CHAPTER XVI
"Most like it's the Spring," said Martha. It was Memorial Day. She and Miss Lang were at home, sitting together in Claire's pretty room, through the closed blinds of which the hot May sun sent tempered shafts of light.
Claire regarded Mrs. Slawson steadily for a moment, seeming to make some sort of mental calculation meanwhile.
"Well, if it is the Spring," she observed at length with a whimsical little frown knitting her brows, "it's mighty forehanded, for it began to get in its fine work as far back as January. Ever since the time Sam went to the Sanatorium you've been losing flesh and color, Martha, and—I don't know what to do about it!"
"Do about it!" repeated Mrs. Slawson. "Why, there ain't nothin' to do about it, but let the good work go on. I'm in luck, if it's true what you say. Believe me, there's lots o' ladies in this town, is starvin' their stummicks an' everythin' else about 'em, an' payin' the doctors high besides, just to get delicate-complected, an' airy-fairy figgers, same's I'm doin' without turnin' a hand. Did you never hear o' bantin'? It's what the high-toned doctors recommend to thin down ladies who have it so comfortable they're uncomfortable. The doctors prescribes exercise for'm, an' they take it, willin' as doves, whereas if their husbands said, 'Say, old woman, while you're restin', just scrub down the cellar-stairs good—that'll take the flesh off'n you quicker'n anythin' else I know!' they'd get a divorce from him so quick you couldn't see 'em for dust. No, they'd not do anythin' so low as cellar-stairs, to save their lives. You couldn't please 'em better'n to see another woman down on her marra-bones workin' for 'em, but get down themselves? Not on your sweet life, they wouldn't. They'd rather bant. Bantin' sounds so much more stylisher than scrubbin'."
Claire smiled, but her eyes were very serious as she said, "All the same, Martha, I believe you are grieving your heart out for Sam. I've been watching you when you didn't know it, and I've seen the signs and the tokens. Your heart has the hunger-ache in it!"
"Now, what do you think o' that!" exclaimed Mrs. Slawson. "What do you know about hearts an' hunger-aches, I should like to know. You, an unmarried maiden-girl, without so much as the shadder or the skelegan of a beau, as far as I can see. What do you know about a woman hungerin' an' cravin' for her own man? You have to have reelly felt them things yourself, to know the signs of 'em in other folks."
Claire's lip trembled, but she did not reply.
When Martha spoke again it was as if she had replied.
"O, go 'way! You ain't never had a leanin' in any gen'l'man's direction, I'd be willin' to wager. An' yet, I may as well tell you, you been gettin' kinder white an' scrawny yourself lately, beggin' your pardon for bein' so bold as notice it. Mind, I ain't the faintest notion of holdin' it against you! I know better than think you been settin' your affections on anybody. There's other things besides love gives you that tired feelin'. What you need is somethin' to brace you up, an' clear your blood, like Hoodses Sassperilla. Everybody feels the way you do, this time o' year. I heard a young saleslady (she wasn't a woman, mind you, she was a sales_lady_), I heard a young saleslady in the car the other mornin' complain—she was the reel dressy kind, you know, with more'n a month's pay of hair, boilin' over on the back of her head in puffs an' things—the gallus sort that, if you want to buy a yard o' good flannen off her, will sass you up an' down to your face, as fresh as if she was your own daughter—she was complainin' 'the Spring always made her feel so sorter, kinder, so awful la-anguid.'"
"Martha, dear," broke in Claire irrelevantly, "I wonder if you'd mind very much if I told Mr. Ronald the truth. He thinks you were an old family servant. He thinks you nursed me till I was able to walk."
Martha considered. "Well, ain't that the truth?" she asked blandly. "I lived out from the time I was twelve years old. That was in Mrs. Granville's mother's house. When I was sixteen I went to Mrs. Granville's. I was kitchen-maid there first-off, an' gradjelly she promoted me till I was first housemaid. I never left her till I got married. If that don't make me an old family servant, I'd like to know."
"But he thinks you were an old family servant in our house."
"Well, bless your heart, that's his business, not mine. How can I help what he thinks?"
"Didn't you tell him, Martha dear, that you nursed me till I was able to walk?"
"Shoor I did! An' it's the livin' truth. What's the matter with that? Believe me, you wasn't good for more than a minit or two more on your legs, when I got you into your bed that blessed night. You was clean bowled over, an' you couldn't 'a' walked another step if you'd been killed for it. Didn't I nurse you them days you was in bed, helplesslike as a baby? Didn't I nurse you till you could walk?"
"Indeed you did. And that's precisely the point!" said Claire. "If Mr. Ronald—if Mrs. Sherman knew the truth, that I was poor, homeless, without a friend in New York the night you picked me up on the street, and carried me home and cared for me without knowing a thing about me, they mightn't—they wouldn't have taken me into their house and given me their little boy to train. And because they wouldn't, I want to tell them. I want to square myself. I ought to have told them long ago. I want—"
"You want 'em to bounce you," observed Mrs. Slawson calmly. "Well, there's always more'n one way of lookin' at things. For instance any good chambermaid, with experience, will tell you there's three ways of dustin'. The first is, do it thora, wipin' the rungs o' the chairs, an' the backs o' the pictures, an' under the books on the table like. The second is, just sorter flashin' your rag over the places that shows, an' the third is—pull down the shades. They're all good enough ways in their own time an' place, an' you foller them accordin' to your disposition or, if you're nacherelly particular, accordin' to the other things you got to do, in the time you got to do 'em in. Now, I'm particular. I'm the nacherelly thora kind, but if I'm pressed, an' there's more important things up to me than the dustin', I give it a lick an' a promise, same as the next one, an' let it go at that, till the time comes I can do better. Life's too short to fuss an' fidget your soul out over trifles. It ain't always what you want, but what you must. You sometimes got to cut short at one end so's you can piece out at another, an' you can take it from me, you only pester folks by gettin' 'm down where they can't resist you, an' forcin' a lot of hard facks down their throats, which ain't the truth anyhow, an' which they don't want to swaller on no account. What do they care about the machinery, so long as it turns out the thing they want? Believe me, it's foolishness to try to get 'em back into the works, pokin' about among the inside wheels an' springs, an' so forth. You likely get knocked senseless by some big thing-um-bob you didn't know was there. Now I know just eggsackly what's in your mind, but you're wrong. You think I told Mr. Ronald fibs. I didn't tell'm fibs. I just give'm the truth the way he'd take it, like you give people castor-oil that's too dainty to gullup it down straight. Some likes it in lemon, an' some in grobyules, but it's castor-oil all the same. He wanted to know the truth about you, an' I let him have it, the truth bein' you're as fine a lady as any in the land. If I'd happened to live in Grand Rapids at the time, I'd most likely of lived out with your grandmother, an' been an old family servant in your house like I was at Mrs. Granville's, an' I certainly would of nursed you if I'd had the chanct. It was just a case o' happenso, my not havin' it. The right kind o' folks here in New York is mighty squeamish about strangers. They want recommendations—they want 'em because they want to be sure the ones they engage is O.K. That's all recommendations is for, ain't it? Now I knew the minit I clapped eye to you, that, as I say, you was as grand a lady as any in the land, an' that bein' the case, what was the use o' frettin' because I hadn't more than your sayso to prove it. But if I'd pulled a long face to Mrs. Sherman, an' told her, hesitatin'-like an' nervous, about—well, about what took place that night, she, not havin' much experience of human nature (only the other kind that's more common here in New York City), she'd have hemmed, an' hawed, an' thought she'd better not try it, seein' Radcliffe is such an angel-child an' not to be trained except by a A-I Lady."
"But the truth," persisted Claire.
"I tell the truth," Mrs. Slawson returned with quiet dignity. "I only don't waste time on trifles."
"It is not wasting time on trifles to be exact and accurate. An architect planning a house must make every little detail true, else when the house goes up, it won't stand."
"Don't he have to reckon nothin' on the give or not-give of the things he's dealin' with?" demanded Martha. "I'm only a ignorant woman, an' I ask for information. When you're dress-makin' you have to allow for the seams, an' when you're makin'—well, other things, you have to do the same thing, only spelled a little different—you have to allow for the seems. Most folks don't do it, an' that's where a lot o' trouble comes in, or so it appears to me."
Claire twisted her ring in silence, gazing down at it the while as if the operation was, of all others, the most important and absorbing.
"We may not agree, Martha dear," she said at last, "but anyway I know you're good, good, good, and I wouldn't hurt your feelings for the world."
"Shoor! I know you wouldn't! An' they ain't hurt. Not in the least. You got one kinder conscience an' I got another, that's all. Consciences is like hats. One that suits one party would make another look like a guy. You got to have your own style. You got to know what's best for you, an' then stick to it!"
"And you won't object if I tell Mr. Ronald?"
"Objeck? Certainly not! Tell'm anything you like. I always was fond o' Mr. Ronald myself. I never thought he was as hard an' stern with a body as some thinks. Some thinks he's as hard as nails, but—"
"O, I'm sure he's not," cried Claire with unexpected loyalty. "His manner may seem a little cold and proud sometimes, but I know he's very kind and generous."
"Certaintly. So do I know it," said Mrs. Slawson. "I don't say I mayn't be mistaken, but I have the highest opinion o' Lor—Mr. Ronald. I think you could trust'm do the square thing, no matter what, an' if he was kinder harsh doin' it, it's only because he expects a body to be perfect like he is himself."
In the next room Sabina was shouting at the top of her lungs—"Come back to ear-ring, my voornean, my voornean!"
"Ain't it a caution what lungs that child has—considerin'?" Martha reflected. "Just hear her holler! She'd wake the dead. I wonder if she's tryin' to beat that auta whoopin' it up outside. Have you ever noticed them autas nowadays? Some of them has such croupy coughs, before I know it I'm huntin' for a flannen an' a embrercation. 'Xcuse me a minit while I go answer the bell."
A second later she returned. A step in advance of her was Mr. Ronald.
"I am lucky to find you at home, Martha," were the first words Claire heard him say.
Martha, by dint of a little unobservable maneuvering, managed to superimpose her substantial shadow upon Claire's frail one.
"Yes, sir. When I get a day to lay off in, you couldn't move me outer the house with a derrick," she announced. "Miss Lang's here, too. Bein' so dim, an' comin' in outer the sunlight, perhaps you don't make out to see her."
"She ain't had time yet to pull herself together," Mrs. Slawson inwardly noted. "But, Lord! I couldn't stand in front of her forever, an' even if a girl is dead in love with a man (more power to her!), that's no reason she should go to the other extreme to hide it, an' pertend she's a cold storage, warranted to freeze'm stiff, like the artificial ice they're makin' these days, in the good old summertime."
The first cold greetings over, Claire started to retreat in the direction of the door.
"Excuse me, please—I promised Francie—She's expecting me—she's waiting—"
"Pshaw now, let her wait!" said Martha.
"Don't let me detain Miss Lang if she wishes to go," interposed Mr.
Ronald. "My business is really with you, Martha."
"Thank you, sir. But I'd like Miss Lang to stay by, all the same—that is, if you don't objeck."
"As a witness? You think I need watching, eh?"
"I think it does a body good to watch you, sir!"
"I didn't know before, you were a flatterer, Martha. But I see you're a lineal descendant of the Blarney Stone."
Claire felt herself utterly ignored. She tried again to slip away, but Martha's strong hand detained her, bore her down into the place she had just vacated.
"How is Francie?" inquired Mr. Ronald, taking the chair Mrs. Slawson placed for him.
"Fine—thank you, sir. The doctors says they never see a child get well so fast. She's grown so fat an' big, there ain't a thing belongs to her will fit her any longer, they're all shorter, an' she has to go whacks with Cora on her clo'es."
"Perhaps she'd enjoy a little run out into the country this afternoon in my car. The other children, too? And—possibly—Miss Lang."
"I'm sure they'd all thank you kindly, sir," began Martha, when—"I'm sorry," said Claire coldly, "I can't go."
Mr. Ronald did not urge her. "It is early. We have plenty of time to discuss the ride later," he observed quietly. "Meanwhile, what I have in mind, Martha, is this: Mr. Slawson has been at the Sanatorium now for—?"
"Goin' on five months," said Martha.
"And the doctors think him improved?"
"Well, on the whole, yes, sir. His one lung (sounds kinder Chineesy, don't it?), his one lung ain't no worse—it's better some—only he keeps losin' flesh an' that puzzles'm."
"Do you think he is contented there?"
"He says he is. He says it's the grand place, an' they're all as good to'm as if he was the king o' Harlem. You seen to that, sir—he says. An' Sam, he's always pationate, no matter what comes, but—"
"Well—but?"
"But—only just, it ain't home, you know, sir!"
"I see. And the doctors think he ought to stay up there? Not return home—here, I mean?"
"That's what they say."
"Have you—the means to keep him at the Sanatorium over the five months we settled for in January?"
"No, sir. That is, not—not yet."
"Would you like to borrow enough money to see him through the rest of the year?"
Martha deliberated. "I may have to, sir," she said at last with a visible effort. "But I don't like to borrer. I notice when folks gets the borrerin'-habit they're slow payin' back, an' then you don't get thanks for a gift or you don't get credit for a loan."
This time it was Mr. Ronald who seemed to be considering. "Right!" he announced presently. "I notice you go into things rather deep, Martha."
Mrs. Slawson smiled. "Well, when things is deep, that's the way you got to go into them. What's on your plate you got to chew, an' if you don't like it, you can lump it, an' if you don't like to lump it, you can cut it up finer. But there it is, an' there it stays, till you swaller it, somehow."
"Do you enjoy or resent the good things that are, or seem to be, heaped on other people's plates?"
"Why, yes. Certaintly I enjoy 'em. But, after all, the things taste best that we're eatin' ourselves, don't they? An' if I had money enough like some, so's I didn't have to borrer to see my man through, why, I don't go behind the door to say I'd be glad an' grateful."
"Would you take the money as a gift, Martha?"
"You done far more than your share already, sir."
"Then, if you won't take, and you'd rather not borrow, we must find another way. A rather good idea occurred to me last night. I've an uncommonly nice old place up in New Hampshire—in the mountains. It was my father's—and my grandfather's. It's been closed for many years, and I haven't given it a thought, except when the tax-bills came due, or the caretaker sent in his account. It's so far away my sister won't live there, and—it's too big and formidable for one lone man to summer in by himself. Now, why wouldn't it be a capital idea for you to pack up your goods and chattels here, and take your family right up there—make that your home? The lodge is comfortable and roomy, and I don't see why Mr. Slawson couldn't recover there as well, if not better, than where he is. I'd like to put the place in order—make some improvements, do a little remodeling. I need a trusty man to oversee the laborers, and keep an eye and close tab on the workmen I send up from town. If Mr. Slawson would act as superintendent for me, I'd pay him what such a position is worth, and you would have your house, fuel, and vegetables free. Don't try to answer now. You'd be foolish to make a decision in a hurry that you might regret later. Write to your husband. Talk it over with him. He might prefer to choose a job for himself. And remember—it's 'way out in the country. The children would have to walk some distance to school."
"Give 'em exercise, along of their exercises," said Martha.
"The church in the village is certainly three miles off."
"My husband don't go to church as reg'lar as I might wish," Mrs. Slawson observed. "I tell'm, the reason men don't be going to church so much these days, is for fear they might hear something they believe."
"You would find country life tame, perhaps, after the city."
"Well, the city life ain't been that wild for me that I'd miss the dizzy whirl. An' anyhow—we'd be together!" Martha said. "We'd be together, maybe, come our weddin'-day. The fourth o' July. We never been parted oncet, on that day, all the fifteen years we been married," she mused, "but—"
"Well?"
"But, come winter, an' Mis' Sherman opens the house again, an' wants
Miss Claire back, who's goin' to look out for her?"
"Why—a—as to that—" said Mr. Ronald, so vaguely it sounded almost supercilious to Claire.
In an instant her pride rose in revolt, rebelling against the notion he might have, that she could possibly put forth any claim upon his consideration.
"O, please, please don't think of me, Martha," she cried vehemently. "I have entirely other plans. You mustn't give me, or my affairs, a thought, in settling your own. You must do what's best for you. You mustn't count for, or on, me in the least. I have not told you before, but I've made up my mind I must resign my position at Mrs. Sherman's, anyway. I'll write her at once. I'll tell her myself, of course, but I tell you now to show that you mustn't have me in mind, at all, in making your plans."
Martha's low-pitched voice fell upon Claire's tense, nervous one with soothing calmness.
"Certaintly not, Miss Claire," she said.
"And you'll write to your husband and report to him what I propose," suggested Mr. Ronald, as if over Claire's head.
"Shoor I will, sir!"
"And if he likes the idea, my secretary will discuss the details with him later. Wages, duties—all the details."
"Yes, sir."
"And you may tell the children I'll leave orders that the car be sent for them some other day. I find it's not convenient, after all, for me to take them myself this afternoon. I spoke too fast in proposing it. But they'll not be disappointed. Mr. Blennerhasset will see to that. I leave town to-night to be gone—well, indefinitely. In any case, until well on into the autumn or winter. Any letter you may direct to me, care of Mr. Blennerhasset at the office, will be attended to at once. Good-by, Martha!—Miss Lang—" He was gone.
When the car had shot out of sound and sight, Martha withdrew from the window, from behind the blinds of which she had been peering eagerly.
"He certainly is a little woolly wonder, meaning no offense," she observed with a deep-drawn sigh. "Yes, Mr. Ronald is as good as they make 'em, an' dontcher forget it!"
She seated herself opposite Claire, drawing her chair quite close.
"Pity you an' him is so on the outs. I'm not speakin' o' him, s'much, but anybody with half an eye can see you got a reg'lar hate on'm. Any one can see that!"
A moment of silence, and then Claire flung herself, sobbing and quivering, across Martha's lap, ready to receive her.
"O, Martha!" she choked.