The Adventures of a Modest Man

For I have a certain delicacy in admitting that my second visit abroad, after twenty years, was due to a pig. So now that the secret is out – the pig also – I'll begin properly.

I purchased the porker at a Long Island cattle show; why, I don't know, except that my neighbor, Gillian Schuyler Van Dieman, put me up to it.

We are an inoffensive community maintaining a hunt club and the traditions of a by-gone generation. To the latter our children refuse to subscribe.

Our houses are what are popularly known as "fine old Colonial mansions." They were built recently. So was the pig. You see, I can never get away from that pig, although – but the paradox might injure the story. It has sufficiently injured me – the pig and the story, both.

The architecture of the pig was a kind of degenerate Chippendale, modified by Louis XVI and traces of Bavarian baroque. And his squeal resembled the atmospheric preliminaries for a Texas norther.

Van Dieman said I ought to buy him. I bought him. My men built him a chaste bower to leeward of an edifice dedicated to cows.

Here I sometimes came to contemplate him while my horse was being saddled.

That particular morning, when Van Dieman saluted me so suspiciously at the country club, I had been gazing at the pig.

And now, as we settled down to our morning game of chess, I said:

"Van, that pig of mine seems to be in nowise remarkable. Why the devil do you suppose I bought him?"

"How do I know?"

"You ought to. You suggested that I buy him. Why did you?"

"To see whether you would."

I said rather warmly: "Did you think me weak-minded enough to do whatever you suggested?"

"The fact remains that you did," he said calmly, pushing the king's knight to queen's bishop six.

"Did what?" I snapped.

"What you didn't really want to do."

"Buy the pig?"

"Exactly."

I thought a moment, took a pawn with satisfaction, considered.

"Van," I said, "why do you suppose I bought that pig?"

"Ennui."

"A man doesn't buy pigs to escape from ennui!"

"You can't predict what a man will do to escape it," he said, smiling. "The trouble with you is that you're been here too long; you're in a rut; you're gone stale. Year in, year out, you do the same things in the same way, rise at the same time, retire at the same hour, see the same people, drive, motor, ride, potter about your lawns and gardens, come here to the club – and it's enough to petrify anybody's intellect."

"Do you mean to say that mine– "

"Partly. Don't get mad. No man who lives year after year in a Long Island community could escape it. What you need is to go abroad. What you require is a good dose of Paris."

"For twenty odd years I have avoided Paris," I said, restlessly. "Why should I go back there?"

"Haven't you been there in twenty years?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Well, for one thing, to avoid meeting the entire United States."

"All right," said Van Dieman, "if you want to become an old uncle foozle, continue to take root in Long Island." He announced mate in two moves. After I had silently conceded it, he leaned back in his chair and lighted a cigarette.

"It's my opinion," he said, "that you've already gone too stale to take care of your own pig."

Even years of intimacy scarcely justified this.

"When the day comes," said I, "that I find myself no longer competent to look after my own affairs, I'll take your advice and get out of Long Island."

He looked up with a smile. "Suppose somebody stole that pig, for instance."

"They couldn't."

"Suppose they did, under your very nose."

"If anything happens to that pig," I said – "anything untoward, due to any negligence or stupidity of mine, I'll admit that I need waking up… Now get that pig if you can!"

"Will you promise to go to Paris for a jolly little jaunt if anything does happen to your pig?" he asked.

"Why the devil do you want me to go to Paris?"

"Do you good, intellectually."

Then I got mad.

"Van," I said, "if anybody can get that pig away from me, I'll do anything you suggest for the next six months."

"À nous deux, alors!" he said. He speaks French too fast for me to translate. It's a foolish way to talk a foreign language. But he has never yet been able to put it over me.

"À la guerre comme à la guerre," I replied carelessly. It's a phrase one can use in reply to any remark that was ever uttered in French. I use it constantly.

That afternoon I went and took a good look at my pig. Later, as I was walking on the main street of Oyster Bay, a man touched his hat and asked me for a job. Instantly it occurred to me to hire him as night watchman for the pig. He had excellent references, and his countenance expressed a capacity for honest and faithful service. That night before I went to bed, I walked around to the sty. My man was there on duty.

"That," thought I, "will hold Van Dieman for a while."

When my daughters had retired and all the servants were abed, I did a thing I have not done in years – not since I was a freshman at Harvard: I sat up with my pipe and an unexpurged translation of Henry James until nearly eleven o'clock. However, by midnight I was asleep.

It was full starlight when I awoke and jumped softly out of bed. Somebody was tapping at the front door. I put on a dressing-gown and slippers and waited; but no servants were aroused by the persistent rapping.