There is no such word as hurry in the bright lexicon of Cape Cod, but I confess it with some trepidation, for my many Cape friends will take violent exception to my statement, true as it is. And yet I do not blame them. I believe it is thoroughly accounted for by the climate; for when I first visit the Cape in the spring or early summer, I always experience a languor which makes the slightest effort seem a task of large proportions. In short, I am lazy and prefer to see some one else do it. This feeling generally passes away with the sheer joy of vacation days, days of freedom and fresh air; but I realize that the climate breeds a lack of ambition, to which I doubtless would succumb were I to live on without interruption amid the Cape-Codders.
And therefore I prefer to think of the Cape as a playground for the initiate, a wonderland for children, and a haven of rest for the tired of all ages, a land where lines and wrinkles quickly disappear under the soothing softness of the tempered climate.
Joseph Lincoln has told us of the people; Thoreau has written of the place; but no one will really know the Cape unless he becomes a part of it.
II
THE CASUAL DWELLING-PLACE
Is there a reader who has not at one time or another gloated over the terrors, the thrills, and the mysteries which, in fiction, invariably lie hidden in an unoccupied house? When one stops to think of it nearly all the literature of roguery, as so clearly set forth in former days by Wilkie Collins, Gaboriau, down to Conan Doyle and Mary Roberts Rinehart, possesses as its most important stage-setting an untenanted mansion. It may be one of those familiar villas generally located somewhere near Hampstead Heath, a house set apart from its neighbors and surrounded by a hedge; a house with every appearance of having been closed for several years and now showing the first signs of decay; or it may be one of those somber brownstone houses situated in one of the many New York residential streets, where every house so closely resembles its fellows as to court mischief to all who may return late at night; or again, it may be one of those palatial country houses set among lawns and gardens which are invariably described with broad, magnificent porticoes toward which spotless limousines are continually approaching at top speed for no apparent reason. Such a setting is perhaps the commonest, and the time is always just before the family arrive for the season or just after they have left for other equally expensive quarters. Now and then the novelist will modestly cast the fate of his story in the seclusion of a deserted cottage by the sea or a lonely hut among the hills, but rarely does this occur nowadays. The mystery story is as dependent upon luxury of setting as is the modern bachelor upon his creature comforts. And, therefore, if the devotee of fiction chose to apply himself to this theme, he would find that nearly all novelists, great and small, from Dickens to Oppenheim, from Hawthorne to Anna Katharine Green, have utilized the empty house to bring about the climactic point in the weaving of some gruesome tale. So clear are these fictional features that, by the association of ideas, one’s fears and apprehensions are invariably aroused whenever the occasion arises when an unoccupied house or even an untenanted apartment must be entered.
With that unmistakable odor of mustiness comes afresh this uncomfortable sense of trepidation (hardly fear, perhaps), and with it a conviction that rats and mice are hidden spectators, and that the darkness and gloom could well hide crime as well as the thieves themselves. This entire mental state is largely caused by the aforesaid novelists, who I doubt not would have the same hesitancy in opening the door of a darkened chamber or in groping down the cellar stairs of a house long left to disintegration.
In short, reading has trained us all to regard empty houses with suspicion, an absurd state of mind which should be quickly dispelled, for in the case of nine out of every ten, yes, or ninety-nine out of every hundred houses, there is no cause whatever for suspicion.