So Miss Green Smythe wuz left with a anxious contemplation of the color of the light that wuz goin’ to softly gild the heads of her guests as they talked of the cruel needs of the motherless, and, bein’ took up with this, she hadn’t time to worry about the evil glare of vile and corrupt words and ways, deceit and lies, and worse, that wuz fallin’ on the heads of her own children.
But to resoom forwards agin. Maggie and I wuz settin’ there calm and peaceful, and saw the colored nigger’s countenance lookin’ round dretful clever from his high seat.
Miss Green Smythe swep’ up the neat gravel walk to the door, and in a few minutes entered the room. She is a kinder good natured little woman, but dretful wore out and haggard lookin’ under the embellishments she uses to cover up the ravages of time and care and fashionable ambition and worry. She always dresses in the very height of fashion, but she has too many feathers and flowers and danglin’ ends of ribbon to suit me.
I never took any fancy to her, though I spoze I ort to feel complimented on her comin’ clear from New York to git Thomas Jefferson to try her lawsuit. Her present husband is a distant, a very distant, relation of ourn. But I don’t spoze that makes any difference about her employin’ Thomas J., I spoze it is his smartness that draws her. She is spendin’ the summer at a summer hotel not fur off, she and her family, and she is tryin’ to git some divorces for herself and one of her children. She don’t want a divorce from Smith, Mr. Green Smythe gives her rope enough. I guess she feels pretty foot loose, ’tennyrate nobody ever sees him, though they know there is a husband somewhere in the background grubbin’ away to make money. They say he is a sad and humble sperited man, who sets a good deal on their back doorstep at Newport and New York, when he sets anywhere, a modest, bald headed man, with iron gray mustache and sad eyes. They say he don’t seem at home in the palatial front rooms and boodoors, and is kinder trompled on by the high headed servants in livery. But he, knowin’, I spoze, that he could turn ’em all out, neck and crop and leathered legs, if he wanted to, bears it pretty well, and sets out there and reads the daily papers. And sometimes I have hearn holds an old degariotype in his hand, and will look at it a long time, of a pretty young country girl that he loved when he wuz young and poor, and prized ambition and wealth a good deal more than he duz now. They say he looks at that a sight, and some letters writ by “Alice” and some little sprigs of old fashioned runnin’ myrtle that has opened its blue flowers for many summers over a grave on a country hillside.
They commenced to bloom about a year after he married the rich widder Green, whose money put with his made him rich as a Jew. She had three husbands, Miss Green Smythe had, before she married Smith; Smith then but Smythe now. Her first husband, Sam Warn, he don’t count much in her thoughts, so I’ve hearn, bein’ young and poor, and havin’ married him for love, so called, and he her. He died in a few years, died from overwork, everybody said. He wuz tryin’ to work over hours to pay for a melodeon for his wife and a pair of bracelets; she wuz ambitious then in her young and poor days, ambitious as a dog. He died leavin’ her nothin’ but the twins, Eudora Francesca and Medora Francina.
Her next husband wuz old Green, he wuz goin’ on eighty when she married him, and he died in less than a year, leavin’ her with over two millions. Her next husband, Emery Tweedle, father of Algernon and Angenora, wuz much younger than herself, and I didn’t wonder at that so much as some did, thinkin’ that she wanted to sort o’ even up the ages of her pardners, and he wuzn’t nigh as much younger than her as Green wuz older, and I always believed (theoretically) that sass for the goose and sass for the gander might as well be about the same age.
Howsumever, they didn’t live happy, he throwin’ her downstairs the third year of their union and throwin’ a cut glass pitcher on top of her. The occasion bein’ that she found him tryin’ to help the pretty parlor maid carry upstairs the pitcher of ice water she had rung for.
She wuz a real pretty parlor maid, and Miss Tweedle by this time, havin’ run so hard after fashion, had got kinder worn out lookin’ and winded in the race, as you may say, with lots of small wrinkles showin’ round the eyes and nose, and real scrawny where her figger wuzn’t veneered and upholstered for company, and the parlor maid had a plump figger, and complexion like strawberries and cream, but wuzn’t considered likely. But ’tennyrate that fall precipitated affairs, and havin’ got up with little Eudora Francesca’s help, Miss Tweedle’s first move wuz to sue for a divorce.
Her back wuz hurt considerable, and so wuz her pride, but her heart not at all, so it wuz spozed, for she married him in the first place, not for love, but because he could sing bass good, she had a high terible voice, and their voices went well together. He wuz poor, and she made the first advances, so they said, bein’ anxious to secure his bass.
And didn’t it turn out queer as a dog that when she married for bass she got such a sight of it, she got more than she bargained for. She had never made any inquiries about him, and found out, when it wuz too late, that his voice wuzn’t the only base thing about him. He wuz real mean and tried to throw her out of the second story winder before they had been married two weeks. That wuz because she wouldn’t deed all her property to him. But she knew enough to hang onto her property, and he, bein’ so poor, hung onto her off and on for a little over two years. They got along somehow, and when she and affairs wuz finally precipitated, they had two children, which the law give to her, about a year and a half old. And about two months after the seperation she had another child, Angelia Genevieve, but she didn’t live only a year or so, havin’ crep’ up and fell into the bathtub, and wuz drowned, her Ma bein’ at a masked ball at the time.