Sheila and Others/Williams
WILLIAMS
NATURE does certainly miss the mark sometimes. Williams is a signal instance of it. She made him without any reference to his future career, or station in life, and endowed him with a quite superfluous amount of personal beauty. He is an Apollo to look at, or would be, if he were clean. Unfortunately, he hardly ever is. His avocation does not conduce to it. It takes him into back yards, and cellar entries and coal bins. For Williams is our peripatetic furnace man. He has regular features, a perfect profile, long curling lashes over melting dark eyes, and a high opinion of himself.
Of course one never really looks at a furnace man. It would seem almost indelicate to do so, as if he were an individual, instead of a part of the landscape, an accessory, like the hose or garbage tins, necessary conveniences which one instinctively ignores. But you can hardly help looking at Williams, once you realize him at all. He is such an anomaly, such a conspicious example of Nature's misplaced confidences.
He shares, of course, the outstanding characteristic of all furnace men. He is elusive. You never really get any of them at bay—unless on Christmas morning and then you can't wait. Their first call upon you is before the light of day (you are blessed if don't know when) and their second, in the afternoon when you have callers.
I have gone so far (when the callers were of second rank socially) as to excuse myself when the first raucous rumblings under us began, and endeavor to get a word with Williams from the top of the cellar steps or out of the back window, but I rarely ever succeed. The outside door bangs the announcement of his departure just as I reach the top step, or if I watch for him from the study window overlooking the back area, he is either late that night or has come an hour earlier than usual, and my vigil is in vain.
Of course there are seasons when, and persons with whom, elusiveness is a virtue. The longer I know Williams the more I realize this. Deference to his superiors is not one of his strong points. Indeed, he is not conscious of having superiors, which sometimes complicates things. His way of meeting the situation and avoiding any little unpleasantness that might prejudice it, is to adopt a friendly hail-fellow-well-met air, retaining his hat which he wears well pushed back off his classically-shaped brow, in the approved Canadian manner.
This, of course, is on one of those infrequent occasions, put off as long as possible always, when it becomes absolutely necessary to speak to Williams, and he has been watched for, waylaid and triumphantly produced by Janet.
"Williams," I find myself saying a trifle crisply, "why is it when you come in the evenings lately, there is such a smell of coal-gas all over the house? Are you particular to open the drafts always before you put fresh coal on?"
"It's them pipes," responds Williams disputatively, striking an attitude and ignoring my question. "They ain't no good. They're fallin' to pieces. A buddy can't clean 'em properly. You'd ought to hev' noo ones put in."
This naturally produces something of a shock, as Williams intends it shall, and while I endeavor to dissemble my emotions, he follows up his advantage with further comment and advice.
"The chimbly ain't high enough—not fer a real good draft. Mebbe the bricks is fallin' in. You'd ought to hev' a bricklayer come and look it over."
"But Williams," I say firmly, recovering my stand, "Janet can bring that fire up in twenty minutes with just a good shaking down and clearing out. There is nothing wrong with the draft when she puts on a fire—not a suspicion of coal gas."
"Well, all I say is, git her to do it then," returns Williams with the weary air of one who has to do with unreasonable people.
If it isn't the pipes he falls back upon in self-defense, it is the obsolete manner in which the coils were put into the fire box—"any child u'd a' knowed better—" or the quality of the coal this year, or the wrong principle on which the intake was constructed. He is never at a loss and I confess I sometimes am, in the flood-tide of his eloquence, which of course tips the argument his way, and certainly does not conduce to the frequency of our interviews.
But this is only one of Williams' attractive little ways. His outstanding trait is his inability to put on sufficient coal to keep the house warm. It is a temperamental deficiency. Neither threats, nor persuasions, nor yet appeals, can move him—at least to a permanent reformation. If I try peremptorily ordering him to fill the furnace up, he complies with much ostentatious banging, and the air of one who says, "Very well then, have it your own way and see how like it!"
That wouldn't matter, of course, if only he'd keep on filling and banging, but his extra exertions last only as long as his resentment. Ingrained nature and habit combined are too strong for him, and in another round or two of the clock, we are back at the same old pace, drafts low, furnace clogged, rooms chilly. The path of least resistance (which is a well-beaten one for modern housekeepers) is to work on Janet's feelings, or go down myself, in the absence of pater familias, who nearly always is absent, of course, after his kind.
On Sundays Williams is a changed being. He wears a leisurely, not to say absent air, an approximation to cleanliness and a carnation in his buttonhole. The latter has an absent air also sometimes, as if about to disintegrate. I suspect Williams is friends with the florist at the corner of his street, and is made the recipient of benefactions on Saturday nights.
At 4.30 precisely on Sunday afternoons, one hour earlier than on week-days, and just when the Sunday tea-drinkers are arriving, Williams strolls in through the back gate humming a hymn. If you chance to have any intercourse with him on that day, you call him Mr. Williams. You can't help yourself. And you experience a sense of humbling gratitude that such a fine-looking gentleman consents to keep your furnace going on any terms, even though it be only at half-blast, so to speak.
He is so get-at-able on Sundays, with Janet out and all, that if you don't happen to have company, you are tempted to take this occasion to unload your accumulation of grievances, or to give him his month's check. But it is not the thing to do at all. I tried it once or twice with regret. He made me feel that I was worldly and wanting in elementary Christian principles regarding Sabbath observance.
Janet says he is a Plymouth Brethren and consistent. Probably that is why he is so dependable in the mornings and doesn't suffer from the same necessity for something to warm him up before going out into the cold, that rendered his numerous predecessors so precarious an undertaking. It may be difficult to regard him as a citizen and a father and an exemplary Church goer, not a mere cog in the commercial machinery, but Democracy is many sided, and has a way of bringing one up with a jolt now and then, at least in Canada where it is important to make your social ideas tally with facts.
There is a standing feud between Williams and Janet. Janet maintains that he never returned the carpet-beater after borrowing it in the interests of the lady next door but two. Williams somewhat indelicately avers that it is all in her eye. (This is a week-day interlude. Williams doesn't use language like that on Sundays.) Janet says the carpet-beater isn't on the premises. Williams says it is. Janet invites him to inspection, and Williams says what does she take him for?
At this point Janet turns the affair over to me and says he is no gentleman, or words to that effect. Meanwhile the privilege of procuring a new carpet-beater is mine, and I reluctantly embrace it, feeling a sense of guilty weakness because I haven't lived up to Janet's more than hinted expectations and compelled Williams to disgorge.
There are other feuds, sudsidiary ones, which I suspect Williams of intentionally fostering as a form of entertainment that comes cheaper even than the movies. One revolves around the subject of a washing-machine he foisted on us against our weak, feminine wills, but I decline to go into particulars. They are too humiliating.
Why do we retain his services? A not unnatural question. I ask it of myself several times a year. I am forced to the conviction that is because of Janet's irresolution. If she once definitely made up her mind to his dismissal, I'm sure I should give in. I have thought of dismissing him myself. In fact I have decided more than once that it must be done, but this is generally in mid-winter when suffering from the consequence of his low fires, and of course, it would be madness to change your furnace-man in mid-winter. It has to be done in the spring.
But in the spring you say to yourself, "Suppose there's no one else available in the fall? Hadn't I better wait and see?" And you hesitate. Besides, there are always the rugs to be beaten then. So you leave it till next September, and the first thing you know then, a genial and most welcome warmth is radiating the atmosphere some chilly evening, and you suddenly realize that Williams has taken time by the forelock and reinstalled himself for another year. I then extract what comfort I can from recounting his good points. He has several. He keeps the ashes down, and the furnace room tidy, and above all, he never fails us, no matter how blizzardy and cold the morning.
I repeat to myself the proverb about the fire and frying-pan, and get an extra provision of weight in the family underwear. Sometimes I brace myself for a good plain talk with Williams, but it's always Christmas in our house before you know it, and I never like to prejudice the smallness of my Christmas offering by adding admonition therewith. Clearly, Williams is with us to stay.