1
On July 1, 1913, Greece delivered an ultimatum to Bulgaria. The G.A.R. turned out en masse for the bicentennial of the Battle of Gettysburg. The enfranchised women of Illinois promised a new era in politics, while deans of co-educational schools raved against the immorality of the Tango. Big panama hats were all the rage, with ankle length wrap-around skirts and frilly summer blouses. Girls ratted their hair and read Ford joke books to boys who sat beside them in the hammock holding a box of chocolate creams. Pitcher Brennan of the Phillies socked Manager McGraw of the New York Giants. The berry market was firm with a strong tone in swine. In Chicago the coroner promised he would do something about the crazy joy riders who had killed twenty people in Cook County during June.
But in the home of Temperance Crandall and her mother nothing else really mattered because now Temperance had a huge, careless, messy man to run after and do for.
If you had told her six months before that she would stand for a man and a cat in her best bedroom Temperance would probably have tongue-lashed you out of her front door and down the street. But there they were, sleeping all day and out all night. A scandal and a caution if you asked Temperance. She wanted to blurt it out to the whole town but for once she held her tongue.
It was a trial and a tribulation, a plague of boils which would have tried the patience of Job. The Lord could testify that Temperance Crandall had the disposition of an angel and the patience of a saint, but even she could be driven only so far and not one inch farther.
"He throws his dirty socks and underwear all over the room," she told her image in the mirror. "He misses the porcelain spittoon a foot."
She yanked the kid curlers out of her hair with a viciousness which added a tenth of an inch to the diameter of the bald spot which was starting on her crown, twisted her hair into a hard knot at the nape of her neck and punched in hairpins with fury.
The filthy man and his dirty cat in her very best brass bed, sleeping under her nicest patchwork quilts, dirtying her monogrammed pillow cases drawn taut and smooth over her finest goose-down pillows.
"My land-a-living, why do you tolerate the brute?" she asked her scowling image. "He's the seven plagues of Egypt, and that's a fact."
Biting her upper lip touched with the lightest possible suggestion of a black mustache, she pulled upon the pink strings of her corset until the black enamel eyelets threatened to rip completely out of the fabric, hastily donned a corset-cover, thrust her legs into a luxurious pair of lisle hose, snapped on garters hanging from the corset before and aft, pulled them a bit too tight, added a pair of stiff white petticoats to her ensemble, then plunged like a swimmer into the mass of calico, which, when jerked into position over her gaunt posterior, assumed the general outlines of a dress.
For a moment a buttonhook clicked on the beady jet buttons of her high shoes; there was a snap as she pinned the chain of her pince nez to her under-developed bosom. A touch of rose water now and the effect was complete.
Down the stairs she pattered while the grandfather clock in the hall boomed five of a bright July morning. Beyond the hall window the bachelor buttons wore their brightest blue; the four o'clocks were just closing for the day, but the pastel trumpets of the morning glories, the sun-loving zinnias and climbing roses were at their best in a garden which had not changed its general appearance in forty years.
She banged the hall door at the foot of the stairs with a violence which shook the light-timbered house and sent down an avalanche of soot around the parlor stove-pipe, marched out the kitchen door and down the garden path to the not unromantic privy covered with grape vines and ivy.
Later as she washed in a graniteware washbowl in the kitchen sink she ruminated upon the disastrous day she had taken a man into her house. He had come up the long board walk which led back through nearly one hundred yards of trees and shrubbery to the hidden clapboard residence of the Crandall women.
"Heard you had a room to rent," he said, vaguely. "Nice and quiet back here." He looked about him with a dull but satisfied air and stroked the big black tom cat in his arms.
"It's three dollars a week, mister," Temperance had said severely. "That's just for bed and breakfast. I don't do no laundry, and I don't like cats. Besides there hasn't ever been a man in my house, and I don't think there ever will be." She banged her feather duster against the peeling porch rail.
"That's all right," the man said, "Tommy and I ain't particular."
"Oh, so you ain't particular," she mocked. "Well listen here my good man. You'd better be particular when you crawl into my best bed."
"I don't want to sleep in your bed. I want to sleep by myself."
"Don't get sassy or I'll bat you over the head with this feather duster," Temperance warned.
"All right, Sister," the man said. "All right. Are you going to rent me the room or ain't you?"
"I'll think about it," Temperance said. "Come in and have a chair but leave that filthy cat out of doors."
"It ain't a filthy cat," the man said. "Maybe in another life this cat was your grandmother." Temperance shuddered. The man stooped to come in through the door—his cat still safely in his arms. He slouched comfortably into a red plush easy chair and put his head back against the lace doily.
"Three dollars a week in advance," Temperance said. "And mind you I have a sick mother who mustn't be disturbed. She's bedfast and hard of hearing, and she'd probably have a relapse if she knew you was in the downstairs bedroom."
"I get you, Sister."
Why, Temperance Crandall! Whatever are you thinking of? the good woman asked herself while showing the man to his room. Why not tell Mother? Evil woman! Nasty woman! She bustled about the parlor flicking the dust from the gilded cat-tails, ferocious crayon portraits of her ancestors, and the model of the Washington Monument made of ground-up paper money.
But if Temperance had any idea she could deceive her mother she was rudely disillusioned the next morning when she took toast and poor-man's tea to the invalid.
"Temperance," shouted the old lady. "You've got a man in the house."
"But, Mother. How did you know?"
"Smelled him," said the old lady.
"Smelled him?"
"Tobacco and shaving soap. I'm no ninny."
Luckily her mother wasn't shocked, said that what they needed around the house was a man. But Temperance on due consideration decided not to tell the neighbors.
She remembered that Brailsford Junction was one bee-hive of gossips. They would be sure to suspect the worst and add a few details of their own. How Temperance hated gossips!
Not that everything wasn't Christian and proper with her mother there every moment for a chaperon. And not that Temperance would carry on with her roomer the way Mabel Bentley had done with that railroad man. Nevertheless some women she knew had evil minds. She didn't trust them.
She patted the sofa pillows embroidered with "God Bless Our Happy Home" into an engaging fullness of ripe curves, straightened the doily on the easy chair, and singing in a lusty off-keyed falsetto the touching strains of "Blest Be the Tie That Binds," rustled off to the kitchen to fix her boarder a tray.
My how the morning had flown. Eleven o'clock already. High time he was up and eating breakfast, the lazy, filthy brute and his dirty tom cat.
Such a big strange man. Huge, simply huge. And with a ferocious appetite. She thought he would eat her out of house and home. It cost more than three dollars a week to feed the big lummox.
"Our hearts in Christian love," warbled the busy woman as she hastened about the old wainscoted kitchen, banging the spiders and pots loudly enough to wake the dead. He certainly should be up by this time. Almost noon, imagine! And Temperance up and busy since five o'clock.
Three boiled eggs, five slices of toast, a whole pot of coffee that held at least five cups, oatmeal in a bowl, cream and sugar, and, well, she might condescend to put one of those rambler roses from over the back stoop upon his tray. Not that he would appreciate it, the filthy, lazy thing. He'd better pay his board bill today or she'd throw him out like dishwater.
There, that tray looked nice. Altogether too nice if you asked Temperance Crandall. She whisked off her apron, looked into the kitchen mirror for a second, pushed her hair this way and that, sneaked a pinch of flour out of the flour bin and dusted it on her nose with the corner of a dish towel, then assuming the air of Fox's entire conference of martyrs picked up the tray for prompt delivery.