset weren't worth risking your money on."

  The Idiot smiled broadly.

  "He said that, did he? Well, he doesn't know what he is talking about,"he retorted. "I am spending money on my inventions. I have alreadyinvested fifty cents in my patent Clothes-Pin-Holding Laundry-Bonnet,and I have strung the wires along my fence to be used in my electricHired-Man-Discourager; and when I have managed to save up a few dollarsmore I'm going to get a battery to attach to it, when woe betide thatman of Jimpsonberry's if he tries to talk to Maria while she is at work!Furthermore, I have extended the operations of that same usefulinvention so that it will meet a long-felt want in all suburbancommunities as a discourager of promiscuous wooing. You never livedin the country, did you?"

  "Not permanently," said the Poet.

  "'COURTING HIS BEST GIRL ON SOME OTHER FELLOW'S STONEWALL'"]

  "Then you are not aware of a singular habit the young country swain hasof courting his best girl on some other fellow's stone wall after thesun goes down," said the Idiot. "Some balmy evening next spring, ifyou'll come up here I'll show you one of the features of suburban lifethat will give you an idea for a poem. That stone wall that runs alongthe front of my place has been the scene of more engagements than I cantell you of. Many a time when I have come home late at night I havecounted as many as ten couples sitting on the cold coping of that walltelling each other how beautiful the world is, and holding each other onwith loving arms."

  "Rather an affecting scene, that," said the Poet.

  "It was at first," rejoined the Idiot, "and I rather liked to see it.Indeed, I once suggested to Mrs. Idiot that we should have the copingupholstered, so that they might sit more comfortably. I even wanted toput a back along the inner side of it for them to lean against, butafter a while it palled. We couldn't sit out on our own front porch ona summer evening and talk without sentimental interruptions that weredemoralizing to a sustained conversation. We'd try to talk, forinstance, about Browning, or Tennyson, or Le Gallienne, or some otherpoet of their class, when we'd be interrupted by such sentiments as,'Ess I is,' and 'I's oo ducky,' and 'Ain't de moon boofer?' Then when wehad guests we never dared to take them out-of-doors, but remained coopedup inside the house, because Mrs. Idiot feared to intrude upon thesacred right of those ten couples to do their courting comparativelyunobserved."

  "It must have been a nuisance," said the Poet.

  "It grew to be so; but I hadn't the heart to stop it, even if I couldhave done so, so I put up a hedge to hide them from view and soften thesound of their voices; but it didn't work very long. They didn't seem toappreciate my motive, and it so happened that the hedge which I put upwith the most innocent of intentions was a Japanese quince that blossomsout in thorns half an inch long, to an extent which suggests the fretfulporcupine. These, for some reason or other, excited the animosity ofmy twenty young friends on the wall, and at the end of the season therewere not two consecutive feet of the hedge that had not been hacked andcut to pieces by my indignant but uninvited guests."

  "What impudence!" cried the Poet.

  "Only the ardor of youth," observed the Idiot, calmly. "Put yourself inthe same place. Suppose that you, just as you were about to declare yourundying love for the girl of your choice, and while gently stealing yourarm about her waist, were to have the back of your hand ripped off by abrutal hedge?"

  "I see," laughed the Poet. "I dare say I should be indignant."

  "They were properly so," said the Idiot, "properly so; and neither Mrs.Idiot nor I really blamed them."

  "'HOLDING UP A GREAT OSAGE ORANGE'"]

  "We let the matter rest, and made no complaint," he continued. "Timewent on, and the courters became a trifle more assertive. One of themcame into the house one evening and demanded to know what I meant byassaulting him and his lady friend, holding up a great Osage orangewhich he alleged to have been the murderous weapon I had used; and Ireally had to apologize, for I was guilty. It happened that whilewalking about my small preserves I had picked up this orange, which hadfallen onto my lawn from a tree on Jimpsonberry's place, and hadunthinkingly tried to see how far I could throw it. It went just overthe hedge, and had unceremoniously knocked Strephon's hat into themiddle of next week and frightened Phyllis into hysterics. I was placedon the defensive, but for the life of me I couldn't help laughing, withthe result that Strephon stalked angrily away, alleging that I shouldhear from him further in the matter."

  "And did you?" asked the Poet.

  "No," said the Idiot, "I never did; but the incident rather soured metowards the people who seemed to regard my stone wall as their property.I even came to feel like purchasing a gatling-gun and loading it withOsage oranges for the purpose of repelling them, but even under thisprovocation I still continued to ignore the matter."

  "You are too easy-going," suggested the Poet.

  "I was," said the Idiot, "until they began to use the sidewalk that runsparallel with the wall as a tablet upon which to inscribe in lettersof flame their undying affection. One Sunday morning, as Mrs. Idiot andI started for church, we were horrified to find our flagstones scribbledall over with poetry, done in chalk, after the order of

  "Roses is pink, and violets is blue, Sugar is sweet, and so be you.

  "'THE PICTURE OF A HEART WITH AN ARROW DRAWN THROUGHIT'"]

  "Further along was the picture of a heart with an arrow drawn throughit, and the two names 'Larry' and 'Mame' written on either side. And oneunusually affectionate youth had actually cut the initials of his younglady and himself in the top of the coping, with a cold-chisel, Isuspect. It's there yet. It was then my spirit rose up into fiercedenunciation. That night, when the clans had gathered and were goingthrough the initial stages I marched out in front of them, cleared mythroat ostentatiously, and made a speech. It was the most nervous speechI ever made; worse than after-dinner speaking by a good deal. I calledtheir attention to how I had suffered: referred pathetically to thedestruction of the hedge; inveighed sarcastically against theOsage-orange man; told them in highly original fashion that worms, iftaken at the ebb that leads on to fortune, would surely turn and rendtheir persecutors, and that I'd had enough. I forgave them the hedge; Iforgave them the annoyance they had cost me, but I asserted that I'd seethem all condemned to eternal celibacy before I would permit my sidewalkto be turned into an anthology of love, and my coping into an intaglioof eternal blessedness. I requested them if they wished to write poetryto write it upon their own hearths, and if they had any inscriptions tocut to chip in and buy an obelisk of their own and hieroglyph to theirhearts' content. I even offered to buy them each a slate and pencil,which they might bring with them when they came, upon which to sendtheir sentiments down to posterity, and I finished with what I considerto be a pleasing perversion of Longfellow's poem on the Woodman, with afew lines beginning:

  "Scribbler, spare that sidewalk.

/>   "Then I departed, threatening to have them all arrested."

  "Good!" said the Poet. "I didn't think you'd ever do it. You have nerveenough, but you are too good-natured."

  "I wasn't good-natured then," said the Idiot, regretfully; "and when Igot through I stalked back into the house, scolded Mollie, sent Tommy tobed, and behaved like a bear for the rest of the evening."

  "And the people on the wall? They slunk away in despair, I suppose,"said the Poet.

  "'IT TOOK MY HIRED MAN TWO WEEKS TO SCRUB IT OUT'"]

  "Not they," said the Idiot; "not by a long shot. They combined againstme, and next morning when I started for town I found my sidewalk inworse shape than ever. One flag had written upon it the pleasing mandate'Go drown yourself.' Another bore the mystic word 'Chump' in greatcapital letters, and at the end of my walk was a pastel portrait ofmyself, of rough and awkward composition, labelled with my name in full.It took my hired man two weeks to scrub it out. And on the followingHallowe'en they strung a huge banner on my telephone wires, inscribed'The Idiot Asylum,' and every blessed gate I have to my name had beenremoved from the premises."

  "What an outrage!" cried the Poet.

  "Not a bit of it. Merely a suburban ebullition," said the Idiot. "Theydon't mean anything by it. They are mere children, after all, and fromtheir point of view I have interfered with their rights."

  "And you propose to stand all this?" asked the Poet. "If I were you I'dget a pile of broken bottles, as they do in England, and place themalong the top of that wall so that they couldn't possibly use it."

  "Brutal custom, that," said the Idiot. "May do for Englishmen; won't dohere at all. In the first place, it spoils the appearance of the wall;in the second place, it is not efficacious; in the third place, it wouldplace me in a false position. Everybody'd soon be asking where I got allthose bottles. An Englishman drinks enough beer in the course of a weekto keep his walls covered with broken bottles for a century. I don't,and I'm not going to buy bottles. I've got a better scheme."

  "Ah!" cried the Poet. "Now we are coming to the invention."

  "Merely an extension of my 'Hired-Man-Discourager,'" said the Idiot."Simple, and I trust efficacious. I am going to put a live wire alongthe coping of my wall. Broken bottles are cheap, my dear Poet, butthey don't work. If I put broken bottles on my wall the AmalgamatedBrotherhood of Wooers would meet on my lawn and pass resolutions againstme, and ultimately they would demand the use of my parlor, unless Imisunderstand their nature.

  "The lovers' rights must be respected always, and I'm truly thankfulthat they have stopped short at my frontage. When they operate along myfrontier-line they are harmless, interesting, even amusing. If theycarry their principles through and penetrate beyond the edge, why, thenMrs. Idiot and I will have to give it up.

  "My scheme is to make them feel that they are welcome to the wall, butto make the wall--well, to give an element of surprise to the wall. Justas Jimpsonberry's man is soon to be surprised electrically, which islegitimately, so do I propose to surprise these inconsiderate personswho cut down my hedges, who scribble up my sidewalk with their poems,and who hang Hallowe'en banners on my telephone wires. I wish them allwell, but next spring when they attempt to revive the customs of thepast they will find that even I am resentful."

  "But how?"

  "I shall have a wire running along the coping, as I have already said,that between the hours of eight and twelve p.m. will be so full ofshocking things that my uninvited guests will cease to bother me. Canyou imagine the effect of a live wire upon ten loving couples engaged inlooking at the moon while sitting on it?"

  "Yet you claim to insist upon their rights as lovers," said the Poet,deprecatingly.

  "Certainly I do," said the Idiot. "Man has a right to make love whereverhe can. If he can't make love on my wall, let him make love somewhereelse."

  "But where?" cried the Poet. "Your swains up here have no home,apparently."

  "Or Jimpsonberry's wall," said the Idiot. "By the way, do you knowanything about moths?"