Susan Clegg and Her Love Affairs Part 7

"And I don't need nothing. Or if I do, I can buy it. I know Jathrop means it kindly, but Jathrop can't enter into my ways of thinking.

Jathrop is looking into life from the Klondike gold-fields and I'm looking at it from my back stoop. That young man was out swishing his pocket handkerchief about and sucking his thumb and holding it up all yesterday afternoon, and about the time I'd made up my mind to bolt him out of the kitchen for a lunatic, he come in and told me he really thought there was wind enough in your back yard and my back yard together to run a windmill, in which case a water system could be easy inaugurated. I told him I didn't know you could inaugurate anything but a president, but he said anything as you hadn't had before and thought was going to work fine and be a great improvement could be inaugurated.

I told him I supposed I could stand a windmill if you could.

"What do you think--what _do_ you think, Mrs. Lathrop, if that young man didn't ask if he might go and look up the parlor fireplace! Well, I told him he could, and I give him a newspaper to shake his head on after he was done looking, too. He's been in my garret until I bet he knows every trunk label by heart, and I must say I feel as if I'd have very little of my own affairs to tell on Judgment Day if he gets dressed and out of his grave quicker than I get dressed and out of mine. But that isn't all, whatever you may think. There's a many other things about him as I don't like and don't like a _tall_.

"For one thing, he's got a way of looking around as if it was my house that was the main thing and I was the last and smallest piece of cross-paper tied in the kite's tail. To my order of thinking, that's a far from polite way for a young man as Jathrop's hiring and boarding to look on a woman whose house he may thank his lucky stars if he may get the chance to build over. Mrs. Macy says Mrs. Lupey says architects is all like that, but I'm far from seeing why. I don't consider that young man superior a _tall_. I consider his brains as very far from being equal to my own. When he asks me to hold the other end of his tape-line and does it just as if a pin would do as well, only I was handier at the moment, I'm very far from feeling flattered. I never saw just such a young man before, and when I think of being delivered up to him--house and all--for the summer, I'm also very far from feeling easy. I d'n know, I'm sure, what will be the end of this, but I do know that it looks to me like a pretty bad business."

Susan paused again and looked at her friend, but Mrs. Lathrop just rocked onward. Life had widened so tremendously for her that she couldn't possibly be perturbed in any way or by anything. If the roof fell in, Jathrop would buy her another, and if she were smashed by it, Jathrop would have her put together again. Why worry?

The young man remained ten days in all, and when his visit of investigation was completed, he returned to New York. Jathrop took him to the Lotus Club to wash and to the Yacht Club to lunch and to Claremont in the afternoon (in his motor), and they talked it all over.

The young man had his sketches, ideas, ideals, and plans all tied into a neat patent cover with cost-estimates lightly glued in the back. Jathrop was deeply interested, and the young man expounded the inmost soul of all his measurements and proposed alt.i.tudes and alterations. The young man reminded Jathrop of his pertinent hypothesis that a house should express its owner. Jathrop's own view of "express" was that if you could pay the bill, it beat freighting all out of sight, but he felt that perhaps the young man meant something different, so he merely gave him a cigar.

The young man took the cigar and proceeded to elucidate his hypothesis by explaining that, having carefully studied both Mrs. Lathrop and Miss Clegg, he should suggest that Miss Clegg's house express her by being severely Doric and that Mrs. Lathrop's should be rambling and Queen Anne with wide, free floor s.p.a.ces. He further suggested a hyena-headed door-knocker for Miss Clegg and an electric b.u.t.ton to press, so that the door opened of itself for Mrs. Lathrop. Also a roofless pergola to connect the two houses. Jathrop liked all his ideas and sketches very much, but as he was really good-hearted and had not the least desire to present green hats to those who wanted pink coats, he had the whole book sent down to his mother and begged her to carefully inspect it in company with Susan Clegg. They inspected it.

"Well," said Susan, "all I can say is I'll have to carry this book home and sit down and try and make out what he _does_ mean. He's done it very neat, that I will say, but between crosses and dotted lines and your house behind mine like two Roman emperors on a cameo pin, I can't make head or tail of what's going to be done to either of us. I can't even find my own house in this plan on some pages, and as for this bird-cage walk that I'm supposed to run back and forth in like a polar bear in a circus all day long, my own opinion is that if it's got no roof, it's going to be very hard indeed about the snow in winter, for I'll have to carry every single solitary shovelful to one end or the other so as to throw it out of either your kitchen window or mine. That's all the good that will do us."

Mrs. Lathrop swung to and fro, totally unconcerned. No sort of proposition could disconcert her now. If the house when built over proved a failure, Jathrop would build her another.

Susan took the prettily-bound portfolio home with her and spent the evening over it. She studied it profoundly and to some purpose, for the next morning when she brought it back to Mrs. Lathrop, it held but few secrets, other than those of a purely technical character, for her.

"I've been all through it," she said to her friend, "and now I can't really tell what I think a _tall_. But this I _do_ know, if we ever really get these houses, I will be running back and forth from dawn to dark through that wire tunnel in a way as'll make the liveliest polar bear that ever kept taking a fresh turn look like a petrified tree beside me. Why, only to keep the conveniences he's got put in scoured bright would take me all of every morning in my house, to say nothing of wiping up the floors, for Jathrop isn't intending to buy us no carpets ever. We're to sit around on cherry when we ain't on Georgia pine, and he's got every mantelpiece marked with the kind of wood we're to burn in it, and he's been kind enough to tell us what colored china we're to use in each bedroom. We're to shoot our clothes into the cellar through a hole from up-stairs and wash 'em there in those two square boxes as we couldn't make out. That thing I read 'angle-hook' is a 'inglenook,' and so far from sitting in it to fish we're to set in it to look at the fire, if we can get any mahogany to burn in that particular fireplace.

"Those fans are stairs, we're to go up 'em the way the arrow points, and heaven knows where or how we're to get down again. What we thought was beds is closets, and what we thought was closets is beds, and it's evident with all his hopping and hanging he didn't really charge his mind with us a _tall_, for he's got a bedroom in your house marked 'Mr.

Lathrop,' when the last bit of real thought would have made him just _have_ to remember as you're a widow. He's give me a sewing-room when he must have seen that I always do my mending in the kitchen, and he's give us each enough places to wash to keep the whole community clean. I must say he's tried to be fair, for he's give both houses the same number of rooms and the same names to each room. We've each got a summer kitchen, but he left the spring and autumn to scratch along anyhow; we've each got a bathtub, and we've each got a china-closet as well as a pantry, which shows he had very little observation of the way _you_ keep things in order."

Mrs. Lathrop absorbed all this with the happy calm of a contented (and rocking) sponge.

"But what takes me is the way he's not only got a finger, but has just smashed both hands, into every pie on the place," Susan continued. "He's moved the chicken-house and give us each a horse and give the cow a calf without even so much as 'by your leave.' I don't know which will be the most surprised if this plan comes true--me with my horse, or the cow finding herself with a calf in the fall as well as the spring this year.

Then it beats me where he's going to get all his trees, for both houses is a blooming bower, and the way tree-toads will sing me to sleep shows he's had no close friends in the country. Trees brushing your window mean mosquitos at night and spiders whenever they feel so disposed. And that ain't all, whatever you may think, for you haven't got a window-pane over four inches square and, as every window has fifty-six of them, I see your windows going dirty till out of very shame I get 'em washed for your funeral. And that ain't all, whatever you may think, either, for the snow is going to lodge all around all those little gables and inglenooks he's trimmed your roof with, and you'll leak before six months goes by, or I'll lose my guess."

But it was impossible to impress Mrs. Lathrop. If things leaked, Jathrop would have them mended. She just rocked and rocked.

"I don't know what to write Jathrop about these plans," Susan Clegg said slowly. "Of course, I've got to write him something, and I declare I don't know what to say. He means it kindly, and there's nothing in the wide world that makes things so hard as when people mean kindly. You can do all sorts of things when people is enemies, but when any one means anything kindly, you've got to eat it if it kills you. Mrs. Allen was telling me the other day that since she's took a vow to do one good action daily, she's lost most all of her friends.

"That just shows how people feel about being grabbed by the neck and held under till you feel you've done enough good to 'em. Jathrop means this well, but I've got a feeling as we'll go through a great deal of misery being built over, and I really don't think we'll be so much better off after we've survived. You'll have to be torn right down, and the day that that young man was up on my porch post, he said he couldn't be positive that I'd keep even my north wall. He pounded it all over in the dining-room until the paper was a sight, and then when he saw how very far from pleased I was, he tried to get out of it by saying the wall would have to come down, anyhow. I think he saw toward the last that he'd gone too far in a many little ways. I didn't like his taking the hens off their nests to measure how wide the henhouse was. I consider a hen is one woman when she's seated at work and had ought not to be called off by any man alive. But, laws, that young man wasn't any respecter of work or hens or anything else! He called himself an artist, and since I've been studying these plans, I've begun to think as he was really telling the truth, for artists is all crazy, and anything crazier than these plans I never did see. Not content with having us wash in the sink and the cellar, we're to wash under the front stairs, too, not to speak of all but swimming up-stairs."

Mrs. Lathrop just smiled and rocked more.

"I'm not in favor of it," said Miss Clegg, rising to go. "I don't believe it'll be any real advantage. We'll be like the Indians that die as soon as you civilize 'em--that's what we'll be. The windmill will keep us awake nights, and you don't use any water to speak of, anyhow.

So I don't see why I should be kept awake. As for that laughing tiger he's give me on my front door, I just won't have it, and that's all there is about it. A laughing tiger's no kind of a welcome to people you want, and when people come that I don't want, I don't need no tiger to let 'em know it. No, I never took to that young man, and I don't take to his plans. I don't like those four pillars across my front any more than I do that mouse-hole without a roof that he's give me to go to you in. I consider it a very poor compliment to you, Mrs. Lathrop, that he's fixed it so if I once start to go to see you, I've got to keep on, for I can't possibly get out so to go nowhere else."

Susan Clegg paused. Mrs. Lathrop rocked.

"Well?" said Miss Clegg, impatiently.

But Mrs. Lathrop just rocked. If Susan didn't like it, she needn't like it. Jathrop would pay the bill.

Susan Clegg went home, her mind still unconvinced.

VI

SUSAN CLEGG UPROOTED

Many things against which we protest bitterly at first we eventually come to accept and possibly even to enjoy. It was that way, to a degree at least, with the reconstruction of the houses of Susan Clegg and her friend Mrs. Lathrop, neither lady being particularly charmed with the idea when it was originally presented, and Miss Clegg being even frankly displeased with the plans that were sent down for approval. But the plans were accepted, nevertheless, after some alterations, and by easy stages Susan Clegg and Mrs. Lathrop arrived at that degree of philosophy which enabled them to face with commendable composure the fact that they must vacate their dwellings for an indefinitely extended period.

It was not that Miss Clegg had ceased to entertain doubts as to the advisability of "being renovated," nor was it that Mrs. Lathrop looked forward gladly to a temporary transplanting of herself and her rocker.

But Jathrop's glory as a millionaire was now so strongly to the fore in their minds that both bowed, more or less resignedly, to his wishes.

"I must say I d'n know how this thing is going to work out in the end,"

Susan observed to Mrs. Lathrop, as the date set for the beginning of the work drew nearer. "I'm against it myself, but I ain't against Jathrop, so I'm giving up my views just to see what will happen. My own opinion is as it's all very well to build over most anything, but if your house is to be built over, you've got to get out of it, and I must say as I don't just see as yet when we get out of our houses what we're going to get into. Jathrop says we can go to the hotel, and that he'll pay the bill. Well, I must say it's good he'd pay the bill, for I'd never go to any hotel if somebody else didn't pay the bill--I know that. But even if I haven't got the bill to pay, I don't feel so raving, raring mad to go to the hotel. It wouldn't matter to you, Mrs. Lathrop, for nothing ever does matter to you, and anyway, even if anything had mattered to you before, you'd not mind it now that Jathrop's come back. But just the same a hotel does matter to me. They take very little interest in their housekeeping in hotels, and no matter who's eat off of what, if they can use it again--and they generally can--they always do. Why, they churn up the melted odds and ends of ice-cream and serve 'em out as fresh-made with that cheerful countenance as loveth no giver. And what we'd throw to the cat they sc.r.a.pe right back into the soup pot, and glad enough to get it. I don't suppose you'd mind what you ate, nor what kind of a cloth had dusted your plate, but I was brought up to be clean, and I don't want to sleep with spiders swinging themselves down to see how I do it. No, Mrs. Lathrop, I can't consider no hotel, not even in common affection for Jathrop. I'd go down a well on my hands and knees to dig coal for him if necessary, or I'd do any other thing as a woman as respects Jathrop might do if she didn't respect herself more. But live in a hotel I will not, and you can write and tell him so, for _I_ don't want to hurt his feelings. But all kindness has its limits, and if I let a boy architect run through the heart of my house, I consider as I've done enough to prove my Christian spirit for one year."

"What--?" ventured Mrs. Lathrop, but Susan Clegg went right on.

"I don't see where we're ever going to put our things while they haul our walls down and rock our foundations. That young man says there won't be a room as won't have to have something done to it, and I don't want my furniture spoiled, even if I do have to have my house built over against my will. My furniture is very good furniture, Mrs. Lathrop. It's been oiled, and rubbed, and polished ever since it was bought, and none of the chairs has ever had their middles stepped on, and nothing of mine has got a sunk hole from sitting,--no, sir! My mattresses is all slept even, from side to side, and there ain't a bottle-mark in the whole house. It's a sin to take and wreck a happy home like mine. I shall have untold convenience hereafter, but I shall never take any more real comfort. That's what I see a-coming. And where under the sun we are going to put our things the Lord only knows."

Mrs. Lathrop was one of those who rarely take a question as a personal matter. She made no suggestion; she just rocked.

"I can see what I've got to be doing," said Susan, a clearer light breaking. "I've got to be getting up and seeing where you and me can go, and where we can put our goods. I don't want to live under the same roof with you if I can possibly help it. And not to do it's going to be hard, for knowing we're such friends, folks is going to naturally plan to take us together. I don't want to hurt your feelings, Mrs. Lathrop, and yet I can't in Christian courtesy deny that to live with you would drive me distracted, and so I shan't consider it for a minute. Not for one single minute. Still, I can't live far from you, for we are old friends, and the brother that leaveth all else to cleave to his brother wasn't more close when he done it than I am to you. Besides, if they're building our houses over, I shall naturally be pretty lively in watching them do it, and as one of the houses is yours, you'll like to be where I can easy tell you how it's being done. And so it goes without saying we've got to be close together. But not too close together."

All these premises were so undeniably true that the pa.s.sive Mrs. Lathrop could not have gainsaid them even had she been so disposed; which she wasn't.

Accordingly, upon the very next day, Susan began her search for an abiding place, and the right abiding place was--as she had predicted--not to be easily found.

"There's plenty of places," said Susan, when she returned from her task, "but they don't any of them suit my views. You're easily suited, Mrs.

Lathrop, but I'm not and never will be. I'm of a nature that never is to be lightly took in vain, nor yet to be just lightly took either. And no one isn't going to put me in a room that'll be sunny in July, nor yet in one that will be shady in September. No room as is pleasant in September can help being most hot in summer; and although I'm willing to be hot in my own house, I will not be hot in any place where I pay board. You'll do very well almost anywhere, Mrs. Lathrop, for Lord knows whatever other virtues you may have, being particular could never be left at your door in no orphaned basket. But I'm different. Mrs. Brown would take us until young Doctor Brown and Amelia gets back, and Mrs. Allen would be glad of the very dust of our feet; but I couldn't go to either of those two places. Mrs. Brown would have to have both of us, for there's no one else to take you, and Mrs. Allen would want to read us her poetry. It's all right to write if you ain't got brains or time for nothing better, but I have, and I ain't going to knowingly board myself with no one as hasn't."

Mrs. Lathrop made no comment. She merely rocked and waited.

"As for our things," Susan continued, "I've found where we can put _them_. It wasn't easy, but I never give up, and Mr. Sh.o.r.es says he's willing we should have all the back of his upper part. I told him as I should want to be able to go to 'em any time, and he said far be it from him to desire to prevent no woman from visiting what was her own. I could see from his tone as he was thinking of his wife as run off with his clerk, and it does beat all how you can even make a misery out of a woman's visiting her furniture if you feel so inclined. So the goods is off our minds, and now it's just us as has got to be put somewheres till our own doors is opened to us again. I must say I'd like to know where we'll end."

On the very next day the solution was effected.

"I've got it all fixed," said Susan, returning, dovelike, with the evening shadows. "Mrs. Macy'll take one of us and Gran'ma Mullins the other. Gran'ma Mullins says with Hiram gone to the Klondike and Lucy gone to her father, either you or me can have their room; only for the love of heaven we mustn't look like Hiram in bed; for her heart is aching and breaking, and the car-wheels of his train ain't grinding on any track half as much as they're grinding in her tenderest spot. Now the question is, Mrs. Lathrop, which'll go which, and it's a thing as I must consider very carefully, for Lord knows I don't want to be no more miserable than I've got to be. And it goes without saying I wouldn't choose to live with Gran'ma Mullins, nor Mrs. Macy, nor n.o.body else if I had my choice. I'm too much give to liking to live alone with myself. Of course, Mrs. Macy is a pleasanter disposition than Gran'ma Mullins, for she ain't got Hiram to wear my bones into skin over; but I feel as living with Mrs. Macy all summer will surely lead to her trying to make it come out even for the rent up to next January, so I would have to worry over that. Then, too, even if Gran'ma Mullins is wearing, she's soothing too, and I shall need soothing this summer. I declare, Mrs.

Lathrop, I can't well see how I'm ever going to pack up my things. I can't see what's to keep 'em from getting scratched and the corners knocked. How can I fix a toilet set smooth together? A toilet set don't never fit smooth together; the handles always stick out. And the frying-pan's got a handle too, and a clothesbar ain't any ways adaptable to nothing. Chair legs is very bad and table legs is worse, and there's Mother's wedding-present clock as found its level years ago and ain't been stirred since. Father give it to her, and it's so heavy I couldn't stir it if I wanted to, anyhow. But I don't want to stir it. It's my dead mother's last wish, and as such is sacred. I wasn't to stir Father nor the clock. It's a French clock, and it's marble. It's a handsome clock. It was Father's one handsome present to Mother. And now I've got to put it in storage. And then there's our hens. I don't know but what it'd be wisest to set right to eating them. I know one thing--I'll never board chickens. Oh, Mrs. Lathrop, this is going to be an awful business!

Think of the carpets! Think of the window shades, and my dead mother's lamberquins! Think of the things in the garret! And the things in the cellar! And the things in the closets! I don't know, I'm sure, how we'll ever get moved."

As the days went on, the slow trend of life brought the problem still more pressingly to the front. Susan decided to lodge herself with Gran'ma Mullins. Gran'ma Mullins, whose heart was still very heavy over Hiram's escape from the home nest, would have preferred Mrs. Lathrop.

Mrs. Lathrop's capacity for listening would have meant much to Gran'ma Mullins in these hours of bitter loneliness; but Mrs. Macy wanted Mrs.

Lathrop, and Susan didn't want Mrs. Macy, so the outcome of that question was a fore-gone conclusion.

When all was settled, Jathrop dispatched emissaries who, with a deftness and dexterity possessed only by the hirelings of millionaires, descended on Mrs. Lathrop, and in the course of a single afternoon transferred her, her rocker, and the whole contents of her bedroom to Mrs. Macy's.

The emissaries offered to do the same thing for Susan Clegg, but she rejected their aid. Alone and una.s.sisted Susan wrestled with her packing, and no one ever knew just how she accomplished it. It took her several days, and it introduced a new order of things into not only her life but her speech. Her struggle was valiant, but towards the end she had to call on Felicia Hemans and Sam Durny for help. When, on Sat.u.r.day night, Susan arrived at Gran'ma Mullins's, her first observation was that when the Lord got through with the creation it was small wonder He arranged to rest on the seventh day.

"I d'n know as I shall ever get up again," she said to Gran'ma Mullins, who was watching her take off her bonnet. "A ap.r.o.n as has been used to carry things in for six days is bright and starched beside me. Oh, Gran'ma Mullins, pray on your folded knees as Hiram won't come back rich and want to build you over! Anything but that."