CHAPTER III
For days Claire lay in a state of drowsy quiet.
She hardly realized the fact of her changed condition, that she was being cared for, ministered to, looked after. She had brief, waking moments when she seemed to be aware that Martha was bringing in her breakfast, or sitting beside her while she ate her dinner, but the intervening spaces, when "Ma" or Cora served, were dim, indistinct adumbrations of no more substantial quality than the vagrant dreams that ranged mistily across her relaxed brain.
The thin walls of the cheaply-built flat did not protect her from the noise of the children's prattling tongues and boisterous laughter, but the walls of her consciousness closed her about, as in a muffled security, and she slept on and on, until the exhausted body was reinforced, the overtaxed nerves infused with new strength.
Then, one evening, when the room in which she lay was dusky with twilight shadows, she realized that she was awake, that she was alive. She had gradually groped her way through the dim stretches lying between the region of visions and that of the actual, but the step into a full sense of reality was abrupt. She heard the sound of children's voices in the next room. So clear they were, she could distinguish every syllable.
"Say, now, listen, mother! What do you do when you go out working every day?" It was Cora speaking.
"I work."
"Pooh, you know what I mean. What kinder work do you do?"
For a moment there was no answer, then Claire recognized Martha's voice, with what was, undeniably, a chuckle tucked away in its mellow depths, where no mere, literal child would be apt to discern it.
"Stenography an' typewritin'!"
"Are you a stenographer an' typewriter, mother? Honest?"
"Well, you can take it from me, if I was it at all, I'd be it honest. What makes you think there's any doubt o' my being one? Don't I have the appearance of a high-toned young lady stenographer an' typewriter?"
A pause, in which Martha's substantial steps were to be heard busily passing to and fro, as she went about her work. Her mother's reply evidently did not carry conviction to Cora's questioning mind, for a second later she was up and at it afresh.
"Say, now, listen, mother—if you do stenography an' typewritin', what makes your apron so wet an' dirty, nights when you come home?"
"Don't you s'pose I clean my machine before I leave? What kinder typewriter d'you think I am? To leave my machine dirty, when a good scrub-down, with a pail o' hot water, an' a stiff brush, an' Sapolio, would put it in fine shape for the next mornin'."
"Mother—say, now, listen! I don't believe that's the way they clean typewriters. Miss Symonds, she's the Principal's seckerterry to our school, an' she sits in the office, she cleans her machine with oil and a little fine brush, like you clean your teeth with."
"What you been doin' in the Principal's office, miss, I should like to know? Been sent up to her for bad behavior, or not knowin' your lessons? Speak up now! Quick!"
"My teacher, she sends me on errands, an' I got a credit-card last week an', say, mother, I don't believe you're a young lady stenographer an' typewriter. You're just trying to fool me."
"Well, Miss Smarty, supposin' I am. So long's I don't succeed you've no kick comin'."
"Say, now listen, mother."
"Hush! You'll wake the pretty lady. Besides, too many questions before dinner is apt to spoil the appetite, to say nothin' of the temper. Turn to, an' lend a hand with them potatoes. Smash 'em good first, an' then beat 'em with a fork until they're light an' creamy, an' you won't have so much gimp left for snoopin' into things that don't concern you!"
"Say, now listen, mother!"
"Well?"
"Say, mother, something awful funny happened to me last night?"
"Are you tellin' what it was?"
"Something woke me up in the middle of the night, 'n' I got up out of bed, an' the clock struck four, 'n' then I knew it was mornin'. 'N' I heard a noise, 'n' I thought it was robbers, 'n' I went to the door, 'n' it was open, 'n' I went out into the hall, 'n'—"
"Well?"
"An' there was you, mother, on the stairs—kneelin'!"
"Guess you had a dream, didn't you?"
"No, I didn't."
"What'd I be kneelin' on the stairs for, at four o'clock in the mornin',
I should like to know?"
"It looked like you was brushin' 'em down."
"Me brushin' down Snyder's stairs! Well, now what do you think o' that?" Her tone of amazement, at the mere possibility, struck Cora, and there was a pause, broken at length by Martha, in a preternaturally solemn voice. "I s'pose you never tumbled to it I might be prayin'."
Cora's eyes grew wide. "Prayin'!" she repeated in an awed whisper. "But, mother, what'd you want to go out in the hall for, to pray on the stairs, at four o'clock in the mornin'?"
"Prayin' is a godly ack. Wheresomedever, an' _when_somedever you do it."
"But, mother, I don't believe you were prayin'. I heard the knockin' o' your whis'-broom. You was brushin' down the stairs."
"Well, what if I was? Cleanliness is next to godliness, ain't it? Prayin' an' cleanin', it amounts to the same thing in the end—it's just a question of what you clean, outside you or in."
"But say, now, listen, mother, you never cleaned down Mr. Snyder's stairs before. An' you been making shirtwaists for Mrs. Snyder, after you get home nights. I saw her with one of 'em on."
"Cora, do you know what happened to a little girl oncet who asked too many questions?"
"No."
"Well, I won't tell you now. It might spoil your appetite for dinner.
But you can take it from me, the end she met with would surprise you."
Shortly after, Claire's door quietly opened, and Cora, with a lighted taper in her hand, tiptoed cautiously in, like a young torch-bearing avant-courrière, behind whom Mrs. Slawson, laden with a wonderful tray, advanced processionally.
"Light the changelier, an' then turn it low," Martha whispered. "An' then you, yourself, light out, so's the pretty lady can eat in comfort."
The pretty lady, sitting up among her pillows, awake and alert, almost brought disaster upon the taper, and the tray, by exclaiming brightly, "Good-evening! I'm wide awake for good! You needn't tiptoe or hush any more. O, I feel like new! All rested and well and—ready again. And I owe it, every bit, to you! You've been so good to me!"
It was hard on Cora to have to obey her mother's injunction to "clear out," just when the pretty lady was beginning to demonstrate her right to the title. But Martha's word in her little household was not to be disputed with impunity, and Cora slipped away reluctantly, carrying with her a dazzling vision of soft, dark hair, starry blue-gray eyes, wonderful changing expressions, and, in and over all, a smile that was like a key to unlock hearts.
"My, but it's good to see you so!" said Mrs. Slawson heartily. "I was glad to have you sleep, for goodness knows you needed it, but if you'd 'a' kep' it up a day or so longer, I'd 'a' called in a doctor—shoor! Just as a kind of nacherl percaution, against your settlin' down to a permanent sleepin'-beauty ack, for, you can take it from me, I haven't the business address of any Beast, here in New York City, could be counted on to do the Prince-turn, when needed. There's plenty of beasts, worse luck! but they're on the job, for fair. No magic, lightenin'-change about them. They stay beasts straight through the performance."
Claire laughed.
"But, as it happened, I didn't need a Prince, did I? I didn't need a
Prince or any one else, for I had a good fairy godmother who—O, Mrs.
Slawson, I—I—can't—"
"You don't have to. An' I'm not Mrs. Slawson to you. I'm just Martha, for I feel like you was my own young lady, an' if you call me Mrs. Slawson, I won't feel so, an' here—now—see if you can clear up this tray so clean it'll seem silly to wash the dishes."
For a moment there was silence in the little room, while Claire tried to compose herself, and Martha pretended to be busy with the tray. Then Claire said, "I'll be very glad to call you Martha if you'll let me, and there's something I'd like to say right off, because I've been lying here quite a while thinking about it, and it's very important, indeed. It's about my future, and—"
"You'll excuse my interruckting, but before you reely get your steam up, let me have a word on my own account, an' then, if you want to, you can fire away—the gun's your own. What I mean is—I don't believe in lyin' awake, thinkin' about the future, when a body can put in good licks o' sleep, restin' from the past. It's against my principles. I'm by the day. I work by the day, an' I live by the day. I reasoned it out so-fashion: the past is over an' done with, whatever it may be, an' you can't change it, for all you can do, so what's the use? You can bet on one thing, shoor, whatever ain't dead waste in your past is, somehow, goin' to get dished up to you in your present, or your future. You ain't goin' to get rid of it, till you've worked it into your system for health, as our dear old friend, Lydia Pinkham, says. As to the future, the future's like a flea—when you can put your finger on the future, it's time enough to think what you'll do with it. Folkes futures'd be all right, if they'd just pin down a little tighter to to-day, an' make that square up, the best they can, with what they'd oughter do. Now, as to your future, there's nothin' to fret about for a minute in it. Jus' now, you're here, safe an' sound, an' here you're goin' to stay until you're well an' strong an' fed up, an' the chill o' Mrs. Daggett is out o' your body an' soul. You can take it from me, that woman is worse than any line-storm I ever struck for dampenin'-down purposes, an' freeze-out, an' generl cussedness. Your business to-day—now—is to get well an' strong. Then the future'll take care of itself."
"But meanwhile," Claire persisted, "I'm living on you. Eating food for which I haven't the money to pay, having loving care for which I couldn't pay, if I had all the money in the world. I guess I know how you settled my account with Mrs. Daggett. You gave her money you had been saving for the rent, and now you are working, slaving overtime, at four o'clock mornings, sweeping down the stairs, and late nights, making shirtwaists for Mrs. Snyder, to help supply what's lacking."
"Just you wait till I see that Cora," observed Mrs. Slawson irrelevantly. "That's the time her past will have slopped over on her present, so's she can't tell which is which. Just you wait till I see that Cora!"
"No, no—please! Martha dear! It wasn't Cora! She's not to blame. I'd have known sooner or later anyway. I always reason things out for myself. Please promise not to scold Cora."
"Scold Cora? Not on your life, my dear; I won't scold Cora. I'm old-fashioned in my ways with childern. I don't believe in scoldin'. It spoils their tempers, but a good lickin' oncet in a while, helps 'em to remember, besides bein' good for the circulation."
Claire was ready to cry. "It's all my fault," she lamented. "I was clumsy. I was tactless. And now Cora will be punished for it, and—I make nothing but trouble for you all."
"There, there! For mercy sake, don't take on like that. I promise I'll let Cora go free, if you'll sit back quiet an' eat your dinner in peace. So now! That's better!"
"What I was going to say, Martha dear, is, I'm quite well and strong now, and I want to set about immediately looking for something to do. I ought to be able to support myself, you know, for I'm able-bodied, and not so stupid but that I managed to graduate from college. Once, two summers ago, I tutored—I taught a young girl who was studying to take the Wellesley entrance exams. And I coached her so well she went through without a condition, and she wasn't very quick, either. I wonder if I couldn't teach?"
"Shoor, you could!"
"If I could get a position to teach in some school or some family, I could, maybe, live here with you—rent this room—unless you have some other use for it."
"Lord, no! I call it the boarder's room because this flat is really too rich for my blood, but you see I don't want the childern brought up in a bad neighborhood with low companions. Well, Sammy argued the rent was too high, till I told'm we'd let a room an' make it up that way, but what with this, an' what with that, we ain't had any boarders exceptin' now an' then some friend of himself out of a job, or one o' the girls, livin' out in the houses where I work, gettin' bounced suddent, an' in want of a bed, an' none of 'em ever paid us a cent or was asked for it."
"Well, if I could get a position as teacher or governess, I'd soon be able to pay back what you've laid out for me, and more besides, and—In the houses where you work, are there any children who need a governess? Any young girls who need a tutor? That's what I wanted to ask you, Martha."
Mrs. Slawson deliberated in silence for a moment.
"There's the Livingstons," she mused, "but they ain't any childern. Only a childish brother-in-law. He's not quite all there, as you might say. It'd be no use tryin' to learn him nothin', seein' he's so odd—seventy-odd—an' his habits like to be fixed. Then, there's the Farrands. But the girls goes to Miss Spenny's school, an' the son's at Columbia. It might upset their plans, if I was to suggest their givin' up where they're at, an' havin' you. Then there's the Grays, an' the Granvilles, an' the Thornes. Addin' 'em all together for childern, they'd come to about half a child a pair. Talk about your race suicide! They say they 'can't afford to have childern.' You can take it from me, it's the poor people are rich nowadays. We can afford to have childern, all right, all right. Then there's Mrs. Sherman—She's got one boy, but he—Radcliffe Sherman—well, he's a limb! A reg'lar young villain. You couldn't manage him. Only Lord Ronald can manage Radcliffe Sherman, an' he—"
"Lord Ronald?" questioned Claire, when Mrs. Slawson's meditation threatened to become static.
"Why, he's Mrs. Sherman's brother, Mr. Frank Ronald, an' no real lord could be handsomer-lookin', or grander-behavin', or richer than him. Mrs. Sherman is a widder, or a divorcy, or somethin' stylish like that. Anyhow, I worked for her this eight years an' more—almost ever since Radcliffe was born, an' I ain't seen hide nor hair o' any Mr. Sherman yet, an' they never speak o' him, so I guess he was either too good or too bad to mention. Mr. Frank an' his mother lives with Mrs. Sherman, an' what Mr. Frank says goes. His word is law. She thinks the world of'm, an' well she may, for he's a thorerbred. The way he treats me, for instants. You'd think I was the grandest lady in the land. He never sees me but it's, 'How d'do, Martha?' or, 'How's the childern an' Mr. Slawson these days?' He certainly has got grand ways with'm, Mr. Frank has. An' yet, he's never free. You wouldn't dare make bold with'm. His eyes has a sort o' keep-off-the-grass look gener'ly, but when he smiles down at you, friendly-like, why, you wouldn't call the queen your cousin. Radcliffe knows he can't monkey with his uncle Frank, an' when he's by, butter wouldn't melt in that young un's mouth. But other times—my! You see, Mrs. Sherman is dead easy. She told me oncet, childern ought to be brought up 'scientifically.' Lord! She said they'd ought to be let express their souls, whatever she means by that. I told her I thought it was safer not to trust too much to the childern's souls, but to help along some occasional with your own—the sole of your slipper. It was then she said she 'abserlootly forbid' any one to touch Radcliffe. She wanted him 'guided by love alone.' Well, that's what he's been guided with, an', you can take it from me, love's made a hash of it, as it ushally does when it ain't mixed with a little common sense. You'd oughta see that fella's anticks when his mother, an' Lord Ronald, ain't by. He'd raise the hair offn your head, if you hadn't a spear of it there to begin with. He speaks to the help as if they was dirt under his feet, an' he'd as lief lie as look at you, an' always up to some new devilment. It'd take your time to think fast enough to keep up with'm. But he ain't all bad—I don't believe no child is, not on your life, an' my idea is, he'd turn out O.K. if only he'd the right sort o' handlin'. Mr. Frank could do it—but when Lord Ronald is by, Radcliffe is a pet lamb—a little woolly wonder. You ast me why I call Mr. Frank Lord Ronald. I never thought of it till one time when Cora said a piece at a Sund'-School ent'tainment. I can't tell you what the piece was, for, to be perfectly honest, I was too took up, at the time, watchin' Cora's stockin', which was comin' down, right before the whole churchful. It reely didn't, but I seen the garter hangin', an' I thought it would, any minute. I remember it was somethin' about a fella called Lord Ronald, who was a reel thorerbred, just like Mr. Frank is. I recklect one of the verses went:
"'Lord Ronald had the lily-white dough—'
(to my way o' thinkin' it's no matter about the color, white or gold or just plain, green paper-money, so long's you've got it), anyhow, that's what it said in the piece—
"'Lord Ronald had the lily-white dough,
Which he gave to his cousin, Lady Clare.'
Say, wasn't he generous?—'give to his cousin—Lady Clare'—an'—good gracious! O, excuse me! I didn't mean to jolt your tray like that, but I just couldn't help flyin' up, for I got an idea! True as you live, I got an idea!"