"What is to Become of Me?"
Holcroft's reference to a constable and arrest, though scarcely
intended to be more than a vague threat, had the effect of clearing the
air like a clap of thunder. Jane had never lost her senses, such as
she possessed, and Mrs. Wiggins recovered hers sufficiently to
apologize to the farmer when he came down to breakfast. "But that
Mumpson's hawfully haggravatin', master, as ye know yeself, hi'm
a-thinkin'. Vud ye jis tell a body vat she is 'here, han 'ow hi'm to
get hon vith 'er. Hif hi'm to take me horders from 'er, hi'd ruther go
back to the poor-'us."
"You are to take your orders from me and no one else. All I ask is
that you go on quietly with your work and pay no attention to her. You
know well enough that I can't have such goings on. I want you to let
Jane help you and learn her to do everything as far as she can. Mrs.
Mumpson can do the mending and ironing, I suppose. At any rate, I
won't have any more quarreling and uproar. I'm a quiet man and intend
to have a quiet house. You and Jane can get along very well in the
kitchen, and you say you understand the dairy work."
"Vell hi does, han noo hi've got me horders hi'll go right along."
Mrs. Mumpson was like one who had been rudely shaken out of a dream,
and she appeared to have sense enough to realize that she couldn't
assume so much at first as she anticipated. She received from Jane a
cup of coffee, and said feebly, "I can partake of no more after the
recent trying events."
For some hours she was a little dazed, but her mind was of too light
weight to be long cast down. Jane rehearsed Holcroft's words,
described his manner, and sought with much insistence to show her
mother that she must drop her nonsense at once. "I can see it in his
eye," said the girl, "that he won't stand much more. If yer don't come
down and keep yer hands busy and yer tongue still, we'll tramp. As to
his marrying you, bah! He'd jes' as soon marry Mrs. Wiggins."
This was awful prose, but Mrs. Mumpson was too bewildered and
discouraged for a time to dispute it, and the household fell into a
somewhat regular routine. The widow appeared at her meals with the air
of a meek and suffering martyr; Holcroft was exceedingly brief in his
replies to her questions, and paid no heed to her remarks. After
supper and his evening work, he went directly to his room. Every day,
however, he secretly chafed with ever-increasing discontent, over this
tormenting presence in his house. The mending and such work as she
attempted was so wretchedly performed that it would better have been
left undone. She was also recovering her garrulousness, and mistook
his toleration and her immunity in the parlor for proof of a growing
consideration. "He knows that my hands were never made for such coarse,
menial tasks as that Viggins does," she thought, as she darned one of
his stockings in a way that would render it almost impossible for him
to put his foot into it again. "The events of last Monday morning were
unfortunate, unforeseen, unprecedented. I was unprepared for such
vulgar, barbarous, unheard-of proceedings--taken off my feet, as it
were; but now that he's had time to think it all over, he sees that I
am not a common woman like Viggins,"--Mrs. Mumpson would have suffered
rather than have accorded her enemy the prefix of Mrs.,--"who is only
fit to be among pots and kettles. He leaves me in the parlor as if a
refined apartment became me and I became it. Time and my influence
will mellow, soften, elevate, develop, and at last awaken a desire for
my society, then yearnings. My first error was in not giving myself
time to make a proper impression. He will soon begin to yield like the
earth without. First it is hard and frosty, then it is cold and muddy,
if I may permit myself so disagreeable an illustration. Now he is
becoming mellow, and soon every word I utter will be like good seed in
good ground. How aptly it all fits! I have only to be patient."
She was finally left almost to utter idleness, for Jane and Mrs.
Wiggins gradually took from the incompetent hands even the light tasks
which she had attempted. She made no protest, regarding all as another
proof that Holcroft was beginning to recognize her superiority and
unfitness for menial tasks. She would maintain, however, her character
as the caretaker and ostentatiously inspected everything; she also
tried to make as much noise in fastening up the dwelling at night as if
she were barricading a castle. Holcroft would listen grimly, well
aware that no house had been entered in Oakville during his memory. He
had taken an early occasion to say at the table that he wished no one
to enter his room except Jane, and that he would not permit any
infringement of this rule. Mrs. Mumpson's feelings had been hurt at
first by this order, but she soon satisfied herself that it had been
meant for Mrs. Wiggins' benefit and not her own. She found, however,
that Jane interpreted it literally. "If either of you set foot in that
room, I'll tell him," she said flatly. "I've had my orders and I'm
a-goin' to obey. There's to be no more rummagin'. If you'll give me
the keys I'll put things back in order ag'in."
"Well, I won't give you the keys. I'm the proper person to put things
in order if you did not replace them properly. You are just making an
excuse to rummage yourself. My motive for inspecting is very different
from yours."
"Shouldn't wonder if you was sorry some day," the girl had remarked,
and so the matter had dropped and been forgotten.
Holcroft solaced himself with the fact that Jane and Mrs. Wiggins
served his meals regularly and looked after the dairy with better care
than it had received since his wife died. "If I had only those two in
the house, I could get along first-rate," he thought. "After the three
months are up, I'll try to make such an arrangement. I'd pay the
mother and send her off now, but if I did, Lemuel Weeks would put her
up to a lawsuit."
April days brought the longed-for plowing and planting, and the farmer
was so busy and absorbed in his work that Mrs. Mumpson had less and
less place in his thoughts, even as a thorn in the flesh. One bright
afternoon, however, chaos came again unexpectedly. Mrs. Wiggins did
not suggest a volatile creature, yet such, alas! she was. She
apparently exhaled and was lost, leaving no trace. The circumstances
of her disappearance permit of a very matter-of-fact and not very
creditable explanation. On the day in question she prepared an
unusually good dinner, and the farmer had enjoyed it in spite of Mrs.
Mumpson's presence and desultory remarks. The morning had been fine
and he had made progress in his early spring work. Mrs. Wiggins felt
that her hour and opportunity had come. Following him to the door, she
said in a low tone and yet with a decisive accent, as if she was
claiming a right, "Master, hi'd thank ye for me two weeks' wages."
He unsuspectingly and unhesitatingly gave it to her, thinking, "That's
the way with such people. They want to be paid often and be sure of
their money. She'll work all the better for having it."
Mrs. Wiggins knew the hour when the stage passed the house; she had
made up a bundle without a very close regard to meum or tuum, and was
ready to flit. The chance speedily came.
The "caretaker" was rocking in the parlor and would disdain to look,
while Jane had gone out to help plant some early potatoes on a warm
hillside. The coast was clear. Seeing the stage coming, the old woman
waddled down the lane at a remarkable pace, paid her fare to town, and
the Holcroft kitchen knew her no more.
That she found the "friend" she had wished to see on her way out to the
farm, and that this friend brought her quickly under Tom Watterly's
care again, goes without saying.
As the shadows lengthened and the robins became tuneful, Holcroft said,
"You've done well, Jane. Thank you. Now you can go back to the house."
The child soon returned in breathless haste to the field where the
farmer was covering the potato pieces she had dropped, and cried, "Mrs.
Wiggins's gone!"
Like a flash the woman's motive in asking for her wages occurred to
him, but he started for the house to assure himself of the truth.
"Perhaps she's in the cellar," he said, remembering the cider barrel,
"or else she's out for a walk."
"No, she aint," persisted Jane. "I've looked everywhere and all over
the barn, and she aint nowhere. Mother haint seen her, nuther."
With dreary misgivings, Holcroft remembered that he no longer had a
practical ally in the old Englishwoman, and he felt that a new breaking
up was coming. He looked wistfully at Jane, and thought, "I COULD get
along with that child if the other was away. But that can't be; SHE'D
visit here indefinitely if Jane stayed."
When Mrs. Mumpson learned from Jane of Mrs. Wiggins' disappearance, she
was thrown into a state of strong excitement. She felt that her hour
and opportunity might be near also, and she began to rock very fast.
"What else could he expect of such a female?" she soliloquized. "I've
no doubt but she's taken things, too. He'll now learn my value and
what it is to have a caretaker who will never desert him."
Spirits and courage rose with the emergency; her thoughts hurried her
along like a dry leaf caught in a March gale. "Yes," she murmured, "the
time has come for me to act, to dare, to show him in his desperate need
and hour of desertion what might be, may be, must be. He will now see
clearly the difference between these peculiar females who come and go,
and a respecterble woman and a mother who can be depended upon--one who
will never steal away like a thief in the night."
She saw Holcroft approaching the house with Jane; she heard him ascend
to Mrs. Wiggins' room, then return to the kitchen and ejaculate, "Yes,
she's gone, sure enough."
"Now, ACT!" murmured the widow, and she rushed toward the farmer with
clasped hands, and cried with emotion, "Yes, she's gone; but I'm not
gone. You are not deserted. Jane will minister to you; I will be the
caretaker, and our home will be all the happier because that monstrous
creature is absent. Dear Mr. Holcroft, don't be so blind to your own
interests and happiness, don't remain undeveloped! Everything is wrong
here if you would but see it. You are lonely and desolate. Moth and
rust have entered, things in unopened drawers and closets are molding
and going to waste. Yield to true female influence and--"
Holcroft had been rendered speechless at first by this onslaught, but
the reference to unopened drawers and closets awakened a sudden
suspicion. Had she dared to touch what had belonged to his wife?
"What!" he exclaimed sharply, interrupting her; then with an expression
of disgust and anger, he passed her swiftly and went to his room. A
moment later came the stern summons, "Jane, come here!"
"Now you'll see what'll come of that rummagin'," whimpered Jane. "You
aint got no sense at all to go at him so. He's jes' goin' to put us
right out," and she went upstairs as if to execution.
"Have I failed?" gasped Mrs. Mumpson, and retreating to the chair, she
rocked nervously.
"Jane," said Holcroft in hot anger, "my wife's things have been pulled
out of her bureau and stuffed back again as if they were no better than
dishcloths. Who did it?"
The child now began to cry aloud.
"There, there!" he said, with intense irritation, "I can't trust you
either."
"I haint--touched 'em--since you told me--told me--not to do things on
the sly," the girl sobbed brokenly; but he had closed the door upon her
and did not hear.
He could have forgiven her almost anything but this. Since she only
had been permitted to take care of his room, he naturally thought that
she had committed the sacrilege, and her manner had confirmed this
impression. Of course, the mother had been present and probably had
assisted; but he had expected nothing better of her.
He took the things out, folded and smoothed them as carefully as he
could with his heavy hands and clumsy fingers. His gentle, almost
reverent touch was in strange contrast with his flushed, angry face and
gleaming eyes. "This is the worst that's happened yet," he muttered.
"Oh, Lemuel Weeks! It's well you are not here now, or we might both
have cause to be sorry. It was you who put these prying, and for all I
know, thieving creatures into my house, and it was as mean a trick as
ever one man played another. You and this precious cousin of yours
thought you could bring about a marriage; you put her up to her
ridiculous antics. Faugh! The very thought of it all makes me sick."
"Oh, mother, what shall I do?" Jane cried, rushing into the parlor and
throwing herself on the floor, "he's goin' to put us right out."
"He can't put me out before the three months are up," quavered the
widow.
"Yes, he can. We've been a-rummagin' where we'd no bizniss to be.
He's mad enough to do anything; he jes' looks awful; I'm afraid of him."
"Jane," said her mother plaintively, "I feel indisposed. I think I'll
retire."
"Yes, that's the way with YOU," sobbed the child. "You get me into the
scrape and now you retire."
Mrs. Mumpson's confidence in herself and her schemes was terribly
shaken. "I must act very discreetly. I must be alone that I may think
over these untoward events. Mr. Holcroft has been so warped by the
past female influences of his life that there's no counting on his
action. He taxes me sorely," she explained, and then ascended the
stairs.
"Oh! Oh!" moaned the child as she writhed on the floor, "mother aint
got no sense at all. What IS goin' to become of me? I'd ruther hang
about his barn than go back to Cousin Lemuel's or any other cousin's."
Spurred by one hope, she at last sprung up and went to the kitchen. It
was already growing dark, and she lighted the lamp, kindled the fire,
and began getting supper with breathless energy.
As far as he could discover, Holcroft was satisfied that nothing had
been taken. In this respect he was right. Mrs. Mumpson's curiosity
and covetousness were boundless, but she would not steal. There are
few who do not draw the line somewhere.
Having tried to put the articles back as they were before, he locked
them up, and went hastily down and out, feeling that he must regain his
self-control and decide upon his future action at once. "I will then
carry out my purposes in a way that will give the Weeks tribe no chance
to make trouble."
As he passed the kitchen windows he saw Jane rushing about as if
possessed, and he stopped to watch her. It soon became evident that
she was trying to get his supper. His heart relented at once in spite
of himself. "The poor, wronged child!" he muttered. "Why should I be so
hard on her for doing what she's been brought up to do? Well, well,
it's too bad to send her away, but I can't help it. I'd lose my own
reason if the mother were here much longer, and if I kept Jane, her
idiotic mother would stay in spite of me. If she didn't, there'd be
endless talk and lawsuits, too, like enough, about separating parent
and child. Jane's too young and little, anyway, to be here alone and
do the work. But I'm sorry for her, I declare I am, and I wish I could
do something to give her a chance in the world. If my wife was only
living, we'd take and bring her up, disagreeable and homely as she is;
but there's no use of my trying to do anything alone. I fear, after
all, that I shall have to give up the old place and go--I don't know
where. What is to become of her?"