"and it saves me from being asked questions. And you know as well as I
do, Mrs. Lathrop, that I can have him if I want him."
Mrs. Lathrop sat open-mouthed, dumb.
"If I don't have him, it'll be because I don't want him," added Miss
Clegg with dignity. "So it's no use your saying one other word, Mrs.
Lathrop."
And Mrs. Lathrop, thus adjured, refrained from further speech.
X
SUSAN CLEGG DEVELOPS IMAGINATION
"Far be it from me, Mrs. Lathrop," said Susan Clegg, returning from an
early errand down-town and dropping in at Mrs. Macy's to find her friend
still in her own room and rocking in her old-gold stationary rocker. It
was now autumn, and to take the chill off the room an oil burner was
brightly ablaze. "Far be it from me to say anything disrespectful of
such a good Samaritan as your son Jathrop, but as we have it in the
scriptures, he certainly does move in a mysterious way his neighbors to
inform. It's mighty good of him to go to all the expense of building
over my house in a way I'd never in this wide world have had it if I
could 'a' understood those plans of that boy architect, and it may
be--providing we escape earthquake, fire, blood, and famine--that I'll
get into it once more before next summer, notwithstanding it's all of
two months behind yours, you being his mother, Mrs. Lathrop, and me only
your friend. But a early frost is sure to crack the plaster, and, seeing
as the glass blowers has gone on a strike, there's no telling when
they'll blow the panes for the windows. Just the same, kind and good as
Jathrop is, he might have had more consideration for me as would this
day have been his wife, if I'd felt to answer him with a three-letter
word instead of a two, than to put me on the pillar of scorn before a
community as has known me always as a scrupulous lover of the voracious
truth."
"You don't--" began Mrs. Lathrop, in mild astonishment.
"Yes, I do," continued Susan, with growing indignation. "Jathrop has
done his best to make me out a liar, and I don't know as I'll ever be
able to hold my head up again. He's struck me in the tenderest spot he
could strike me in, and not boldly neither, but in a skulking,
underhand way that makes it all the bitterer pill to swallow."
"I can't see--" objected Mrs. Lathrop.
"No, nor me neither. But he did, and in no time everybody'll know it
from Johnny, at the station, to Mrs. Lupey in Meadville, not forgettin'
the poor demented over to the insane asylum. And it all comes of those
letters I have been getting from Jathrop during the summer."
"But--"
"Yes, I know and you know there was no letters a _tall_. But everybody
else, except you and me and the postmaster, believed I had a letter
regular every week. Whenever I run short of subjects at the Sewing
Society, I just fell back on my last letter from Jathrop and told them
all about what he was doing in those islands. I'd read the book he sent,
and I'd read it to good profit. There was some things as I didn't quite
understand, of course, but on them I just put my own interpretations,
and knowing Jathrop as I did, it was easy enough for me to figure out
how he'd be most likely to act in a strange, barbaric land. The book
didn't have a word to say about the costumes of the native tribes, but
I'm not so ignorant as not to know how those South Sea Islanders never
wear nothing more hamperin' than sea-shell earrings and necklaces of
sharks' teeth; and I'd read, too, that foreign visitors, on account of
the unbearable heat, was in the habit of adoptin' the native fashions in
dress. When you get started makin' things up, there's no knowing just
where you're likely as to end. It's so easy to go straight ahead and say
just whatever you please that seems in any way interesting. And so, when
Mrs. Fisher asked me one day whether I supposed there was any cannibals
there, I said there was one cannibal tribe that was most ferocious and
had appetites that there was no such thing as quenchin'. I said that in
Jathrop's last letter he had written me about how this tribe had
captured the cook off the yacht and that when they finally found his
captors and defeated them in a desperate battle lasting three days, all
that was found of the cook was two chicken croquettes."
"For gra--!" cried Mrs. Lathrop.
"That's what Mrs. Fisher said. Of course, with the cook eat up--all but
what was in the two croquettes, that is,--Jathrop and his millionaire
friends was a good deal put about. There wasn't a one of 'em as knew the
first thing about cooking, and after the exercise of the three days'
battle they was most awful hungry. And then, I says, quoting from the
letter from Jathrop which never came, they had a piece of real luck,
just as millionaires is always having. They had taken one prisoner, and
by means of signs, not knowin' a word of the cannibal language, they
discovered that the prisoner was the cook of the tribe. He pointed to
the croquettes as a example of his handiwork, and Jathrop said that he
never saw anything in the cookin' line that looked more toothsome than
they did. So, of course they engaged the cannibal cook on the spot and
carried him back to the yacht with 'em. Everything went well for a few
days, but on a day when they had invited the chief of a friendly tribe
to dinner, there was something as aroused their suspicions. The
principal dish for the feast was, so far as they could make out from the
cook's sign-language, a savory rabbit stew. Now as they had never seen
or heard tell of a rabbit in the Bahamas, they was naturally curious to
learn where the cook had managed to dig it up. He either couldn't or
wouldn't tell. I says that Jathrop says you might 'a' thought that the
cook was a thirty-second degree mason and that the origin of the rabbit
was a thirty-second degree masonic secret. The millionaires gathered in
council and discussed the question, pro and con, from every obtainable
or imaginable angle. Then, just as they were about to adjourn without
having reached any conclusion whatever, they rang for the cabin boy to
fetch some liquid refreshment. But there wasn't no answer. And they
might 'a' been ringing yet as to any good it would do. They never did
see that cabin boy, and the only one to eat the savory rabbit stew was
the visiting chief."
"I don't--" observed Mrs. Lathrop, rocking faster.
"Well, Mrs. Lathrop, you're right about that," Susan confirmed,
loosening her shawl, for the oil-stove was rapidly lifting the room's
temperature. "I don't see, myself, why anybody should ever have known
any better, and nobody would have, if it hadn't been as Jathrop took it
into his head to talk to a newspaper man at Atlantic City on about the
same day as I had him missing the cabin boy and refusing a helping to
the rabbit stew. Mr. Kimball showed me the paper as came from New York
wrapped around a new ledger he just received by express. The reporter
had written two columns and over about the 'Klondike Bonanza King,' and
if Jathrop had set his mind to makin' me out a Ananias and a Saphira
boiled into one, he couldn't have succeeded better. He hasn't been in
the Bahamas a _tall_. The yacht started for there, but it went to Cuba
instead, and he and his friends only stayed in Cuba a week. From there
they went down to Panama and looked over the canal as far as it's gone.
They spent the summer sailin' from one summer resort to another, and I
must say I should think there was better ways of passin' the time than
that. When it comes to eatin', I'd about as leave eat the dishes of a
cannibal cook as eat things made of the salt water that people go
bathin' in, and that's what they do at Atlantic City. The minister
showed me some candy 'Liza Em'ly sent him from Atlantic City in July,
and I know what I'm talkin' about, for it was printed on the paper
around each piece. 'Salt-water Taffy.' Think of that! It's plain to be
seen that they ain't got any fresh water there, or they wouldn't use
salt. Jathrop and the other millionaires, I suppose, drink nothin' but
wine, but the poor folks must drink salt water or go thirsty. I suppose
it saves salt in seasonin', but I'd rather have my vituals unseasoned
than have 'em salted with water that folks has swum in. They certainly
ain't got no enterprise, that's sure. If they had they'd pipe
water--fresh water--from somewheres. And if there's no place near enough
to pipe it from, they'd build cisterns. But water's not the only thing
as shows their shiftlessness. Our town isn't exactly a metropolis, but
we got a few cement sidewalks. Atlantic City ain't got a one. I heard
about that long ago. And in these days of progress, too! Nothing but a
board walk on its principal street--nothing a _tall_."
"What did--?" asked Mrs. Lathrop.
"He said a good deal more'n his prayers, I can tell you that. He said
his object in going to the Bahamas, to which he never went, after all,
was to look into the possibility of securin' a large tract of land there
for the cultivation and growth of sisal. Now what under the sun would
you suppose sisal was? I saw in the book that sisal was being grown in
increasing quantities in the islands, and I just naturally supposed it
was some sort of animal. It might of been buffalo, or it might of been
guinea pigs, but when I spoke at the Sewing Society of how Jathrop had
mentioned the great number of sisal, and Mrs. Allen says: 'What is
sisal?' I just right then and there on the spur of the minute says:
'Why, don't you know? Sisal is a sort of small oxen striped like a zebra
and spotted like a leopard.' And would you believe it, Mrs. Lathrop,
when Mr. Kimball asked me that same question to-day, I said the very
same thing--small oxen striped like a zebra and spotted like a leopard.
'That's what Mrs. Allen told me you said, Miss Clegg,' says he, 'but
accordin' to the paper, Jathrop Lathrop don't quite agree with you.' I
don't know, Mrs. Lathrop, I d'n know, I'm sure, why Jathrop should take
pleasure in making me appear like a ignoramus, but there ain't no
question about it that that's what he did when he gave that interview to
that there reporter. 'What kind of animal is a sisal, then, Mr.
Kimball?' I asked, and you can believe me my blood was boilin' in my
veins. 'It ain't no animal a _tall_,' he says. 'It's hemp what they
make ropes out of to hang murderers with. And the seeds they feed
canaries on.' 'Well,' I says, 'that may be the reporter's sisal, but it
ain't mine, and it ain't Jathrop's. The newspapers never get nothin'
right nohow, but when it comes to reducin' cattle into rope and
birdseed, they are certainly goin' one better on the Chicago pork
packers.' In all my life I have never been a respecter of the untruth,
but I know enough on the subject to tell a good lie when necessity calls
upon me and to stick to it as long as it has an eyelid to hang by. But I
will say this for your son Jathrop, Mrs. Lathrop, and that is that
before he got done with that reporter, he didn't leave so much as a
eyelash, let alone a lid. It wasn't only that he'd never been to those
islands a _tall_, and I'd been tellin' everybody in town as how I'd had
a letter from him there every week the whole summer through, but he must
air his acquaintance with things on the islands just as if he'd been
born and raised there. And it seems there ain't no natives within miles
of the Bahamas, and hasn't been since Columbus and his people was there,
goin' on fifteen hundred years ago. Columbus told 'em that he'd take 'em
to the land where all their dead relatives and friends had gone to, a
land flowin' with milk and honey, and he kept his word. Seems he shipped
every last mother's son and daughter of 'em back to Spain with him, and
left the islands bare for the next comers. It may have appeared a rather
roundabout way for the native Bahamians to reach heaven and their
departed folks, seeing as it led through hard work in the Spanish mines,
but there ain't no question whatever that they every one got there in
the end."
"You mean--" suggested Mrs. Lathrop.
"I mean that unless Lathrop or the reporter made it up, or the pair of
'em together, that nobody lives there now except whites and blacks, and
there's not enough whites to make a nice shepherd's plaid out of the
combination. But savagery, except for pirates, has never had any place
there, and cannibalism is absolutely unknown. It's all very
humiliating, and it'd 'a' been much better to let people ask me and
never said nothing back a _tall_. When people is in the dark, they've
got to imagine for themselves, and as long as they don't tell what they
imagine to others, no piece in a newspaper can never make 'em blush. I
can tell you it's learnt me a lesson as I won't soon forget. I'll never
get over the way Mr. Kimball looked at me when he said as how sisal was
hemp; and me thinking all the time it was a animal when it was a herb.
Well, Mrs. Lathrop, it's a ill wind that don't chill the shorn lamb. I'm
that chilled that I feel I never shall talk again. I'll never say black
is black or white is white until I've looked at the color twice with my
glasses on. Accuracy is the best policy, I says, from this day
henceforth."
"You might--" began Mrs. Lathrop sympathetically.
"That's true, too. I might have known that it didn't sound true to be
getting letters every week from a man who went away to the Klondike and
never sent his mother so much as a picture postal card in all the years
he was there. But then, too, you've got to consider the kind of folks as
you're telling things to, and with all due respect to the ladies of the
Sewing Society, from Mrs. Allen to Gran'ma Mullins, they're not
over-burdened with the kind of intellect as can add two and two and get
the same answer twice in succession. There wasn't a one of 'em as
thought of that, or they'd 'a' said it straight out, without once
considering my feelings. And I'll say this much for you, Mrs. Lathrop:
you're not the best housekeeper I ever see, and you're about a match for
Mrs. Sperrit's cousin when it comes to being practical, but you have got
some brains, and I'd no more think of trying to deceive you than I'd
think of trying to deceive Judge Fitch when he'd got a big retainer to
get the truth out of me."
Mrs. Lathrop leaned down and turned out the oil burner.
"Was that--?"
"No, it wasn't all. There was something else that has set me all of a
flutter. If it wasn't as you never can tell whether a newspaper is
voracious or just bearing false witness, I'd certainly feel as if
Jathrop was playing fast and loose with my affections. I can remember,
and you can remember, too, when the freedom of the press didn't mean
freedom to make a Pike's Peak out of a ant hill. But in these days
there's no telling whether, when we read of a poor soul being attacked
by a wild beast, it's a jungle tiger or just a pet yellow kitten. Folks
would rather read about the tiger than the kitten, and so the papers
give 'em what they want without any regard for the real facts a _tall_.
Elijah Doxey, who's a real editor if there ever was one, and knows all
about the paper business, says that the newspaper, like everything else,
has to keep abreast of the times or go to the wall, and that since
people in these days 'ld rather read fiction than history, it stands to
reason a paper can't stand in its own light by sticking always to cold
commonplace facts."
"Did the--?" Mrs. Lathrop attempted mildly to question.
"I don't know, I d'n know, I'm sure, Mrs. Lathrop. But the interview
with Jathrop wasn't all interview, by no means. It said a lot about his
party, and it mentioned each of the millionaires as was in it. Seems the
interview was given on one of those Atlantic City board walks, and it
was given--from what on earth do you think, Mrs. Lathrop? From a wheel
chair. Jathrop in a wheel chair! Think of that! And not alone, either.
'Beside him,' wrote the interviewer, 'was the beautiful, dark-eyed Cuban
senora who, rumor says, is soon to become his bride.' My lands! If it
hadn't been for Mr. Kimball's apple barrel, I certainly would have
dropped. It would 'a' been bad enough if they was both strong and well,
but to think of Jathrop being too weak to walk and going to marry a
foreigner no more robust than himself. You can't imagine the shock it
give me. For a minute I was clean speechless, and I'd 'a' been dumb yet,
I do believe, if it wasn't as I begun to figure things out in my head
and got sight of a ray of hope. Just as like as not, I says, Jathrop was
suffering from the sudden change of climate,--from the Klondike to Cuba
seems to me a pretty rigorous switch for any constitution,--and the
Cuban woman was more'n likely his trained nurse fetched from the island.
Either that or the woman was just recovering from a illness, and Jathrop
got in to ride with her out of pure kindness of heart. Then, too, I
remembered that: 'rumor says,' and cheered right up. Rumor never told
the truth yet, as far as I know, and it's not in reason to believe the
shameless thing is going to reform in these degenerate days. Jathrop may
be going to marry the senora, I don't say he isn't, and I don't say he
is. But before I believe it, I've got to have some better authority than
what rumor says. He's steered clear of wives in the Klondike, and he's
steered clear of 'em in other places, and I don't see as there's any
reason to think his steering apparatus come to grief while he was in
Cuba. 'How's Susan Clegg?' That was what he wrote in the first letter
you'd had from him in a dog's age, Mrs. Lathrop, and it showed pretty
clear to me who he was thinking of while engaged in the steering
operation."
"You don't think--" Mrs. Lathrop began distressfully.
"No man as was seriously sick, Mrs. Lathrop, ever talked two whole long
newspaper columns to a reporter. You can bank on that. He was well
enough to make me out the king of prevaricators, and it took some
strength and a good deal of attention to small details to do it, and as
the Cuban senora never said one word in all that time, I can't think as
she is cutting any figure eights in his affairs. Consequently, I don't
believe it'll pay either of us to do any great lot of worrying."
"If--" Mrs. Lathrop attempted once more to interpolate.
"That's just what I told Mr. Kimball. 'If Mrs. Lathrop could only see
this paper,' I says, 'I know she'd be delighted.' It stands to reason
as a mother must be proud of a son who, after having no more sense than
to take a kicking cow for a bad debt, goes to the Klondike and comes
back a millionaire; but it stands to reason, too, that she'd be more
proud of him to get two columns of free advertising in a New York paper
that can sell its columns to the department stores for real money. Well,
I asked him for the paper just to show you, and though he didn't feel to
part with it, just the same he did in the end, and I carried it away in
triumph."
"You've brought--"
"No, I haven't. I'm sorry to disappoint you, Mrs. Lathrop, more sorry
than I am to disappoint Mr. Kimball in not being able to return it, but
the truth is I lost it on the way home."
"Lost--"
"Every last scrap of it. And I can't say as it was altogether accidental
either. As Shakespeare says: 'Self-protection is the best part of
valor.' If that paper was ever to get before the Sewing Society, my
character would be stripped off me to the last rag. Mr. Kimball can say
what was in it, but without the paper itself, he'll have a hard time
proving anything, and my word when it comes to a dispute is as good as
his and a thousand times better."
Mrs. Lathrop leaned forward and for a moment stopped rocking.
"You--" she said quietly but tensely.
"Tore it into small bits," returned Susan, rising, "and scattered them
to the winds of heaven. There's a paper trail all the way from the
square to Mrs. Macy's gate."
Mrs. Lathrop resumed her rocking and relapsed into silence.
Susan Clegg, laying her finger to her lips as a parting warning, went
quietly out.
XI
SUSAN CLEGG AND THE PLAYWRIGHT
"Well," said Miss Clegg to her dear friend in the early fall of that
same year, while they still waited under alien roofs the completion of
their own made-over houses, "the men who write the Sunday papers and say
that when you look at the world with a impartial eye in this century you
can't but have hopes of women some day developing into something, surely
would know they spoke the truth if they could see Elijah Doxey now."
"But Eli--" expostulated Mrs. Lathrop.
"No, of course not. But 'Liza Em'ly is, and it's her I'm talking about.
She was up to see me this afternoon, and she says she'll spare no money
nowhere. The trained nurse is to stay with him right along forever if
he likes, and the two can have her automobile and ride or walk or do
anything, without thinking once what it costs. There was a doctor up
from the city again yesterday, and that makes four visits at a hundred a
visit. But 'Liza Em'ly says even if Elijah hadn't anything of his own,
she'd pay all the bills sooner'n think anything that could be done was
being left out. It's a pretty sad case, Mrs. Lathrop, and this last
doctor says he never see a sadder. He said nothing more could be done
right now, for there really is nothing in this community to remind
Elijah that he ever wrote a play, if they only could get those clippings
from the newspapers away from him. But that's just what they can't do.
He keeps looking them over, and then such a look of agony comes into his
eyes,--and Elijah was never one to bear pain as you must know,
remembering him with the colic,--and he clasps his hands and shakes his
head, and--well, Mrs. Lathrop, Elijah just wasn't strong enough to write
a play, and some one as was stronger ought to of restrained him right
in the first of it."
"He--" said Mrs. Lathrop pityingly.