"I don't know what cordin' an' pipin' is," said Caleb, "but after what I've seen, I can believe that you'd only need to rummage in a big rag-bag awhile to dress like a queen—or look like one."
VIII—THE PORK-HOUSE
COLD weather and the pork-packing season had arrived, and the lower floor of Somerton's warehouse was a busier place than the store. At one side "dressed" hogs, unloaded from farmers' wagons, were piled high; in the centre a man with a cleaver lopped the heads and feet from the carcasses, and divided the remainder into hams, shoulders, and sides, which another man trimmed into commercial shape; a third packed the product in salted layers on the other side. At the rear of the room two men cut the trimmings, carefully separating the lean from the fat, and with the latter filled, once in two or three hours, some huge iron kettles which sat in a brick furnace in the corner. At similar intervals the contents of the kettles were transferred to the hopper of a large press, not unlike a cider press, and soon an odorous wine-colored fluid streamed into a tank below, from which it was ladled through tin funnels into large, closely hooped barrels. The room was cold, despite the furnace; the walls, windows, and ceiling were reminiscent of the dust and smell of many pork-packing seasons. Early in the season Philip had dubbed the pork-packing floor "Bluebeard's Chamber," and warned his wife never to enter it. After a single glance one day, through the street door of the warehouse, Grace assured her husband that the prohibition was entirely unnecessary. She also said that she never had been fond of pork, but that in the future she would eschew ham, bacon, sausage, lard, and all other pork products.
When the sound of rapid, heavy hammering was audible in the Somerton sitting room and parlor, and when Grace asked where it came from, Philip replied, "The pork-house;" the cooper was packing barrels of sides, hams, or shoulders for shipment, or tightening the hoops of lard-barrels which were inclined to leak. When Grace wondered whence came the great flakes of soot on table-linen which had been hung out of doors to dry, Philip replied, "The pork-house;" probably the fire in the furnace was drawing badly and smoking too much. Frequently, when she went to the store and asked Caleb where her husband was, the reply would be, "The pork-house." If Philip reached home late for a meal, and Grace asked what had kept him, he was almost certain to reply, "The pork-house," and if, as frequently occurred later in the season, he retired so late that Grace thought she had slept through half the night, he groaned, in answer to her inevitable question, "The pork-house."
Then came a day when Grace detected an unfamiliar and unpleasing odor in the house. She suspected the napkins, then the tablecloth, and examined the rug under the dining-room table for possible spots of butter. Next she inspected the kitchen, which she washed and scoured industriously for a full day. Occasionally she detected the same odor in the store, as if she had carried it with her from the house, so she examined her dresses minutely, for the odor was reminiscent of cookery of some kind, although she had but a single dress for kitchen wear, and never wore it out of the house. She mentioned the odor to Philip, but he was unable to detect it in the air. One day it inflicted itself upon her even in church, and became so obnoxious that she spoke of it, instead of the sermon, as soon as the congregation was dismissed.
"I'm very sorry, dear girl, that you're so tormented," said Philip. "I wish I could identify the nuisance; then possibly I could find means to abate it. I know an odor is hard to describe, but do try to give me some clew to it."
"It reminds me somewhat of stale butter," Grace replied slowly, "and of some kinds of greasy pans, and of burned meat, and of parts of some tenement-house streets in the city, and some ash-cans on city sidewalks on hot summer mornings—oh, those days!—and of—I don't know what else."
"You've already named enough to show that 'tis truly disgusting and dreadful, and I do wish you and I could exchange the one of the five senses which is affected by it, for I never had much sense of smell."