IX
WORSE, AND MORE OF IT
As if that were not enough for one day, in the afternoon Johnetta Ackerley called. She saw Mrs. Budlong at an upper window and waved to her as she came along the walk. When the cook arrived upstairs like a grand piano moving in, Mrs. Budlong said in an icy tone:
"Not at home."
"But I told her you was. And she seen you at the windy."
"Not!—at!—home!"
"But I'm after telling her—"
Mrs. Budlong could be as stern as steel with her husband or her servants. She cowed Brigida into lumbering downstairs with the message. Mrs. Budlong went to the window to triumph over her victim's retreat in a panic of confusion.
Instead, she heard a light patter of footsteps and Johnetta Ackerley hurried into the room.
"Oh, my dear, are you ill? Pardon my coming right up, but the cook takes so long and I was so worried for fear you were—but you aren't, are you?"
Mrs. Budlong was at bay. She glared at the intruder and threw up her chin. Johnetta stared at her aghast.
"Why, my dear! you aren't mad at me, are you?"
Mrs. Budlong smiled bitterly, and said nothing. Johnetta shrilled:
"Why, what have I done?"
As a matter of fact, what had she done? All that Mrs. Budlong could think of was her husband's unused suggestion for a war with Sally Swezey. She spoke through locked teeth:
"It's not what you've done but what you've said."
"Why, what have I said?"
"You know well enough what you've been saying behind my back, and you needn't think that people don't come and tell me. I name no names, but I know! Oh, I know!"
Now, of course, everybody says things behind everybody else's back that nobody would care to have repeated to anybody. Through Johnetta Ackerley's memory dashed a hundred caustic comments she had made on Mrs. Budlong. She blushed and sighed, turned away and closed the door after her, like the last line of an elegy.
A surge of triumph swept over Mrs. Budlong. Success at last.
Then the door opened and Johnetta reappeared on the sill with a look of angelic contrition.
"I hardly know what to say," she said. "Of course, I must admit I did rather forget myself. It was at the last meeting of the Progressive Euchre Club and everybody was criticizing you for having solid gold prizes when they were at your house. They said it was vulgar ostentation. I didn't say anything for the longest time, but finally when they all said your money had gone to your head, hadn't it, I admit I did mumble, 'It seems so.' But it is only what everybody else says all the time, and I assure you I didn't really mean it. Of course nobody can behave just the same after they are a millionaire as they did before. But I am awfully fond of you and—and—"
"It was most disloyal," said Mrs. Budlong. "And to think that after tearing me to pieces behind my back, you could come and call on me."
It was a fine speech, but after she heard herself say it, Mrs. Budlong had a sinking feeling that if she herself had never called on anybody she had not criticized she would have stayed at home all her life. But Johnetta Ackerley took another line. She threw herself on Mrs. Budlong's mercy, and if Mrs. Budlong boasted of anything more than another it was her mercy.
"I have just been at the church," said Johnetta, "helping to decorate it for Christmas week, and I was hanging up a big motto 'Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men' and I think it ought to apply to women, too. I grovel in apology and I pray you to forgive me. You can't refuse your forgiveness when I implore it, can you?"
Mrs. Budlong wanted to but could not and the two women fell about each other's throats and exchanged moan for moan. As they were comfortably dabbing each other's tears from their cheeks and sniffing their own and laughing cosily after the rain, Johnetta giggled and sobbed at once:
"The idea of your thinking I didn't just love you—and me working my fingers to the bone making a Christmas present for you!"