MRS. HAZARD SMATTER.
The two houses were now at open war, at least the female part of them.
Jay was forbidden, without any secresy, to go into his neighbor's
grounds, Gabrielle was in an ecstasy of gossip all the while, and
brought Flora news, true and false, continually. She spied through the
hedge, and found the new servants and her high-minded cousins ready to
receive a report of all she discovered, _i.e._, if it were reported in a
whisper. Mr. Andrews seemed to have given up all attempts to reconcile
the contending parties. He never went to the Varians' now, nor made any
effort to exchange neighborly courtesies.
Missy was very bitter and unhappy, about these days. She knew what all
Yellowcoats was saying about Mr. Andrews and his cousin, for they said
that to her openly. And she surmised what they did not say openly to
her, to wit: that the cause of her own unhappy looks was her
disappointment in the matter. How can one help unhappy looks? One can
help unhappy words; one can do all sorts of things that are meant to
mean happy acts, but how to keep the cloud off one's face at all hours
and moments, is an art yet in the bowels of time. Missy knew she looked
unhappy, and she knew she could not dissemble it. She knew, by this
time, that she was jealous, and jealous not only in the matter of Jay.
She knew that, deride him as she might, the silent widower was an object
of interest to her. She did not yet acknowledge to herself that she
cared for him, but she did acknowledge that it was important to her that
he cared for her, that he gave her a certain sort of admiration. Alas!
she felt a doubt now whether he gave her even a small degree of respect.
For who can respect a jealous woman? And she had been jealous, even
before she saw her rival, or knew more of her than that she might be her
rival.
There is nothing kills self-respect like jealousy. Missy hated and
despised herself from the moment that she knew she was jealous. She felt
herself no longer mistress of her words and actions. Begin the morning
with the best resolutions in the world, before noon she would have said
or done something that upset them all. She had such evil thoughts of
others, such an eating, burning discontent with herself. She remembered
her childish days, when her jealousy of her stepfather made her a
little fiend. "I was brought up on it, I learned it with my
alphabet,--it is not my fault, it is my fate," she said to herself with
bitterness.
It was very fortunate perhaps, as she could dissemble so ill, that the
two houses saw so little of each other. Flora was not of a jealous
nature, and it seemed as if she had very little to be jealous about. She
was having it all her own way apparently, and she longed to flaunt her
triumphs in her rival's face. That was the one thing that she felt she
was not succeeding in. She could not be sure Missy knew it, every time
she went out to drive with Mr. Andrews, and that took away half the
pleasure. Miss Rothermel kept herself so much out of reach of criticism
it was unsatisfactory. Pure speculation grew tiresome. It was the
longing of Flora's heart to have another meeting, and to display Mr.
Andrews, but Missy baulked her. At church it could have been
accomplished, but most unhappily Mr. Andrews wouldn't go to church (at
least with them). His amiable and accomplished cousins could make him do
a good deal, but they couldn't make him do that. Neither could they make
him talk about his neighbors nor laugh at any of their sarcasms.
About this time, Miss Varian had a friend to stay with her. Mrs. Varian
was always rather shy of her sister's friends; they were apt to be
unusual people. This one, however, Mrs. Varian remembered in her youth,
and had no doubt would be of an unobjectionable kind. Mrs. Hazard
Smatter had been an inoffensive New York girl, not considered to carry
very heavy guns, but good-looking and good-natured. That was the last
Miss Varian knew of her. In the revolution of years she turned up again,
now a middle-aged woman, with feeble gray hair, and misgivings about
revealed religion. She had married a Bostonian, and that had been too
much for her. She despised her former condition so much as not to desire
to allude to it. She was filled with lofty aspirations and cultivated
herself. There was nothing that she did not look into, though it was
doubtful whether she saw very much when she did look. Having begun
rather late, she had to hurry a good deal to know all that was to be
known about History, Science, Art, Theology, and Literature; and as
these rivers of human thought are continually flowing on, and
occasionally altering their channels, it was perhaps excusable that
while she kept up, she sometimes lost her breath, and was a little
unintelligible. If it had only been one river, but there was such a lot
of them, and of course a person of culture can't ignore even a little
boiling spring that has just burst out. There's no knowing what it may
develop into; one must watch its course, and not let it get ahead of
one. Taking notes on the universe is hard work, and Mrs. Hazard Smatter
felt that her gray hair was so to be accounted for. It was her one
feminine weakness, the one remnant of her pre-cultured state, that led
her to call it premature.
What with dress reform, and want of taste, she was not a woman to
reproach with personal vanity. She was rather a little person. She had
pale blue eyes somewhat prominent; a high forehead, which retreated, and
a small chin, which did, too. She attributed these defects to her place
of nativity, and drew many inferences about the habits and mental
peculiarities of her ancestors, which wouldn't have pleased them if
they'd known about it. She had a very candid mind, and of course no
family pride, and it was quite surprising to hear her talk on this
subject.
Mrs. Varian was quite frightened the first evening. Miss Harriet was
delighted. She always had liked the dangerous edge of things, and had
felt herself defrauded in being forced to live among such conventional
people as her sister's friends. Mrs. Smatter was so unexpectedly changed
from the commonplace comrade of her youth, that she could not be
thankful enough that she had sent for her. The first evening they only
got through Inherited Traits, the History of Modern Thought, the
Subjection of Women, and a few other light and airy themes, which were
treated, of course, exhaustively. To Miss Varian, it was a foretaste of
rich treats in store.
"Mamma," cried Missy, when she was alone with Mrs. Varian, "what kind of
creature have we got hold of?"
"I can't classify her," said her mother. "But I am afraid it will be
very hard to use hospitality without grudging towards a woman who talks
so about her grandfather, and who knows so much more than we do about
the sacerdotal systems of the prehistoric races."
"I'd much rather she'd talk of things I don't understand, than of things
I do. How long do you suppose she is going to stay?"
"I am afraid Harriet will never be willing to let her go, she seems so
charmed with her."
"Don't you think she might be persuaded to take Aunt Harriet home to
Boston with her, to live? Fancy, a few minds to tea two or three times a
week, and on the alternate nights, lectures, and clubs, and classes. It
is just what Aunt Harriet needs, indeed it is. See if you can't lead up
to it, mamma."
The next morning, when Missy passed the guest's room, the door of which
stood open, she was surprised to see a complete revolution in the
furniture. The rugs had all been taken away, the curtains, unhooked and
folded up, were lying on a chair, the sofa and two upholstered chairs
were rolled away into the adjoining chamber. The bed, pushed out into
the room, stood in a most awkward attitude at right angles with nothing.
On the pillow was pinned a pocket compass, which indicated due north.
Goneril, who was putting the room in order, with set teeth, explained
that it was by the lady's orders, who had instructed her that her bed
must always stand at exactly that angle, on account of the electric
currents.
"I take it," said the woman, "she doesn't like to ride backwards."
The rugs were liable to contain disease germs, as well as the
upholstered furniture, and she had intimated that she would like the
walls rubbed down with carbolic once or twice a week.
"I told her," snapped Goneril, "that we weren't a hospital, no more were
we a hotel."
It was well that the duster was not made of anything sterner than
feathers, or the delicate ornaments of the dressing-table would have had
a hard time of it, for she brushed with increased vehemence as she got
worked up in talking. "She told me she would have preferred straw for
her bed, but it was no matter now, as it was all made up. Straw was the
only thing for beds, she said, and to be changed once a week. I'm sorry
I didn't take her at her word. I know she enjoys the springs and the
new mattress, and if it hadn't been for the trouble, I'd have given her
her fill of straw, and lumpy straw at that. I told her I was used to
clean and decent Christian folks, who didn't need to have their beds
burned once a week, and who didn't carry diseases about with them, and
who could get along without carbolic. And as to carrying up water enough
to flush a sewer every night and morning, I wouldn't do it for her nor
any other woman, clean or dirty. And as to being called up at twelve
o'clock at night to look at the thermometer and to close the window an
inch and a quarter, and to spread a blanket over her feet to keep the
temperature of her body from going a little bit too low--and then being
called up at five to look again, and to take the blanket off, and to see
that it didn't get a little too high,--it's just a trifle more than I
can bear. I hope the new woman will like it, when she comes. _I'm_ going
next week, Wednesday, and that's the end of it."
"I am ashamed of you, Goneril; you're not going to do anything of the
sort. Don't upset Miss Varian by talking so to her. Let her have a
little peace, if she likes Mrs. Smatter."
"I'm the one to talk about being upset. It's bad enough to wait on an
old vixen like Miss Varian, but when it comes to waiting on all her
company, and when her company are fools and idiots, I say it's time to
go. I've put up with a good deal in this house. I've come down in the
world, but that's no reason I should put up with everything. It's one
thing to say you'll be obliging and sleep in a room that's handy, so you
could be called if anything extraordinary happened, where the person
you're looking after is afflicted of Providence. But it's another thing
to be broke of your rest two nights running to keep count of the
thermometer over a well woman who hasn't sense enough to know when she's
hot and when she's cold. It's bad enough to be Help anyhow, but it ain't
worth while to be walked over. I can stand folks that's got some sense,
even if they've got some temper. But people like this, jumbling up
almanacs and doctors' books, and free thinkin' tracts; them I can't
stand, and what's more, I won't stand, and there's an end of it."
There wouldn't have been an end of it, though, if Miss Rothermel had not
got up and walked away. There is a limit beyond which even American
Farmers' Daughters must not be permitted to go, and Goneril had
certainly reached that limit, and as she would have talked on for an
hour in steadily increasing vehemence, there was nothing but for Missy
to go away, with silent disapprobation, and wish the visitor well out of
the house. The visitor she found at the breakfast-table, blandly
stirring her weak tea, and waiting for her oatmeal to have an additional
fifteen minutes on the fire. The cook had been called in and
acknowledged that the oatmeal had only had two hours of cooking. Mrs.
Smatter had explained, on exact scientific principles, the necessity of
boiling oatmeal two hours and thirty-five minutes, and the wheels of
breakfast stood still while this was being accomplished. The cook was in
a rage, for oatmeal was one of her strong points, and she always boiled
it two hours. Miss Varian was growing distrustful of everything. Mrs.
Smatter had raised her suspicions about the adulteration of all the food
on the table. Even the water, she found, wasn't filtered with the proper
filter, and there was salt enough in the potatoes to destroy the
tissues of a whole household. She desired the waitress to have a pitcher
of water boiled for her, and then iced; and she would be glad if she
would ask the grocer where he got his salt.
By dinner time Miss Varian's usual good appetite was destroyed; she was
so engaged in speculating about the assimilation of her food, that she
had a bad indigestion. When evening came, she was so fretful she was
almost inclined to quarrel with her new-found friend. As they sat around
the lamp, Mrs. Smatter became a little restless because the conversation
showed a tendency to degenerate into domestic or commonplace channels;
she strove to buoy it up with æsthetic, speculative, scientific
bladders, as the case might be. Missy pricked one or two of these, by
asking some question which wasn't in Mrs. Smatter's catechism; but,
nothing daunted, she would inflate another, and go sailing on to the
admiration of her hearers.
A letter had come from St. John, in which he gave some hope that he
might return in the autumn, though he entered into no explanation of the
reason for such a change of plan. Missy was all curiosity, and her
mother was all solicitude, but they naturally did not talk much to each
other about it, and of course did not wish it alluded to in Mrs.
Smatter's presence. Miss Varian, however, asked questions, and brought
the subject forward with persistence. It seemed to Miss Rothermel
profanation to have her brother's name spoken by this woman. What was
her dismay to hear Mrs. Smatter say, settling herself into a speculative
attitude:
"I hear, Mrs. Varian, that your son is in one of those organizations
they call brotherhoods. I should like very much, if you don't mind, if
you would tell me something about his youth, and how you brought him up,
and what traces you saw of this tendency, and how you account for it."
"I don't understand," faltered Mrs. Varian. "Do you mean--his
education--or--or--"
"I mean," said Mrs. Smatter, "was he physically strong, and properly
developed, and did you attend to his diet? I should have thought oatmeal
and fish and phosphates might have counteracted this tendency; that is,
of course, if you could have anticipated it."
"He has always been in very fine health," said the mother.
"Indeed! That seems inexplicable. I have always felt these things could
be accounted for, if one were inclined to look into it. It _must_ be the
result of something abnormal, you know. If we could look into the
matter, I am sure we should find the monastic idea had a physical
basis."
"Indeed!" said Miss Varian, tartly. "Well, I shouldn't have thought it
had anything of the kind. No more than that the culinary idea had a
spiritual basis."
"I have always thought," remarked Mrs. Smatter, ignoring the
interruption, "that science would do well to study individual cases of
this kind, to ascertain the cause of the mental bias. It would be useful
to know the reason of the imperfect development of the brain, for
instance, of this young man, who represents a class becoming, I am told,
quite numerous. Do you remember, dear Mrs. Varian, any accident in
childhood--any fall?"
"I really think you've got beyond your depth," cried Miss Varian, under
the spur of indigestion and family feeling. "If I were you I would talk
about things I understood a little. St. John Varian isn't down in your
books, my dear. You can't take him in any more than you can the planet
Jupiter, and you'd better not try."
"Indeed," said Mrs. Smatter, a little uneasy. "Is he so very remarkable
an entity?"
"I don't know anything about his entity, but he has a good brain of his
own, if you want to know that, and he didn't fall down stairs when he
was a child, any more than St. Charles Borromeo, or St. Francis Xavier,
or Lacordaire did. But then, perhaps you think they did, if it were only
looked into. Fancy what a procession of them, bumping down the stairs of
time, or tumbling out of trees of knowledge that they'd been forbidden
to climb up."
Missy laughed, a little hysterically, and that irritated Miss Varian,
whose indigestion was really very bad, and who was naturally opposed to
Missy, and who was ashamed to find herself tackling her guest in this
way and upholding the unpardonable step of St. John in the hearing of
his mother, who was to blame for it. It was exasperating, and she didn't
know whom to hit, or rather, whom not to hit, she was so out of patience
with everybody.
"If you'd give up the phosphates," she said, "and inquire into the way
he was brought up, you might get more satisfaction. How he was drilled
and drilled and made to read saints' lives, and told legends of the
martyrs when he was going to bed, and made to believe that all that was
nice and jolly in life was to be given up almost before you got it, and
that all the sins in the decalogue were to be confessed, almost before
you'd committed them; if you'd look into _this_, you might get a little
light upon your subject."
"Ah!" said Mrs. Smatter, interested, "perhaps that might account--"
"Aunt Harriet," cried Missy, getting up, and letting her work fall on
the floor--spools, thimble and scissors dispersing themselves in
corners--"Aunt Harriet, there is a limit--"
"A limit to what? Superstition and priest-craft--maudlin sentiment and
enervating influence--"
"Mamma, won't you go up stairs with me?" cried Missy, and there was no
time given Mrs. Smatter for further speculation, or Miss Varian for
further aggression. After the door closed behind them, Miss Varian's
wrath rose against her inquisitive friend, and family feeling carried
the day.
"You'd better drop the subject of St. John, permanently," she said with
decision.
And Mrs. Smatter accommodatingly offered to read her a treatise on the
Artistic Dualism of the Renaissance, with which the evening closed.