“She couldn’t stand the organ,” explained Carson.  “She said it got on to her nerves—­’rumblin’ like.’”

I gazed upon him in silent sympathy as we dined on cold roast beef, stuffed olives, and ice cream.

“This is serious,” my host observed as we sat over our coffee and cigars after the repast.  “That woman was the only decent cook we’ve managed to secure in seven years, and, by Jingo, the minute she gets on to my taste the organ gets on to her nerves and she departs!”

“One must eat,” I observed.

“That’s just it,” said Carson.  “If it comes to a question of cook or organ the organ will have to go.  She was right about it, though.  The organ does rumble like the dickens.  Some of the bass notes make the house buzz like an ocean-steamer blowing off steam.”  It was a picturesque description, for I had noticed at times that when the organ was being made to shriek fortissimo every bit of panelling in the house seemed to rattle, and if a huge boiler of some sort suffering from internal disturbance had been growling down in the cellar, the result would have been quite similar.

“It may work out all right in time,” Carson said.  “The thing is new yet, and you can’t expect it to be mellow all at once.  What I’m afraid of, apart from the inability of our cook to stand the racket, is that this quivering will structurally weaken the house.  What do you think?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said.  “Some of the wainscot panels rattle a bit, but I imagine the house will stand it unless you go in too much for Wagner.  ‘Tannhaeuser’ or ‘Siegfried’ might shake a few beams loose, but lighter music, I think, can be indulged in with impunity.”

Time did not serve, as Carson had hoped, to mellow things.  Indeed, the succeeding weeks brought more trouble, and most of it came through the organ.  Some of the rattling panels, in spite of every effort to make them fast, rattled the more.  One night when the servants were alone in the house, of its own volition the organ sent forth, to break the still hours, a blood-curdling basso-profundo groan that suggested ghosts to their superstitious minds.  The housemaid came to regard the instrument as something uncanny, and, even as the cook had done before her, shook the dust of the house of Carson from her feet.

Then a rat crawled into one of the pipes—­Carson was unable to ascertain which—­and died there, with results that baffle description.  I doubt if Wagner himself could have expressed the situation in his most inspired moments.  Still Carson was philosophical.

“I’ll play a requiem to the rodent,” he said, “that will make him turn over in his grave, wherever that interesting spot may be.”

This he did, and the effect was superb, and no doubt the deceased did turn over in his grave, for the improvisation called into play every pipe on the whole instrument.  However, I could see that this constant pelting at the hands of an unkind fate through the medium of his most cherished possession was having its effect upon Carson’s hitherto impregnable philosophy.  When he spoke of the organ it was with a tone of suppressed irritation which boded ill, and finally I was not surprised to hear that he had offered to give the organ away.