MISTRESS AND MAID
MRS. BRUCE remained with the captain at the gate for fifteen minutes
longer before she re-entered the house. Hiram came as far as the
door with her and laid the rug inside. He caught a glimpse of Betsy,
stormily dusting and polishing in the living-room, but contented
himself with touching his cap to Mrs. Bruce, and disappearing down the
garden path.
That lady looked sharply at her factotum as she entered the room.
Mankind loves a lover undoubtedly, as a rule; but there are exceptions.
Mrs. Bruce decidedly did not love anybody who proposed to deprive her
of her right hand: cook, waitress, lady’s maid, housekeeper, either
of which posts Betsy was capable of filling in the defection of the
regular incumbent.
Betsy was a none-such, and Mrs. Bruce knew it sufficiently well to have
swallowed her wrath on many previous occasions when her strong will
had collided with that of her handmaid. During her husband’s lifetime
Mrs. Bruce had discharged the New England woman several times in her
most magnificent manner; but the ebullition had not been noticed by
Betsy, who pursued the even tenor of her way as one who had more
important matters to think of. Since Mr. Bruce’s death his widow had
not proceeded to such lengths, some intuition perhaps warning her that
the spiritual cable which held the none-such to her service had lost
its strongest strands and would not stand a strain.
She looked at the faithful woman now with a new curiosity. Mankind
loves a lover. Yes, of course; but Betsy couldn’t have a lover! The
cheese-cloth binding the hair away from the high sallow forehead,
taken in connection with the prominent thin nose and retreating
chin, presented the class of profile which explains the curious
human semblance taken on by a walnut when similarly coiffed. No—that
designing sailor was tired of living alone. He wanted a housekeeper and
a cook. How did he dare! Quite a blaze of indignation mounted in the
breast of Betsy’s fortunate owner. What a blessed thing that Betsy was
the sort of woman who could see into a millstone and could be trusted
to flout her deceitful wooer to the end. Mrs. Bruce spoke with gracious
playfulness.
“You never told me Captain Salter was a beau of yours, Betsy.”
The other did not cease to beat up the cushions of the wicker chairs.
“I don’t know as I ever did take the time to reg’larly sit down and
give you my history, Mrs. Bruce,” was the reply.
And that lady took a few moments to reflect upon the spirit of the
crisp words, finally deciding to veer away from the subject.
“Now what can I do to help you, Betsy? I know you want everything spick
and span before that cook comes to-morrow.”
Betsy looked up.
“I’ve laid the silver out there on the dining-room table. You might
clean it. Here, let me put this apron on you.” And abruptly abandoning
the cushions, the speaker hurried into the dining-room, divided from
the living-room only by an imaginary line, and seizing an enveloping
gingham apron, concealed Mrs. Bruce’s trim China silk from head to foot.
The mistress sat down at the table and opened the silver-polish, and
Betsy returned to her work.
“I’ve been asking Captain Salter about the neighbors, and especially
about my little protégée.”
“Which one? Oh, you mean Mrs. Pogram’s girl!”
“Yes, Rosalie Vincent. With that name and her pretty face and graceful
figure, it did seem too bad that she shouldn’t have her chance. I
remember, though, you didn’t altogether approve of my sending her away
from washing Mrs. Pogram’s dishes.”
“Washin’ Mrs. Pogram’s dishes was real safe,” returned Betsy. “Rosalie
was pretty, and poor, and young; and that’s a combination that had
better stay right in the home village under some good woman’s wing.
Mrs. Pogram’s a clever soul, though some like putty. If she hadn’t
been, she wouldn’t have spared Rosalie, I s’pose.”
“Oh, it wasn’t for long,” replied Mrs. Bruce. “I thought it only fair
that the child should have one season’s course in English, with such
a yearning as she had after poetry and all things poetical. Such a
doom as it seemed to be to peel Mrs. Pogram’s vegetables and wash her
dishes. I can always discern an artist,” added Mrs. Bruce complacently,
“even in the most unlikely places; and that girl had a touch of the
divine fire. I recognized it that day when she recited the bit of
Browning up here.”
Betsy’s eyes happening to fall on the silver-polish, she remarked dryly.
“Well, whitin’ ’s safer than Brownin’ for her sort, and I thought she
was contented enough.”
Betsy’s two-year-old disapproval of this one of her mistress’s
undertakings revived. Education was a good thing, without doubt, but
according to Betsy’s judgment it was best, under circumstances of such
dependence as existed with Mrs. Pogram’s pretty adopted child, to let
well enough alone. Mrs. Pogram’s principal motive in giving the girl a
home had been the material help she could render, and it was a doubtful
experiment to send her to the new environment of the city, and the
novel companionship of her fellow students, unless her benefactress
intended to prolong her watch over the young girl’s fortunes; and
this Betsy knew would not be the case; for long before Rosalie’s term
of study was ended, Mrs. Bruce’s energies would be directed toward
superintending the affairs of somebody else. The girl’s grateful
letters had begun to be ignored some time before Mrs. Bruce joined her
adored boy in Europe; and it is doubtful when she would have thought
again of Rosalie Vincent, had she not returned to the village where the
young girl had attracted her fleeting fancy.
“I gave her the wings to soar,” she now added virtuously, “and I
inquired of Captain Salter if she had used them. I found his report
quite unsatisfactory.”
“Why, where is Rosalie?” asked Betsy quickly, stopping her labors in
the interest of her query.
“Captain Salter wasn’t sure. He said he supposed Mrs. Pogram knew, but
there had been some recent quarrel with a brother of Mrs. Pogram’s and
it had ended in Rosalie’s going away.”
“Soarin’, perhaps,” remarked Betsy dryly, grasping the legs of an
unoffending table and giving it vicious tweaks with the dust-cloth.
“Just as well folks shouldn’t be given wings sometimes, in my opinion.
When a bird’s got plumage like Rosalie’s, it’d better stick to the
long grass. The world’s just full o’ folks that if they catch sight o’
the brightness never rest till they get a shot at it and drag it down.”
“Was she so pretty? Let’s see, was she dark or light? Oh, I remember
her hair was blonde.”
Betsy gave one look at her employer. It was entirely characteristic
that two years should have sunk the village girl’s memory in a haze.
Mrs. Bruce sighed and began to polish another fork. “It seldom pays
to try to help people,” she said. “I distinctly remember the girl had
talent, and I thought she might get a position in one of the Portland
schools if she had a little training and applied herself.”
“Her letters to you certainly sounded as if she was workin’ her best.”
“Did they?” vaguely. “Perhaps they did. Well, very likely she has gone
to take a position then.”
“Not in summer time, I guess,” remarked Betsy.
“I don’t seem to remember any brother of Mrs. Pogram’s,” said Mrs.
Bruce plaintively.
“Humph! You’ve probably bought ribbons of him lots o’ times. He sells
’em up in Portland, and I’ll bet it’s a strain on him every time he
measures off over thirty-five and a half inches for a yard. Brown’s his
name. Loomis Brown; and it would seem more fittin’ if ’twas Lucy. Such
a hen-betty I never saw in all my days. I wonder if it’s possible he
took to shinin’ up to Rosalie.”
“Oh, he’s a bachelor?”
“Law, yes. He wouldn’t want to pay for a marriage license, but p’raps
he took such a shine to Rosalie as she grew older that it spurred him
on to the extravagance. No tellin’. If that’s the case, no wonder she
took wings.”
“It’s very tiresome,” said Mrs. Bruce, “the way girls will marry after
one has done one’s best for them.”
“Yes, Mrs. Bruce. The next time you take a fancy to a village girl,
you give her a course in cookin’ instead of English. She can jaw her
husband all right without any teachin’; but it takes trainin’ to make
good bread.”
Mrs. Bruce sighed leniently. “That is your point of view, naturally,”
she said. “You could hardly be expected to have that divining rod which
recognizes the artistic. Strange how much better I remember that girl’s
gift and her unstudied gestures than I do her face.”
Betsy paused long enough in her undertakings to pull up the bib of her
mistress’s apron, which had slipped, endangering the pretty silk gown.
There was a permanent line in Betsy’s forehead, which might have been
named “Mrs. Bruce the second”; but she fastened the apron as carefully
now as she did all things pertaining to that lady’s welfare, and made
no reply to the reflection upon her æsthetic capabilities. Betsy would
not have known the meaning of the word æsthetic, but she would have
declared unhesitatingly that if it characterized Mrs. Bruce she was
willing not to have it describe herself. Not that she had a dislike
of her mistress. She took her as she found her. Mr. Bruce had been
attached to her, and Betsy’s duty was to the bearer of his name. She
seldom contended with her mistress, nor had any argument. She said to
herself simply that it was hard to teach an old dog new tricks; and
while it might seem a trifle rough to mention an old dog in connection
with a lady of Mrs. Bruce’s attractive appearance, the sense of the
axiom was extremely applicable, since Mrs. Bruce could become no more
set in all essentials if she lived to be a hundred.
Betsy very rightly realizing that avoidable discord was foolishness,
lived her philosophy, and contented herself with mental reservations
which would have astonished her complacent mistress mightily.
On the evening, twelve years ago, when Mr. Bruce announced to his
housekeeper his impending marriage, she shouldered this cross
resolutely.
He had been a man of few words, and on this occasion he said simply to
the woman who had seen his happiness with the bride of his youth, “I
find myself very lonely, Betsy. I am going to marry Miss Flushing.”
“Very well, sir,” she replied quietly, though her heart leaped to her
throat and her thoughts flew to the twelve-year-old boy who was then at
home on his vacation. “Have you told Mr. Irving, sir?”
She remembered the father’s face as he replied, “Yes. That boy, Betsy,
is a manly little chap. Miss Flushing is devoted to him and has gained
his affection already; but—it was a blow to him. I saw it. A surprise,
a great surprise.”
Betsy remembered to this day how she bit her tongue to keep it from
speaking.
“He talked to me though,” the father had continued, “more like one man
to another than like a child; but after being very civil about it, he
announced that I mustn’t expect him to call her mother, because he
should not be able to.”
Betsy had nodded. “Mr. Irving had a mother out of the ordinary, Mr.
Bruce,” she replied very quietly, but with the hot blood pressing in
her head; then she went up decorously to her room, closed the door, and
indulged in one storm of weeping; after which she shouldered the cross
above mentioned, which like all crosses heartily borne, lightened as
the years went on.
One thing was certain. Greater devotion was never displayed by a
stepmother; and if Irving Bruce had mental reservations, too, he did
not divulge them to the faithful woman who was part of his earliest
remembrance.