“Ah, dearie me, but it’s a lonesome life, after all,” sighed Mrs.
Griffin.
The good soul was sitting by the comfortable stove in the commodious
kitchen of Delaney House, intent upon the concoction of some savory
broth that was simmering on the stove. It was on the evening of the day
that Mr. Delaney had saved Aline Rodney from drowning.
The bright, sunny morning had ended in a dreary, overcast evening,
with hints of snow in the air. The warm, spacious kitchen was very
comfortable, but it was intensely quiet and still, even to dreariness.
The audible ticking of the clock, and the soft purr of the little gray
kitten at Mrs. Griffin’s feet, seemed to make the stillness and quiet
even more marked and oppressive to her peculiar mood.
“It’s a lonesome life,” she repeated. “It is hard even for me, and I do
not see how Mr. Delaney bears it at all, used as he has been to society
and amusement. Sometimes I fairly long for the sight of a friendly face
and the sound of a kind voice besides my master’s. I never felt the
dreariness of my life as much as I have done since Miss Rodney came and
went away. Spoiled child as she was, she brought a bit of life into the
house!”
She sighed and mechanically lifted the lid of the stew-pan and stirred
the savory broth with a long-handled spoon.
“Tap! Tap! Tap!”
That ghostly sound broke so suddenly upon the silence of the room,
that Mrs. Griffin gave a violent start and dropped her long spoon upon
the floor with a hideous clatter, disturbing kitty’s peaceful slumbers
by a thump upon her little pink nose, accompanied by a few drops of hot
broth that sent her pattering into the corner with a spiteful meow. The
good woman mechanically reached for the spoon and looked toward the
door.
“Tap! Tap!” came the low knocking again, with as ghostly a sound as
ever Poe’s fabled raven produced.
Mrs. Griffin stared at the closed door with an air of stupid amazement,
and made no move to open it.
“Whoever can it be?” she asked aloud, and a squeaky, peculiar voice
from outside, answered immediately:
“Open the door, my good woman, and see!”
“What impudence! There, then, I won’t do it!” replied Mrs. Griffin,
who, although dying of curiosity to see her visitor, knew better than
to admit any one within the walls of Delaney House.
“You’re the first woman, then, that I ever knew to turn a poor peddler
from the door, and it’ll be to your sorrow as you did so,” replied a
bantering voice outside. “I have a basketful of notions, and I’m just
from New York with the biggest bargains of the season. Come, don’t
be churlish, mistress. Open the door, and let me come in and warm my
frozen fingers, even if you won’t buy one of my nice lace collars.”
Mrs. Griffin’s eyes had brightened at the mention of the peddler. The
majority of women have an unexplainable propensity for buying from
peddlers, and Mrs. Griffin was no exception to the rule. Besides, she
was dying of loneliness and _ennui_. She intensely desired to speak to
some one, and to have better companionship, if only for an hour, than
the purring gray kitten.
She hesitated. And we have always heard--have we not, reader?--that the
woman who hesitates is lost. She remembered that her stock of pins and
needles and tapes and buttons needed replenishing. Why not embrace this
excellent opportunity for the purpose? She might easily do so, and Mr.
Delaney be none the wiser, and no harm done. She would take care that
the harmless peddler did not penetrate beyond the kitchen.
The cheery, seductive voice of the person outside sounded pleasantly
in her hearing. She felt that she would be all the better for a little
human contact with that world from which she was so closely secluded.
She softly turned the key and opened the door, meaning to have some
little colloquy with the peddler before she admitted her; but that
worthy frustrated her intention by immediately stepping across the
threshold, with the proverbial impudence of the class.
“So you thought better of your first intentions, did you?” she said,
genially, to the astonished mistress of the kitchen. “Second thoughts
are best, aren’t they? Well, you were wise to let me in. I shall sell
you the biggest bargain of the season.”
And then she laughed, and set her basket down upon the floor, and
warmed her brown fingers by the stove.
Mrs. Griffin was dumfounded by the ease, not to say impudence, of the
female peddler, who already had taken a seat and was gazing about the
large apartment with careless curiosity.
“You must please not to laugh so loud,” she said. “If my master hears
you he will come down and turn you out. I should not have let you in
anyhow, only that I needed some things in your line. Strangers are not
allowed in here. You shouldn’t have entered the grounds.”
“I did not know there were any orders against it. You see, I’m a
stranger about here, and seeing such a fine large house I naturally
thought to myself, ‘Here’s the place to sell my nice goods to the
ladies.’ But if there’s any offense, ma’am, I’ll humbly take my leave,”
said this artful old woman, beginning to replace the tempting things
she had drawn from her heavy basket.
“Well, well, let me have my buttons and things first,” said Mrs.
Griffin, who had not expected to be so soon taken at her word. “You may
show me your things, only be quiet about it. I shouldn’t care to have
my master disturbed.”
“And your mistress, hey? Wouldn’t she like to buy some of my pretty
laces?”
“There isn’t any mistress. There’s only my master and me. I’m cook and
housekeeper both,” Mrs. Griffin replied, as she poised a black lace cap
on her fingers, and mentally wondered if it wouldn’t be becoming to her.
They had the usual haggling, the old woman good-humoredly putting down
her goods to Mrs. Griffin’s own prices, remarking as each new purchase
was laid on the pile at the housekeeper’s elbow: “I told you I would
sell you the biggest bargain of the season. They don’t call me Cheap
Jane for nothing!”
“Is that your name? How funny!” said the housekeeper, laughing.
“That’s what they call me,” said the female peddler. “Mrs. Broadcloth
is my real name, though.”
Mrs. Griffin had to laugh again. She thought that the name of
Broadcloth was even more amusing than that of Cheap Jane. There was a
dry humor about the peddler that she rather enjoyed after her forced
seclusion from companionship with her kind.
“Perhaps you’d like a cup of hot tea before you start out again, Mrs.
Broadcloth,” said she, with reckless hospitality.
“Thank you kindly,” was the reply, and the old woman drew out a short,
black pipe from, some recess under her coarse cloak. “While you draw
the tea, I suppose you will let me smoke my pipe by your fire,” she
said.
“Certainly,” assented Mrs. Griffin, and then her heart suddenly misgave
her.
It occurred to her that, under the peculiar circumstances of the case,
she was making almost too lavish a show of hospitality.
“Only suppose that Mr. Delaney should happen in! It isn’t likely he
will, but then I’ve heard say that the most unlikely things are always
happening,” she thought, apprehensively to herself.
“I will step up to his room and see if he wants anything,” was her next
thought, with a view to forestalling his possible intrusion on the
prohibited guest.
Fortune favored her artful design. At that moment a bell rung from the
upper room that Mr. Delaney occupied as a bed-chamber.
Mrs. Griffin turned to Cheap Jane, who was contentedly puffing away at
her stubby pipe.
“There is my master’s bell now,” she said. “Will you just set here all
quiet while I step up and see what he wants?”
“Yes, go. Don’t mind me,” replied Mrs. Broadcloth, affably.
The housekeeper opened the door into the hall, closed it carefully
behind her, and went up to Mr. Delaney’s room.
To her surprise, although it was barely six o’clock, he had retired to
bed. There was a feverish flush on his face, and his dark eyes gleamed
restlessly.
“Oh, Mr. Delaney, you are ill,” she exclaimed.
“Hardly that,” he replied, with a forced smile; “but I am certainly
somewhat the worse for the wetting I received this morning.”
“Oh, sir, you should see a physician!” she exclaimed, alarmed at his
feverish looks.
“No; the last one did me harm enough by his long tongue,” Mr. Delaney
answered, angrily. “I will have nothing of the kind. I need no one--I
shall be all right in the morning.”
She saw that persistence would only irritate him, and dropped the
subject.
“Can I do nothing for you?” she inquired, anxiously.
“No; I have myself taken some drops that will soon cool my fever. I
shall not take any supper; but, after a while, you may bring me a cup
of tea--nothing else.”
She beat a hasty retreat, sorry for his sickness, but reflecting that
it stood her in good stead at this particular time, when her loneliness
had led her into such imprudence as admitting a human being under the
tabooed portals of Delaney House.
“I will go and make the tea, and get her away as soon as I can,” she
thought, hurrying down the wide stairway, along the hall, and so into
the kitchen again, where she had left Cheap Jane contentedly, puffing
at her pipe.
“Well, now, Mistress Broadcloth, I will put the tea to draw,” she
began, then stopped and stared, and rubbed her hand across her eyes.
The great kitchen was empty, save for the gray kitten under the stove,
purring away in lazy contentment. The old woman and the big basket were
vanished from the scene as if they had never been. The door by which
she had entered a little while ago, stood wide open, letting in the
cold and the gathering darkness.
Mrs. Griffin ran down the steps and into the grounds in search of the
missing peddler; but the darkness and a haze of snow were beginning to
fall together, and they soon drove her into the house again.
“Ah, well-a-day! the strange old creature has taken herself off without
her tea, and just as well, perhaps, for I was on needles and pins for
fear of being caught in her company,” commented the housekeeper.