Susan observed to Mrs. Lathrop, as the date set for the beginning of the
work drew nearer. "I'm against it myself, but I ain't against Jathrop,
so I'm giving up my views just to see what will happen. My own opinion
is as it's all very well to build over most anything, but if your house
is to be built over, you've got to get out of it, and I must say as I
don't just see as yet when we get out of our houses what we're going to
get into. Jathrop says we can go to the hotel, and that he'll pay the
bill. Well, I must say it's good he'd pay the bill, for I'd never go to
any hotel if somebody else didn't pay the bill--I know that. But even
if I haven't got the bill to pay, I don't feel so raving, raring mad to
go to the hotel. It wouldn't matter to you, Mrs. Lathrop, for nothing
ever does matter to you, and anyway, even if anything had mattered to
you before, you'd not mind it now that Jathrop's come back. But just the
same a hotel does matter to me. They take very little interest in their
housekeeping in hotels, and no matter who's eat off of what, if they can
use it again--and they generally can--they always do. Why, they churn up
the melted odds and ends of ice-cream and serve 'em out as fresh-made
with that cheerful countenance as loveth no giver. And what we'd throw
to the cat they scrape right back into the soup pot, and glad enough to
get it. I don't suppose you'd mind what you ate, nor what kind of a
cloth had dusted your plate, but I was brought up to be clean, and I
don't want to sleep with spiders swinging themselves down to see how I
do it. No, Mrs. Lathrop, I can't consider no hotel, not even in common
affection for Jathrop. I'd go down a well on my hands and knees to dig
coal for him if necessary, or I'd do any other thing as a woman as
respects Jathrop might do if she didn't respect herself more. But live
in a hotel I will not, and you can write and tell him so, for _I_ don't
want to hurt his feelings. But all kindness has its limits, and if I let
a boy architect run through the heart of my house, I consider as I've
done enough to prove my Christian spirit for one year."
"What--?" ventured Mrs. Lathrop, but Susan Clegg went right on.
"I don't see where we're ever going to put our things while they haul
our walls down and rock our foundations. That young man says there won't
be a room as won't have to have something done to it, and I don't want
my furniture spoiled, even if I do have to have my house built over
against my will. My furniture is very good furniture, Mrs. Lathrop. It's
been oiled, and rubbed, and polished ever since it was bought, and none
of the chairs has ever had their middles stepped on, and nothing of
mine has got a sunk hole from sitting,--no, sir! My mattresses is all
slept even, from side to side, and there ain't a bottle-mark in the
whole house. It's a sin to take and wreck a happy home like mine. I
shall have untold convenience hereafter, but I shall never take any more
real comfort. That's what I see a-coming. And where under the sun we are
going to put our things the Lord only knows."
Mrs. Lathrop was one of those who rarely take a question as a personal
matter. She made no suggestion; she just rocked.
"I can see what I've got to be doing," said Susan, a clearer light
breaking. "I've got to be getting up and seeing where you and me can go,
and where we can put our goods. I don't want to live under the same roof
with you if I can possibly help it. And not to do it's going to be hard,
for knowing we're such friends, folks is going to naturally plan to take
us together. I don't want to hurt your feelings, Mrs. Lathrop, and yet I
can't in Christian courtesy deny that to live with you would drive me
distracted, and so I shan't consider it for a minute. Not for one single
minute. Still, I can't live far from you, for we are old friends, and
the brother that leaveth all else to cleave to his brother wasn't more
close when he done it than I am to you. Besides, if they're building our
houses over, I shall naturally be pretty lively in watching them do it,
and as one of the houses is yours, you'll like to be where I can easy
tell you how it's being done. And so it goes without saying we've got to
be close together. But not too close together."
All these premises were so undeniably true that the passive Mrs. Lathrop
could not have gainsaid them even had she been so disposed; which she
wasn't.
Accordingly, upon the very next day, Susan began her search for an
abiding place, and the right abiding place was--as she had
predicted--not to be easily found.
"There's plenty of places," said Susan, when she returned from her task,
"but they don't any of them suit my views. You're easily suited, Mrs.
Lathrop, but I'm not and never will be. I'm of a nature that never is to
be lightly took in vain, nor yet to be just lightly took either. And no
one isn't going to put me in a room that'll be sunny in July, nor yet in
one that will be shady in September. No room as is pleasant in September
can help being most hot in summer; and although I'm willing to be hot in
my own house, I will not be hot in any place where I pay board. You'll
do very well almost anywhere, Mrs. Lathrop, for Lord knows whatever
other virtues you may have, being particular could never be left at your
door in no orphaned basket. But I'm different. Mrs. Brown would take us
until young Doctor Brown and Amelia gets back, and Mrs. Allen would be
glad of the very dust of our feet; but I couldn't go to either of those
two places. Mrs. Brown would have to have both of us, for there's no one
else to take you, and Mrs. Allen would want to read us her poetry. It's
all right to write if you ain't got brains or time for nothing better,
but I have, and I ain't going to knowingly board myself with no one as
hasn't."
Mrs. Lathrop made no comment. She merely rocked and waited.
"As for our things," Susan continued, "I've found where we can put
_them_. It wasn't easy, but I never give up, and Mr. Shores says he's
willing we should have all the back of his upper part. I told him as I
should want to be able to go to 'em any time, and he said far be it from
him to desire to prevent no woman from visiting what was her own. I
could see from his tone as he was thinking of his wife as run off with
his clerk, and it does beat all how you can even make a misery out of a
woman's visiting her furniture if you feel so inclined. So the goods is
off our minds, and now it's just us as has got to be put somewheres till
our own doors is opened to us again. I must say I'd like to know where
we'll end."
On the very next day the solution was effected.
"I've got it all fixed," said Susan, returning, dovelike, with the
evening shadows. "Mrs. Macy'll take one of us and Gran'ma Mullins the
other. Gran'ma Mullins says with Hiram gone to the Klondike and Lucy
gone to her father, either you or me can have their room; only for the
love of heaven we mustn't look like Hiram in bed; for her heart is
aching and breaking, and the car-wheels of his train ain't grinding on
any track half as much as they're grinding in her tenderest spot. Now
the question is, Mrs. Lathrop, which'll go which, and it's a thing as I
must consider very carefully, for Lord knows I don't want to be no more
miserable than I've got to be. And it goes without saying I wouldn't
choose to live with Gran'ma Mullins, nor Mrs. Macy, nor nobody else if I
had my choice. I'm too much give to liking to live alone with myself. Of
course, Mrs. Macy is a pleasanter disposition than Gran'ma Mullins, for
she ain't got Hiram to wear my bones into skin over; but I feel as
living with Mrs. Macy all summer will surely lead to her trying to make
it come out even for the rent up to next January, so I would have to
worry over that. Then, too, even if Gran'ma Mullins is wearing, she's
soothing too, and I shall need soothing this summer. I declare, Mrs.
Lathrop, I can't well see how I'm ever going to pack up my things. I
can't see what's to keep 'em from getting scratched and the corners
knocked. How can I fix a toilet set smooth together? A toilet set don't
never fit smooth together; the handles always stick out. And the
frying-pan's got a handle too, and a clothesbar ain't any ways adaptable
to nothing. Chair legs is very bad and table legs is worse, and there's
Mother's wedding-present clock as found its level years ago and ain't
been stirred since. Father give it to her, and it's so heavy I couldn't
stir it if I wanted to, anyhow. But I don't want to stir it. It's my
dead mother's last wish, and as such is sacred. I wasn't to stir Father
nor the clock. It's a French clock, and it's marble. It's a handsome
clock. It was Father's one handsome present to Mother. And now I've got
to put it in storage. And then there's our hens. I don't know but what
it'd be wisest to set right to eating them. I know one thing--I'll never
board chickens. Oh, Mrs. Lathrop, this is going to be an awful business!
Think of the carpets! Think of the window shades, and my dead mother's
lamberquins! Think of the things in the garret! And the things in the
cellar! And the things in the closets! I don't know, I'm sure, how we'll
ever get moved."
As the days went on, the slow trend of life brought the problem still
more pressingly to the front. Susan decided to lodge herself with
Gran'ma Mullins. Gran'ma Mullins, whose heart was still very heavy over
Hiram's escape from the home nest, would have preferred Mrs. Lathrop.
Mrs. Lathrop's capacity for listening would have meant much to Gran'ma
Mullins in these hours of bitter loneliness; but Mrs. Macy wanted Mrs.
Lathrop, and Susan didn't want Mrs. Macy, so the outcome of that
question was a fore-gone conclusion.
When all was settled, Jathrop dispatched emissaries who, with a deftness
and dexterity possessed only by the hirelings of millionaires, descended
on Mrs. Lathrop, and in the course of a single afternoon transferred
her, her rocker, and the whole contents of her bedroom to Mrs. Macy's.
The emissaries offered to do the same thing for Susan Clegg, but she
rejected their aid. Alone and unassisted Susan wrestled with her
packing, and no one ever knew just how she accomplished it. It took her
several days, and it introduced a new order of things into not only her
life but her speech. Her struggle was valiant, but towards the end she
had to call on Felicia Hemans and Sam Durny for help. When, on Saturday
night, Susan arrived at Gran'ma Mullins's, her first observation was
that when the Lord got through with the creation it was small wonder He
arranged to rest on the seventh day.
"I d'n know as I shall ever get up again," she said to Gran'ma Mullins,
who was watching her take off her bonnet. "A apron as has been used to
carry things in for six days is bright and starched beside me. Oh,
Gran'ma Mullins, pray on your folded knees as Hiram won't come back rich
and want to build you over! Anything but that."
"Oh, if he'll only come back, it's all I'll ask!" returned Gran'ma
Mullins sadly. "To think he can't get there for four weeks yet. And
think of Hiram in a boat! Why Hiram can't even see a mirror tipped back
and forth without having to go right where he'll be the only company.
And then to be in a boat! A boat is such a tippy thing. I read about one
man being drowned in one last week. They're hooking for him with
dynamite to see if they can even get a piece of him back for his wife.
His wife isn't much like Lucy, I guess. Oh, Susan, you'll never know
what I've stood from Lucy! Nobody will."
Miss Clegg shook her head and looked about her quarters with an eye that
was dubious.
"I've got some eggs for supper," said Gran'ma Mullins, "one for you and
one for me, and one for either of us as can eat two."
"I can eat two," said Susan, who thought best to declare herself at the
outset.
"Is your things all out of the house?" Gran'ma Mullins asked, as they
seated themselves at the table.
"Oh, yes," answered Susan, "everything is out! Towards the last we acted
more like hens being fed than anything else, but we got everything
finished."
"Did you get the clock out safe?"
Susan's expression altered suddenly. "The clock! Oh, the clock! What
_do_ you think happened to that clock? And I didn't feel to mind it,
either."
"Oh, Susan, you didn't break it!"
"I did. And in sixty thousand flinders. And I'm glad, too. Very glad.
It's a sad thing as how we may be found out, no matter how careful we
sweep up our trackings. And I don't mind telling you as the bitterest
pill in my cup of clearing out has been that very same clock."
"It was such a handsome clock," said Gran'ma Mullins, opening her
naturally open countenance still wider. "Oh, Susan! What did happen?"
"You thought it was a handsome clock," said Susan, "and so did I. It was
such a handsome clock that we weren't allowed to pick it up and look at
it. Father screwed it down with big screws, so we couldn't, and he wet
'em so they rusted in. I had a awful time getting those screws out
to-day, I can tell you. You get a very different light on a dead and
gone father when you're trying to get out screws that he wet thirty-five
years ago. Me on a stepladder digging under the claws of a clock for two
mortal hours! And when I got the last one out, I had to climb down and
wake my foot up before I could do the next thing. Then I got a block and
a bed-slat, and I proceeded very carefully to try how heavy that
handsome clock--that handsome marble clock--might be. I put the block
beside it, and I put the bed-slat over the block and under the clock.
Then I climbed my ladder again, and then I bore down on the bed-slat.
Well, Gran'ma Mullins, you can believe me or not, just as you please,
but it's a solemn fact that nothing but the ceiling stopped that clock
from going sky-high. And nothing but the floor stopped me from falling
through to China. I come down to earth with such a bang as brought
Felicia Hemans running. And the stepladder shut up on me with such
another bang as brought Sam Durny."
"The saints preserve us!" ejaculated Gran'ma Mullins.
"It wasn't a marble clock a _tall_," confessed Susan. "It was painted
wood. That was why Father screwed it down. Oh, men are such deceivers!
And the best wife in the world can't develop 'em above their natural
natures. I expect it was always a real pleasure to Father to think as
Mother and me didn't know that marble clock was wood. I don't know what
there is about a man as makes his everyday character liking to deceive
and his Sunday sense of righteousness satisfied with just calling it
fooling. Well, he's gone now, and the Bible says 'to him as hath shall
be given,' so I guess he's settling up accounts somewheres. Give me the
other egg!"
After supper they stepped over to Mrs. Macy's, which was next door, and
the four sat on the piazza in the pleasant spring twilight. Mrs. Macy
was so happy over having Mrs. Lathrop instead of Susan Clegg that she
smiled perpetually. Mrs. Lathrop sat and rocked in her old-gold-plush
rocker. Gran'ma Mullins and Susan Clegg occupied the step at the feet of
the other two.
"Well, Susan," Mrs. Macy remarked meditatively, "I never looked to see
you leave your house any way except feet first. Well, well, this
certainly is a funny world."
"Yes," returned Susan, brief for once, "it certainly is."
"It's a very sad world, I think," contributed Gran'ma Mullins with a
heavy, heavy sigh. "My goodness, to think this time last spring Hiram
was spading up the potato patch! And now where is he?"
"Nobody knows," answered Susan. "See how many years it was till Jathrop
come back. But I do hope for your sake, Gran'ma Mullins, that when Hiram
does come back he won't take it into his head to buy this house and
build it over for you."
Gran'ma Mullins looked at Mrs. Macy, and Mrs. Macy looked back at
Gran'ma Mullins, and a message flashed and was answered in the glances.
"Well, Susan," said Gran'ma Mullins with neighborly interest, "you do
see that the house needs fixing up, don't you?"
Susan was the owner and Mrs. Macy only the tenant, and the implication
was not at all pleasing to her. She turned with the air of the weariest
worm that had ever done so and gave Gran'ma Mullins a look that could
only be translated as an admonition to mind her own business. Whereupon
Gran'ma Mullins promptly subsided, and the subject did not come up
again.
It was on a Monday--the very next Monday--that the workmen arrived and
set to work to demolish the outer casing of the homes of Susan and Mrs.
Lathrop. Susan went up and stood about for an hour, viewing the way they
did it with great but resigned scorn. She went every day thereafter, and
her heart was rent at the sight of the sacrilege. Then, to add to her
woe, Gran'ma Mullins proved less soothing than had been expected, and
Susan suffered keenly at her hands.
"Oh, Mrs. Lathrop," she said one morning, when the exigencies of
shopping left the two old friends full freedom of intercourse, "if I'm
going to live in that house for this whole summer, the first thing that
I'll have to do is either to change Gran'ma Mullins or change me! I can
see that. Why, I never heard anything like Gran'ma Mullins' views on
Hiram. You've heard Mrs. Macy, and I've told you what Lucy's told me
whenever I've met her, but I never had no idea it was anything like
what it is. I'm stark, raving crazy hearing about Hiram. Gran'ma Mullins
says no child was ever like Hiram, and I begin to wonder if it ain't so.
No child ever made such an impression on his mother before,--I can take
my Bible oath on that, for she's talking about him from the time I wake
till long after I'm asleep,--and she remembers things in the stillness
of the night and wakes me up to hear 'em for fear she'll forget 'em
before morning. Last night she was up at two to tell me how Hiram used
to shut his eyes before he went to sleep when he was a baby. She said he
had a different way of doing it from any other child that's ever been
born. He picked it all up by himself. She couldn't possibly tell me just
how he did it, but it was most remarkable. He had it in May and well
into June the year he was born, but along in July he began to lose it,
and by October he opened and shut just like other people's babies.
That's what I was woke up to hear, Mrs. Lathrop, and Herod was a sweet
and good-tempered mother of ten compared to me as I listened. And then
at daybreak if she didn't come in again to explain as Hiram was so
different from all other babies that he crept before he walked, and the
first of his trying to walk he climbed up a chair leg."
"Why, Jathrop--" volunteered Mrs. Lathrop.
"Of course. They all do. But I must say I don't see how I'm going to
stand it till my house is ready to receive me back with open bosom if
this is the way she's going on straight along. I wouldn't stay with Mrs.
Macy because I was tired of hearing what she said Gran'ma Mullins said
about Hiram, but it never once struck me that if I stayed with Gran'ma
Mullins I'd have it all to hear straight from the fountain mouth. My
lands alive, Mrs. Lathrop, you never hear the beat! Hiram used to
wrinkle up his face when she washed it, and he never wanted to have a
bath. And he used to bring mud turtles into the house; and when she
thinks of that and how now he's off for the Klondike, she says she feels
like going straight after him. She says she could be very useful in the
Klondike. She could polish his pick and his sled-runners, and hang up
his snowy things, and wash out his gold and his clothes. She says she
can't just see how they wash out gold, but she knows how to polish
silver, and she says mother-love like hers can pick up anything. She
goes on and on till I feel like going to the Klondike myself. I'm
getting a great deal of sympathy for Lucy. Lucy always said she could
have been happy with Hiram--maybe--if it hadn't been for his mother.
Lucy's got no kind of tender feeling for Gran'ma Mullins, and I
certainly don't feel to blame her none."
"Is your--?" asked Mrs. Lathrop, striving towards pleasanter paths.
"Well, it ain't burnt up yet," answered Susan. "I stopped at Mr. Shores'
coming back and took a look at it, and I was far from pleased to find
the door as opens into the next room to the room as my furniture is
locked up in a little open. Goodness knows who'd opened it, but it
looked very much like some one had been trying my door, to me. I asked
Mr. Shores, and I saw at a glance as it was news to him, which shows
just how much interest he's taking in looking out for my things. He said
maybe the cat had pushed it open. The cat! I unlocked my door and went
in. The furniture's all safe enough, but it's enough to put any
housekeeper's heart through the clothes wringer only to see how it's
piled. The beds is smashed flat along the wall, and wherever they could
turn a table or a chair upside down and plant something on the wrong
side of it, they've done it. As for the way the dishes is combined, I
can only say that the Lord fits the back to the burden, so the
wash-bowls is bearing everything. They've put Mother's picture in a
coal-hod for safety, and the coal-hod is sitting on the bookcase. It's a
far from cheering sight, Mrs. Lathrop, but you know I was against being
built over from the start. When I see the walls of my happy home being
smashed flat and then picked over like they was raisins to see what'll
do to use again, and then when I see my furniture put together in a way
as no one living can make head or tail of, and when I see myself woke up
at three in the night to be told that sometimes when Hiram was a baby he
would go to sleep and sometimes he wouldn't, why I feel as if that Roman
as they rolled down hill in a barrel because he wouldn't stay anywhere
else where they put him was sitting smoking cross-legged compared to me.
I d'n know what I'm going to do this summer. It would just drive an
ordinary woman crazy. But I presume I'll survive."
Mrs. Lathrop looked slightly saddened. "Well, Susan,--" she began to
murmur sympathetically.
"Oh, it doesn't matter," said Susan. "Of course, if it gets where I
can't stand it, we'll just have to change houses, that's all."
VII
SUSAN CLEGG UNSETTLED
Life under the roof of Gran'ma Mullins eventually--and eventually was a
matter of days rather than weeks--became unbearable for Susan Clegg. At
least, she so decided, and finding opportunity in the fact that both
Gran'ma Mullins and Mrs. Macy had gone to market, Susan hastened to her
old friend, Mrs. Lathrop, and laid open her fresh burden of woes.
"I can't stand it, Mrs. Lathrop," she declared with strongest emphasis,
"I can't stand it. No matter what the Bible says, a saint on a gridiron
would smile all over and wriggle for nothing but joy only to think as
where he was and wasn't boarding with Gran'ma Mullins. It's awful.
That's what it is--awful. I never had no idea that nothing could be so
awful. I've got to where I'm thinking very seriously of leaving my
property to Lucy. I'm becoming very sorry for Lucy. Lucy isn't properly
appreciated. Why, Hiram was stung by a bee once,--no ordinary bee, but a
bee a third bigger than the usual bee,--and it swelled up all different
from common, and Gran'ma Mullins thought he was surely going to die
right there before her streaming eyes. But Hiram was so bright he
remembered about putting mud on bee-bites, and he did it. Only there
wasn't no mud, and nobody knew what they could do about it. But Hiram's
mind wasn't like the mind of a ordinary person. Hiram's mind is all
different, and Hiram said, just as quick as scat, to mix water and earth
and make some mud. So they did, and the water and earth, Gran'ma Mullins
says, made the finest mud she ever saw. They covered up Hiram's bee-bite
with it, and it didn't leave so much as a scar. And now there's Hiram in
the Klondike, knowing just what to do when bit by a bee, but without a
notion what to put on if a seal catches him unawares. And all this going
on hour after hour, Mrs. Lathrop, and me sitting there waiting for my
dinner, half mad anyway over the way my dead-and-gone father's home is
being torn limb from limb, and in no mood to listen to anything. Oh,
laws, no! It's no use. I can't stand it, and I won't either."
Susan paused expressively.
Mrs. Lathrop gasped. "What will--?"
"I'm going to find another place to live right away," Susan went on.
"I've too much consideration for you to ask you to go there, Mrs.
Lathrop, and besides, I feel it would be exchanging the fire for the
stew-pan for me to come here. I'm going this town over this very
afternoon, and I think I'll find some place where I can sleep part of
the night, at any rate. I guess I got about three quarters of a hour's
sleep last night. Gran'ma Mullins woke me up weeping on the foot of my
bed before daylight. Just before daylight is her special time for
recollecting how Hiram used to drink milk out of a cup when he was a
baby, and how he used to eat candy if anybody gave him any, and other
remarkable doings that he did. My lands, I wish Job could have met
Gran'ma Mullins! His friends and his boils would have just been pleasant
things to amuse him, then. I'm going first to Mrs. Allen, and then I'm
going to every one. I shan't make no bones about my errand, for
everybody knows Gran'ma Mullins. I'll have the sympathy of the whole
community. I need sympathy, and I feel I can soak up a good lot of it if
I'm let to."
"How's the--?" asked Mrs. Lathrop.