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House, a non-fiction book by Eugene Field |
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Chapter 5. We Negotiate A Mortgage |
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_ CHAPTER V. WE NEGOTIATE A MORTGAGE Alice and I supposed that as soon as we made that first payment upon the old Schmittheimer place we should take possession of it. We had hastened negotiations because naturally enough we were anxious to share the delights of the Eden which was to be ours. It transpired all too early in the proceedings, however, that the processes of the law are exceedingly exacting and provokingly tedious. With the one thousand dollars which Mr. Black gave us we fancied that we should be able to say to the widow Schmittheimer: "Here is your money; now let us move in." It seems that the business is not done in that business-like way. As soon as the widow Schmittheimer contracted to part with her property at a stated price and upon stated terms she awoke to a realization of the fact that she ought to have the cooeperation and counsel of a lawyer--although for the life of me I cannot see what there was left for a lawyer to do. With a magnanimity and generosity which bespoke the largeness of his nature, Mr. Denslow volunteered his services as counsellor to the wary widow, and I confess that I should have interposed no objection to having this versatile friend serve in this capacity. But the widow chose to decline the gratuitous services of Mr. Denslow, and to pay fifty dollars for the professional advice of a certain Lawyer Meisterbaum, not a bad fellow, but one of those carping, superficial people who pretend to a conscientiousness and a prudence and a zeal which they actually do not possess. After repeated meetings and the most annoying delays, Alice plainly told this Lawyer Meisterbaum that he had more than earned his fee by his puerile interferences with a prompt and amicable adjustment of the affair. Alice and Mr. Denslow and I agreed that, if we had been left to ourselves, we could have settled the business with the widow Schmittheimer in half a day. However, I suppose that the lawyers must have a chance to make a living, and I can readily understand how a really conscientious lawyer might have the lingering remnant or suggestion of a desire to impress his client with the suspicion that he was earning his fee. For fully a fortnight after my return from Cincinnati we were harassed by the delays of the law, or, more exactly speaking, by the exasperating crochets of the lawyer. Meanwhile there came letters of anxious inquiry from our munificent friend Mr. Black, for that estimable person, being aware of my predilection for ancient armor and other curios, found it difficult to disabuse his mind of the suspicion that his one thousand dollars might have been diverted from its original purpose, and misappropriated to what he esteemed the uses of folly. So it was with a feeling of great relief that finally I apprised our generous friend by telegraph that the transaction had been closed. This end had not been reached, however, until Alice had put her signature and her seal to a curiously-phrased document which served (as I was told) as security to the widow Schmittheimer in case of "default in payment of interest or principal." This instrument is called, as I remember, a deed of trust, which seems to be another and a more polite name for a mortgage. I protested against Alice's putting her signature to this document, which I still recognize as a covert foe to our happiness and prosperity. But Mr. Denslow assured us that the proceeding was wholly proper and businesslike, and Alice paid no heed to my expostulations. Never before had I had any experience in matters or with instruments of this kind, and I will admit that I have not even now any idea of what the purport of the document in question is, further than a distinct intuition that its involved syntax and complex and cloudy phraseology bode no good. As soon as the transaction was closed the widow Schmittheimer burst into tears and loudly bewailed having parted with her home. I then learned that for the last ten days she had been almost constantly besieged by old friends of hers--the same who had been wont to consume her coffee and her kuchen and who now regaled her (in compensation, as it were, for her past hospitality) with reproachful assurances that she had been virtually swindled out of her beautiful property. The grief of this lonely and amiable woman touched me to the core, and I sought to assuage her melancholy by telling her that we should expect her to visit us, to which she replied amid tears and seeming gratitude that she would be sure to call every September and March, these being the months (as I afterward learned) in which the semi-annual interest, so called, fell due. As you may suppose, while Alice and I, under the direction of Mr. Denslow, were worrying ourselves nearly to death over the miserable details of "closing" this transaction, our neighbors and Adah (Alice's sister) busied themselves with planning improvements in and for our new home. It was during this period that Adah met with one of those sorrows which benumb the sensitive feminine heart. In a moment of vandalism ever to be deprecated, little Erasmus discovered and took possession of that copy of "The National Architect" which contained the picture of the plutocratic villa at Narragansett Pier. This precious relic was put by the heedless boy to the base use of serving as a tail to a kite, and during one of the high winds the kite blew away, and there was an end to Adah's most precious possession! Thus perished the link that united Adah to the sweetest dream of her maturer years. However, this mishap did not wholly abate Adah's interest in our affairs. In answer to Adah's solicitation a long letter had come from Maria, bearing the blissful promise that a carefully made plan of Maria's house of St. Joe (drawn by Maria herself upon a fly leaf excerpted from Maria's favorite volume, "The Life of Mary Lyon") would soon be forwarded for our enlightenment and delectation. Maria felt kindly toward us, and her sympathies had been awakened to their very depths by a tender souvenir Adah had sent her--a leaf plucked from one of the lilac bushes on the old Schmittheimer place. Both Adah and Maria belong to that old-school class of proper feminine folk who never pick but always pluck flowers. Well, Adah and the neighbors kept as busy as a bee in a bottle planning changes that they deemed necessary in our house. When we got through with that dilly-dallying, shilly-shallying Lawyer Meisterbaum, Alice and I found out that Adah and the neighbors had left little for us to do except to approve their plans and pay for the execution thereof. There had been a kind of tacit understanding all along that such changes as we made in the Schmittheimer house should be superintended by an architect-carpenter who was cordially recommended by Mrs. Denslow. This important person's name was Silas Plum, and he had a shop in Osgood Avenue, opposite one of our most fashionable and most prosperous cemeteries. Mrs. Denslow always called him Uncle Si, and this circumstance rather prejudiced me in favor of him. The facts, too, that Uncle Si was not overcrowded with business, that he was considerate in his charges, and that he was of so great versatility that he could boss the plumbing as well as the carpentering--these facts confirmed us in the opinion that Uncle Si was just the man for our needs. I went with Mrs. Denslow to call upon this gifted and honest son of toil. His modest place of business was indicated to the passer-by by this insinuating sign:
Uncle Si impressed me as being a very trustworthy man. He looked not unlike myself; his gaunt, sinewy frame betokened severe practicability, and his calm blue eyes and large straight mouth combined to give his face an unmistakable and convincing expression of candor. Of speech he was monosyllabic, and this peculiarity pleased me, for I have always admired and always cultivated directness and terseness, there being nothing else more distasteful to me than the prolixity, diffuseness, pleonasm, amplification, redundance, and copia verborum of some people. I told Uncle Si all about the new purchase we had made, and I drew upon a pine board a fairly correct plan of the Schmittheimer house as it now stood. I gave him to understand that numerous and important changes were required, and that I desired to secure from him an estimate as to the cost of those changes. "I can't tell how much it will be till I know what you want," said Uncle Si. I recognized the justness of this remark, yet at the same time I felt bitter toward Uncle Si for not knowing without being told. To tell the truth, _I_ didn't know. I had heard Alice and Adah talking in a general way about "closets" and a "new hall," and "hardwood floors" and--and--and things of that kind; I remembered having heard some discussion of a prospective "addition," and--yes--I now recalled that the front porch would have to be rebuilt. Hoping to conceal my utter ignorance, I told Uncle Si that we wanted "lots of changes," but this would not satisfy the exasperating man; he insisted upon particulars, upon "specifications," as he termed them. Of course I was unable to give them; so was Mrs. Denslow. The only really distinct idea Mrs. Denslow had of the transformation contemplated by Alice was one concerning the front lawn, and involving gravel walks between flower beds and under umbrageous trees; exotics perennially in bloom; Swiss tree boxes, from which the lark carolled by day and the nightingale warbled at night; an artificial lake, in which goldfishes swam and upon whose translucent bosom majestic swans glided gracefully--I assure you that Mrs. Denslow has the soul of a poet! But these delightful fancies did not interest Uncle Si, because they did not concern him or his trade. So we compromised the matter by appointing an hour that evening for Uncle Si to call and talk it all over with Alice. This was, seemingly, the only way out of the dilemma. All I knew was what I didn't want, or, rather, what _we_ didn't want. Our many and long and earnest conversations with the neighbors had determined numerous important points. We didn't want a roof like the Baylors' roof; nor water-pipes like the Rushes'; nor backstairs like the Tiltmans'; nor plastering like the Denslows'; nor dormer-windows like the Carters'; nor a kitchen sink like the Plunkers'; nor smoky chimneys like the Bollingers'; nor a skimpy little conservatory like the Mayhews'--in fact, there were so many things we _didn't_ want that it seemed to me that if Uncle Si had been moderately ingenious or had given his imagination full rein, he might have guessed what we _did_ want, and so have gone ahead without fear of incurring our displeasure. It was perhaps better, however, that, before undertaking his task, Uncle Si should require some hint or intimation of what would be expected of him. I am the last man in the world to discourage what is ordinarily regarded and accepted as reasonable precaution against embarrassment and adversity. _ |
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