SOMETHING UNEXPECTED
Success in life comes from putting to use that gift, or those gifts,
which the individual possesses and developing such talent to the
highest degree of excellence. That is what Beth had done in her small
way.
The opportunity to darn silk hose had come her way, and she had a
natural taste for such work and ability in it, as well as considerable
training from her mother. Out of the “silk stocking hospital” had grown
the other mending. She was in a fair way to earn sufficient money
during the year, in the vacation and all, to carry her through the
subsequent two school years which she had originally resolved to obtain
at Rivercliff.
But Mr. Baldwin’s illness seemed to preclude such an event. Beth kept
bravely on with her work, but with a new resolve.
She wanted to carry home with her in June as much money as she could
possibly earn with which to repay the loan she supposed her mother had
made before Beth entered Rivercliff School.
In writing home Beth said very little about future plans, or even about
her immediate work. That she was very busy, both with her books and
outside work, they knew. Twice a week she heard from either her mother
or Ella. Sometimes Marcus wrote.
Marcus was particularly proud of the fact that he had obtained a paying
“job.” He brought his four dollars home each Saturday night, and felt
himself to be a man.
“He is getting to be insufferably important,” Ella wrote. “If he
could raise whiskers there would be no living in the house with him.
I believe he has been pricing safety razors at the cutlery store. I
tell him he will first have to lather his face with cream and let the
cat lick it off.”
To tell the truth, Beth felt sometimes that Marcus was doing much
more for the family than she ever could--and she was so much older.
Of course, if she could have carried through her plans, in the end
she might have been the family’s main support if her father’s illness
continued. Now----
All her plans had tumbled. She could not see ahead. Living from day to
day was not an easy thing for Beth Baldwin.
Soon after her father was taken ill she heard from Larry. He expressed
his sorrow for Mr. Baldwin’s condition; and Beth knew he was at the
Bemis Street cottage just as frequently as before the holidays. But
Larry said nothing in his letter regarding the change the event of her
father’s illness must make in Beth’s plans for an education.
Ella wrote: “Larry comes and potters around with papa in the old
shop, sometimes for a whole afternoon at a time. I guess his clients
aren’t keeping him so awfully busy. He isn’t so much fun as he used
to be. But the other night he took all us kids to the picture show.”
Mr. Baldwin was up and about; but his strength did not return and the
doctor would not hear of his attempting any regular work. Beth knew
her father had half a dozen different inventions partly finished--Mr.
Baldwin laughingly called them “dinkuses”--in the old shop in the
back yard, over which he sometimes worked. He never expected to make
anything of the machines.
It was several weeks after Beth began to work for Mrs. Ricardo Severn
on Saturday afternoons that she heard again from Larry, and that in a
most unexpected way. But first something happened to Cynthia Fogg.
All this time Beth had sought Cynthia from time to time when
opportunity afforded, and showed the girl that she felt more than an
ordinary interest in her. Cynthia was not of a particularly grateful
disposition, perhaps; or else she did not consider that she needed the
interest or sympathy of anybody. But with Beth she was always much
franker than with any one else.
That she made a good waitress or maid it could not be said with truth.
She did not, indeed, seem to care whether she really suited madam or
not. Yet the madam, so particular and exact with every other girl on
her staff, seemed rather lenient with Cynthia.
Was it because she felt Cynthia Fogg to be, somehow, different from the
other maids in her employ?
Beth retained her habit of early rising. Sometimes, indeed, she worked
a little before the first bell--especially as the days grew longer.
But almost always when she was up an hour or more before the rising
bell rang, she took a run out of doors--a very excellent practice,
indeed, for one working as hard as she did.
As, at that hour, only the front door was unlocked, Beth usually ran
down that way. So she frequently saw Cynthia Fogg and spoke to her, as
the latter dusted the furniture and woodwork.
Madam Hammersly, with her cambric handkerchief, which all her maids
learned to fear, was always up early, and many a little talk did the
madam and Beth have together. Sometimes, too, would Beth hear her
complain to Cynthia of her lack of attention to her duties.
“I can never teach you the importance of trifles, Cynthia,” the madam
said in Beth’s hearing on one occasion. “How many months have you been
with me?”
“Almost nine now, Madam,” said Cynthia, briskly. “We ought to know each
other pretty well, don’t you think so?”
“Girl! it is only necessary that you should know your work. My
character has nothing to do with the matter,” said the madam, stiffly.
“Goodness!” drawled Cynthia. “Don’t you see that it has? If you were
not so particular----”
“Cynthia! how dare you?”
“Madam?” replied the freckled girl, raising her eyebrows and turning
the full battery of her saucy blue eyes on Madam Hammersly.
“If you were not a homeless and friendless orphan----”
“Who has saved almost a hundred dollars out of her wages these past
eight months, Madam, so don’t let that bother you,” interposed the
girl, flippantly.
“You are discharged!” exclaimed Madam Hammersly, finding the girl’s
impudence past bearing.
“You dear!” retorted Cynthia, in her very pleasantest tone of voice.
“You shall go at once, girl--this very day!” and the angry madam almost
sputtered.
“I just love you for it!” said Cynthia. “You don’t know how I have
fairly hungered to be discharged!”
She tossed the feather-duster on one of the great settees, her cap and
apron after it, and, humming a tune, departed for the rear premises.
Beth, who stood by with coat and hat on, had been horrified.
The madam was really in tears--none the less sad to see because they
were tears of rage. Beth could not forgive Cynthia Fogg for her
callousness and flippancy. But at first she dared not speak.
When, however, she saw the madam pick up the duster and attempt to
reach the top of the pictures with it, Beth interfered. She took off
her cap and coat and laid them on a chair. Then she took the duster
from the lady with a decisive hand.
“Let me finish here, Madam Hammersly. I shall like to,” said Beth. “And
I’ll put on Cynthia’s apron and cap, and do it in style. I am sorry she
has acted so, Madam--and after all your kindness to her,” added Beth.
“But I dare you to find any dust after I get through,” and she finished
with a laugh, giving the madam a chance to recover her wonted calm.
“But, my dear Miss Baldwin,” Madam Hammersly finally said weakly,
“what--what will my daughter--and the instructors--say?”
Beth looked over her shoulder roguishly. “I don’t believe they will see
me,” she whispered, “for they are none of them up.”
“But the other young ladies?” put forth the madam.
“I might say the same about most of them,” laughed Beth. “But I will
say instead: What if they should see me?”
“It--it might cause comment,” said the madam, doubtfully.
Meanwhile, the substitute parlor-maid was going briskly about the work
Cynthia Fogg had left undone. Madam Hammersly ceased objecting, sat
down upon one of the hall chairs, smoothed out her black silk dress,
and watched Beth.
In twenty minutes the reception hall was finished, baseboards wiped,
and the walls brushed as high up as Beth could reach with the feather
duster. Then the girl went over the polished balustrade of the stairway
again with the soft dustcloth.
“There!” she said, with satisfaction. “I don’t think you will find any
dust here now, Madam. Try your handkerchief.”
“No, my child,” sighed the lady, nodding her head. “I have watched
you. That is sufficient. You are thorough. You see the importance of
trifles. I wish I had a girl to train like you.”
“Do you think I could suit you, Madam?” asked Beth, demurely.
“Indeed, I am sure of it,” cried Madam Hammersly, vigorously.
“By getting to work at half-past five and working till seven, I could
dust the stairway and hall and one of the drawing-rooms each morning.
Then, in the hour between three and four in the afternoon except
Saturdays, when I could start half an hour earlier in the morning, I
could do the other drawing-room.”
“Goodness me, child!” exclaimed the madam, rising quickly. “What are
you saying?”
“I am applying for the position that I see is open, Madam,” said Beth,
laughing. “If you think I’d suit----”
“But, child!” gasped the madam. “Can you do it with your manifold other
duties?”
“Why,” said Beth, laughing outright, “my mother says that the only
people in the world who find time to do extra work are the busy
people.”
“Perhaps she is correct,” agreed the lady, though somewhat slowly.
“I--I do not know what to say, my dear.”
“Say yes. I will go right ahead and do the south drawing-room this
morning. Then this afternoon, in my free hour, I will do the north
room. Is it agreed?”
The madam showed weakness at that moment. She believed Beth would make
a “perfect treasure” of a parlor-maid. So she said: “Yes.”
Beth ran upstairs just as the rising bell rang, and removed the cap
and apron in her room. She hid them away and said nothing about the
dusting, not even to Molly.
By “grapevine telegraph” Maude Grimshaw learned before breakfast that
Cynthia Fogg was going. She was delighted.
“What did I tell you?” she asked loudly, at the table. “I told you I
would not stand that impudent waitress remaining here. No, indeed!” and
she tossed her head as though it were by her influence that Cynthia had
received her discharge.
“Pass the butter!” said somebody, in a sepulchral voice, and the whole
table tittered, while Miss Grimshaw flushed red, leaving the table
abruptly.
Molly learned that Cynthia would not leave the premises till afternoon.
The down boat stopped at the Rivercliff landing at four-thirty. So
Beth took her time about seeing the departing girl.
Of course, Cynthia was her senior, and, after all, a much more
sophisticated girl than Beth. Yet the latter felt somewhat responsible
for the freckled one.
At least, had it not been for her and Molly, Cynthia Fogg would not
have come to Rivercliff School to work. And it hurt Beth to think that
she was going away under such circumstances.
She believed the madam must have really liked the strange girl, or she
would never have kept her so long; for Cynthia had done none of her
work well. Miss Small whispered that Cynthia had been the slowest and
most careless girl that had ever worked in the house--and yet Madam
Hammersly had borne with her.
When Beth saw Cynthia to bid her good-bye she did criticize the
freckled girl’s course. “You might have tried to please the madam--she
was so kind to you,” Beth said.
“Goodness me!” smiled Cynthia. “Are housemaids ever grateful? I didn’t
know it. And, to tell the truth, Miss Baldwin, I don’t think they have
much to be grateful for.
“I was put at the top of the house to sleep, in a stuffy little room
with a window that would open only a few inches at the bottom, and with
the coarsest of bed clothing, and a rag of a carpet on the floor. We
were expected to keep our rooms neat, and there was little pleasure in
doing so, for they were so ugly--and everything in them so ugly--that
one could not make them livable. My bureau had only three legs and the
mirror was cracked. And in the cold weather! Why, the halls up there
are barely warm. You can’t tell me anything about what maids have to
put up with hereafter. When I go back----”
“Go back where?” asked Beth, pointedly. “To the institution you ran
away from?”
“Well! And if I did it would be no worse, at least,” and Cynthia’s
wonderful eyes smiled again, lighting up her freckled face and making
it very attractive for the moment.
“But don’t you worry over what is to become of me, dear girl! I have
nearly a hundred dollars, and it will last me a long time. I am all
right. I will write you when I get settled.”
That afternoon Beth stole down in Cynthia’s discarded cap and apron,
opened the north drawing-room and began her dusting. The madam was
on hand, evidently to see if Beth kept her part of the contract, and
hardly had Beth begun her work when Cynthia, dressed for departure,
appeared in the reception hall.
“Oh, Madam Hammersly!” she said cheerfully, “I must bid you good-bye
before I go. I hope you will get another girl to suit you better than I
could---- What! Beth Baldwin? Are you doing my work?”
“No, Cynthia, I am doing my own work,” laughed Beth.
“And much better than I could ever do it, I warrant,” laughed the older
girl. “Well, Madam, I know that you will be perfectly satisfied with
Miss Baldwin. Good-bye!”
“That is not the door for the serving people to use, and you know it
well, Cynthia,” said the madam, her voice shaking.
“Bless your dear heart! I know it,” and Cynthia’s laugh was mellow
and her manner unruffled. “But I came in this way and I might as well
depart like a lady too.”
Suddenly she seized the madam around the neck and planted a warm kiss
upon either of her wrinkled cheeks. “You are a dear!” she repeated.
“Good-bye!”
The next moment she had flashed through the open door and out over the
porch and down the steps--just as a motor-car stopped before the door.
Madam Hammersly stood, actually thunderstruck at the liberty Cynthia
had taken, so only Beth saw the young man who alighted from the car.
The chauffeur was about to start again when Cynthia spoke to him, and
then stepped into the tonneau and was whisked away. For a servant she
certainly was departing in style from Rivercliff School.
But Beth was looking at somebody besides Cynthia. She saw the young man
turn and stare after the departing girl; then he came slowly up the
steps.
It was Larry Haven. He caught sight of Beth standing just inside the
hall door and his face brightened. He sprang forward, exclaiming:
“Beth! Why, Beth Baldwin! How lucky to see you at once!” and Beth met
him quite as warmly, forgetting all about Madam Hammersly’s presence,
and put both her hands--one still holding the dustcloth--in Larry’s
gloved ones.