head," she said bitterly; "oh, she _is_ a figure of fun and no mistake.
I d'n know, I'm sure, what Jathrop was ever thinking of the day he
picked her out, but this I do know, and that is, that he'd better pick
her off of me pretty quick. You know, Mrs. Lathrop, as a friend is a
friend and I've always been a good friend to you, but I never was one to
stand any nonsense--not now and not never--and when a man writes, 'I'm
rich' and 'How's Susan Clegg?' he gets me where no Chinese wife ain't
going to please me in a hurry. I'm glad Jathrop is rich, on your
account, Mrs. Lathrop, but his being rich don't alter my views of him a
mite. I look upon him as a gray deceiver, that's what I look upon him
as, and if he's brought a piece of carnelian or anything back to me, you
can tell him to give it to his lawfully wedded wife, for I don't want to
have nothing more to do with him."
"But, Susan--" broke in poor Mrs. Lathrop.
"Don't interrupt me, Mrs. Lathrop; I'm in no mood to listen to no
one just now. I ain't mad, but I'm hurt. It's no wonder I dreamed he
was a cat, for of all the sly, back-door things a cat is the
meanest. And there was always something very cat-like about Jathrop
Lathrop--something soft and slow and creepy--nothing bold and
out-spoken. I might have known as even if he did come home rich, he'd
find a way to even it up. And now look how he has evened it up. Think of
your grandchildren; there won't be one of 'em able to ever look anybody
straight in more'n one eye at once. Marrying Chinese is terrible,
anyway--in some States it's forbidden. It's to be hoped Jathrop'll keep
out of those States or he may land in the penitentiary yet."
Just here the front door slammed, and Jathrop's voice was heard calling,
"Where are you, mother?"
He didn't wait for an answer, but came straight through the kitchen.
Entering there, what he saw startled him so much that he came to a
sudden halt.
"We've been telling your--" began Mrs. Macy.
"--mother about your wife," finished up Susan.
Jathrop looked at all three in great astonishment. "About my _wife_!" he
repeated. "Did you say 'my wife'?"
"Yes," said Susan, absolutely undaunted. "I think it would have been
kinder in you to have broke it to her yourself; but anyhow, we've done
it now."
"Oh, Jathrop, my son, my son!" wailed poor Mrs. Lathrop in
heart-wringing Biblical paraphrase.
"But I haven't got any wife," said Jathrop. "What under the sun do you
mean?"
There was a clammy pause; Susan and Mrs. Macy clasped hands.
"What made you think I had one?" Jathrop asked, quite bewildered. "Who
said I had one?"
Susan rose with dignity and coughed. Mrs. Macy rose, too, looking at
Susan. Poor Mrs. Lathrop seemed fairly terror-stricken.
"I think I'll go now," said Susan. "I hope I needn't board her much
longer, that's all. Even if she's only using the floor, it's a floor as
has been sacred to my dead father up to now, and a dead father is not to
be lightly took in vain by a heathen Chinee."
"But what does it all mean?" asked Jathrop, appearing genuinely
bewildered. "I don't understand. What are you talking about?"
Susan moved toward the door; Mrs. Macy faltered. "Maybe it was all
right in the Klondike," she began, trying to put a brace under the
situation.
"Maybe what was all right in the Klondike?" asked Jathrop.
"To buy her with beads."
"To buy who with beads? Who's her?" Jathrop's voice was becoming
exasperated.
"Hop Loo," said Susan, in a tone of piercing scorn, "the Chinese lady as
you brought with you and gave me to board."
Jathrop looked at them all in amazement. "But Hop Loo's a boy--my boy,"
he said.
"Your boy!" said Susan.
"Yes, my boy."
Miss Clegg turned and gave him a long look fraught with disgust, pity,
and hopeless resignation.
"Jathrop Lathrop," she said, "I _did_ suppose you had some sense even in
the view of all that's dead and gone, but I guess now I'll have to give
up. I did have some respect for you while I thought she was maybe your
wife, but if you've gone so clean crazy that you believe that that is
your boy--well!"
Susan thereupon sailed out of Mrs. Lathrop's house with Mrs. Macy
wobbling in her wake.
III
SUSAN CLEGG SOLVES THE MYSTERY
Susan Clegg and Mrs. Macy walked down to Mrs. Lathrop's gate, and out of
her gate and to Miss Clegg's gate; the whole in a silence deadly and
impressive. Mrs. Macy paused there.
"I don't believe I'll come in," she said doubtfully.
"I don't blame you," said Susan, "I wouldn't if it was me. Jathrop's
boy, indeed! What kind of a man is it as'll have a Chinese family and go
forcing them onto the true and long-tried friends of his one and only
mother!"
"I can't see why he didn't leave the boy in the Klondike," said Mrs.
Macy slowly and reflectively. "I thought men always left their Chinese
families just where they found 'em. It's strange Jathrop brought him
home with him."
"You see now what my dream meant," said Susan darkly, "a cat, indeed.
It's small wonder I knew the cat was Jathrop Lathrop. Of all the mean,
sly, creeping creatures that ever come up against the back of your legs
sudden a cat is the worst. A snake is open and aboveboard beside a cat.
You can see a snake. You don't see 'em often around here, thank heaven."
"Well, we haven't seen Jathrop often around here for a long time," said
Mrs. Macy, whose mind was as given to easy logical deduction as many of
her mental caliber, "and we do see a lot of cats--you know that, Susan."
"'How's Susan Clegg?'" quoted Susan in a tone of reflective wrath. "I
don't know whether you know it or not, Mrs. Macy, but Jathrop asked
after me in his letter to his mother, and him with a Chinese wife.
'How's Susan Clegg?' What did he write that for if he was married, I'd
like to know."
"Maybe he wanted to know how you were," suggested Mrs. Macy.
The look she received in recognition of this offered explanation led to
her immediately proposing to go on home. "You've got the Chinaman to
look after, anyhow," she added.
"You'd better come in while I go up and look at him again," said Susan
shortly. "It's a very strange sensation to be alone in your house with
what you fully and freely take to your dead father's bed and board,
supposing it's a wife, and then find out as it's her son instead. Come
on in."
Mrs. Macy was easily persuaded, and they thereupon went up the walk. "I
guess I'll go see if he's still asleep," Susan said when they reached
the piazza, and Mrs. Macy forthwith sat down to await what might come of
it.
Susan was absent but a few minutes; she returned with a fresh layer of
disapproval upon her face.
"Is he still sleeping?" Mrs. Macy asked.
"Yes, he's still sleeping," Miss Clegg replied, jerking a chair forward
for herself. "You'd know he was Jathrop Lathrop's child just by the way
he sleeps. You remember what a one Jathrop always was for sleeping. I
don't know as I remember Jathrop's ever being awake till he was fairly
grown. Whatever you set him at always just made him more sleepy. You
know yourself, Mrs. Macy, as he wouldn't be no grasshopper with Mrs.
Lathrop for his mother, but a cocoon is a comet beside what Jathrop
Lathrop always was. I don't know whether he's rich or not, but I do know
that heathen Chinee is his son, and I know it just by the way he
sleeps."
"And so Jathrop's rich," said Mrs. Macy, rocking agreeably to and fro,
and evidently striving toward more pleasant conversation.
"Yes," said Susan darkly, "rich and with a Chinese wife somewhere. Just
as often as I think of Jathrop Lathrop writing, 'How's Susan Clegg,'
with a Chinese wife I feel more and more tempered, and I can't conceal
my feelings. I never was one to conceal anything; if I had a Chinese
wife the whole world might know it."
Just here Gran'ma Mullins hove in sight, coming slowly and laboriously
up the street.
"Why, there's Gran'ma Mullins!" Mrs. Macy exclaimed. "She's surely
coming to see you, too."
Both ladies remained silent, watching the progress of Gran'ma Mullins.
Gran'ma Mullins arrived a good deal out of breath. Susan brought a chair
out of the house for her.
"I come to--tell you," panted the new visitor as soon as she had
attained unto the chair, "that Jathrop's--things is--coming."
"What things?" asked Susan.
"They all come on--the ten o'clock--from the junction; Hiram is helping
unload."
"What's he brought?" Susan asked.
"Well, he's brought an automobile," said Gran'ma Mullins, "and a lot of
other trunks and boxes."
"An automobile!" exclaimed Mrs. Macy, "well, he _is_ rich then!"
"I wouldn't be too sure of that," said Susan, "some very poor folks is
riding that way nowadays."
"And he brought three trunks and seventeen big wooden boxes," continued
Gran'ma Mullins, "big boxes."
"Three trunks and sev-en-teen--Three trunks and sev-en--" Susan's voice
faded into nothingness.
"Goodness knows what's in them," said Gran'ma Mullins. "Hiram was
getting so hot unloading that I wanted him to stop and let me fan him,
but he wouldn't hear to it. Hiram's so brave. If he said he'd unload
something, he'd unload it if he dropped dead under it and was smashed to
nothing."
There was a pause of unlimited bewilderment while Mrs. Macy and Susan
raised Jathrop upon the pedestal erected by his three trunks, seventeen
boxes and the automobile.
"And to think of his having a Chinese wife," Susan exclaimed, the keen
edge of sorrow cutting crossways through all her words.
It was just here that Mrs. Lupey now appeared, approaching at a good
pace. Mrs. Lupey was a large, imposing woman and wore a silk dolman with
fringe. It was immediately necessary for the party to adjourn to the
sitting-room, as the piazza was strictly limited.
It was Mrs. Lupey who without loss of time did away with the Lathrop
parentage of the young Chinese.
"Why, he's his servant, of course," she said in a lofty scorn. "I'm
surprised you didn't know that by his age."
"I did think of his age," Susan said, "but I read once in some paper as
the women in China get married when they're four years old, so you'd
never be able to tell nothing by the age of no one there. Well, well,
and so she isn't his wife, nor yet his son. Well, I'm glad--for Mrs.
Lathrop's sake."
"But if Jathrop's really got a automobile and seventeen trunks, he
_must_ be awful rich," said Mrs. Macy. "It'll be a great thing for this
town if Jathrop's rich. He'd ought to be very grateful to the place
where his happy childhood memories run around barefoot."
"Oh, he'll remember," said Gran'ma Mullins, "it's easy to remember when
you've got the money to do it. But I hope to heaven he won't set Hiram
off on that track again. Hiram does so want to go away and make a
fortune; I'm worried for fear he will all the time. And Lucy wants him
to, too. I can't understand a woman as wants a fortune worse than she
wants Hiram. Lucy doesn't seem to want Hiram 'round at all any more. If
he's asleep, she starts right in making the bed the same as if he wasn't
in it, and if she's sewing, he don't dare go within the length of her
thread.
"Life has come to a pretty pass when a wife'll run a needle into a
husband just for the simple pleasure of feeling him go away when she
sticks him." Gran'ma Mullins sighed.
"I wonder what they're doing now!" Mrs. Macy said.
All four turned at this and looked toward the Lathrop house together. It
was quiet as usual.
"I d'n know as it changes my opinion of Jathrop much, that being his
servant," said Miss Clegg suddenly. "It's kind of different, his handing
his wife or his son over to me; but his heathen Chinee servant! I don't
know as I'm very pleased."
"Pleased!" said Mrs. Lupey. "Why, in San Francisco they make 'em live
underground like rats."
"Maybe that was why you dreamed he was a cat, Susan?" suggested Mrs.
Macy, whose brain seemed to grasp at the subject under consideration
with special illumination.
Susan rose. "I think you'd better go," she said abruptly, "I've got to
get dinner. My mind's in no state to deal with all these sides of
Jathrop and his Chinaman just now."
What the day brought up the street and in and around Mrs. Lathrop's
house would take too long to catalogue. Suffice it to say that poor Mrs.
Lathrop, who had been for long years the veriest zero in the life of the
community, became suddenly its center and apex.
When Jathrop went to New York at the end of the week, he left his mother
not only sitting, but rocking in the lap of luxury, with her head
leaning back against more luxury and her feet braced firmly on yet more
luxury. Even her friend over the way was rendered utterly content.
And the pleasantest part of it all was the way that it affected Susan
Clegg. As Susan sat by Mrs. Lathrop and turned upon her that tender gaze
which one old friend may turn on another old friend when the latter's
son has suddenly bloomed forth golden, her full heart found utterance
thus:
"Well, Mrs. Lathrop--well, Mrs. Lathrop, I guess no one will ever doubt
anything again. Talk about dreams, _now_! I dreamed Jathrop was a cat,
and the reason was that it's a well-known fact that cats _always_ come
back. Why, Mrs. Macy told me once how she chloroformed a cat, and put it
in a flour sack with a stone, and put the sack in a hogshead of water,
and put the cover on the hogshead, and put a stone--another stone--on
that, and went to church to hear the minister preach on 'Do unto others
as you do unto others,' and when she came back, the cat was asleep on
top of the hogshead, and Mrs. Macy got the worst shock she ever got. So
you can easy see why I dreamed Jathrop was a cat; and he _did_ come
back.
"I declare that'll always be the pleasantest recollection of my life,
how I met him at the station and how we came chatting up the street
together. How he has improved, Mrs. Lathrop--not but what he was always
handsome! There was always something noble about Jathrop. Gran'ma
Mullins said yesterday as he made her think of a man she saw in a play
once as stood on his crossed legs in front of a fire and smoked. So
careless.
"And then his bringing Mrs. Macy that polar-bear skin! Mrs. Macy says if
there was one spot in the whole wide world where she never expected to
set foot it was on top of a polar bear, and now she can stand on her
head on one if the fancy takes her. I saw the minister when I was down
in the square to-night, and he told me not to speak of it, but he
thought a service of prayer for any stocks and mines as Jathrop has
would be the only fitting form of gratitude which a reverent and
affectionate congregation might offer to the great and glorious
generosity of him who is going to give us a steeple after all these
years of finishing flat at the top. Mr. Kimball came out to tell me to
ask you if you'd like some one to come regularly for your order, and he
says he'll keep caviare from now on, just on the chance of Jathrop's
being here to eat it; he says why he didn't keep it before was he
thought it was a kind of chamois skin.
"It's beautiful to see the faces down-town, Mrs. Lathrop; you never saw
nothing like it. Everybody's just so happy. Hiram is grinning from ear
to ear over being took to the Klondike, and everybody is swore to not
let Gran'ma Mullins know he's going. He's going to climb out of the
window at night and get away that way, and Gran'ma Mullins won't mind
what she feels when he really does come back a millionaire, too. She'll
be just like you, Mrs. Lathrop; no one minds anything once it's over.
Little misunderstandings are easy forgot.
"And to think there's been a blue automobile puffing at these very
kitchen steps! To think you and me was over to Meadville and back
between dinner and supper one day! I guess Mrs. Lupey never got such a
start. She'd been all the morning getting home on the train and was only
just putting her bonnet away in its box when we rolled up. I never
enjoyed nothing like that roll up in all my life! I never see
automobiles from the automobile's side before, but now I can. When a
automobile goes over a duck it makes all the difference in the world
whether it's your automobile or your duck.
"And then Jathrop's generosity! Not but what he was always generous.
Deacon White says he will say that for Jathrop, he was always generous.
And look what he brought home. Every child in town is just about out of
their senses. Felicia Hemans is crazy about the earrings, and 'Liza
Em'ly won't never take off the bracelet. Mr. Shores can't keep the tears
back when he looks at his watch charm. I think it was so kind of
Jathrop. But Jathrop was always kind; you know yourself that a kinder
creature never lived than Jathrop. I always said that for him.
"And then his having a new fence built around the cemetery. It was
thoughtful, and Judge Fitch says nobody can't say more. But Judge Fitch
says Jathrop was always thoughtful; he says he's been interested in him
always just for that very reason. Judge Fitch says Jathrop's nature was
always that deep kind that's easy overlooked. He says he'll have to
confess to his shame that some of the time he overlooked him himself. He
says it's very difficult to understand a deep nature, because if a deep
nature don't make money, there's hardly any way of ever knowing that it
really was deep; people just think you're a fool then--like we always
thought Jathrop was. You know, nobody ever thought he ever could amount
to nothing. You know that yourself, Mrs. Lathrop. But making money lets
you see just what a person's got in 'em and see it plain.
"I'm sure for all I've loved Jathrop as if he was going to be my own,
for years and years and years, still I never credited him with being the
man he is. I supposed he was a tramp somewhere--yes, I really did, Mrs.
Lathrop, you may believe me or not, but that's just what I thought when
I thought anything at all about him--which wasn't often.
"Everybody in the whole place is busy remembering pleasant things about
him now. The minister's wife remembers his coming to a Christmas tree
once a long time ago when they both was little; she says she hasn't
thought of it in thirty years, but she remembers it as plain as day
now,--he had on a coat and a little tie.
"And Gran'ma Mullins says she never will forget the day before he was
born, for she went to town and dropped her little bead bag, and you know
how much she thinks of her little bead bag now when the beads is all
worn off, so you can think what store she set by it when the beads were
still on, and so she was all back and forth along the road hunting for
it the whole blessed afternoon, and when she found it and went home, she
_was_ tired, and she slept late next morning because her husband was out
very late the night before, and when he slept late she always slept
late, 'cause she said sleeping late was almost the only treat he ever
give her, and, anyhow, when they did wake up and get up and get out,
there was Jathrop, and she says she shall never forget her joy over
having found the bead bag again.
"Mrs. Macy says she remembers the day he hid, and you thought he was in
the cistern, and you was kneeling down looking in when he jumped out
from behind the stove and give you such a start you went in head first.
"I remember that day myself, too--father was insisting he was paralyzed
then, and mother and me wouldn't take his word for it, and we fully
expected he'd race over and help haul you out, but all he said was,
'She'll have to manage the best she can--I'm paralyzed,' and we really
began to believe him from then on.
"The minister says he shall always remember how well he looked when he
put on long trousers; the minister's preparing a little paper on Jathrop
to read at the Sunday-school annual, and he says he shall begin with the
day he put on long trousers and then mark his rise step by step. The
minister's so pleased over Jathrop's patting Brunhilde Susan on the
head; he says there are pats and pats, but that pat that Jathrop give
Brunhilde Susan was what he calls, in pure and Biblical simplicity, _a_
pat."
Susan paused. Mrs. Lathrop just felt her diamond solitaires, glanced at
the new kitchen range, and was silent.
"And then, Mrs. Lathrop, that dear blessed little Chinese angel--I tell
you I shall never forget that boy. I liked his face when I first laid
eyes on him, and when I thought he was Jathrop's lawful wife, I loved
him as I'd loved even a Chinaman if he was your daughter; but when I saw
him cleaning up my sink, polishing my pans, washing out my cupboards and
all that, just the same as yours, _then_ was when I see that a heathen
Chinee has just the same right to go to heaven that anybody else has,
and from then on I just trusted him completely and let him do every bit
of the work till he left.
"I see now why everybody's so happy being a missionary if you can just
get away and live with the Chinee. I'd have kept that boy if Jathrop
hadn't wanted him--I'd have been very glad to; and it's awful to think
we're keeping quiet, lovable natures like his from settling here. A girl
might do much worse than marry that Chinese--_very_ much worse. A very
great deal worse. Though I suppose many would hesitate."
Mrs. Lathrop rose, went to the cupboard, took out a bottle of homemade
gooseberry wine, poured out a little, and took a sip. She did not offer
any to Susan.
"It'll do you good," said Susan encouragingly. "I don't like the taste
myself, but it'll do you good. Besides, Mrs. Lathrop, you must begin to
get used to it. When you go around with Jathrop in his private car,
you'll have to drink wine, and if I was you, I'd stop tying a stocking
around your neck nights, for you'll have to wear a very different cut of
gowns soon. If Jathrop buys that yacht he's gone to look at, you'll have
to wear a sailor blouse."
"Oh," said Mrs. Lathrop faintly, "oh, Susan, I--" Miss Clegg put her
hastily back into her chair.
"Never mind if it does make your head go 'round a little, Mrs. Lathrop;
you must learn how. It may be hard, but it'll make Jathrop happy, and
now he's come back rich, that's what everybody wants to do.
"Mrs. Brown says next time he comes she's going to make him a jet-black
pound-cake, and Mrs. Allen says she's going to work him a pincushion.
She says it'll be a plain, simple token of affection, but those whom
Fortune smiles on soon learn to know the true worth of a simple gift of
purest love. She says no one has ever known how she loved Jathrop,
'cause she kept it to herself for fear you'd think she was after him for
Polly."
Mrs. Lathrop rocked dreamily.
Susan rose to go.
"Don't--" said Mrs. Lathrop.
"I must," said Susan. "Oh, Mrs. Lathrop, think of his giving me those
fifty shares of stock just on account of my long-suffering friendship
for you. I declare he's a great character--that's all I can say.
"I always had a feeling he'd end in some unusual way; when they started
to lynch him, I thought that was the way, but now I see that this was
the way, and I thank heaven that I wasn't right the other time and am
right this time. For human nature is human nature, Mrs. Lathrop, and
people are always kinder to a woman whose son comes home from the
Klondike a millionaire than they are if they had the bother of lynching
him, no matter how much he may have deserved it."
Mrs. Lathrop continued to finger her solitaire earrings in happy
silence. Miss Clegg, who never exhibited any tenderness toward anything,
went over and arranged the fold-over of her friend's gold-embroidered,
silk-quilted kimono.
"I'll be glad when your new hair gets here, Mrs. Lathrop," she said
tenderly, "it'll make a different woman of you. It's astonishing what a
little extra hair can do; I always feel that when I put on my wave.
"You and me will have to be getting used to all kinds of new things now.
And that beautiful dream of mine letting us know he was coming. Mrs.
Brown says Amelia says the Egyptians worshipped cats and used to pickle
them when they died.
"It's astonishing how, if you know enough, you can see how any dream is
full of meaning. There's Jathrop so fond of pickles, and you and me
worshipping him. And he writing in every letter he has time to get
somebody to write for him, 'How's Susan Clegg?'"
Mrs. Lathrop lapsed into beatific slumber. Susan Clegg went quietly
home.
IV
SUSAN CLEGG AND THE OLIVE BRANCH
It was not in reason to suppose that the return of Jathrop Lathrop
should continue to occupy wholly the attention of the community. Each
week--even each day--brought its fresh interests. Not the least exciting
of the provocative elements was borne back from the metropolis to which
'Liza Em'ly, that hitherto negatively regarded olive branch of the
ministerial family, had but recently emigrated. 'Liza Em'ly, it was
whispered one day, had written a book.
The Sewing Society, at its next meeting, discussed it, as a matter of
course; and Susan Clegg, equally as a matter of course, promptly
reported the proceedings to her friend and neighbor, Mrs. Lathrop.