Stories That End Well Part 3

Susannah and her husband were both on their feet, both ready to speak; but something in the att.i.tude of the figure on the platform to which the long lines of the mourning-veil gave a strange suggestion of sibylline dignity, held speech away from them. Solemnly and not with any anger, Sister Humphreys' eyes searched the eyes of the man and woman before her, while the spectators held their breath. "Wherefo' it is bettah ever' way," she said slowly, "that both her an' her husband go out from us fo'evermo'. Bruddah Coffin, the cunnel has got another blacksmith, an' you ain't got no mo' reason fo' stayin' on longer. And as fo' you, _Sister_--"

"I won't go!" shrilled Susannah, hysterically weeping; it was with no pretense now. "You cayn't fo'ce me!"

"You _will_ go, _Sister_, fo' you don' wanter lose the young man you got now. You will go; an' you will take him along of you; an' you will go _so far_ he cayn't heah no word of my sermons. Go in peace."

Susannah faced about, writhing between fear and rage. "You cowards! you ornery, pusillanimous cowards!" she flung back at the gaping black faces. "You putt on dog when she ain't heah, but minute she lif's her han', you cayn't make a riffle! Ba-h-h! S-sh!" she hissed at them like a cat or a snake. "Come on, you fool n.i.g.g.e.r!" she jeered, pulling at her bewildered husband's collar; and in this sorry fashion, but still with her head high, she left Zion for ever.

"An' now," concluded Sister Esmeralda Humphreys sedately, "let us all try fo' to lead a bettah life. I shall preach nex' Sunday on the _Seventh_ Commandment, an' all them that feels they have broke that commandment is at free liberty to stay away. I shall expec' to see all the res' of you, even if 'tis fallin' weader. Let us all sing befo' we go:

"'Blest be the tie that binds Our hearts in Christian love; The fellowship of kindred minds Is like to that above.'"

Brother Moore arose. "Sist' Humphreys," he announced, "you got de right kin' o' gospil light in you. I cayn't jine in the singin' 'cause since I got my store teef I ain't be'n able to cyar' a chune; but I want to do sumfin de wuk er grace; an' I got up to say dat de nex' socherble gatherin' I'll donate de lemons."

"Dis meetin' accep's with t'anks," shouted Brother Morrow. "Now, le's show our beloved pastor the clouds is swep' away! _All_ sing!"

And never had so n.o.ble a burst of melody wakened the echoes along the moonlit road as that which made the colonel outside turn, smiling, in his saddle.

"She didn't need me," he mused. "Well, so much the better. I reckon they need a good despot, and they've got one, all right."

THE REAL THING

The club had gone, save only the guest of the afternoon and a few friends of the hostess, who lingered to congratulate her. It had been a most successful meeting. The guest who had spoken was the president of a southern club. The hearers were warm in their praises of the leisurely music of her southern voice, the charm of her southern manner, so simple and direct and sympathetic, her beauty, her grace, even of the finish of her toilet. She had handled a weighty subject with a light touch (it was the child labor of the south), and her husband being a very large manufacturer, she had spoken out of experience as well as theory.

Moreover, she had shown a luminous common sense and a tolerant humor such as did not always brighten such serious themes; and not only the earnest students of the club, but the more flippant members, were aroused to an unusual and captivated attention. Now they were loath to let her go; pressing about, tarrying amid the teacups, and only reluctantly faring forth as the maids appeared to remove the wreckage of the feast. The hostess sank, weary but elated, into a chair by Miss Clymer, the secretary, as the last silken skirt rustled away. Mrs.

Waite, the president, who was dallying with socialism, had evidently introduced her new pet to the visitor, who listened politely.

"After all," suggested Mrs. Clymer, more from the amiable design of steering the conversation within safe limits than out of any craving to exploit her own views, "after all, do we really know _how_ these people feel? Is there one of us, for example, who ever had an intimate friend among them, a woman who worked with her hands?"

"Madelaide Dunbar told me once," remarked the youngest club member, "that she was fonder of her maid than of most of her friends."

"Which maid?" inquired another. "The one who took her pearl necklace?"

"n.o.body took those pearls; Madelaide hid them herself, and forgot all about it, and then found them in her soiled-handkerchief bag! But it wasn't that one. This one had a little wave to her nose and her eyes were near together."

"Is she with Madelaide now?"

"I think she married. Madelaide was buying teaspoons the other day, and asking for rather light weight--maybe they were for her wedding present."

The South Carolinian smothered a smile. "Madelaide doesn't exactly count," said the hostess.

A new voice took up the theme, a sweet, rather diffident voice, to which, nevertheless, the circle listened with an attention that was almost distinction. She who spoke had been born in the little mid-Western city, and there she had spent her early youth, but she had married a rich man of the East, and was only a visitor to-day. The Ridgelys were people of importance; and Constance Ridgely, the only child, who never went to parties with boys, and only paid visits with her mother, and finally disappeared into vistas of fashion and intimacy with the peerage, was a person of mark. The more, that no splendid transformation had altered her affection for the town, or her gentle, almost shy modesty of manner. She flushed slightly now as she spoke.

"The best, the dearest girl friend I ever had, used to work with her hands," said she.

The sudden silence was almost the dumbness of dismay; but the hostess sprang nimbly to the rescue with a murmur of "How picturesque!"

"Why, of course," cried Mrs. Clymer. "I wish you would tell us of it.

You mean Nannie, don't you?"

The Southerner leaned slightly forward, with a look of interest.

"It is so long ago," said Mrs. Curtis, who had been Constance Ridgely, "but something has made me think of Nannie all the afternoon. My friendship with Nannie began almost thirty years ago, when Miss Arthur kept the Pleasant Street kindergarten next to No. 3. The school was a dear; but I remember so well the odd mixture of admiration and dread I felt for the big, tumultuous public school. The boys used to make faces at us, but they were so daring and they turned somersaults so nimbly!

And I was devoured with curiosity regarding the little girls who came to school without their nurses. I thought it must be grand! One little girl I singled out. She used to wear a red jersey and a red tam-o'-shanter.

She wasn't precisely pretty--according to my childish, wax-dolly standard of beauty--but there was something fascinating in the way her silky mop of brown hair flung itself to the wind, in the flash of her brown eyes and her white teeth and the feather-down lightness of her motions. She was as reckless of her frock as her bones--I was trained to be very careful of both. The fearless rush with which she would slide down the high bank or skin up a tree to the very awful, oscillating top--I can't describe the awesome joy of seeing her! And she was so gay; she had the sweetest, merriest laugh in the world. I loved it. Ah, how many times did I glue my demure little face, which hid so many wild fancies, to a certain knot-hole in that high, high fence of Miss Arthur's, which all our mothers praised because it protected our privacy, watching the boys and girls, and _my_ girl run out to recess!

And, oh, the blow it was when the hour of recess at the kindergarten was changed! Because the No. 3 boys stole Bennie Olmstead's roller skates, and there was a combat, in which our injured and innocent boys were no match for the wicked No. 3's; and Miss Betty, who attended to minor matters of our physical comfort, being only the third kindergartner, who was learning and received no salary, and of course had most of the drudgery, washed at least four b.l.o.o.d.y noses and one bitten ear, and put butchers' brown paper on half a dozen bruises, while the little girls wept for sympathy and Bennie howled for his skates! I wept, too; but it was because I could never any more look through the knot-hole for Nannie. I knew her name, because I heard it so often. And then, in the midst of my dejection, I met her. It was by accident. Tina had come for me in the carriage, but Harland, having an errand at the harness shop, had sent her on ahead, and we two were waiting for him on the curb-stone. Of a sudden we heard an appalling outcry of canine yelps and boyish yells, and I saw a sickening sight, a wretched little dog with a tin can tied to his tail, which clattered against the bricks of the sidewalk as he bounded; and in the can a huge fire-cracker spitting fire! For sheer terror lest I should see the catastrophe, I covered up my face. And _then_ I heard my Nannie's voice, 'Here, doggie! Here, poor doggie!' I let my little coward hands drop. I saw her welcome the terrified beast to the shelter of her skirts, while with one swift curve she plucked out the hissing red stick and hurled it with admirable certainty of aim straight at the pursuers. As they scampered away, she told them what she thought of them. Before they could rally, Harland came to the rescue with the carriage; and Tina pushed both of us into it. It was one of those double phaetons which we all used to have then.

I don't know whether Tina's mercy would have included the dog; but he included himself with a flying leap into Nannie's lap."

"And that was how you met Nancy?" said Mrs. Clymer. "You took her home, didn't you, and found her conversation on the way very entertaining?"

"Entrancing. She was full of thrilling knowledge of the world. She went to school all alone. Her father was a carpenter, and she had a hatchet and a plane and a brace and bit all her very own. Her mother was dead, but she lived with her aunty, and she invited us most politely to get out and see her aunty, and her papa's shop in the back yard. 'We got a lovely home,' said Nannie."

"Was it?" laughed the youngest clubwoman.

"I thought it was; and, yes, I think it was, now. So specklessly, radiantly tidy. A tiny house of wood, but painted freshly in gray and white, and with a most wonderful garden. That belonged to Nannie's aunt.

Nannie said she could make anything with a root grow. I remember she was out amid the phlox--such brilliant, luxuriant phlox as it was! She had on a white ap.r.o.n, which the sun made dazzling. By a wonderful coincidence, the aunt went to Tina's church, and Tina knew her; so Tina let me go inside the house, and the aunt gave us coffee hot from the stove, and delicious little spice cakes just out of the oven; and we carried out some to Harland; and it was a full half-hour before Tina's conscience stirred, and we had to go. By that time Nannie and I were very well acquainted. Yet I had always been amazingly slow about making friends.

"After this episode Nannie and I always nodded and grinned when we saw each other, going or coming from school. The next month Nannie appeared at our Sunday school and announced that she would always attend there if she might be in Miss Browning's cla.s.s. Miss Browning taught my cla.s.s.

Fancy my happiness! It impressed me very much the way Nannie could make people do what she wanted. In summer another wonder happened. Nannie's father built our new stable. Nannie used to bring him his luncheon daily. Before the summer ended we were great chums."

"But did your mother approve of your intimacy?" asked Mrs. Waite, who was bewildered by conduct so opposed to her recollections of the Ridgelys.

"My mother was a wise woman. One day she sent me away on some pretext, and she asked Nannie into the house and showed her pictures and talked to her. Nannie adored my mother; and mamma never threw any obstacles in the way of my seeing Nannie, while Tina was always willing to take me to the Marshes; of course I never went alone. Tina thought Nannie one of the nicest little girls in town; and she had sense enough to see that while I was most often listless and shy with other girls, I was always happy with Nannie. I don't think I can quite express her charm. She was clever, but clever people have bored me. She was pretty, too; and she was a true, delicate-minded little gentlewoman, though her father was a mechanic and her aunt helped the family income by taking in fine washing; but it was none of those things. I think it was that she was so _wholesome_! Always cheerful. Always fearless. By consequence she was the most absolutely truthful being I ever knew. Aunt Kate"--to Mrs.

Clymer--"you heard about the red paint? Shall I tell them?" At Mrs.

Clymer's a.s.sent she continued, "It was a truly terrible experience. I was never so scared in my life; and I was always getting scared when I was little. Nannie's next-door neighbor was a little girl named Elsa Clarke, whose father was a painter by trade. He was an easy-tempered man, and sometimes used to let us paint. If we daubed ourselves (which we seldom failed to do), he would scrub us off with turpentine. I had some painful scenes with Tina; for even if the paint was gone, the scent of roses, you know. She was going to put a ban on the whole business, when Nannie contrived some oilcloth ap.r.o.ns out of a discarded table covering. This appeased her. One day Elsa's father gave us the dregs of a can of red paint. Another painter who was doing some work in the shop glowered at him, and from him to a white window sash that he had just finished. He was a very gruff old fellow, of whom I stood in dreadful fear. I thought he was very much such a looking man as the ogre in 'Jack and the Beanstalk.' 'Them kids will mess up something if you give 'em paint, you'll see,' the ogre growled, 'but they better keep clear of _my_ sash, if they know what's good for 'em!' With that he followed Elsa's father out of the shop. We were left with our artistic fury. I don't know exactly how the calamity came about, but Elsa wanted the paint can which Nannie was using. If Elsa wanted anything and didn't get it, she grew angry. It was her papa's shop and her papa's paint and she had a right to have it, she _would_ have it! 'But he gave it to us all,'

I protested, rather shocked at the squabble. Nannie didn't say anything; she went on slapping the paint on a box in vast content. Then Elsa flew into a rage and laid hold of Nannie. I laid hold of her. And a dog in the household, hearing our loud voices, bounded joyously into the fray.

And somehow Nannie tripped! The paint, the red, red paint made a ghastly cascade over the snowy whiteness of the ogre's window frame. Stupefied by the enormity of our mishap, we stood staring miserably at each other.

Elsa burst into tears. As for me, I could hear my heart thump.

"'He's coming back,' gasped Elsa, 'and papa ain't with him. I saw him box a little girl's ears once jest for using his brush--let's run! Let's _run_! He'll think it was Jumper!' (Jumper was wagging his tail and affectionately sympathizing.)

"'Jumper didn't do it,' said Nannie.

"But Elsa was sprinting across the yard. My own terror seemed to clutch me and propel me without volition; I was outside and hurrying after Elsa before I realized. But at the sound of a dreadful, menacing voice I turned my head. Nannie had not fled. She was facing the brutal man who had boxed a little girl's ears; and he was demanding who had done _That_! The rumble of thunder was in his deep tones. I ran back; but I was in such a panic I had to hold on to the bench to keep me on my feet.

Elsa, from the fortress of her kitchen, screamed that Jumper had done it.

"'Hay?' exploded the man. It seemed to me an appalling interjection.

"'Jumper didn't do it,' said Nannie. 'I fell and the paint splashed.

I'll paint it over for you, all right.'

"'_You!_' the ogre bellowed, lifting his fist in a pa.s.sion. 'You've done enough mischief!' I had been trying to speak, but I was so scared that my mouth only made little choking sounds, but now I did sob, 'Please, mister, we _made_ her do it, Elsa and I. Elsa caught her arm and I caught Elsa's arm--I'll _pay_ you for it!' I had my little purse out in my trembling fingers and would have given it all to him. Not Nannie. 'It can't take you an hour to paint it over,' said she. 'Will you take twenty-five cents--that's an hour's wages--and let _me_ paint it? I'm awful sorry it happened.'

"'I've a mind to lick you both,' grumbled the man.

"But Nannie didn't flinch; she looked into his face, repeating, 'We're awful sorry; and we'll pay you. It wouldn't do any good to spank us; and I'll paint something else first, to show you I won't daub the gla.s.s.'

"'Well, you _are_ a cool one,' said the man. I could hardly believe my eyes; he was grinning. Actually he did let Nannie show him how neatly she painted; and the end of it was, he taught us a great deal about painting."