Susan Clegg and Her Love Affairs Part 14

"Well, maybe you can imagine her feelings! She says she was never so mad in all her life. She called through the door, but not a sound. There was a crack big enough to put your hand through under the door, and she tried to look through it, but it wasn't high enough to put your eye to.

Then she heard a shout and run to the window. There they all was, out on the gra.s.s in front,--all but Bocaj, who was asleep in his cradle down-stairs. Well, such doings! She says 'Zile, who was always full of ideas, was just outstripping herself in ideas this time. They had a old pair of scissors, and first they went to work for half an hour cutting each other's hair. She says you can maybe think of her feelings in the upper window, left in charge of 'em, with full permission to whip 'em if necessary, and having to sit and watch 'em trim each other anyway the notion hit 'em. She says tying a man to a tree while cannibals eat up his family is the only thing as would express it a _tall_. After they got done cutting hair, they went in and got a pot of jam and brought it out and sat down in full sight and eat jam with their fingers till there was no more jam. She says she'd stopped calling things to 'em by that time and was just sitting quietly in the window, thanking G.o.d for every minute as they stayed where she could see what they was doing. But when they had finished the jam, they went in the house and was so deathly quiet she was scared to fits. She thought maybe they was setting fire to something. But after a while they begun to bang on the piano, and when she was half crazy over the noise, she looked towards the door, and there was the key poked under. She made a jump for the key, and it was jerked back by a piece of string. And her own string at that. Then she was called to the window by Gringer yelling, and while she was trying to hear what he had to say--the piano jangling worse than ever--they opened the door suddenly and bundled Bocaj into the room and then locked the door again.

"The baby was just woke up and hungry, and it was a pretty kettle of fish. She says she made up her mind then and there to quit that house and adopt Bocaj. She says she saw as there was no use trying to reform the rest; but Bocaj was so little and helpless, and nothing in her heart made her feel as he couldn't be raised to be practical. She went to work and fed him crackers soaked in boiling water while she packed her trunk.

And when her cousin came home, she was sitting with her bonnet on ready to go. Her cousin just naturally felt awful. She wanted to call it a joke; but Mrs. Sperrit is a woman whose feelings isn't lightly took in vain. She left, and she took Bocaj with her. She telegraphed Mr.

Sperrit, and he met her at the train. He was some disappointed because he'd forgotten about the baby's name and thought from reading it in the telegraph that she was bringing back a monkey. Seems Mr. Sperrit has always wanted a monkey, and she wouldn't have one. But now she says he can have a monkey or anything else, if he'll only stay practical. She says she doesn't believe she could ever live with any one as wasn't practical, after this experience."

Susan paused, Mrs. Macy and Gran'ma Mullins rose to go to their kitchens and get suppers for their guests. When they had gone, Susan, having Mrs.

Lathrop alone, eased a troubled conscience.

"Oh, Mrs. Lathrop," she confided, "do you remember me saying the other evening I'd had a letter from Jathrop?"

Mrs. Lathrop suddenly stopped rocking. "Yes--yes, Susan," she answered eagerly. "I--"

"Well, I didn't have one. It was just as everybody in this community has got their minds fixed on Jathrop's being wild about me, so I felt to mention a letter, and I shall go on mentioning getting a letter from him whenever the spirit moves me."

"Why, Susan--!" exclaimed Mrs. Lathrop.

"It doesn't hurt him a _tall_," said Susan Clegg with calm decision, "and it saves me from being asked questions. And you know as well as I do, Mrs. Lathrop, that I can have him if I want him."

Mrs. Lathrop sat open-mouthed, dumb.

"If I don't have him, it'll be because I don't want him," added Miss Clegg with dignity. "So it's no use your saying one other word, Mrs.

Lathrop."

And Mrs. Lathrop, thus adjured, refrained from further speech.

X

SUSAN CLEGG DEVELOPS IMAGINATION

"Far be it from me, Mrs. Lathrop," said Susan Clegg, returning from an early errand down-town and dropping in at Mrs. Macy's to find her friend still in her own room and rocking in her old-gold stationary rocker. It was now autumn, and to take the chill off the room an oil burner was brightly ablaze. "Far be it from me to say anything disrespectful of such a good Samaritan as your son Jathrop, but as we have it in the scriptures, he certainly does move in a mysterious way his neighbors to inform. It's mighty good of him to go to all the expense of building over my house in a way I'd never in this wide world have had it if I could 'a' understood those plans of that boy architect, and it may be--providing we escape earthquake, fire, blood, and famine--that I'll get into it once more before next summer, notwithstanding it's all of two months behind yours, you being his mother, Mrs. Lathrop, and me only your friend. But a early frost is sure to crack the plaster, and, seeing as the gla.s.s blowers has gone on a strike, there's no telling when they'll blow the panes for the windows. Just the same, kind and good as Jathrop is, he might have had more consideration for me as would this day have been his wife, if I'd felt to answer him with a three-letter word instead of a two, than to put me on the pillar of scorn before a community as has known me always as a scrupulous lover of the voracious truth."

"You don't--" began Mrs. Lathrop, in mild astonishment.

"Yes, I do," continued Susan, with growing indignation. "Jathrop has done his best to make me out a liar, and I don't know as I'll ever be able to hold my head up again. He's struck me in the tenderest spot he could strike me in, and not boldly neither, but in a skulking, underhand way that makes it all the bitterer pill to swallow."

"I can't see--" objected Mrs. Lathrop.

"No, nor me neither. But he did, and in no time everybody'll know it from Johnny, at the station, to Mrs. Lupey in Meadville, not forgettin'

the poor demented over to the insane asylum. And it all comes of those letters I have been getting from Jathrop during the summer."

"But--"

"Yes, I know and you know there was no letters a _tall_. But everybody else, except you and me and the postmaster, believed I had a letter regular every week. Whenever I run short of subjects at the Sewing Society, I just fell back on my last letter from Jathrop and told them all about what he was doing in those islands. I'd read the book he sent, and I'd read it to good profit. There was some things as I didn't quite understand, of course, but on them I just put my own interpretations, and knowing Jathrop as I did, it was easy enough for me to figure out how he'd be most likely to act in a strange, barbaric land. The book didn't have a word to say about the costumes of the native tribes, but I'm not so ignorant as not to know how those South Sea Islanders never wear nothing more hamperin' than sea-sh.e.l.l earrings and necklaces of sharks' teeth; and I'd read, too, that foreign visitors, on account of the unbearable heat, was in the habit of adoptin' the native fas.h.i.+ons in dress. When you get started makin' things up, there's no knowing just where you're likely as to end. It's so easy to go straight ahead and say just whatever you please that seems in any way interesting. And so, when Mrs. Fisher asked me one day whether I supposed there was any cannibals there, I said there was one cannibal tribe that was most ferocious and had appet.i.tes that there was no such thing as quenchin'. I said that in Jathrop's last letter he had written me about how this tribe had captured the cook off the yacht and that when they finally found his captors and defeated them in a desperate battle lasting three days, all that was found of the cook was two chicken croquettes."

"For gra--!" cried Mrs. Lathrop.

"That's what Mrs. Fisher said. Of course, with the cook eat up--all but what was in the two croquettes, that is,--Jathrop and his millionaire friends was a good deal put about. There wasn't a one of 'em as knew the first thing about cooking, and after the exercise of the three days'

battle they was most awful hungry. And then, I says, quoting from the letter from Jathrop which never came, they had a piece of real luck, just as millionaires is always having. They had taken one prisoner, and by means of signs, not knowin' a word of the cannibal language, they discovered that the prisoner was the cook of the tribe. He pointed to the croquettes as a example of his handiwork, and Jathrop said that he never saw anything in the cookin' line that looked more toothsome than they did. So, of course they engaged the cannibal cook on the spot and carried him back to the yacht with 'em. Everything went well for a few days, but on a day when they had invited the chief of a friendly tribe to dinner, there was something as aroused their suspicions. The princ.i.p.al dish for the feast was, so far as they could make out from the cook's sign-language, a savory rabbit stew. Now as they had never seen or heard tell of a rabbit in the Bahamas, they was naturally curious to learn where the cook had managed to dig it up. He either couldn't or wouldn't tell. I says that Jathrop says you might 'a' thought that the cook was a thirty-second degree mason and that the origin of the rabbit was a thirty-second degree masonic secret. The millionaires gathered in council and discussed the question, pro and con, from every obtainable or imaginable angle. Then, just as they were about to adjourn without having reached any conclusion whatever, they rang for the cabin boy to fetch some liquid refreshment. But there wasn't no answer. And they might 'a' been ringing yet as to any good it would do. They never did see that cabin boy, and the only one to eat the savory rabbit stew was the visiting chief."

"I don't--" observed Mrs. Lathrop, rocking faster.

"Well, Mrs. Lathrop, you're right about that," Susan confirmed, loosening her shawl, for the oil-stove was rapidly lifting the room's temperature. "I don't see, myself, why anybody should ever have known any better, and n.o.body would have, if it hadn't been as Jathrop took it into his head to talk to a newspaper man at Atlantic City on about the same day as I had him missing the cabin boy and refusing a helping to the rabbit stew. Mr. Kimball showed me the paper as came from New York wrapped around a new ledger he just received by express. The reporter had written two columns and over about the 'Klondike Bonanza King,' and if Jathrop had set his mind to makin' me out a Ananias and a Saphira boiled into one, he couldn't have succeeded better. He hasn't been in the Bahamas a _tall_. The yacht started for there, but it went to Cuba instead, and he and his friends only stayed in Cuba a week. From there they went down to Panama and looked over the ca.n.a.l as far as it's gone.

They spent the summer sailin' from one summer resort to another, and I must say I should think there was better ways of pa.s.sin' the time than that. When it comes to eatin', I'd about as leave eat the dishes of a cannibal cook as eat things made of the salt water that people go bathin' in, and that's what they do at Atlantic City. The minister showed me some candy 'Liza Em'ly sent him from Atlantic City in July, and I know what I'm talkin' about, for it was printed on the paper around each piece. 'Salt-water Taffy.' Think of that! It's plain to be seen that they ain't got any fresh water there, or they wouldn't use salt. Jathrop and the other millionaires, I suppose, drink nothin' but wine, but the poor folks must drink salt water or go thirsty. I suppose it saves salt in seasonin', but I'd rather have my vituals unseasoned than have 'em salted with water that folks has swum in. They certainly ain't got no enterprise, that's sure. If they had they'd pipe water--fresh water--from somewheres. And if there's no place near enough to pipe it from, they'd build cisterns. But water's not the only thing as shows their s.h.i.+ftlessness. Our town isn't exactly a metropolis, but we got a few cement sidewalks. Atlantic City ain't got a one. I heard about that long ago. And in these days of progress, too! Nothing but a board walk on its princ.i.p.al street--nothing a _tall_."

"What did--?" asked Mrs. Lathrop.

"He said a good deal more'n his prayers, I can tell you that. He said his object in going to the Bahamas, to which he never went, after all, was to look into the possibility of securin' a large tract of land there for the cultivation and growth of sisal. Now what under the sun would you suppose sisal was? I saw in the book that sisal was being grown in increasing quant.i.ties in the islands, and I just naturally supposed it was some sort of animal. It might of been buffalo, or it might of been guinea pigs, but when I spoke at the Sewing Society of how Jathrop had mentioned the great number of sisal, and Mrs. Allen says: 'What is sisal?' I just right then and there on the spur of the minute says: 'Why, don't you know? Sisal is a sort of small oxen striped like a zebra and spotted like a leopard.' And would you believe it, Mrs. Lathrop, when Mr. Kimball asked me that same question to-day, I said the very same thing--small oxen striped like a zebra and spotted like a leopard.

'That's what Mrs. Allen told me you said, Miss Clegg,' says he, 'but accordin' to the paper, Jathrop Lathrop don't quite agree with you.' I don't know, Mrs. Lathrop, I d'n know, I'm sure, why Jathrop should take pleasure in making me appear like a ignoramus, but there ain't no question about it that that's what he did when he gave that interview to that there reporter. 'What kind of animal is a sisal, then, Mr.

Kimball?' I asked, and you can believe me my blood was boilin' in my veins. 'It ain't no animal a _tall_,' he says. 'It's hemp what they make ropes out of to hang murderers with. And the seeds they feed canaries on.' 'Well,' I says, 'that may be the reporter's sisal, but it ain't mine, and it ain't Jathrop's. The newspapers never get nothin'

right nohow, but when it comes to reducin' cattle into rope and birdseed, they are certainly goin' one better on the Chicago pork packers.' In all my life I have never been a respecter of the untruth, but I know enough on the subject to tell a good lie when necessity calls upon me and to stick to it as long as it has an eyelid to hang by. But I will say this for your son Jathrop, Mrs. Lathrop, and that is that before he got done with that reporter, he didn't leave so much as a eyelash, let alone a lid. It wasn't only that he'd never been to those islands a _tall_, and I'd been tellin' everybody in town as how I'd had a letter from him there every week the whole summer through, but he must air his acquaintance with things on the islands just as if he'd been born and raised there. And it seems there ain't no natives within miles of the Bahamas, and hasn't been since Columbus and his people was there, goin' on fifteen hundred years ago. Columbus told 'em that he'd take 'em to the land where all their dead relatives and friends had gone to, a land flowin' with milk and honey, and he kept his word. Seems he s.h.i.+pped every last mother's son and daughter of 'em back to Spain with him, and left the islands bare for the next comers. It may have appeared a rather roundabout way for the native Bahamians to reach heaven and their departed folks, seeing as it led through hard work in the Spanish mines, but there ain't no question whatever that they every one got there in the end."

"You mean--" suggested Mrs. Lathrop.

"I mean that unless Lathrop or the reporter made it up, or the pair of 'em together, that n.o.body lives there now except whites and blacks, and there's not enough whites to make a nice shepherd's plaid out of the combination. But savagery, except for pirates, has never had any place there, and cannibalism is absolutely unknown. It's all very humiliating, and it'd 'a' been much better to let people ask me and never said nothing back a _tall_. When people is in the dark, they've got to imagine for themselves, and as long as they don't tell what they imagine to others, no piece in a newspaper can never make 'em blush. I can tell you it's learnt me a lesson as I won't soon forget. I'll never get over the way Mr. Kimball looked at me when he said as how sisal was hemp; and me thinking all the time it was a animal when it was a herb.

Well, Mrs. Lathrop, it's a ill wind that don't chill the shorn lamb. I'm that chilled that I feel I never shall talk again. I'll never say black is black or white is white until I've looked at the color twice with my gla.s.ses on. Accuracy is the best policy, I says, from this day henceforth."

"You might--" began Mrs. Lathrop sympathetically.

"That's true, too. I might have known that it didn't sound true to be getting letters every week from a man who went away to the Klondike and never sent his mother so much as a picture postal card in all the years he was there. But then, too, you've got to consider the kind of folks as you're telling things to, and with all due respect to the ladies of the Sewing Society, from Mrs. Allen to Gran'ma Mullins, they're not over-burdened with the kind of intellect as can add two and two and get the same answer twice in succession. There wasn't a one of 'em as thought of that, or they'd 'a' said it straight out, without once considering my feelings. And I'll say this much for you, Mrs. Lathrop: you're not the best housekeeper I ever see, and you're about a match for Mrs. Sperrit's cousin when it comes to being practical, but you have got some brains, and I'd no more think of trying to deceive you than I'd think of trying to deceive Judge Fitch when he'd got a big retainer to get the truth out of me."

Mrs. Lathrop leaned down and turned out the oil burner.

"Was that--?"

"No, it wasn't all. There was something else that has set me all of a flutter. If it wasn't as you never can tell whether a newspaper is voracious or just bearing false witness, I'd certainly feel as if Jathrop was playing fast and loose with my affections. I can remember, and you can remember, too, when the freedom of the press didn't mean freedom to make a Pike's Peak out of a ant hill. But in these days there's no telling whether, when we read of a poor soul being attacked by a wild beast, it's a jungle tiger or just a pet yellow kitten. Folks would rather read about the tiger than the kitten, and so the papers give 'em what they want without any regard for the real facts a _tall_.

Elijah Doxey, who's a real editor if there ever was one, and knows all about the paper business, says that the newspaper, like everything else, has to keep abreast of the times or go to the wall, and that since people in these days 'ld rather read fiction than history, it stands to reason a paper can't stand in its own light by sticking always to cold commonplace facts."

"Did the--?" Mrs. Lathrop attempted mildly to question.

"I don't know, I d'n know, I'm sure, Mrs. Lathrop. But the interview with Jathrop wasn't all interview, by no means. It said a lot about his party, and it mentioned each of the millionaires as was in it. Seems the interview was given on one of those Atlantic City board walks, and it was given--from what on earth do you think, Mrs. Lathrop? From a wheel chair. Jathrop in a wheel chair! Think of that! And not alone, either.

'Beside him,' wrote the interviewer, 'was the beautiful, dark-eyed Cuban senora who, rumor says, is soon to become his bride.' My lands! If it hadn't been for Mr. Kimball's apple barrel, I certainly would have dropped. It would 'a' been bad enough if they was both strong and well, but to think of Jathrop being too weak to walk and going to marry a foreigner no more robust than himself. You can't imagine the shock it give me. For a minute I was clean speechless, and I'd 'a' been dumb yet, I do believe, if it wasn't as I begun to figure things out in my head and got sight of a ray of hope. Just as like as not, I says, Jathrop was suffering from the sudden change of climate,--from the Klondike to Cuba seems to me a pretty rigorous switch for any const.i.tution,--and the Cuban woman was more'n likely his trained nurse fetched from the island.

Either that or the woman was just recovering from a illness, and Jathrop got in to ride with her out of pure kindness of heart. Then, too, I remembered that: 'rumor says,' and cheered right up. Rumor never told the truth yet, as far as I know, and it's not in reason to believe the shameless thing is going to reform in these degenerate days. Jathrop may be going to marry the senora, I don't say he isn't, and I don't say he is. But before I believe it, I've got to have some better authority than what rumor says. He's steered clear of wives in the Klondike, and he's steered clear of 'em in other places, and I don't see as there's any reason to think his steering apparatus come to grief while he was in Cuba. 'How's Susan Clegg?' That was what he wrote in the first letter you'd had from him in a dog's age, Mrs. Lathrop, and it showed pretty clear to me who he was thinking of while engaged in the steering operation."

"You don't think--" Mrs. Lathrop began distressfully.

"No man as was seriously sick, Mrs. Lathrop, ever talked two whole long newspaper columns to a reporter. You can bank on that. He was well enough to make me out the king of prevaricators, and it took some strength and a good deal of attention to small details to do it, and as the Cuban senora never said one word in all that time, I can't think as she is cutting any figure eights in his affairs. Consequently, I don't believe it'll pay either of us to do any great lot of worrying."

"If--" Mrs. Lathrop attempted once more to interpolate.

"That's just what I told Mr. Kimball. 'If Mrs. Lathrop could only see this paper,' I says, 'I know she'd be delighted.' It stands to reason as a mother must be proud of a son who, after having no more sense than to take a kicking cow for a bad debt, goes to the Klondike and comes back a millionaire; but it stands to reason, too, that she'd be more proud of him to get two columns of free advertising in a New York paper that can sell its columns to the department stores for real money. Well, I asked him for the paper just to show you, and though he didn't feel to part with it, just the same he did in the end, and I carried it away in triumph."

"You've brought--"