He's bringing the senora. And he wouldn't bring her if it wasn't that
he's going to marry her. Even you must see that. And if there was ever a
insult multiplied by perjury, Jathrop's done it in that action. It's a
good thing he didn't ask: 'How's Susan Clegg?' this time, as he did the
time he was coming back from the Klondike. For I don't believe I could
ever have stood that. All I can say, Mrs. Lathrop, is as I'm sorry for
you from the soles of my feet up. You'll never in the world be able to
get up a Christmas dinner as will please any senora, you can take my
word on that. And not to please her will be a bad beginning with a
senora as is to be your future daughter-in-law. Senoras don't care
shucks for turkey and mince pie. They're not used to 'em and likely to
get indigestion from 'em, and think what it would mean to Jathrop, let
alone to her, if she should be carried off by a acute attack right here
in your new, built-over house, at the dinner table. He'd blame it on
you, and like as not she'd haunt you the rest of your living days. No,
sir. You've got to give her Spanish omelets with lots of red peppers in
'em, and everything else Creole style, which means all he't up with
tabasco sauce fit to burn out your insides. It's eating like that as
makes those Spaniards and Cubans so dark colored you can't tell 'em from
mulattoes. The peppers and the tabasco sauce bakes 'em brown on the
outside, after leaving 'em all scorched and parched within."
For once, however, Susan Clegg was wrong in her deduction. Jathrop
arrived in a red automobile on the day before Christmas, with a
chauffeur in bear-skins driving, and a guest in sealskin beside him. But
the guest was not the senora. It was one of Jathrop's millionaire
friends who, Jathrop said, could buy and sell him twenty times over. He
was a small man with a bald head and a red beard and old enough to be
Jathrop's father.
Miss Clegg viewed the arrival from her bedroom window and was so glad it
wasn't the senora that she at once set about baking extra doughnuts and
mince pie to contribute to the festivities of the morrow. This occupied
her until supper time. Then she made a hurried meal, washed her one
plate and cup and saucer, and loaded down with her thank offering,
flitted through the pergola and in at Mrs. Lathrop's kitchen door. The
kitchen was empty, but voices penetrating from the dining room told her
that her friend and her visitors were still at table. Being a trifle
nervous and unable to sit quietly, she began at once to put the
disordered kitchen into some degree of order, purely for the sake of
occupation.
She had just finished washing and scouring the pots and pans and was
flushing the waste-pipe of Mrs. Lathrop's new porcelain sink with
lye-water so strong that her eyes ran tears from the fumes, when the
voices growing more and more audible told her that Jathrop was leading
his mother and his guest toward the kitchen. She just had time hurriedly
to dry her hands on the roller towel when they appeared.
"Well, well," exclaimed Jathrop, in apparent surprise, "if here ain't
our old friend, Susan Clegg!"
There is no question that Miss Clegg was slightly flustered at thus
being taken unawares, but she recovered herself promptly, and shook
hands cordially with Jathrop and not less cordially with the little
millionaire, whom he introduced as Mr. Kettlewell. And Mr. Kettlewell
was cordiality itself. Everybody sat down, right there in the kitchen
and talked for a full hour, and in the course of the talk, Jathrop told
Susan that he had arranged with a department store in New York to let
her have whatever she needed for her built-over house and charge the
same to his account. She could select the things from the firm's
catalogue, or go to the city at his expense and pick out the actual
articles. It was his Christmas present to his mother's and his own
oldest friend. In conclusion, Jathrop joined with his mother in an
invitation to Susan to take Christmas dinner with them; and Mr.
Kettlewell smilingly begged her, for his sake, not to refuse. Altogether
Susan had the pleasantest evening she had experienced in years, and the
next morning, while Jathrop and Mr. Kettlewell were off in the car after
evergreens with which to decorate the two houses, she ran over with the
express purpose of telling Mrs. Lathrop so.
"Jathrop mayn't have much judgment when it comes to selecting
architects," she began, "nor again when it comes to selecting servants,
as was proved by his bringing that Hop Loo all the way from the
Klondike. Nor again, neither, when it comes to wives, if it's a real
fact that he's going to marry a brown-baked senora; but there's no
getting away from the fact that he's a king in choosing his men friends.
I've seen men in my life of all sorts and descriptions, from the
minister to the blacksmith, but I ain't never see before such a
handsome, high-minded, superior gentleman as Jathrop's friend, Mr.
Kettlewell. I never thought much of bald-headed men before, but his head
is so white and shiny, it's a pleasure to look at it. And I always just
hated a red beard; but Mr. Kettlewell's beard is of a different red.
It's a nice, warm, comforting red as makes you feel as cosy as the glow
of a red-hot stove when the thermometer's down around zero. I can't say
either, Mrs. Lathrop, as I wasn't more or less prejudiced against men as
never rightly grew up, but stopped in the women's sizes. But there's a
something about Mr. Kettlewell's proportions as gives you the idea he's
really taller than he seems. And there's only one thing to compare his
voice to. It's milk and honey. My lands, what a sweet, clear-rolling,
liquid voice that Mr. Kettlewell has!"
"Ja--" began Mrs. Lathrop.
"Yes, I heard him. But I don't put that against Mr. Kettlewell, not a
_tall_. I'm sure he made every penny of it honestly, and if he's retired
from business now, it don't mean he's quit work. It's no easy job
cutting coupons off all the bonds he must have, and collecting rents is
a occupation I don't envy nobody. It's the penalty that rich men have to
pay for their success. They work hard to get the principal, and then
they're made to work twice as hard to get the interest. There's no such
thing as rest for the rich any more'n there is for the poor. I used to
think before Father died as I'd like to roll in wealth, but it ain't no
easy rolling, I can tell you that, Mrs. Lathrop, especially when you've
got a tenant like Mrs. Macy, who won't buy so much as a gas-tip or do so
much as drive a nail without charging it up to the owner."
Miss Clegg's participation in the Christmas dinner at her neighbors' was
twofold. She took part in its preparation as well as in its discussion.
It was her soup which began it, it was her "stuffing" which added zest
to the roast turkey, it was her cranberry sauce which sweetened
contrastingly the high seasoning, and it was her mince pie which brought
the repast to a fitting and enjoyable close. Seated opposite to Mr.
Kettlewell, where she could revel in a full view of his shining pate and
his warmly comforting whiskers, her enjoyment was ocular as well as
gustatory; and under the caressing sweetness of his voice it was
likewise auricular. For the occasion Jathrop had provided a fine vintage
champagne, and though Miss Clegg, whose total-abstinence principles
forbade her to even taste, refrained from so much as touching her lips
to the edge of her glass, she unquestionably warmed in the stimulating
atmosphere of the sparkling, bubbling, golden juice of the grape. To her
it was indeed the red-letter Christmas of her life, and every incident,
of the dinner especially, was a matter for reflection and rumination in
the succeeding hours.
In this vale of tears, however, there is apparently no great joy without
its compensating sorrow; and in Susan Clegg's case the one followed
swiftly on the heels of the other. In the pale gray of the dawn of the
following day, Susan Clegg dashed wildly out of her kitchen door and
flitted with lifted skirts across the brief intervening space that led
to Mrs. Lathrop's back door. As pallid as the morning itself, her scant
hair streaming, her eyes wide with mixed terror and indignation, she
burst into her neighbor's kitchen, where to her great relief she found
her old friend already up and occupied.
One glimpse of Susan was enough for Mrs. Lathrop. Up went her hands and
down went she on to the nearest chair with an inarticulate gasp of
horrified yet questioning astonishment, while Miss Clegg flopped limply
into another at the end of the kitchen table.
There she must have sat for a full minute before she could get breath to
utter a word, which, being contrary to all her habits, was in itself
terrifying to her friend. Eventually, however, she forced herself to
assume an upright position and simultaneously attained a somewhat
feeble attempt at speech.
"Well, of all things in this world to happen to me!" Then she paused for
a fresh breath, which being utterly without precedent, added mightily to
Mrs. Lathrop's alarm. "And even now at this minute I don't really know
whether I'm more dead than alive, or more alive than dead."
Mrs. Lathrop, believing that the situation being extraordinary, some
extraordinary effort on her part was demanded, stirred herself to a
prolonged speech.
"Don't tell me I'm looking--"
"No, I'm not a ghost, if that's what you mean. You are looking at Susan
Clegg in the flesh--all the flesh that ain't been scared clean off her.
But it's the greatest miracle as ever happened in this community that
it's my body and not my spirit as is here to tell the tale. My house was
broken into by a burglar, Mrs. Lathrop, and I was tied up and gagged in
one of my own chairs."
Mrs. Lathrop just gasped. Susan drew herself up a little straighter,
gaining courage from the sound of her own voice, and striking something
like her old oral gait.
"I was gagged for five hours, Mrs. Lathrop, and knowing me as you do for
all these years and years, maybe you can feel what being gagged for five
hours and not able to say even 'boo' meant to a active person like me.
Every one of those hours was like a eternity in a Spanish inferno of
torture. And everything I possess in this world, from my bonnet and
striped silk dress to Father's deeds at the mercy of that gagger. And
all I've got to say is this: If I hadn't of been built over, it never in
the wide creation would have happened. And if your son Jathrop thinks he
can ever make up to me for being gagged by inviting me to a Christmas
dinner, most of which I cooked with my own hands, and offering to give
me strange pieces of furniture to take the place of pieces as is old
friends and dearer than the apples of my two eyes, he'd better do some
more thinking. There never was nothing about the house I was born in and
my mother and father died in to make a burglar look at it twice. No
burglar as had any respect for himself or his calling, Mrs. Lathrop,
would have looked at it once or knowed as it was there. But built over
it's as different as diamon's is from pebbles. It looks money from the
tips of its lightning rods to its cellar windows and is as inviting to
robbers as if it had a sign on the gatepost, reading: 'Walk in!' So,
however you look at it, there's nobody responsible for my gagging and
for whatever is missing but one man, and that man is Jathrop Lathrop.
It's easy to be seen as he's no more fit to have money than a crow as
steals gold trinkets that cost fortunes and goes and hides 'em in hollow
trees. He was born poor, and the Lord meant him to stay poor, no matter
what Mrs. Allen and her Persian religion has to say about things as
happens being meant to happen. The Lord hadn't nothing to do with
Jathrop going to the Klondike and getting rich, you can be certain
about that. If he hadn't been fool enough to take a kicking cow for a
perfectly good debt and then let it loose to ride over a peaceful and
long-suffering community, he'd 'a' lived and died a pauper in this here
very town. So's far as I can see it was the devil and not the Lord as
guided Jathrop from the first, and everything as has happened since
shows the devil is still guiding him. Everything he turns his mind to
goes by contraries. I'm not saying anything against the goodness of
Jathrop's intentions, mind you, Mrs. Lathrop, but no matter how good
they are, evil and misery certainly seems sure to follow."
The tirade stirred Mrs. Lathrop to her feet, but she was not resentful.
She knew that Susan Clegg's bitterness was confined to her tongue, and
that even with that she could salve as well as sting.
"Can't I--?" she suggested.
"Indeed you can," answered Miss Clegg. "I never felt as I needed a cup
of tea more, and if the doughnuts I brought you ain't all eat up, I'd
relish four or five of 'em right now."
"You haven't--" began Mrs. Lathrop, taking down the teapot.
"No; but I'm coming to it. I begun with the cause, and the effect'll
come trailing after like the tails of Mary's little lambs. Only the
tails in this case was bigger than the sheep. It may have been hearing
the noise Jathrop makes when he eats, or it may have been your turkey
gravy or your biscuits, Mrs. Lathrop, or all of 'em put together. Not
knowing which, I'm not foolish enough to blame one more'n the other. But
it's a fact as is undeniable that I never slept poorer than last night.
I was in bed by nine, but I never closed my eyes till eleven, and I
certainly heard the clock strike midnight. I counted goats jumping over
a stile, and I counted 'em backward as well as forward, but I heard one
struck, and I heard two. And then I heard something as set my hair up on
end and the gooseflesh sprouting all over me. It sounded like footsteps
in the 'But. Pan.,' and they was too heavy for the cat's, I could tell
that at once, though at two in the morning it's surprising how loud a
cat's footsteps can sound, especially when it's reached the pouncing
stage, and the rat ain't got no hole to run to. I'd forgot to put the
turkey leg in the ice-box as I'd carried home with me, and all I could
think of was that if it was the cat, there'd be nothing left on that
bone by morning, unless I stopped things right then and immediately.
You'd never believe how cold a house can be at two o'clock in the
morning of the day after Christmas unless you'd got up in it as I did;
and now to look back at it, I see how lucky it was as it was as cold as
it was, for if it hadn't of been, I'd a gone down just as I was, and I
was in no trim to meet a man burglar, I can tell you _that_. So I just
slipped into this flannel wrapper and a old pair of slippers, which I've
got on now under these arctics, and I picked up the candle as I'd lit,
and down-stairs I went. Well, Mrs. Lathrop, I hope you may never in your
born days in this world or the other have such a shock as met me there
face to face in my own new, built-over kitchen. If there wasn't the
biggest giant of a man I ever see coming out of the shadows between the
cookstove and the cellar door. And he with his head all wrapped around
in one of my best plaid roller towels, so that nothing of him was to be
seen but two fierce, staring, bloodshot eyes as gleamed like a wild
beast's. Oh, my soul and body, Mrs. Lathrop, that minute! How I ever
kept my senses I don't pretend to say, more especially as he was on me
with one jump. There was no such thing as holding on to the candle, you
can see that. It dropped, and I never knew I dropped it. For, of course,
I shut my eyes, and when your eyes is shut, there's no knowing whether
there's a lighted candle about or whether there isn't."
In her agitation over the recital, Mrs. Lathrop, who was placing cups
and saucers on the table, let one of the cups slide crashing to the
floor. "Oh, Su--!" she exclaimed.
"You may well say: 'Oh, Susan!'" Miss Clegg continued. "There is times
when 'Oh, Susan' don't half express the state of affairs, and this was
one of 'em, Mrs. Lathrop. It wasn't in nature for me not to scream, so I
screamed, and it was that scream that did the business. It showed the
burglar I wasn't deaf and dumb, and people as isn't deaf and dumb is
looked on by burglars as their natural enemies. Maybe some people can
scream without opening their mouths, but I never was one of that kind,
and the kind as open their mouths when they scream is the kind that all
burglars prefer. It saves 'em the trouble of forcing apart their jaws. I
never shut my mouth after opening it; for the burglar just shoved
something in it as quick as scat, and then he tied a bandage around back
of my head so I couldn't spit it out. Then he picked me up and plumped
me down hard in a chair and tied me fast to it with my own clothesline.
And all the time he never no more opened his lips to speak than if he
couldn't. It's my opinion he must have had a cold and lost his voice.
Either that, or his voice was such a unpleasant voice he was ashamed to
let anybody hear it. For it ain't in common sense as a man, even if he
is a burglar, could keep as still as he did, if he had a speaking voice
that's in any way fit for use. I know in the time he took there was a
lot of things I felt to say to him, and would if I could, and common
sense'll tell you, Mrs. Lathrop, that he must have felt to say a lot of
things to me. But he didn't make so much as a peep behind his roller
towel."
"Did--?" asked Mrs. Lathrop, pouring the tea.
"I can't say as he did or he didn't. I haven't missed nothing yet, but
then I haven't looked. Still, if he didn't I can't say as I'd have much
respect for him. What sort of a burglar would a burglar be to take all
that trouble of breaking in, binding and gagging, and then go away
without helping himself to something for his trouble. I ain't got no
love for burglars in general or in particular. But any burglar as 'ld
do a fool trick like that I ain't got no respect for neither."
"How--?" queried her neighbor as she passed Susan her cup.
"It was something of a job I can tell you, but when I sets my mind to a
thing I sets my mind to it, and ropes and a kitchen chair ain't got the
power to stop me. I begun wriggling as soon as I heard the burglar shut
the door behind him, and I kept on wriggling for every minute of the
five hours. A tramped-on worm never did more turning and wriggling than
I did between two and seven this morning, and at last wriggling being
its own reward, I wriggled free, first with my hands and then with my
feet. But before I got my feet free, I undid the band and ungagged
myself and said just a few of the things that was bottled up all that
time. The Bible says there's a time to talk and a time to be still, but
there's such a thing as overdoing the still time, I think, and when
you're gagged by a burglar is one of 'em."
Susan sipped her tea for a moment in silence.
"Where's Jathrop and Mr. Kettlewell?" she asked at length. "Ain't they
up yet?"
Mrs. Lathrop nodded. "They start--" she began.
"You don't mean they've both lit out already?" asked Susan in surprise.
Then: "I was hoping to see Mr. Kettlewell again. But it's a long journey
back to New York, so I suppose they set off before light."
Mrs. Lathrop nodded once more.
"Aren't--?" she questioned.
"I certainly am. I'm going to report the burglary at once. I've got a
clue, and it ought to be easy enough to run down that burglar." She drew
from her bosom a rather damp handkerchief. "That's what he left me to
chew on for five hours," she said, as she spread it out. "And there's
the clue right there in the corner."
Mrs. Lathrop took it to the window and inspected it through her glasses.
The handkerchief was initialed with a "K."
The New Year came and January was passing and, so far as Susan Clegg
cared to divulge at least, there was no news of her burglar. It was
noted, however, not only by Mrs. Lathrop, but by Mrs. Macy and Gran'ma
Mullins, and indeed by all the ladies of the Sewing Society, that Miss
Clegg had adopted an air of secretiveness concerning the matter that was
quite foreign to her usual frank, unreserved communicativeness. But the
curiosity provoked by this strangely unfamiliar attitude was swallowed
up in the sensational tidings which spread throughout the community
shortly after. Without so much as a hint of warning, Susan Clegg had
vanished between dark and dawn, leaving her house locked, bolted, and
barred, the blinds drawn, and the shutters fast closed.
For once Mrs. Lathrop, thus deprived of her prop and her stay, evinced
sufficient initiative to have the cellar door forced and a search of the
premises made; a rumor having got abroad that the burglar had returned,
this time more murderously inclined, and that Miss Clegg's mangled
corpse would be found stiff and stark within her own darkened domicile.
To every one's infinite relief the search proved the rumor utterly
unfounded; and it proved something more, as well. It proved that Susan's
departure was plainly premeditated--"with malice prepense," to quote
Judge Fitch--since all her best clothes had gone with her. Whereupon
sentiment switched to the opposite pole, and it was openly declared that
Miss Clegg had gone after the burglar.
The wonder was of a magnitude calculated to extend far beyond the
proverbial nine days, and it probably would have greatly exceeded that
limit, had not the heroine of the affair chosen to cut it short of her
own volition by reappearing quite as suddenly as she had vanished, at
the end of a single week.
Mrs. Lathrop, looking across from her bedroom window as she arose from
her night's sleep on the morning of the eighth day, was joyously
startled to see the Clegg windows unshaded, and the house otherwise
displaying signs of rehabitation. Nor did she have long to wait for the
explanation of the mystery, which to the exclusion of everything else
had filled her mind ever since her friend's going. With a shawl over her
head and shoulders, she hastened through the pergola, and the next
moment was facing her neighbor with glad eyes across four yards of
kitchen floor space.
"Oh, Susan! Such a fri--" These were her four and a half words of
greeting.
"I knew it would," Miss Clegg caught her up, beaming as Mrs. Lathrop
couldn't remember ever to have seen her beam before. "I knew it would
frighten you all half to death, but when a thing's to be done, it's to
be done, and there ain't no use shirking. I had to go, and I had to go
quick, and I was never so glad of anything in my life, past or present,
as that I went. Of course, it was all along of that burglary, as any
fool might have guessed if they took the trouble. In the first place, I
don't mind telling you now, I went straight to Mr. Weskin the morning
after it happened, and I took him the clue and showed it to him. The way
he spun around in his spinning chair was fit to make even a level-headed
person like me dizzy. He examined the linen, and he examined the way the
K was worked, and then he says, no it couldn't possibly be Mr.
Kimball's. Now, what _do_ you think of that? Just as if I ever suspected
it was. I guess I know Mr. Kimball well enough to know him, even if he
has got his head wrapped up in one of my new roller towels, and I told
Lawyer Weskin so. Mr. Kimball, indeed! But Lawyer Weskin said as he
didn't never hear of a burglar whose name commenced with K, and he
didn't know a soul in these parts either, burglar or no burglar, whose
name did, except Mr. Kimball. There's only one way to ferret out the
perpetrator of a crime, he says, and that's by deduction, and the first
rule of deduction is to guess what the K stands for. I never thought
much of Lawyer Weskin, I'm free to admit that, but if he don't know
nothing else, it's as clear as shooting that he does know about
education. For in the end it worked out just as he said, and the Lord be
praised for it."
"You don't--" began Mrs. Lathrop in astonishment.
"I don't say as Mr. Kimball had a thing to do with it. I certainly
don't. In the first place, Mr. Kimball would never dare to come to my
house at such a hour of the morning, and in the second place Mr. Kimball
never carried as fine a handkerchief as the one I chewed on. So that put
it past Mr. Kimball. And the only other K I could possibly think of was
old Mrs. Kitts over to Meadville, who could no more of got over here
than could the king of the Sandwich Islands, whose name begins with K,
too. There was the Kellys, of course, but the Kellys couldn't qualify
neither, for they're too rich to need to do any burglarizing. Well, I
can tell you, I soon come to a point where I didn't know where to turn,
and I never would of turned neither, if it hadn't of been for a letter I
got the day of the night I went away. You'd never guess in the world,
Mrs. Lathrop, who that letter was from so I may as well tell you first
as last. It was from Mr. Kettlewell."