It did not take long, once Claire was fairly on her feet again, to
adjust herself to her new surroundings, to find her place and part in
the social economy of the little family-group where she was never for a
moment made to feel an alien. She appropriated a share in the work of
the household at once, insisting, to Martha's dismay, upon lending a
hand mornings with the older children, who were to be got off to school,
and with the three-year-old Sabina, who was to stay at home. She
assisted with the breakfast preparations, and then, when the busy swarm
had flown for the day, she "turned to," to Ma's delight, and got the
place "rid up" so it was "clean as a whistle an' neat as a pin."
Ma was not what Martha approvingly called "a hustler."
"Ma ain't thorer," her daughter-in-law confided to Claire, without
reproach. "She means well, but, as she says, her mind ain't fixed on
things below, an' when that's the case, the dirt is bound to settle. Ma
thinks you can run a fam'ly, readin' the Bible an' singin' hymns. Well,
p'raps you can, only I ain't never dared try. When I married Sammy he
looked dretful peaky, the fack bein' he hadn't never been properly fed,
an' it's took me all of the goin'-on fifteen years now, we been livin'
together, to get'm filled up accordin' to his appetite, which is heavy.
You see, Ma never had any time to attend to such earthly matters as
cookin' a square meal--but she's settin' out to have a lot of leisure
with the Lord."
As for Ma, she found it pleasant to watch, from a comfortable distance,
the work progressing satisfactorily, without any draft on her own
energies.
"Martha's a good woman, miss," she observed judicially, in her detached
manner, "but she is like the lady of her name we read about in the
blessed Book. When _I_ set out in life, I chose the betther part, an'
now I'm old, I have the faith to believe I'll have a front seat in
heaven. I've knew throuble in me day. I raised ten childern, an' I had
three felons, an' God knows I think I earned a front seat in heaven."
Claire's pause, before she spoke, seemed to Ma to indicate she was
giving the subject the weighty consideration it deserved.
"According to that, it would certainly seem so. You have rheumatism,
too, haven't you?" as if that might be regarded as an added guarantee of
special celestial reservation.
Ma paled visibly. "No, miss. I don't never have the rheumatiz now--not
so you'd notice it," she said plaintively. "Oncet I'd it thurrbl, an' me
son Sammy had it, too, loikewoise, fierce. I'd uster lay in bed moanin'
an' cryin' till you'd be surprised, an' me son Sammy, he was a'most as
bad. Well, for a week or two, Martha, she done for us the best she cud,
I s'pose, but she didn't make for to stop the pain, an' at last one
night, when me son Sammy was gruntin', an' I was groanin' to beat the
band, Martha, she up, all of a suddint, an' says she, she was goin' for
to cure us of the rheumatiz, or know the reason why. An' she went, an'
got the karrysene-can, an' she poured out two thurrbl big doses, an' she
stood over me son Sammy an' I, till we swalleyed it down, an' since ever
we tuk it, me an' Sammy ain't never had a retur-rn. Sometimes I have a
sharp twinge o' somethin' in me leg or me arrm, but it ain't rheumatiz,
an' I wouldn't like for me son Sammy's wife to be knowin' it, for the
very sight of her startin' for the karrysene--if it's only to fill the
lamp, is enough to make me gullup, an' I know it's the same wit' me son
Sammy, though we never mention the subjeck between us."
"But if your son didn't want to take the stuff," Claire said, trying to
hide her amusement, "why didn't he stand up and say so? He's a man. He's
much bigger and stronger than his wife. How could she make him do what
he didn't want to?"
The question was evidently not a new one to Ma.
"That's what annywan'd naturrly think," she returned promptly. "But
that's because they wouldn't be knowin' me son Sammy's wife. It ain't
size, an' it ain't stren'th--it's just, well, _Martha_. There's that
about her you wouldn't like to take any chances wit'. Perhaps it's the
thing manny does be talkin' of these days. Perhaps it's _that_ got a
holt of her. Annyhow, she says she's _in_ for't. They does be callin' it
Woman Sufferrich, I'm told. In my day a dacint body'd have thought shame
to be discoursin' in public to the men. They held their tongues, an' let
their betthers do the colloguein', but Martha says some of the ladies
she works for says, if they talk about it enough the men will give them
their rights, an' let 'em vote. I'm an old woman, an' I never had much
book-learnin', but I'm thinkin' one like me son Sammy's wife has all the
rights she needs wit'out the votin'. She goes out worrkin', same's me
son Sammy, day in, day out. She says Sammy could support _her_ good
enough, but she won't raise her childern in a teniment, along wit' th'
low companions. Me son Sammy, he has it harrd these days. He'd not be
able to pay for such a grrand flat as this, in a dacint, quiet
neighborhood, an' so Martha turrns to, an' lends a hand. An' wance, when
me son Sammy was sick, an' out av a job entirely, Martha, she run the
whole concern herself. She wouldn't let me son Sammy give up, or get
down-hearted, like he mighta done. She said it was her _right_ to care
for us all, an' him, too, bein' he was down an' out, like he was. It
seems to me that's fairrly all the rights anny woman'd want--to look out
for four childern, an' a man, an' a mother-in-law. But if Martha wants
to vote, too, why, I'm thinkin' she will."
It was particularly encouraging to Claire, just at this time, to view
Martha in the light of one who did not know the meaning of the word
fail, for Mrs. Slawson had assured her that if she would give up all
attempt to find employment on her own account, she, Mrs. Slawson, felt
she could safely promise to get her "a job that would be satisfacktry
all round, only one must be a little pationate."
But a week, ten days, had gone by, since Martha announced she had _an
idea_, and still the idea had not materialized. Meanwhile, Claire had
ample time to unpack her trunk and settle her belongings about her, so
"the pretty lady's room" took on a look of real comfort, and the
children never passed the door without pausing before the threshold,
waiting with bated breath for some wonderful chance that would give
them a "peek" into the enchanted chamber. As a matter of fact, the
transformation was effected with singularly few "properties." Some good
photographs tastefully framed in plain, dark wood. A Baghdad rug left
over from her college days, some scraps of charming old textiles, and
such few of the precious home trifles as could be safely packed in her
trunk. There was a daguerreotype of her mother, done when she was a
girl. "As old-fashioned as your grandmother's hoopskirt," Martha called
it. A sampler wrought by some ancient great-aunt, both aunt and sampler
long since yellowed and mellowed by the years. A della Robbia plaque,
with its exquisite swaddled baby holding out eager arms, as if to be
taken. A lacquer casket, a string of Egyptian mummy-beads--what seemed
to the children an inexhaustible stock of wonderful, mysterious
treasures.
But the object that appeared to interest their mother more than anything
else in the whole collection, was a book of unmounted photographs,
snap-shots taken by Claire at college, during her travels abroad, some
few, even, here in the city during those first days when she had dreamed
it was easy to walk straight into an art-editorship, and no questions
asked.
Mrs. Slawson scrutinized the prints with an earnestness so eager that
Claire was fairly touched, until she discovered that here was no aching
hunger for knowledge, no ungratified yearning "for to admire and for to
see, for to be'old this world so wide," but just what looked like a
perfectly feminine curiosity, and nothing more.
"Say, ain't it a pity you ain't any real good likeness of you?" Martha
deplored. "These is so aggeravatin'. They don't show you up at all. Just
a taste-like, an' then nothin' to squench the appetite."
"That sounds as if I were an entrée or something," laughed Claire. "But,
you see, I don't want to be _shown up_, Martha. I couldn't abear it, as
my friend, Sairy Gamp, would say. When I was little, my naughty big
brother used to tease me dreadfully about my looks. He invented the most
embarrassing nicknames for me; he alluded to my features with every sort
of disrespect. It made me horribly conscious of myself, a thing no
properly-constituted kiddie ought ever to be, of course. And I've never
really got over the feeling that I am a 'sawed-off,' that my nose is
'curly,' and my hair's a wig, and that the least said about the rest of
me, the better. But if you'd actually like to see something my people at
home consider rather good, why, here's a little tinted photograph I had
done for my dear Daddy, the last Christmas he was with us. He liked it,
and that's the reason I carry it about with me--because he wore it on
his old-fashioned watch-chain."
She put into Martha's hand a thin, flat, dull-gold locket.
Mrs. Slawson opened it, and gave a quick gasp of delight--the sound of
triumph escaping one who, having diligently sought, has satisfactorily
found. "Like it!" Martha ejaculated.
Claire deliberated a moment, watching the play of expression on Martha's
mobile face. "If you like it as much as all that," she said at last, "I
wish you'd take it and keep it. It seems conceited--priggish--to suppose
you'd care to own it, but if you really _would_ care to--"
Mrs. Slawson closed one great, finely-formed, work-hardened fist over
the delicate treasure, with a sort of ecstatic grab of appropriation.
"Care to own it! You betcher life! There's nothin' you could give me I'd
care to own better," she said with honest feeling, then and there tying
its slender ribbon about her neck, and slipping the locket inside her
dress, as if it had been a precious amulet.
The day following saw her started bright and early for work at the
Shermans'. When she arrived at the area-gate and rang, there was no
response, and though she waited a reasonable time, and then rang and
rang again, nobody answered the bell.
"They must be up," she said, settling down to business with a steady
thumb on the electric button. "What ails the bunch o' them in the
kitchen, I should like to know. It'd be a pity to disturb Eliza. She
might be busy, gettin' herself an extry cup o' coffee, an' couple o'
fried hams-an'-eggs, to break her fast before breakfast. But that gay
young sprig of a kitchen-maid, _she_ might answer the bell an' open the
door to an honest woman."
The _gay young sprig_ still failing of her duty, and Martha's patience
giving out at last, the _honest woman_ began to tamper with the
spring-lock of the iron gate. For any one else, it would never have
yielded, but it opened to Martha's hand, as with the dull submission of
the conquered.
Mrs. Slawson closed the gate after her with care. "I'll just step
light," she said to herself, "an' steal in on 'em unbeknownst, an' give
'em as good a scare as ever they had in their lives--the whole lazy lot
of 'em."
But, like Mother Hubbard's cupboard, the kitchen was bare, and no soul
was to be found in the laundry, the pantry or, in fact, anywhere
throughout the basement region. Softly, and with some real misgiving
now, Martha made her way upstairs. Here, for the first time, she
distinguished the sound of a human voice breaking the early morning hush
of the silent house. It was Radcliffe's voice issuing, evidently, from
the dining-room, in which imposing apartment he chose to have his
breakfast served in solitary grandeur every morning, what time the rest
of his family still slept.
Martha, pausing on her way up, peeped around the edge of the half-closed
door, and then stopped short.
Along the wall, ranged up in line, like soldiers facing their captain,
or victims of a hold-up their captor, stood the household
servants--portly Shaw the butler, Beatrice the parlor-maid, Eliza the
"chef-cook"--all, down to the gay young sprig, aforesaid, who, as Martha
had explained to her family in strong disapproval, "was engaged to do
scullerywork, an' then didn't even know how to scull." Before them, in
an attitude of command, not to say menace, stood Radcliffe, brandishing
a carving-knife which, in his cruelly mischievous little hand, became a
weapon full of dangerous possibilities.
"Don't dare to budge, any one of you," he breathed masterfully to his
cowed regiment. "Get back there, you Shaw! An', Beetrice, if you don't
mind me, I'll carve your ear off. You better be afraid of me, all of
you, an' mind what I say, or I'll take this dagger, an' dag the life
out of you! You're all my servants--you're all my slaves! D'you hear
me!"
Evidently they did, and not one of them cared or dared to stir.
For a second Radcliffe faced them in silence, before beginning to march
Napoleonically back and forth, his savage young eye alert, his naughty
hand brandishing the knife threateningly. A second, and then, suddenly,
without warning, the scene changed, and Radcliffe was a squirming,
wriggling little boy, shorn of his power, grasped firmly in a grip from
which there was no chance of escape.
"Shame on you!" exclaimed Martha indignantly, addressing the spellbound
line, staring at her blankly. "Shame on you! To stand there gawkin', an'
never raisin' a finger to this poor little fella, an' him just perishin'
for the touch of a real mother's hand. Get out of this--the whole crowd
o' you," and before the force of her righteous wrath they fled as chaff
before the wind. Then, quick as the automatic click of a monstrous
spring, the hitherto unknown--the supposed-to-be-impossible--befell
Radcliffe Sherman. He was treated as if he had been an iron girder on
which the massive clutch of a steam-lift had fastened. He was raised,
lowered, laid across what seemed to be two moveless iron trestles, and
then the weight as of a mighty, relentless paddle, beat down upon him
once, twice, thrice--and he knew what it was to suffer.
The whole thing was so utterly novel, so absolutely unexpected, that for
the first instant he was positively stunned with surprise. Then the
knowledge that he was being spanked, that an unspeakable indignity was
happening him, made him clinch his teeth against the sobs that rose in
his throat, and he bore his punishment in white-faced, shivering
silence.
When it was over, Martha stood him down in front of her, holding him
firmly against her knees, and looked him squarely in the eyes. His
colorless, quivering lips gave out no sound.
"You've got off easy," observed Mrs. Slawson benevolently. "If you'd
been my boy Sammy, you'd a got about twict as much an' three times as
thora. As it is, I just kinder favored you--give you a lick an' a
promise, as you might say, seein' it's you and you ain't used to
it--_yet_. Besides, I reely like you, an' want you to be a good boy.
But, if you should need any more at any other time, why, you can take it
from me, I keep my hand in on Sammy, an' practice makes perfect."
She released the two small, trembling hands, rose to her feet, and made
as if to leave the room. Then for the first time Radcliffe spoke.
"S-say," he breathed with difficulty, "s-say--are you--are you goin' to
_t-tell?_"
Martha paused, regarding him and his question with due concern. "Tell?"
"Are y-you going to--t-tell on me, t-to ev-everybody? Are y-you going to
t-tell--S-Sammy?"
"Shoor I'm not! I'm a perfect lady! I always keep such little affairs
with my gen'lemen friends strickly confidential. Besides--Sammy has
troubles of his own."