"Get up, Jo! Time you was gettin' up. Come, come--it's ten o'clock!"
A familiar, relentless voice penetrated Joan's consciousness at last,
and she screwed her swollen eyelids down tighter and even managed a
reproving snore, wondering whether the halcyon days would ever come when
she might be allowed to sleep her sleep out in the morning. Probably
not, so long as Ellen Neal was within calling distance. The woman had a
horror of what she called shiftless ways. Once in a moment of special
exasperation she had been heard to mutter, "That's the chief thing
that's the matter with your pa--he's never ready to get up in the
morning!"--a remark which had remained in Joan's memory.
Now the sheets were suddenly jerked off her, and the relentless voice
continued, "No use pretendin' you're asleep when you ain't. Here's your
breakfast they've sent up to you, child, just as if you was sick a-bed.
Humph!"
Suddenly reality came back upon her with full force--horrible reality;
and she jumped up in bed and flung her arms around the old servant's
neck, clinging tight, as she had done many a time before when something
frightened her.
"Oh, Nellen, Nellen!" she moaned. "It's you! I thought you had deserted
me, too!"
The woman stood immobile in this embrace, making no effort to return it.
But her eyes blinked a little.
"Sho! What would I want to do that for? Don't be silly--Look out! There
now, if you haven't gone and upset the coffee all over them fancy
sheets! Coffee's hard to get out, too. That's what comes of havin' your
vittles in bedrooms, where they don't belong."
The tears, which had threatened to take possession of Joan again, turned
into a burst of wild laughter, "No matter! Plenty more where they come
from, Nellen. What is a lace-trimmed sheet to my new mamma? I expect the
very dishcloths are hand-embroidered. Behold the abode of cash, Ellen,
cash! Isn't it grand? Oh," she cried, her voice breaking, "_why_ didn't
you come to me last night! Didn't you know how I'd need you?"
"I didn't know you was here, child, till I come this morning to see when
him and her was expectin' you."
The girl's face fell. "Why, Ellen! Aren't you living here?"
"Me? In this house? I wouldn't so demean myself," said the other primly.
"Do you mean to say"--Joan's cheeks were hot--"that after all these
years, and everything you've done for us, my father has _let you go_?"
Ellen tossed her head. "'Twan't none of his lettin', child. I told him
that all things considered I'd ruther sew for my livin'. And so I would.
Your time's your own that way, and you see more of folks. I like folks.
I must say," she added conscientiously, "that woman--your pa's wife--was
real kind about offerin' to get me work with a dressmaker. But Ellen
Neal don't have to be beholden to nobody, thank you!"
"And where do you live?"
A mysterious smile twinkled in the woman's eyes. "Some day when you're
good and sick of all this fancy flubdubbery" (she indicated with a
disparaging hand the elegancies of the blue chamber) "you come and see
where I live, Jo, and come often. I've got me two as nice rooms as ever
you seen. And--I got my own furniture for 'em, too, real grand furniture
I bought up cheap at an auction room. There's some carved chairs, and a
walnut desk with a bookcase on top, and some blue velvet porteers, and a
mahogany bed with the tester sawed off--"
Comprehension dawned on Joan. "Ellen! _Our_ furniture!" she cried.
Ellen nodded. "Some of it. As much as I could git. I'm keepin' it for
you till you git a home of your own to put it in, Joie. I sort of
thought your ma would want me to."
Joan was weeping again, not the devastating flood of the past night, but
sweet and healing tears, as good for strained nerves as a summer rain is
good for flowers.
"You old wretch!" she gulped. "Where did you get the money?"
The other grinned. "Any time Ellen Neal gets caught without plenty in
her stockin'-fut, you may be sure the Scots blood is failin' her! I'm a
whole lot richer than I'm willin' to let some folks know. Why, I could
set idle, if I'd a mind to, the rest of my life--only I don't hold with
settin' idle just because you got a right." (Long afterwards it occurred
to Joan that Ellen, who was not given to discoursing on her own affairs,
must have had some reason for thus bragging of her unsuspected riches.)
"There's nothing," she added rather irrelevantly, "that makes a person
contented with the place she's in like knowin' she can go somewhere else
if she's a mind to."
What barrier there had been between servant and mistress--a fluctuating
barrier at best, dependent upon Joan's varying conceptions of her own
dignity--had gone down forever under that rain of grateful tears, and
Joan felt free to ask some of the questions of which her heart was
full--how, for instance, the affair between her father and Mrs. Calloway
had begun.
"How?" repeated Ellen grimly. "Well, when a lone female and a lone
he-male ain't got nothin' to keep 'em apart but an alley-fence, and her
with paint on her face till she looks like a fat sixteen, and food on
her table every day as good as a two-dollar table d'hote, what can you
expect? I wa'n't surprised myself. Nor," she added quietly, "I don't
believe your ma would be, Joan."
"Oh, but how it must have hurt her!"
Both spoke in low tones, as if the spirit of Mary Darcy might be
lingering near enough to overhear.
"I ain't so sure about that," mused Ellen. "I ain't so sure! Your ma
always set great store on havin' the Major comfortable--'Ellen,' she
said to me that last day, when we knew what was comin'--'Ellen, be sure
to keep him _comfortable_ here at home, so he won't be lookin' for it
somewheres else.' There's worse things can happen to a widow-man than
gettin' married again."
"Oh, but if I'd been here to look after him myself!" wailed Joan. "If
you had only told me what was happening! I might have come back and
stopped it!"
"About as much chance as stopping a fire-hydrant that's blown the top
off. You're a smart child, Joan, always was; but you don't stand a show
against that woman your pa's married--nor I wouldn't want you to," she
added cryptically. "You wasn't raised that way.--Anyhow it wasn't none
of my business. And just remember this, child, it's none of yours. It's
none of yours!"
After she had gone, a sense of something heartening and bracing remained
with Joan; and as she brushed out her straight, heavy hair with new
silver-backed brushes which bore her own initials, a typical Ellenism
recurred to her: "There's nothing that makes a person contented with the
place she's in like knowing she can go somewheres else if she's a mind
to."
"At least," she thought suddenly, "I'm independent of father. Mother
left her property to me--I can get it whenever I ask for it.... And now
I understand why!"
Mary Darcy had been a very far-sighted woman.