Susan Clegg and Her Love Affairs Part 4

"Why, there's Gran'ma Mullins!" Mrs. Macy exclaimed. "She's surely coming to see you, too."

Both ladies remained silent, watching the progress of Gran'ma Mullins.

Gran'ma Mullins arrived a good deal out of breath. Susan brought a chair out of the house for her.

"I come to--tell you," panted the new visitor as soon as she had attained unto the chair, "that Jathrop's--things is--coming."

"What things?" asked Susan.

"They all come on--the ten o'clock--from the junction; Hiram is helping unload."

"What's he brought?" Susan asked.

"Well, he's brought an automobile," said Gran'ma Mullins, "and a lot of other trunks and boxes."

"An automobile!" exclaimed Mrs. Macy, "well, he _is_ rich then!"

"I wouldn't be too sure of that," said Susan, "some very poor folks is riding that way nowadays."

"And he brought three trunks and seventeen big wooden boxes," continued Gran'ma Mullins, "big boxes."

"Three trunks and sev-en-teen--Three trunks and sev-en--" Susan's voice faded into nothingness.

"Goodness knows what's in them," said Gran'ma Mullins. "Hiram was getting so hot unloading that I wanted him to stop and let me fan him, but he wouldn't hear to it. Hiram's so brave. If he said he'd unload something, he'd unload it if he dropped dead under it and was smashed to nothing."

There was a pause of unlimited bewilderment while Mrs. Macy and Susan raised Jathrop upon the pedestal erected by his three trunks, seventeen boxes and the automobile.

"And to think of his having a Chinese wife," Susan exclaimed, the keen edge of sorrow cutting crossways through all her words.

It was just here that Mrs. Lupey now appeared, approaching at a good pace. Mrs. Lupey was a large, imposing woman and wore a silk dolman with fringe. It was immediately necessary for the party to adjourn to the sitting-room, as the piazza was strictly limited.

It was Mrs. Lupey who without loss of time did away with the Lathrop parentage of the young Chinese.

"Why, he's his servant, of course," she said in a lofty scorn. "I'm surprised you didn't know that by his age."

"I did think of his age," Susan said, "but I read once in some paper as the women in China get married when they're four years old, so you'd never be able to tell nothing by the age of no one there. Well, well, and so she isn't his wife, nor yet his son. Well, I'm glad--for Mrs.

Lathrop's sake."

"But if Jathrop's really got a automobile and seventeen trunks, he _must_ be awful rich," said Mrs. Macy. "It'll be a great thing for this town if Jathrop's rich. He'd ought to be very grateful to the place where his happy childhood memories run around barefoot."

"Oh, he'll remember," said Gran'ma Mullins, "it's easy to remember when you've got the money to do it. But I hope to heaven he won't set Hiram off on that track again. Hiram does so want to go away and make a fortune; I'm worried for fear he will all the time. And Lucy wants him to, too. I can't understand a woman as wants a fortune worse than she wants Hiram. Lucy doesn't seem to want Hiram 'round at all any more. If he's asleep, she starts right in making the bed the same as if he wasn't in it, and if she's sewing, he don't dare go within the length of her thread.

"Life has come to a pretty pa.s.s when a wife'll run a needle into a husband just for the simple pleasure of feeling him go away when she sticks him." Gran'ma Mullins sighed.

"I wonder what they're doing now!" Mrs. Macy said.

All four turned at this and looked toward the Lathrop house together. It was quiet as usual.

"I d'n know as it changes my opinion of Jathrop much, that being his servant," said Miss Clegg suddenly. "It's kind of different, his handing his wife or his son over to me; but his heathen Chinee servant! I don't know as I'm very pleased."

"Pleased!" said Mrs. Lupey. "Why, in San Francisco they make 'em live underground like rats."

"Maybe that was why you dreamed he was a cat, Susan?" suggested Mrs.

Macy, whose brain seemed to grasp at the subject under consideration with special illumination.

Susan rose. "I think you'd better go," she said abruptly, "I've got to get dinner. My mind's in no state to deal with all these sides of Jathrop and his Chinaman just now."

What the day brought up the street and in and around Mrs. Lathrop's house would take too long to catalogue. Suffice it to say that poor Mrs.

Lathrop, who had been for long years the veriest zero in the life of the community, became suddenly its center and apex.

When Jathrop went to New York at the end of the week, he left his mother not only sitting, but rocking in the lap of luxury, with her head leaning back against more luxury and her feet braced firmly on yet more luxury. Even her friend over the way was rendered utterly content.

And the pleasantest part of it all was the way that it affected Susan Clegg. As Susan sat by Mrs. Lathrop and turned upon her that tender gaze which one old friend may turn on another old friend when the latter's son has suddenly bloomed forth golden, her full heart found utterance thus:

"Well, Mrs. Lathrop--well, Mrs. Lathrop, I guess no one will ever doubt anything again. Talk about dreams, _now_! I dreamed Jathrop was a cat, and the reason was that it's a well-known fact that cats _always_ come back. Why, Mrs. Macy told me once how she chloroformed a cat, and put it in a flour sack with a stone, and put the sack in a hogshead of water, and put the cover on the hogshead, and put a stone--another stone--on that, and went to church to hear the minister preach on 'Do unto others as you do unto others,' and when she came back, the cat was asleep on top of the hogshead, and Mrs. Macy got the worst shock she ever got. So you can easy see why I dreamed Jathrop was a cat; and he _did_ come back.

"I declare that'll always be the pleasantest recollection of my life, how I met him at the station and how we came chatting up the street together. How he has improved, Mrs. Lathrop--not but what he was always handsome! There was always something n.o.ble about Jathrop. Gran'ma Mullins said yesterday as he made her think of a man she saw in a play once as stood on his crossed legs in front of a fire and smoked. So careless.

"And then his bringing Mrs. Macy that polar-bear skin! Mrs. Macy says if there was one spot in the whole wide world where she never expected to set foot it was on top of a polar bear, and now she can stand on her head on one if the fancy takes her. I saw the minister when I was down in the square to-night, and he told me not to speak of it, but he thought a service of prayer for any stocks and mines as Jathrop has would be the only fitting form of grat.i.tude which a reverent and affectionate congregation might offer to the great and glorious generosity of him who is going to give us a steeple after all these years of finis.h.i.+ng flat at the top. Mr. Kimball came out to tell me to ask you if you'd like some one to come regularly for your order, and he says he'll keep caviare from now on, just on the chance of Jathrop's being here to eat it; he says why he didn't keep it before was he thought it was a kind of chamois skin.

"It's beautiful to see the faces down-town, Mrs. Lathrop; you never saw nothing like it. Everybody's just so happy. Hiram is grinning from ear to ear over being took to the Klondike, and everybody is swore to not let Gran'ma Mullins know he's going. He's going to climb out of the window at night and get away that way, and Gran'ma Mullins won't mind what she feels when he really does come back a millionaire, too. She'll be just like you, Mrs. Lathrop; no one minds anything once it's over.

Little misunderstandings are easy forgot.

"And to think there's been a blue automobile puffing at these very kitchen steps! To think you and me was over to Meadville and back between dinner and supper one day! I guess Mrs. Lupey never got such a start. She'd been all the morning getting home on the train and was only just putting her bonnet away in its box when we rolled up. I never enjoyed nothing like that roll up in all my life! I never see automobiles from the automobile's side before, but now I can. When a automobile goes over a duck it makes all the difference in the world whether it's your automobile or your duck.

"And then Jathrop's generosity! Not but what he was always generous.

Deacon White says he will say that for Jathrop, he was always generous.

And look what he brought home. Every child in town is just about out of their senses. Felicia Hemans is crazy about the earrings, and 'Liza Em'ly won't never take off the bracelet. Mr. Sh.o.r.es can't keep the tears back when he looks at his watch charm. I think it was so kind of Jathrop. But Jathrop was always kind; you know yourself that a kinder creature never lived than Jathrop. I always said that for him.

"And then his having a new fence built around the cemetery. It was thoughtful, and Judge Fitch says n.o.body can't say more. But Judge Fitch says Jathrop was always thoughtful; he says he's been interested in him always just for that very reason. Judge Fitch says Jathrop's nature was always that deep kind that's easy overlooked. He says he'll have to confess to his shame that some of the time he overlooked him himself. He says it's very difficult to understand a deep nature, because if a deep nature don't make money, there's hardly any way of ever knowing that it really was deep; people just think you're a fool then--like we always thought Jathrop was. You know, n.o.body ever thought he ever could amount to nothing. You know that yourself, Mrs. Lathrop. But making money lets you see just what a person's got in 'em and see it plain.

"I'm sure for all I've loved Jathrop as if he was going to be my own, for years and years and years, still I never credited him with being the man he is. I supposed he was a tramp somewhere--yes, I really did, Mrs.

Lathrop, you may believe me or not, but that's just what I thought when I thought anything at all about him--which wasn't often.

"Everybody in the whole place is busy remembering pleasant things about him now. The minister's wife remembers his coming to a Christmas tree once a long time ago when they both was little; she says she hasn't thought of it in thirty years, but she remembers it as plain as day now,--he had on a coat and a little tie.

"And Gran'ma Mullins says she never will forget the day before he was born, for she went to town and dropped her little bead bag, and you know how much she thinks of her little bead bag now when the beads is all worn off, so you can think what store she set by it when the beads were still on, and so she was all back and forth along the road hunting for it the whole blessed afternoon, and when she found it and went home, she _was_ tired, and she slept late next morning because her husband was out very late the night before, and when he slept late she always slept late, 'cause she said sleeping late was almost the only treat he ever give her, and, anyhow, when they did wake up and get up and get out, there was Jathrop, and she says she shall never forget her joy over having found the bead bag again.

"Mrs. Macy says she remembers the day he hid, and you thought he was in the cistern, and you was kneeling down looking in when he jumped out from behind the stove and give you such a start you went in head first.

"I remember that day myself, too--father was insisting he was paralyzed then, and mother and me wouldn't take his word for it, and we fully expected he'd race over and help haul you out, but all he said was, 'She'll have to manage the best she can--I'm paralyzed,' and we really began to believe him from then on.

"The minister says he shall always remember how well he looked when he put on long trousers; the minister's preparing a little paper on Jathrop to read at the Sunday-school annual, and he says he shall begin with the day he put on long trousers and then mark his rise step by step. The minister's so pleased over Jathrop's patting Brunhilde Susan on the head; he says there are pats and pats, but that pat that Jathrop give Brunhilde Susan was what he calls, in pure and Biblical simplicity, _a_ pat."

Susan paused. Mrs. Lathrop just felt her diamond solitaires, glanced at the new kitchen range, and was silent.

"And then, Mrs. Lathrop, that dear blessed little Chinese angel--I tell you I shall never forget that boy. I liked his face when I first laid eyes on him, and when I thought he was Jathrop's lawful wife, I loved him as I'd loved even a Chinaman if he was your daughter; but when I saw him cleaning up my sink, polis.h.i.+ng my pans, was.h.i.+ng out my cupboards and all that, just the same as yours, _then_ was when I see that a heathen Chinee has just the same right to go to heaven that anybody else has, and from then on I just trusted him completely and let him do every bit of the work till he left.

"I see now why everybody's so happy being a missionary if you can just get away and live with the Chinee. I'd have kept that boy if Jathrop hadn't wanted him--I'd have been very glad to; and it's awful to think we're keeping quiet, lovable natures like his from settling here. A girl might do much worse than marry that Chinese--_very_ much worse. A very great deal worse. Though I suppose many would hesitate."