IIIThe First Caller
As Mr. Blake had heard, there was “one hull room mighty nigh plum full o’ nothin’ but books”; a grievous waste, indeed, when one already “had a book.” It was the front room, opposite the parlour, and every door and window in it could be securely bolted from the inside. If any one desired unbroken privacy, it could be had in the library as nowhere else in the house.
The book-shelves were made of rough pine, unplaned, unpainted, and were scarcely a seemly setting for the treasure they bore. But in looking at the books, one perceived that their owner had been one who passed by the body in his eager search for the soul.
Here were no fine editions, no luxurious, costly volumes in full levant. Illuminated pages, rubricated headings, and fine illustrations were conspicuous by their absence.For the most part, the books were simply but serviceably bound in plain cloth covers. Many a paper-covered book had been bound by its purchaser in pasteboard, flimsy enough in quality, yet further strengthened by cloth at the back. Cheap, pirated editions were so many that Harlan wondered whether his uncle had not been wholly without conscience in the matter of book-buying.
Shelf after shelf stretched across the long wall, with its company of mute consolers whose master was no more. The fine flowering of the centuries, like a single precious drop of imperishable perfume, was hidden in this rude casket. The minds and hearts of the great, laid pitilessly bare, were here in this one room, shielded merely by pasteboard and cloth.
Far up in the mountains, amid snow-clad steeps and rock-bound fastnesses, one finds, perchance, a shell. It is so small a thing that it can be held in the hollow of the hand; so frail that a slight pressure of the finger will crush it to atoms, yet, held to the ear, it brings the surge and sweep of that vast, primeval ocean which, in the inconceivably remote past, covered the peak. And so, tothe eye of the mind, the small brown book, with its hundred printed pages, brings back the whole story of the world.
A thin, piping voice, to which its fellows have paid no heed, after a time becomes silent, and, ceaselessly marching, the years pass on by. Yet that trembling old hand, quietly laid at last upon the turbulent heart, in the solitude of a garret has guided a pen, and the manuscript is left. Ragged, worn, blotted, spotted with candle drippings and endlessly interlined, why should these few sheets of paper be saved?
Because, as it happens, the only record of the period is there—a record so significant that fifty years can be reconstructed, as an entire language was brought to light by a triple inscription upon a single stone. Thrown like the shell upon Time’s ever-receding shore, it is, nevertheless, the means by which unborn thousands shall commune with him who wrote in his garret, see his whole life mirrored in his book, know his philosophy, and take home his truth. For by way of the printed page comes Immortality.
There was no book in the library which had not been read many times. Some werefalling apart, and others had been carefully sewn together and awkwardly rebound. Still open, on a rickety table in the corner, was that ponderous volume with an extremely limited circulation:The Publishers’ Trade List Annual. Pencilled crosses here and there indicated books to be purchased, or at least sent on approval, to “customers known to the House.”
“Some day,” said Dorothy, “when it’s raining and we can’t go out, we’ll take down all these books, arrange them in something like order, and catalogue them.”
“How optimistic you are!” remarked Harlan. “Do you think it could be done in one day?”
“Oh, well,” returned Dorothy; “you know what I mean.”
Harlan paced restlessly back and forth, pausing now and then to look out of the window, where nothing much was to be seen except the orchard, at a little distance from the house, and Claudius Tiberius, sunning himself pleasantly upon the porch. Four weeks had been a pleasant vacation, but two weeks of comparative idleness, added to it, were too much for an active mind and bodyto endure. Three or four times he had tried to begin the book that was to bring fame and fortune, and as many times had failed. Hitherto Harlan’s work had not been obliged to wait for inspiration, and it was not so easy as it had seemed the day he bade his managing editor farewell.
“Somebody is coming,” announced Dorothy, from the window.
“Nonsense! Nobody ever comes here.”
“A precedent is about to be established, then. I feel it in my bones that we’re going to have company.”
“Let’s see.” Harlan went to the window and looked over her shoulder. A little man in a huge silk hat was toiling up the hill, aided by a cane. He was bent and old, yet he moved with a certain briskness, and, as Dorothy had said, he was inevitably coming.
“Who in thunder—” began Harlan.
“Our first company,” interrupted Dorothy, with her hand over his mouth. “The very first person who has called on us since we were married!”
“Except Claudius Tiberius,” amended Harlan. “Isn’t a cat anybody?”
“Claudius is. I beg his imperial pardon for forgetting him.”
The rusty bell-wire creaked, then a timid ring came from the rear depths of the house. “You let him in,” said Dorothy, “and I’ll go and fix my hair.”
“Am I right,” queried the old gentleman, when Harlan opened the door, “in presuming that I am so fortunate as to address Mr. James Harlan Carr?”
“My name is Carr,” answered Harlan, politely. “Will you come in?”
“Thank you,” answered the visitor, in high staccato, oblivious of the fact that Claudius Tiberius had scooted in between his feet; “it will be my pleasure to claim your hospitality for a few brief moments.
“I had hoped,” he went on, as Harlan ushered him into the parlour, “to be able to make your acquaintance before this, but my multitudinous duties——”
He fumbled in his pocket and produced a card, cut somewhat irregularly from a sheet of white cardboard, and bearing in tremulous autographic script: “Jeremiah Bradford, Counsellor at Law.”
“Oh,” said Harlan, “it was you whowrote me the letter. I should have hunted you up when I first came, shouldn’t I?”
“Not at all,” returned Mr. Bradford. “It is I who have been remiss. It is etiquette that the old residents should call first upon the newcomers. Many and varied duties in connection with the practice of my profession have hitherto—” His eyes sought the portrait over the mantel. “A most excellent likeness of your worthy uncle,” he continued, irrelevantly, “a gentleman with whom, as I understand, you never had the pleasure and privilege of becoming acquainted.”
“I never met Uncle Ebeneezer,” rejoined Harlan, “but mother told me a great deal about him and we had one or two pictures—daguerreotypes, I believe they were.”
“Undoubtedly, my dear sir. This portrait was painted from his very last daguerreotype by an artist of renown. It is a wonderful likeness. He was my Colonel—I served under him in the war. It was my desire to possess a portrait of him in uniform, but he would never consent, and would not allow anyone save myself to address him as Colonel. An eccentric, but very estimable gentleman.”
“I cannot understand,” said Harlan, “whyhe should have left the house to me. I had never even seen him.”
“Perhaps,” smiled Mr. Bradford, enigmatically, “that was his reason, or rather, perhaps I should say, if you had known your uncle more intimately and had visited him here, or, if he had had the privilege of knowing you—quite often, as you know, a personal acquaintance proves disappointing, though, of course, in this case——”
The old gentleman was floundering helplessly when Harlan rescued him. “I want you to meet my wife, Mr. Bradford. If you will excuse me, I will call her.”
Left to himself, the visitor slipped back and forth uneasily upon his haircloth chair, and took occasion to observe Claudius Tiberius, who sat near by and regarded the guest unblinkingly. Hearing approaching footsteps, he took out his worn silk handkerchief, unfolded it, and wiped the cold perspiration from his legal brow. In his heart of hearts, he wished he had not come, but Dorothy’s kindly greeting at once relieved him of all embarrassment.
“We have been wondering,” she said, brightly, “who would be the first to callupon us, and you have come at exactly the right time. New residents are always given two weeks, are they not, in which to get settled?”
“Quite so, my dear madam, quite so, and I trust that you are by this time fully accustomed to your changed environment. Judson Centre, while possessing few metropolitan advantages, has distinct and peculiar recommendations of an individual character which endear the locality to those residing therein.”
“I think I shall like it here,” said Dorothy. “At least I shall try to.”
“A very commendable spirit,” rejoined the old gentleman, warmly, “and rather remarkable in one so young.”
Mrs. Carr graciously acknowledged the compliment, and the guest flushed with pleasure. To perception less fine, there would have been food for unseemly mirth in his attire. Never in all her life before had Dorothy seen rough cow-hide boots, and grey striped trousers worn with a rusty and moth-eaten dress-coat in the middle of the afternoon. An immaculate expanse of shirt-front and a general air of extreme cleanliness went far toward redeeming the unfamiliar costume. The silkhat, with a bell-shaped crown and wide, rolling brim, belonged to a much earlier period, and had been brushed to look like new. Even Harlan noted that the ravelled edges of his linen had been carefully trimmed and the worn binding of the hat brim inked wherever necessary.
His wrinkled old face was kindly, though somewhat sad. His weak blue eyes were sheltered by an enormous pair of spectacles, which he took off and wiped continually. He was smooth-shaven and his scanty hair was as white as the driven snow. Now, as he sat in Uncle Ebeneezer’s parlour, he seemed utterly friendless and forlorn—a complete failure of that pitiful type which never for a moment guesses that it has failed.
“It will be my delight,” the old man was saying, his hollow cheeks faintly flushed, “to see that the elite of Judson Centre pay proper respect to you at an early date. If I were not most unfortunately a single gentleman, my wife would do herself the honour of calling upon you immediately and of tendering you some sort of hospitality approximately commensurate with your worth. As it is——”
“As it is,” said Harlan, taking up the wanderingthread of the discourse, “that particular pleasure must be on our side. We both hope that you will come often, and informally.”
“It would be a solace to me,” rejoined the old gentleman, tremulously, “to find the niece and nephew of my departed friend both congenial and companionable. He was my Colonel—I served under him in the war—and until the last, he allowed me to address him as Colonel—a privilege accorded to no one else. He very seldom left his own estate, but at his request I often spent an evening or a Sunday afternoon in his society, and after his untimely death, I feel the loss of his companionship very keenly. He was my Colonel—I——”
“I should imagine so,” said Harlan, kindly, “though, as I have told you, I never knew him at all.”
“A much-misunderstood gentleman,” continued Mr. Bradford, carefully wiping his spectacles. “My grief is too recent, at present, to enable me to discourse freely of his many virtues, but at some future time I shall hope to make you acquainted with your benefactor. He was my Colonel, and in serving under him in the war, I had an unusualopportunity to know him as he really was. May I ask, without intruding upon your private affairs, whether or not it is your intention to reside here permanently?”
“We have not made up our minds,” responded Harlan. “We shall stay here this Summer, anyway, as I have some work to do which can be done only in a quiet place.”
“Quiet!” muttered the old gentleman, “quiet place! If I might venture to suggest, I should think you would find any other season more agreeable for prolonged mental effort. In Summer there are distractions——”
“Yes,” put in Dorothy, “in Summer, one wants to be outdoors, and I am going to keep chickens and a cow, but my husband hopes to have his book finished by September.”
“His book!” repeated Mr. Bradford, in genuine astonishment. “Am I actually addressing an author?”
He beamed upon Harlan in a way which that modest youth found positively disconcerting.
“A would-be author only,” laughed Harlan, the colour mounting to his temples. “I’ve done newspaper work heretofore, and now I’m going to try something else.”
“My dear sir,” said Mr. Bradford, rising, “I must really beg the privilege of clasping your hand. It is a great honour for Judson Centre to have an author residing in its midst!”
Taking pity upon Harlan, Dorothy hastened to change the subject. “We hope it may be,” she observed, lightly, “and I wonder, Mr. Bradford, if you could not give me some good advice?”
“I shall be delighted, my dear madam. Any knowledge I may possess is trebly at your service, for the sake of the distinguished author whose wife you have the honour to be, for the sake of your departed relative, who was my friend, my Colonel, and last, but not least, for your own sake.”
“It is only about a maid,” said Dorothy.
“A —— my dear madam, I beg your pardon?”
“A maid,” repeated Dorothy; “a servant.”
“Oh! A hired girl, or more accurately, in the parlance of Judson Centre, the help. Do I understand that it is your desire to become an employer of help?”
“It is,” answered Dorothy, somewhat awed by the solemnity of his tone, “if help is to befound. I thought you might know where I could get some one.”
“If I might be permitted to suggest,” replied Mr. Bradford, after due deliberation, “I should unhesitatingly recommend Mrs. Sarah Smithers, who did for your uncle during the entire period of his residence here and whose privilege it was to close his eyes in his last sleep. She is at present without prospect of a situation, and I believe would be very ready to accept a new position, especially so desirable a position as this, in your service.”
“Thank you. Could you—could you send her to me?”
“I shall do so, most assuredly, providing she is willing to come, and should she chance not to be agreeably disposed toward so pleasing a project, it will be my happiness to endeavour to persuade her.” Drawing out a memorandum book and a pencil, the old gentleman made an entry upon a fresh page. “The multitudinous duties in connection with the practice of my profession,” he began—“there, my dear madam, it is already attended to, since it is placed quite out of my power to forget.”
“I am greatly obliged,” said Dorothy.
“And now,” continued the visitor, “I must go. I fear I have already outstayed the limitation of a formal visit, such as the first should be, and it is not my desire to intrude upon an author’s time. Moreover, my own duties, slight and unimportant as they are in comparison, must ultimately press upon my attention.”
“Come again,” said Harlan, kindly, following him to the door.
“It will be my great pleasure,” rejoined the guest, “not only on your own account, but because your personality reminds me of that of my departed friend. You favour him considerably, more particularly in the eyes, if I may be permitted to allude to details. I think I told you, did I not, that he was my Colonel and I was privileged to serve under him in the war? My—oh, I walked, did I not? I remember that it was my intention to come in a carriage, as being more suitable to a formal visit, but Mr. Blake had other engagements for his vehicle. Dear sir and madam, I bid you good afternoon.”
So saying, he went downhill, briskly enough, yet stumbling where the way was rough. They watched him until the bobbing,bell-shaped crown of the ancient head-gear was completely out of sight.
“What a dear old man!” said Dorothy. “He’s lonely and we must have him come up often.”
“Do you think,” asked Harlan, “that I look like Uncle Ebeneezer?”
“Indeed you don’t!” cried Dorothy, “and that reminds me. I want to take that picture down.”
“To burn it?” inquired Harlan, slyly.
“No, I wouldn’t burn it,” answered Dorothy, somewhat spitefully, “but there’s no law against putting it in the attic, is there?”
“Not that I know of. Can we reach it from a chair?”
Together they mounted one of the haircloth monuments, slipping, as Dorothy said, until it was like walking on ice.
“Now then,” said Harlan, gaily, “come on down, Uncle! You’re about to be moved into the attic!”
The picture lunged forward, almost before they had touched it, the heavy gilt frame bruising Dorothy’s cheek badly. In catching it, Harlan turned it completely around, then gave a low whistle of astonishment.
Pasted securely to the back was a fearsome skull and cross-bones, made on wrapping paper with a brush and India ink. Below it, in great capitals, was the warning inscription: “LET MY PICTURE ALONE!”
“What shall we do with it?” asked Harlan, endeavouring to laugh, though, as he afterward admitted, he “felt creepy.” “Shall I take it up to the attic?”
“No,” answered Dorothy, in a small, unnatural voice, “leave it where it is.”
While Harlan was putting it back, Dorothy, trembling from head to foot, crept around to the back of the easel which bore Aunt Rebecca’s portrait. She was not at all surprised to find, on the back of it, a notice to this effect: “ANYONE DARING TO MOVE MRS. JUDSON’S PICTURE WILL BE HAUNTED FOR LIFE BY US BOTH.”
“I don’t doubt it,” said Dorothy, somewhat viciously, when Harlan had joined her. “What kind of a woman do you suppose she could have been, to marry him? I’ll bet she’s glad she’s dead!”
Dorothy was still wiping blood from her face and might not have been wholly unprejudiced. Aunt Rebecca was a gentle,sweet-faced woman, if her portrait told the truth, possessed of all the virtues save self-assertion and dominated by habitual, unselfish kindness to others. She could not have been discourteous even to Claudius Tiberius, who at this moment was seated in state upon the sofa and purring industriously.
IVFinances
“I’ve ordered the typewriter,” said Dorothy, brightly, “and some nice new note-paper, and a seal. I’ve just been reading about making virtue out of necessity, so I’ve ordered ‘At the Sign of the Jack-o’-Lantern’ put on our stationery, in gold, and a yellow pumpkin on the envelope flap, just above the seal. And I want you to make a funny sign-board to flap from a pole, the way they did in ‘Rudder Grange.’ If you could make a wooden Jack-o’-Lantern, we could have a candle inside it at night, and then the sign would be just like the house. We can get the paint and things down in the village. Won’t it be cute? We’re farmers, now, so we’ll have to pretend we like it.”
Harlan repressed an exclamation, which could not have been wholly inspired by pleasure.
“What’s the matter?” asked Dorothy, easily. “Don’t you like the design for the note-paper? If you don’t, you won’t have to use it. Nobody’s going to make you write letters on paper you don’t like, so cheer up.”
“It isn’t the paper,” answered Harlan, miserably; “it’s the typewriter.” Up to the present moment, sustained by a false, but none the less determined pride, he had refrained from taking his wife into his confidence regarding his finances. With characteristic masculine short-sightedness, he had failed to perceive that every moment of delay made matters worse.
“Might I inquire,” asked Mrs. Carr, coolly, “what is wrong with the typewriter?”
“Nothing at all,” sighed Harlan, “except that we can’t afford it.” The whole bitter truth was out, now, and he turned away wretchedly, ashamed to meet her eyes.
It seemed ages before she spoke. Then she said, in smooth, icy tones: “What was your object in offering to get it for me?”
“I spoke impulsively,” explained Harlan, forgetting that he had never suggested buying a typewriter. “I didn’t stop to think. I’m sorry,” he concluded, lamely.
“I suppose you spoke impulsively,” snapped Dorothy, “when you asked me to marry you. You’re sorry for that, too, aren’t you?”
“Dorothy!”
“You’re not the only one who’s sorry,” she rejoined, her cheeks flushed and her eyes blazing. “I had no idea what an expense I was going to be!”
“Dorothy!” cried Harlan, angrily; “you didn’t think I was a millionaire, did you? Were you under the impression that I was an active branch of the United States Mint?”
“No,” she answered, huskily; “I merely thought I was marrying a gentleman instead of a loafer, and I beg your pardon for the mistake!” She slammed the door on the last word, and he heard her light feet pattering swiftly down the hall, little guessing that she was trying to gain the shelter of her own room before giving way to a tempest of sobs.
Happy are they who can drown all pain, sorrow, and disappointment in a copious flood of tears. In an hour, at the most, Dorothy would be her sunny self again, penitent, and wholly ashamed of her undignified outburst. By to-morrow she would have forgotten it,but Harlan, made of sterner clay, would remember it for days.
“Loafer!” The cruel word seemed written accusingly on every wall of the room. In a sudden flash of insight he perceived the truth of it—and it hurt.
“Two months,” bethought; “two months of besotted idleness. And I used to chase news from the Battery to the Bronx every day from eight to six! Murders, smallpox, East Side scraps, and Tammany Hall. Why in the hereafter can’t they have a fire at the sanitarium, or something that I can wire in?”
“The Temple of Healing,” as Dorothy had christened it in a happier moment, stood on a distant hill, all but hidden now by trees and shrubbery. A column of smoke curled lazily upward against the blue, but there was no immediate prospect of a fire of the “news” variety.
Harlan stood at the window for a long time, deeply troubled. The call of the city dinned relentlessly into his ears. Oh, for an hour in the midst of it, with the rumble and roar and clatter of ceaseless traffic, the hurrying, heedless throng rushing in every direction, theglare of the sun on the many-windowed cliffs, the fever of the struggle in his veins!
And yet—was two months so long, when a fellow was just married, and hadn’t had more than a day at a time off for six years? Since the “cub reporter” was first “licked into shape” in the office ofThe Thunderer, there had been plenty of work for him, year in and year out.
“I wonder,” he mused, “if the old man would take me back on my job?
“I can see ’em in the office now,” went on Harlan, mentally, “when I go back and tell ’em I want my place again. The old man will look up and say: ‘The hell you do! Thought you’d accepted a position on the literary circuit as manager of the nine muses! Better run along and look after ’em before they join the union.’
“And the exchange man will yell at me not to slam the door as I go out, and I’ll be pointed out to the newest kid as a horrible example of misdirected ambition. Brinkman will say: ‘Sonny, there’s a bloke that got too good for his job and now he’s come back, willing to edit The Mother’s Corner.’
“It’d be about the same in the otheroffices, too,” he thought. “‘Sorry, nothing to-day, but there might be next month. Drop in again sometime after six weeks or so and meanwhile I’ll let you know if anything turns up. Yes, I can remember your address. Don’t slam the door as you go out. Most people seem to have been born in a barn.’
“Besides,” he continued to himself, fiercely, “what is there in it? They’ll take your youth, all your strength and energy, and give you a measly living in exchange. They’ll fill you with excitement till you’re never good for anything else, any more than a cavalry horse is fitted to pull a vegetable wagon. Then, when you’re old, they’ve got no use for you!”
Before his mental vision, in pitiful array, came that unhappy procession of hacks that files, day in and day out, along Newspaper Row, drawn by every instinct to the arena that holds nothing for them but a meagre, uncertain pittance, dwindling slowly to charity.
“That’s where I’d be at the last of it,” muttered Harlan, savagely, “with even the cubs offering me the price of a drink to get out. And Dorothy—good God! Where would Dorothy be?”
He clenched his fists and marched up and down the room in utter despair. “Why,” he breathed, “why wasn’t I taught to do something honest, instead of being cursed with this itch to write? A carpenter, a bricklayer, a stone-mason,—any one of ’em has a better chance than I!”
And yet, even then, Harlan saw clearly that save where some vast cathedral reared its unnumbered spires, the mason and the bricklayer were without significance; that even the builders were remembered only because of the great uses to which their buildings were put. “That, too, through print,” he murmured. “It all comes down to the printed page at last.”
On a table, near by, was a sheaf of rough copy paper, and six or eight carefully sharpened pencils—the dull, meaningless stone waiting for the flint that should strike it into flame. Day after day the table had stood by the window, without result, save in Harlan’s uneasy conscience.
“I’m only a tramp,” he said, aloud, “and I’ve known it, all along.”
He sat down by the table and took up a pencil, but no words came. Remorsefully, hewrote to an acquaintance—a man who had a book published every year and filled in the intervening time with magazine work and newspaper specials. He sealed the letter and addressed it idly, then tossed it aside purposelessly.
“Loafer!” The memory of it stung him like a lash, and, completely overwhelmed with shame, he hid his face in his hands.
Suddenly, a pair of soft arms stole around his neck, a childish, tear-wet cheek was pressed close to his, and a sweet voice whispered, tenderly: “Dear, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry I can’t live another minute unless you tell me you forgive me!”
“Am I really a loafer?” asked Harlan, half an hour later.
“Indeed you’re not,” answered Dorothy, her trustful eyes looking straight into his; “you’re absolutely the most adorable boy in the whole world, and it’s me that knows it!”
“As long as you know it,” returned Harlan, seriously, “I don’t care a hang what other people think.”
“Now, tell me,” continued Dorothy, “how near are we to being broke?”
Obediently, Harlan turned his pockets inside out and piled his worldly wealth on the table.
“Three hundred and seventy-four dollars and sixteen cents,” she said, when she had finished counting. “Why, we’re almost rich, and a little while ago you tried to make me think we were poor!”
“It’s all I have, Dorothy—every blooming cent, except one dollar in the savings bank. Sort of a nest egg I had left,” he explained.
“Wait a minute,” she said, reaching down into her collar and drawing up a loop of worn ribbon. “Straight front corset,” she observed, flushing, “makes a nice pocket for almost everything.” She drew up a chamois-skin bag, of an unprepossessing mouse colour, and emptied out a roll of bills. “Two hundred and twelve dollars,” she said, proudly, “and eighty-three cents and four postage stamps in my purse.
“I saved it,” she continued, hastily, “for an emergency, and I wanted some silk stockings and a French embroidered corset and some handmade lingerie worse than you can ever know. Wasn’t I a brave, heroic, noble woman?”
“Indeed you were,” he cried, “but, Dorothy, you know I can’t touch your money!”
“Why not?” she demanded.
“Because—because—because it isn’t right. Do you think I’m cad enough to live on a woman’s earnings?”
“Harlan,” said Dorothy, kindly, “don’t be a fool. You’ll take my whole heart and soul and life—all that I have been and all that I’m going to be—and be glad to get it, and now you’re balking at ten cents that I happened to have in my stocking when I took the fatal step.”
“Dear heart, don’t. It’s different—tremendously different. Can’t you see that it is?”
“Do you mean that I’m not worth as much as two hundred and twelve dollars and eighty-three cents and four postage stamps?”
“Darling, you’re worth more than all the rest of the world put together. Don’t talk to me like that. But I can’t touch your money, truly, dear, I can’t; so don’t ask me.”
“Idiot,” cried Dorothy, with tears raining down her face, “don’t you know I’d go with you if you had to grind an organ in the street, and collect the money for you in a tin cup till we got enough for a monkey? What kindof a dinky little silver-plated wedding present do you think I am, anyway? You——”
The rest of it was sobbed out, incoherently enough, on his hitherto immaculate shirt-front. “You don’t mind,” she whispered, “if I cry down your neck, do you?”
“If you’re going to cry,” he answered, his voice trembling, “this is the one place for you to do it, but I don’t want you to cry.”
“I won’t, then,” she said, wiping her eyes on a wet and crumpled handkerchief. In a time astonishingly brief to one hitherto unfamiliar with the lachrymal function, her sobs had ceased.
“You’ve made me cry nearly a quart since morning,” she went on, with assumed severity, “and I hope you’ll behave so well from now on that I’ll never have to do it again. Look here.”
She led him to the window, where a pair of robins were building a nest in the boughs of a maple close by. “Do you see those birds?” she demanded, pointing at them with a dimpled, rosy forefinger.
“Yes, what of it?”
“Well, they’re married, aren’t they?”
“I hope they are,” laughed Harlan, “or at least engaged.”
“Who’s bringing the straw and feathers for the nest?” she asked.
“Both, apparently,” he replied, unwillingly.
“Why isn’t she rocking herself on a bough, and keeping her nails nice, and fixing her feathers in the latest style, or perhaps going off to some fool bird club while he builds the nest by himself?”
“Don’t know.”
“Nor anybody else,” she continued, with much satisfaction. “Now, if she happened to have two hundred and twelve feathers, of the proper size and shape to go into that nest, do you suppose he’d refuse to touch them, and make her cry because she brought them to him?”
“Probably he wouldn’t,” admitted Harlan.
There was a long silence, then Dorothy edged up closer to him. “Do you suppose,” she queried, “that Mr. Robin thinks more of his wife than you do of yours?”
“Indeed he doesn’t!”
“And still, he’s letting her help him.”
“But——”
“Now, listen, Harlan. We’ve got a house,with more than enough furniture to make it comfortable, though it’s not the kind of furniture either of us particularly like. Instead of buying a typewriter, we’ll rent one for three or four dollars a month until we have enough money to buy one. And I’m going to have a cow and some chickens and a garden, and I’m going to sell milk and butter and cream and fresh eggs and vegetables and chickens and fruit to the sanitarium, and——”
“The sanitarium people must have plenty of those things.”
“But not the kind I’m going to raise, nor put up as I’m going to put it up, and we’ll be raising most of our own living besides. You can write when you feel like it, and be helping me when you don’t feel like it, and before we know it, we’ll be rich. Oh, Harlan, I feel like Eve all alone in the Garden with Adam!”
The prospect fired his imagination, for, in common with most men, a chicken-ranch had appealed strongly to Harlan ever since he could remember.
“Well,” he began, slowly, in the tone which was always a signal of surrender.
“Won’t it be lovely,” she cried ecstatically,“to have our own bossy cow mooing in the barn, and our own chickens for Sunday dinner, and our own milk, and butter, and cream? And I’ll drive the vegetable waggon and you can take the things in——”
“I guess not,” interrupted Harlan, firmly. “If you’re going to do that sort of thing, you’ll have people to do the work when I can’t help you. The idea of my wife driving a vegetable cart!”
“All right,” answered Dorothy, submissively, wise enough to let small points settle themselves and have her own way in things that really mattered. “I’ve not forgotten that I promised to obey you.”
A gratified smile spread over Harlan’s smooth, boyish face, and, half-fearfully, she reached into her sleeve for a handkerchief which she had hitherto carefully concealed.
“That’s not all,” she smiled. “Look!”
“Twenty-three dollars,” he said. “Why, where did you get that?”
“It was in my dresser. There was a false bottom in one of the small drawers, and I took it out and found this.”
“What in—” began Harlan.
“It’s a present to us from Uncle Ebeneezer,”she cried, her eyes sparkling and her face aglow. “It’s for a coop and chickens,” she continued, executing an intricate dance step. “Oh, Harlan, aren’t you awfully glad we came?”
Seeing her pleasure he could not help being glad, but afterward, when he was alone, he began to wonder whether they had not inadvertently moved into a bank.
“Might be worse places,” he reflected, “for the poor and deserving to move into. Diamonds and money—what next?”
VMrs. Smithers
The chickens were clucking peacefully in their corner of Uncle Ebeneezer’s dooryard, and the newly acquired bossy cow mooed unhappily in her improvised stable. Harlan had christened the cow “Maud” because she insisted upon going into the garden, and though Dorothy had vigorously protested against putting Tennyson to such base uses, the name still held, out of sheer appropriateness.
Harlan was engaged in that pleasant pastime known as “pottering.” The instinct to drive nails, put up shelves, and to improve generally his local habitation is as firmly seated in the masculine nature as housewifely characteristics are ingrained in the feminine soul. Never before having had a home of his own, Harlan was enjoying it to the full.
Early hours had been the rule at the Jack-o’-Lanternever since the feathered sultan with his tribe of voluble wives had taken up his abode on the hilltop. Indeed, as Harlan said, they were obliged to sleep when the chickens did—if they slept at all. So it was not yet seven one morning when Dorothy went in from the chicken coop, singing softly to herself, and intent upon the particular hammer her husband wanted, never expecting to find Her in the kitchen.
“I—I beg your pardon?” she stammered, inquiringly.
A gaunt, aged, and preternaturally solemn female, swathed in crape, bent slightly forward in her chair, without making an effort to rise, and reached forth a black-gloved hand tightly grasping a letter, which was tremulously addressed to “Mrs. J. H. Carr.”
“My dear Madam,” Dorothy read.“The multitudinous duties in connection with the practice of my profession have unfortunately prevented me, until the present hour, from interviewing Mrs. Sarah Smithers in regard to your requirements. While she is naturally unwilling to commit herself entirely without a more definite idea of what isexpected of her, she is none the less kindly disposed. May I hope, my dear madam, that at the first opportunity you will apprise me of ensuing events in this connection, and that in any event I may still faithfully serve you?“With kindest personal remembrances and my polite salutations to the distinguished author whose wife you have the honour to be, I am, my dear madam,“Yr. most respectful and obedient servant,“Jeremiah Bradford.
“My dear Madam,” Dorothy read.
“The multitudinous duties in connection with the practice of my profession have unfortunately prevented me, until the present hour, from interviewing Mrs. Sarah Smithers in regard to your requirements. While she is naturally unwilling to commit herself entirely without a more definite idea of what isexpected of her, she is none the less kindly disposed. May I hope, my dear madam, that at the first opportunity you will apprise me of ensuing events in this connection, and that in any event I may still faithfully serve you?
“With kindest personal remembrances and my polite salutations to the distinguished author whose wife you have the honour to be, I am, my dear madam,
“Yr. most respectful and obedient servant,
“Jeremiah Bradford.
“Jeremiah Bradford.
“Oh,” said Dorothy, “you’re Sarah. I had almost given you up.”
“Begging your parding, Miss,” rejoined Mrs. Smithers in a chilly tone of reproof, “but I take it it’s better for us to begin callin’ each other by our proper names. If we should get friendly, there’d be ample time to change. Your uncle, God rest ’is soul, allers called me ‘Mis’ Smithers.’”
Somewhat startled at first, Mrs. Carr quickly recovered her equanimity. “Very well, Mrs. Smithers,” she returned, lightly, reflecting that when in Rome one must follow Roman customs; “Do you understand all branches of general housework?”
“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be makin’ no attempts in that direction,” replied Mrs. Smithers, harshly. “I doesn’t allow nobody to do wot I does no better than wot I does it.”
Dorothy smiled, for this was distinctly encouraging, from at least one point of view.
“You wear a cap, I suppose?”
“Yes, mum, for dustin’. When I goes out I puts on my bonnet.”
“Can you do plain cooking?” inquired Dorothy, hastily, perceiving that she was treading upon dangerous ground.
“Yes, mum. The more plain it is the better all around. Your uncle was never one to fill hisself with fancy dishes days and walk the floor with ’em nights, that’s wot ’e wasn’t.”
“What wages do you have, Sa—Mrs. Smithers?”
“I worked for your uncle for a dollar and a half a week, bein’ as we’d knowed each other so long, and on account of ’im bein’ easy to get along with and never makin’ no trouble, but I wouldn’t work for no woman for less ’n two dollars.”
“That is satisfactory to me,” returned Dorothy, trying to be dignified. “I daresaywe shall get on all right. Can you stay now?”
“If you’ve finished,” said Mrs. Smithers, ignoring the question, “there’s a few things I’d like to ask. ’Ow did you get that bruise on your face?”
“I—I ran into something,” answered Dorothy, unwillingly, and taken quite by surprise.
“Wot was it,” demanded Mrs. Smithers. “Your ’usband’s fist?”
“No,” replied Mrs. Carr, sternly, “it was a piece of furniture.”
“I’ve never knowed furniture,” observed Mrs. Smithers, doubtfully, “to get up and ’it people in the face wot wasn’t doin’ nothink to it. If you disturb a rockin’-chair at night w’en it’s restin’ quiet, you’ll get your ankle ’it, but I’ve never knowed no furniture to ’it people under the eye unless it ’ad been threw, that’s wot I ain’t.
“I mind me of my youngest sister,” Mrs. Smithers went on, her keen eyes uncomfortably fixed upon Dorothy. “’Er ’usband was one of these ’ere masterful men, ’e was, same as wot yours is, and w’en ’er didn’t please ’im, ’e ’d ’it ’er somethink orful. Many’s the time I’ve gone there and found ’er with ’erpoor face all cut up and the crockery broke bad. ‘I dropped a cup’ ’er’d say to me, ‘and the pieces flew up and ’it me in the face.’ ’Er face looked like a crazy quilt from ’aving dropped so many cups, and wunst, without thinkin’ wot I might be doin’ of, I gave ’er a chiny tea set for ’er Christmas present.
“Wen I went to see ’er again, the tea set was all broke and ’er ’ad court plaster all over ’er face. The pieces must ’ave flew more ’n common from the tea set, cause ’er ’usband’s ’ed was laid open somethink frightful and they’d ’ad in the doctor to take a seam in it. From that time on I never ’eard of no more cups bein’ dropped and ’er face looked quite human and peaceful like w’en ’e died. God rest ’is soul, ’e ain’t a-breakin’ no tea sets now by accident nor a-purpose neither. I was never one to interfere between man and wife, Miss Carr, but I want you to tell your ’usband that should ’e undertake to ’it me, ’e’ll get a bucket of ’ot tea throwed in ’is face.”
“It’s not at all likely,” answered Dorothy, biting her lip, “that such a thing will happen.” She was swayed by two contradictory impulses—one to scream with laughter, the other to throw something at Mrs. Smithers.
“’E’s been at peace now six months come Tuesday,” continued Mrs. Smithers, “and on account of ’is ’avin’ broke the tea set, I don’t feel no call to wear mourning for ’im more ’n a year, though folks thinks as ’ow it brands me as ’eartless for takin’ it off inside of two. Sakes alive, wot’s that?” she cried, drawing her sable skirts more closely about her as a dark shadow darted across the kitchen.
“It’s only the cat,” answered Dorothy, reassuringly. “Come here, Claudius.”
Mrs. Smithers repressed an exclamation of horror as Claudius, purring pleasantly, came out into the sunlight, brandishing his plumed tail, and sat down on the edge of Dorothy’s skirt, blinking his green eyes at the intruder.
“’E’s the very cat,” said Mrs. Smithers, hoarsely, “wot your uncle killed the week afore ’e died!”
“Before who died?” asked Dorothy, a chill creeping into her blood.
“Your uncle,” whispered Mrs. Smithers, her eyes still fixed upon Claudius Tiberius. “’E killed that very cat, ’e did, ’cause ’e couldn’t never abide ’im, and now ’e’s come back!”
“Nonsense!” cried Dorothy, trying to be severe. “If he killed the cat, it couldn’t come back—you must know that.”
“I don’t know w’y not, Miss. Anyhow, ’e killed the cat, that’s wot ’e did, and I saw ’is dead body, and even buried ’im, on account of your uncle not bein’ able to abide cats, and ’ere ’e is. Somebody ’s dug ’im up, and ’e ’s come to life again, thinkin’ to ’aunt your uncle, and your uncle ’as follered ’im, that’s wot ’e ’as, and there bein’ nobody ’ere to ’aunt but us, ’e’s a ’auntin’ us and a-doin’ it ’ard.”
“Mrs. Smithers,” said Dorothy, rising, “I desire to hear no more of this nonsense. The cat happens to be somewhat similar to the dead one, that’s all.”
“Begging your parding, Miss, for askin’, but did you bring that there cat with you from the city?”
Affecting not to hear, Dorothy went out, followed by Claudius Tiberius, who appeared anything but ghostly.
“I knowed it,” muttered Mrs. Smithers, gloomily, to herself. “’E was ’ere w’en ’er come, and ’e’s the same cat. ’E’s come back to ’aunt us, that’s wot ’e ’as!”
“Harlan,” said Dorothy, half-way between smiles and tears, “she’s come.”
Harlan dropped his saw and took up his hammer. “Who’s come?” he asked. “From your tone, it might be Mrs. Satan, or somebody else from the infernal regions.”
“You’re not far out of the way,” rejoined Dorothy. “It’s Sa—Mrs. Smithers.”
“Oh, our maid of all work?”
“I don’t know what she’s made of,” giggled Dorothy, hysterically. “She looks like a tombstone dressed in deep mourning, and carries with her the atmosphere of a graveyard. We have to call her ‘Mrs. Smithers,’ if we don’t want her to call us by our first names, and she has two dollars a week. She says Claudius is a cat that uncle killed the week before he died, and she thinks you hit me and gave me this bruise on my cheek.”
“The old lizard,” said Harlan, indignantly. “She sha’n’t stay!”
“Now don’t be cross,” interrupted Dorothy. “It’s all in the family, for your uncle hit me, as you well know. Besides, we can’t expect all the virtues for two dollars a week and I’m tired almost to death from trying to do the housework in this big houseand take care of the chickens, too. We’ll get on with her as best we can until we see a chance to do better.”
“Wise little woman,” responded Harlan, admiringly. “Can she milk the cow?”
“I don’t know—I’ll go in and ask her.”
“Excuse me, Miss,” began Mrs. Smithers, before Dorothy had a chance to speak, “but am I to ’ave my old rooms?”
“Which rooms were they?”
“These ’ere, back of the kitchen. My own settin’ room and bedroom and kitchen and pantry and my own private door outside. Your uncle was allers a great hand for bein’ private and insistin’ on other folks keepin’ private, that ’s wot ’e was, but God rest ’is soul, it didn’t do the poor old gent much good.”
“Certainly,” said Dorothy, “take your old rooms. And can you milk a cow?”
Mrs. Smithers sighed. “I ain’t never ’ad it put on me, Miss,” she said, with the air of a martyr trying to make himself comfortable up against the stake, “not as a regler thing, I ain’t, but wotever I’m asked to do in the line of duty whiles I’m dwellin’ in this sufferin’ and dyin’ world, I aims to do the best wot Ican, w’ether it’s milkin’ a cow, drownin’ kittens, or buryin’ a cat wot can’t stay buried.”
“We have breakfast about half-past seven,” went on Dorothy, quickly; “luncheon at noon and dinner at six.”
“Wot at six?” demanded Mrs. Smithers, pricking up her ears.
“Dinner! Dinner at six.”
“Lord preserve us,” said Mrs. Smithers, half to herself. “Your uncle allers ’ad ’is dinner at one o’clock, sharp, and ’e wouldn’t like it to ’ave such scandalous goin’s on in ’is own ’ouse.”
“You’re working for me,” Dorothy reminded her sharply, “and not for my uncle.”
There was a long silence, during which Mrs. Smithers peered curiously at her young mistress over her steel-bowed spectacles. “I’m not so sure as you,” she said. “On account of the cat ’avin come back from ’is grave, it wouldn’t surprise me none to see your uncle settin’ ’ere at any time in ’is shroud, and a-askin’ to ’ave mush and milk for ’is supper, the which ’e was so powerful fond of that I was more ’n ’alf minded at the last minute to put some of it in ’s coffin.”
“Mrs. Smithers,” said Dorothy, severely,“I do not want to hear any more about dead people, or resurrected cats, or anything of that nature. What’s gone is gone, and there’s no use in continually referring to it.”
At this significant moment, Claudius Tiberius paraded somewhat ostentatiously through the kitchen and went outdoors.
“You see, Miss?” asked Mrs. Smithers, with ill-concealed satisfaction. “Wot’s gone ain’t always gone for long, that’s wot it ain’t.”
Dorothy retreated, followed by a sepulchral laugh which grated on her nerves. “Upon my word, dear,” she said to Harlan, “I don’t know how we’re going to stand having that woman in the house. She makes me feel as if I were an undertaker, a grave digger, and a cemetery, all rolled into one.”
“You’re too imaginative,” said Harlan, tenderly, stroking her soft cheek. He had not yet seen Mrs. Smithers.
“Perhaps,” Dorothy admitted, “when she gets that pyramid of crape off her head, she’ll seem more nearly human. Do you suppose she expects to wear it in the house all the time?”
“Miss Carr!”
The gaunt black shadow appeared in the doorway of the kitchen and the high, harsh voice shrilled imperiously across the yard.
“I’m coming,” answered Dorothy, submissively, for in the tone there was that which instinctively impels obedience. “What is it?” she asked, when she entered the kitchen.
“Nothink. I only wants to know wot it is you’re layin’ out to ’ave for your—luncheon, if that’s wot you call it.”
“Poached eggs on toast, last night’s cold potatoes warmed over, hot biscuits, jam, and tea.”
Mrs. Smithers’s articulate response resembled a cluck more closely than anything else.
“You can make biscuits, can’t you?” went on Dorothy, hastily.
“I ’ave,” responded Mrs. Smithers, dryly. “Begging your parding, Miss, but is that there feller sawin’ wood out by the chicken coop your ’usband?”
“The gentleman in the yard,” said Dorothy, icily, “is Mr. Carr.”
“Be n’t you married to ’im?” cried Mrs. Smithers, dropping a fork. “I understood as ’ow you was, else I wouldn’t ’ave come. I was never one to——”
“I most assuredlyammarried to him,” answered Dorothy, with due emphasis on the verb.
“Oh! ’E’s the build of my youngest sister’s poor dead ’usband; the one wot broke the tea set wot I give ’er over ’er poor ’ed. ’E can ’it powerful ’ard, can’t ’e?”
Quite beyond speech, Dorothy went outdoors again, her head held high and a dangerous light in her eyes. To-morrow, or next week at the latest, should witness the forced departure of Mrs. Smithers. Mrs. Carr realised that the woman did not intend to be impertinent, and that the social forms of Judson Centre were not those of New York. Still, some things were unbearable.
The luncheon that was set before them, however, went far toward atonement. With the best intentions in the world, Dorothy’s cooking nearly always went wide of the mark, and Harlan welcomed the change with unmistakable pleasure.
“I say, Dorothy,” he whispered, as they rose from the table; “get on with her if you can. Anybody who can make such biscuits as these will go out of the house only over my dead body.”
The latter part of the speech was unfortunate. “My surroundings are so extremely cheerful,” remarked Dorothy, “that I’ve decided to spend the afternoon in the library reading Poe. I’ve always wanted to do it and I don’t believe I’ll ever feel any creepier than I do this blessed minute.”
In spite of his laughing protest, she went into the library, locked the door, and curled up in Uncle Ebeneezer’s easy chair with a well-thumbed volume of Poe, finding a two-dollar bill used in one place as a book mark. She read for some time, then took down another book, which opened of itself at “The Gold Bug.”
The pages were thickly strewn with marginal comments in the fine, small, shaky hand she had learned to associate with Uncle Ebeneezer. The paragraph about the skull, in the tree above the treasure, had evidently filled the last reader with unprecedented admiration, for on the margin was written twice, in ink: “A very, very pretty idea.”
She laughed aloud, for her thoughts since morning had been persistently directed toward things not of this world. “I’m glad I’m not superstitious,” she thought, then jumpedalmost out of her chair at the sound of an ominous crash in the kitchen.
“I won’t go,” she thought, settling back into her place. “I’ll let that old monument alone just as much as I can.”
Upon the whole, it was just as well, for the “old monument” was on her bony knees, with her head and shoulders quite lost in the secret depths of the kitchen range. “I wonder,” she was muttering, “where ’e could ’ave put it. It would ’ave been just like that old skinflint to ’ave ’id it in the stove!”