Something Must Be Done

IT will now and again happen to almost any man in moderate circumstances to be reminded by his wife that something must be done in or about the house. And there are some, no doubt, who leap to the occasion — and do something at once. The bathtub faucet, for example, is almost suddenly provided with a new washer; a trap is set for the mouse that has got into the cellar and will soon be running all over the house, the mouse murdered, and the corpus delicti unostentatiously disposed of; a stepladder is carried upstairs, mounted, balanced upon, the spare-room window shade taken off, its roller shrewdly examined, the spring tightened, the stepladder descended and again hidden away.

The condition, however, is often one that a philosopher would put up with, content to sit in meditation under his Bo Tree and reflect, when reminded, that no Bo Tree is perfect. The faucet (he will subconsciously argue) drips into the tub; mice come and mice go; it will be time enough to do something about the window shade when a guest is expected. Such a man will agree pleasantly that something must be done — but without getting up. Or again, in the case of an active and willing man whose intention to do something is indisputable, unless he does it at once he will do something else first. So performance lags behind intention. So many other affairs, tasks, duties, concerns, and so forth, seemingly of more immediate insistence, intervene that he forgets the reminder. The faucet will continue to drip; the mouse will presently be running all over the house; the unexpected guest will be embarrassed by having to turn off the light and undress in the dark.

For some time past there bad been no question but that something must be done about the lock on my kitchen door. A lock, if anything, should be obedient to its key; but none could any longer say whether this lock would respond with alacrity or would have to be coaxed. Then one gently jiggled the key, violently shook the door, thinking regretfully of Acadia, where

Usually the lock coyly responded in a few minutes; but once it had had to be coaxed, off and on, for several days. The door being unlocked, I had then contrived what is called a ‘button,’ fastening it securely from the inside and practically answering all purposes, for the house could still be locked up externally with the front-door key. But one had to remember to use the button, and sooner or later something must undoubtedly be done about the kitchen-door lock.

Wherever situated, a lock is symbolic of the evolution of man from his early home in a cave to his present home in a suburb. It became, in some form, a necessity as soon as he gave up living in a tree, and — except briefly in Acadia — has so continued, constantly urging and encouraging his ingenuity both to make it and to break it.

‘To primitive man, living in a favorable climate,’ wrote Professor Julius Lippert in his Evolution of Culture, ‘the chief desideratum of his abode must have been protection from dangerous animals. This was easily provided by blocking up the entrance of a cave.’ Professor Lippert, I think, should have tried blocking up the entrance of a cave himself. With a good-sized entrance this must have been a regular sunset job for the whole family, the primitive man, his primitive wife (if one may so call her), and his primitive little ones. Every morning they would have had to unblock the entrance; and sometimes, during the day, whoever happened to be at home or had returned in haste would have had to block it up in a hurry. The will to live, so important in evolution, would have kept them at it; but the will to live with the least possible labor, equally important, would have kept them dissatisfied. They would not have agreed with Professor Lippert. The feeling that something must be done about the entrance of the cave, working from one millennium to another, would at last have resulted in something being done.

Thus we see the dawn of domestic architecture, for the patiently budding architect must have made some sort of house before he could make some sort of door, and some sort of door before he could fasten it against dangerous animals with some sort of button. The family took their lives with them when they went out, and, except for the dangerous animal, it was all quite simple and Acadian. But, as possessions multiplied, the desirability — much as one hates to admit it — of locking up the house when away from home became more and more exigent. Something must be done about the button; and so at last was invented the lock. The key, no doubt, was cumbersome, but it was a great improvement, as I think Professor Lippert would have admitted, over blocking up the entrance of a cave.

But these thoughts about the past do nothing about the present.

As anybody knows who has ever looked, the lock on a kitchen door is cleverly concealed in the woodwork and there held in place by two screws. Nothing is easier, after a man has found his screwdriver, than to remove such a lock, thus leaving to be admired a neat cavity of exactly corresponding proportions. Keyholes in the door coincide so nicely with keyholes in the lock that anybody who will stoop to this method can look through the door. But the inner anatomy of the lock, its physiology and psychology, is still further concealed and protected by a metal body held together by yet another screw. And sometimes a screw sticks. One must unscrew this screw, pressing the screwdriver inexorably against the screw and at the same time twisting it irresistibly in a direction opposite to that followed by the hands of his watch; and until that screw is unscrewed it will remain impossible for one to examine the anatomy of that lock. When I held it up to the light and tried to look in through the keyhole, I saw the house across the street and my neighbor sweeping down her front steps, a pretty spectacle that did nothing whatever but sweep down the front steps. One can, of course, put the lock back in the door; but this, too, really does nothing about it. One merely wastes time trying to find the screws. I laid the lock down on the kitchen table, and threw the screwdriver in the coal hod.

‘The thing to do about this lock,’ I said to my wife, ‘is to scrap it. Now that I have got it out, I will run down to the hardware store —’

My wife looked alarmed.

‘Do you think,’ she said, ‘that you will have time to run down to the hardware store before lunch?’

I looked at my watch and about the kitchen. The groceryman had that morning left a half peck of potatoes in a paper bag. I expeditiously dumped out the potatoes, put the lock in the bag, and the bag in my pocket. I reassured my wife.

‘Allowing ten minutes to go,’ I said, ‘five minutes in the store to exchange this interesting specimen of junk for a new lock, ten minutes to come back, and five minutes to put the new lock in the door, there will be just enough time.’

‘I hope so,’ said my wife. ‘You’re not forgetting the key?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘ I am not forgetting the key.’

I found the key and put it in the paper bag with the lock.

It was the noon hour in our village, and only one clerk — an intellectual-looking young man, as such clerks are apt to be — was in the hardware store. He adjusted his spectacles, looked at the exterior of the lock and at me through the keyholes. He tried the key, and for once I was glad that it stuck.

‘I guess we’ll have to open her up,’ he said. ‘I have n’t got another lock of this make in stock, so I’d have to send for it. Maybe all she needs is a drop of oil.’

‘I tried that through the keyhole,’ I said. ‘It did n’t seem to do any good.’

‘It would n’t,’ he said. ‘Not through the keyhole. Wait a minute till I get a screwdriver.’

In a hardware store it ought not to take very long to find a screwdriver. Yet I presently began to wonder whether he was not out of screwdrivers and having to send for one. I looked at my watch, and was surprised to see that he had been gone less than two minutes. He came back with a screwdriver, whistling a little tune as he came, and nonchalantly tackled the screw. Then he stopped whistling and tackled the screw seriously. The screw passively resisted, and I found myself betting on it. Finally he put the lock on the floor, stood on it with both feet, grasped the screwdriver with both hands, bent over at the waist, and again tackled the screw. Watching him anxiously, I could not but think that here at last was the man who never neglects his morning exercises. This time the screw yielded reluctantly.

‘Wait a minute,’ he said, wiping his forehead and the palms of his hands with his pocket handkerchief, ‘till I get some oil.’

A lock, as I have since read in my encyclopædia, is ‘an arrangement or contrivance for fastening doors, lids, boards, plates, etc., by means of an enclosed bolt which is shot back and forth by means of a key or other device to engage with some form of staple, plate, or box. The enclosed bolt is usually guarded by an obstacle which must be overcome by the action of the key.’ While he was gone for the oil I examined, but without touching, these now exposed mysteries of the lock. But this soon palled; and I began pacing back and forth — six steps one way and six steps another, like a dangerous animal in front of a primitive dwelling — as a man will when he is waiting for somebody to keep an appointment. He came back with an oil can, skillfully applied a drop here and a drop there, closed her up, tightened the screw, inserted the key, shot the enclosed bolt out, was unable to shoot it in, removed the key, and opened her up.

‘It’s funny,’he said, ‘how interested you get in a job of this kind. Wait a minute till I get a rag.'

So he got a rag and began cleaning all the inner parts of the lock.

When one man is doing his best to help another is no time for the other to exhibit impatience. He must govern himself. He must neither pace back and forth like a dangerous animal nor keep tabs on the time like a harmless lad who has but just been given his first watch. As Burton long ago wrote in his Anatomy of Melancholy, ‘Hope and patience are the sovereign remedies for all, the surest reposals.’ Oh, repose on them! Content yourself with teetering gracefully from one foot to the other like a person in no particular hurry. He cleaned all the parts and examined them carefully with eye and forefinger.

‘Wait a minute,’he said, ‘till I get a file.'

By this time life had resumed in the hardware store. Well-fed clerks had returned from lunch. Customers came and went. Automobiles passed in the street. Somebody had turned on the radio, and somewhere the Better Biscuit String Ensemble was playing a Brahms Hungarian dance. He came back, dancing (it seemed to me) like a young Hungarian, and began to file the parts of the lock. When he had filed one part he put that part aside and filed another part. It was not astonishing, if the lock needed so much filing, that it had ceased to work properly. As he had said, it was funny, in the colloquial sense, how interested a man could get in that kind of job. So, I thought, patient prisoners file away by night at the bars of their prisons while guards pace ramparts. I remembered Acadia, where

The Better Biscuits seemed to be playing it in Hungarian. He filed while I paced. But at last he escaped! He wiped his face with the oily rag, put it in his pocket, reassembled the parts of the lock, closed her up, tightened the screw as if tightening it forever, and inserted the key.

‘If she won’t work now,’ he said, ‘it is my opinion that she never will.'

He turned the key easily back and forth, but the enclosed bolt never budged. I suspect now, after consulting the encyclopædia, that he had filed away the obstacle that must be overcome by the key or other device.

Since then he has sent me the new lock, and I should have already put it in the kitchen door except that something must be done about the door. The new lock fits nicely into the cavity, but the keyholes do not coincide with those in the door.

RALPH BERGENGREN