The ringing of the church bells surprised me in my morning work. It was Sunday. Not for a moment, however, must I entertain the idea of going to church!
In C——, bold, day-time robberies were familiar occurrences, and, in my absence, our unguarded domicile would become an easy prey for the spoiler. The outer doors, three in number, were securely fastened, and I especially congratulated myself upon the complete security of the glass door opening from our parlour upon the piazza, as, in addition to its regular fastening, it rejoiced in an admirable catch-lock, that snapped beautifully, of itself, as one closed it.
As the morning wore on, weary of reading, I wrote some letters, and thereafter overhauled my writing-desk. Among my accumulated correspondence, I found half a score of stiffly-worded epistles. They had been indited by inmates of the Massachusetts State Prison. To elucidate the controlling event of my story, let me say, that helpful effort among the convicts had long been an integral part of my life-work.
Among themselves, they were pleased to term me "The Prisoner's Friend," and, when discharged, and homeless, they often came to me for counsel, or aid, in procuring that employment which, naturally, is but grudgingly given to these attainted beings, whom, even as visitors, my friends considered objectionable. On Mondays, my weekly visit to the prison hospital was made. I carried to its patients fruit and flowers, and read to them, sandwiching in, as best I could, a modicum of reproof and advice.
The re-reading, sorting, and bestowal of this odd correspondence brought me to dinner-time. An unsubstantial breakfast having whetted my appetite for this important meal, I resolved to start a fire in the kitchen stove. Having achieved this exploit—with that absurd outlay of time, strength, and patience, peculiar to the amateur—I laboriously elaborated an omelet, a dish of Lyonnaise potatoes, and a steaming pot of tea.
Heated and weary, I hurried through the parlours, threw open the piazza door for a whiff of fresh air, before dishing my dinner, and, attracted by the grateful odor of heliotrope, stepped debonairly into the outside sunshine. As I passed, the "sweet west wind" whipped to the piazza door. It closed behind me, with a malicious bang. The much admired patent fastening had, but too well, done its fatal work! I stood diabolically fastened out of my own house! Recovering breath, and taking in the desperate situation, I glanced ruefully at my neighbour's back bow window. Miss Pettingrew, my next neighbour, was an elderly maiden, and of curiosity "all compact." Nominally (as set forth on her sign of blue and gold) a dressmaker, but adding to her regular vocation the supervision of our neighbourhood, the outgoings and incomings of the Simpletons were especially focussed by her awful eye.
Our neighbourhood was not socially congenial. We had come to C—— for the sole purpose of putting a son through Harvard, and, having no other local interest in that city, we were simply the nobodies from nowhere, and consequently ineligible as acquaintances.
Irving Cottage—so called from its supposed resemblance to that of Washington Irving—attracted us by an exceptional allowance of door-yard, combined with a moderate rent. Irving Cottage was a double tenement-house; and its north side was now vacant. Its western front commanded —— street; its south side an uninterrupted series of back door-yards. On the north it was overtopped by a tall storage building, and in its rear stood a weather-worn old colonial mansion, once an aristocratic abode, but now fallen upon evil times, and become a rackety students' boarding-house. A low picket fence divided our rear premises from those of Mrs. MacNebbins, its proprietor. And now, let me return from this parenthetic information to my forlorn self, drearily surveying my "hermetically sealed" dwelling.
Yes, Miss Pettingrew was, as usual, at her post. It behooved me to take heed to my ways—to step nonchalantly from the piazza, as if being in the yard were entirely optional. Taking a turn or two up and down the drive, I rested a moment beneath the lordly old willows that adorned our grounds. I pulled a nosegay from the flower-garden; hunted the grass-plot for four-leaved clover—meantime furtively scanning my window fastenings and praying inwardly that some unguarded point of ingress to Irving Cottage might be revealed to me.
In vain! I had too well done my fatal work! Not the merest crack had been left exposed. The cottage rejoiced in a terraced front. Thus the lower back windows were, at least, five feet above the door-yard level. A possible elevation of piazza chairs would command them. I might, with a stone, demolish a convenient pane, and so reach and manipulate a patent fastening; but there still was Miss Pettingrew! How could I break and enter my own house, in broad daylight, and on a Sunday, directly beneath her astonished gaze? Heavy at heart (and mentally craving that lady's kind permission), I sought shelter beneath the kindly woodbine that shut in our piazza. Hungry, discouraged, and forlorn, I moped the slow hours away, until the westward sloping sun and the chill of approaching evening warned me that night was drawing near.