The House of Martha Part 6

"I will go on with my work," she said, "and I will not say anything to the sisters until I have given the matter most earnest and careful consideration. I can do that a great deal better at home than I can here."

It was very well that she stopped talking and applied herself to her work, for I do not believe it was ten minutes afterward when Sister Sarah unlocked the door, and came in to take her away.

XIV.

I FAVOR PERMANENCY IN OFFICE.

As soon as my secretary had gone I went into her room and looked for my friend Vespa. I found him on the floor, quite dead, but not demolished.

Picking him up and carrying him to my study, I carefully gummed him to a card. Under his motionless form I wrote, "The good services of this friend I shall ever keep in grateful remembrance." Then I pinned the card to the wall between two bookcases.

During the rest of that day I found myself in a state of unreasonable exaltation. Several times I put to myself the questions: Why is it that you feel so cheerful and so gay? Why have you the inclination to whistle and to dance in your room? Why do you light a cigar, and let it go out through forgetfulness? Why do you answer your grandmother at random, and feel an inclination to take a long walk by yourself, although you know there are people invited to an afternoon tea?

I was not able to give an adequate answer to these questions, nor did I very much care to. I knew that my high spirits were caused by the discoveries the good Vespa had enabled me to make, and the fact that this reason could not be proved adequate did not trouble me at all; but prudence and a regard for my own interests made it very plain to me that other people should not know I had been exalted, and how. If I desired my nun to continue as my secretary, I must not let any one know that I cared in the least to hear her voice, or to have the front of her bonnet turned towards me.

At dinner, that day, my grandmother remarked to me:--

"Are you still satisfied with the House of Martha's sister? Does she do your work as you wish to have it done?"

I leaned back in my chair, and answered with deliberation:--

"Yes, I think she will do very well, and that after more practice she will do better. As it is, she is industrious and attentive. I place great stress upon that point, for I do not like to repeat my sentences; but she has a quick ear, and catches every word."

"Then," asked my grandmother, "you do not wish to make a change at present?"

"Oh, no," I said; "it would be very annoying to begin again with a new amanuensis. I am getting accustomed to this person, and that is a very important matter with me. So I do not wish to make any change so long as this sister does her work properly."

"I must say," resumed my grandmother, after a little pause, in which she seemed to be considering the subject, "that I was not altogether in favor of that young woman taking the position of your secretary. She can have had but little experience, and I thought that an older and steadier person would answer your purpose much better; but this one was unemployed at the time, and wished very much to do literary work; and as the inst.i.tution needed the money you would pay, which would probably amount to a considerable sum if your book should be a long one, and as you were in a great hurry, and might engage some one from the city if one of the Martha sisters were not immediately available, Mother Anastasia and I concluded that it would be well to send this young person until one of the older sisters, competent for the work, should be disengaged. I thought you would be very anxious to have this change made as soon as possible, so that you might feel that you had a permanent secretary."

"Oh, no," said I, trying very hard not to appear too much in earnest.

"This person is very steady, and there is a certain advantage in her being young, without much experience as a secretary. I wish any one who writes for me to work in my way; and if such a person has been accustomed to work in other people's ways, annoyance and interruption must surely result, and that I wish very much to avoid. A secretary should be a mere writing-machine, and I do not believe an elderly person could be that. She would be sure to have notions how my work should or should not be done, and in some way or other would make those notions evident."

"I don't quite agree with you," said my grandmother, "but of course you know your own business better than I do; and I suppose, after all, it doesn't make much difference whether the sister is young or not. They all dress alike, and all look ugly alike. I don't suppose there would be anything attractive about the Venus de Milo, if she wore a coal-scuttle bonnet and a gray woolen shawl."

"No," I answered, "especially if she kept the opening of her coal-scuttle turned down over her paper, as if she were about to empty coals upon it."

"That's very proper," said my grandmother, speaking a little more briskly. "All she has to do is to keep her eyes on her work, and I suppose, from what you say, that the flaps of her bonnet do not interfere with her keeping her ears on you. But if at any time you desire to make a change, all you have to do is to let me know, and I can easily arrange the matter."

I promised that I would certainly let her know in case I had such a desire.

That evening Walkirk remarked to me that he thought nothing could be more satisfactory for me than to have on tap, so to speak, an inst.i.tution like the House of Martha, from which I could draw a secretary whenever I wanted one, and keep her for as long or as short a time as pleased me; and to have this supply in the immediate neighborhood was an extraordinary advantage.

I agreed that the arrangement was a very good one; and I think he was about to ask some questions in regard to my nun, but I began my recital, and cut off any further conversation on the subject.

My monologue was rather disjointed that evening, for my mind was occupied with other things, or, more strictly speaking, another thing. I felt quite sure, however, that Walkirk did not notice my preoccupation, for he gave the same earnest and interested attention to my descriptions which he had always shown, and which made him such an agreeable and valuable listener. Indeed, his manner put me at my ease, because, on account of the wandering of my mind, his general expression indicated that, if I found it necessary to pause in order that I might arrange what I should say next, he was very glad of the opportunity thus given him to reflect upon what I had just said. He was an admirable listener.

XV.

HOW WE WENT BACK TO GENOA.

The next morning I awaited with considerable perturbation of mind the arrival of my nun. I felt a.s.sured that, after the occurrences of the previous day, there must certainly be some sort of a change in her. She could not go on exactly as she had gone on before. The nature of this antic.i.p.ated change concerned me very much,--too much, I a.s.sured myself.

Would she be more rigid and repellent than she had been before the advent of the wasp? But this would be impossible. On the other hand, would she be more like other people? Would she relax a little, and work like common secretaries? Or,--and I whistled as I thought of it,--having once done so, would she permanently cut loose from the absurdities enjoined upon her by the House of Martha people, and look at me and talk to me in the free, honest, ingenuous, frank, sincere, and thoroughly sensible manner in which she had spoken to me the day before?

After revolving these questions in my mind for some time, another one rudely thrust itself upon me: would she come at all? It was already seven minutes past nine; she had never been so late. Now that I came to think of it, this would be the most natural result of the wasp business.

The thought shocked me. I ceased to walk up and down my study, and stopped whistling. I think my face must have flushed; I know my pulse beat faster. My eyes fell upon the body of him who I believed had been my friend. I felt like crushing his remains with my fist. He had been my enemy! He had shown me what I had to lose, and he had made me lose it.

Even in the midst of my agitation this thought made me smile. How much I was making of this affair of my secretary. What difference, after all--But I did not continue the latter question. It did make a difference, and it was of no use to reason about it. What was I to do about it? That was more to the point.

At this instant, my nun, followed by Sister Sarah, entered the adjoining room. The latter merely bowed to me, went out, and locked the door behind her. I was very glad she did not speak to me, for the sudden revulsion of feeling produced by the appearance of the two would have prevented my answering her coherently. I do not know whether my nun bowed or not. If she did, the motion was very slight. She took her seat and prepared for work. I did not say anything, for I did not know what to say. The proper thing to do, in order to relieve my embarra.s.sment and hers,--that is, if she had any,--was to begin work at once; but for the life of me I could not remember whether my dictation of the day before concerned Sicily or Egypt. I did not like to ask her, for that would seem like a trick to make her speak.

But it would not do to keep her sitting there with an idle pen in her hand. I must say something, so I blurted out some remarks concerning the effect of the climate of the Mediterranean upon travelers from northern countries; and while doing this I tried my best to remember where, on the sh.o.r.es of this confounded sea, I had been the day before.

Philosophizing and generalizing were, however, not in my line: I was accustomed to deal with action and definite observation, and I soon dropped the climate of the Mediterranean, and went to work on some of the soul-harrowing improvements in the Eternal City, alluding with particular warmth to the banishment of the models from the Spanish Stairs. Now the work went on easily, but I was gloomy and depressed. My nun sat at the table, more like a stiff gray-enveloped principle than ever before. I did not feel at liberty even to make a remark about the temperature of the room. I feared that whatever I said might be construed into an attempt to presume upon the accidental intercourse of the day before.

For half an hour or more she went on with the work, but, during a pause in my dictation, she sat up straight in her chair and laid down her pen.

Then, without turning her face to me, she began to speak. I stood open-mouthed, and, I need not say, delighted. Whatever her words might be, it rejoiced me to hear them; to know that she voluntarily recognized my existence, and desired to communicate with me.

"I have spoken to Mother Anastasia," she said, her voice directed towards the screen in the open window, "and I told her that it was impossible for me to work without sometimes saying a few words to ask for what I need, or to request you to repeat a word which I did not catch. Since I began to write I have lost no less than twenty-three words. I have left blanks for them, and made memoranda of the pages; but, as I said to her, if this sort of thing went on, you would forget what words you had intended to use, and when you came to read the ma.n.u.script you could not supply them, and that therefore I was not doing my work properly, and honestly earning the money which would be paid to the inst.i.tution. I also told her that you sometimes forgot where you left off the day before, and that I ought to read you a few lines of what I had last written, in order that you might make the proper connection. I think this is very necessary, for to-day you have left an awful gap. Yesterday we were writing about that old Crusader's bank in Genoa, and now you are at work at Rome, when we haven't even started for that city."

Each use of this word "we" was to me like a strain of music from the heavens.

"Do you think I did right?" she added.

"Right!" I exclaimed. "Most a.s.suredly you did. Nothing could be more helpful, and in fact more necessary, than to let me know just where I left off. What did the sisters say?"

"I spoke only to Mother Anastasia," she replied. "She considered the matter a little while, and then said that she could see there must be times when you would require some information from me in regard to the work, and that there could be no reasonable objection to my giving such information; but she reminded me that the laws of the House of Martha require that the sisters must give their sole attention to the labor upon which they are employed, and must not indulge, when so engaged, in any conversation, even among themselves, that is not absolutely necessary."

"Mother Anastasia is very sensible," said I, "and if I were to see her, I should be happy to express my appreciation of her good advice upon the subject. And, by the way, did she tell you that it was necessary to wear that hot bonnet while you are working?"

"She did not say anything about it," she answered; "it was not needful.

We always wear our bonnets outside of the House of Martha."

I was about to make a further remark upon the subject, but restrained myself: it was inc.u.mbent on me to be very prudent. There was a pause, and then she spoke again.

"You are not likely to see Mother Anastasia," she said, "but please do not say anything on the subject to Sister Sarah; she is very rigorous, and would not approve of talking under any circ.u.mstances. In fact, she does not approve of my coming here at all."

"What earthly reason can she have for that?" I asked.

"She thinks it's nonsensical for you to have a secretary," she answered, "and that it would be much better for you to do your own work, and make a gift of the money to the inst.i.tution, and then I could go and learn to be a nurse. I only mention these things to show you that it would be well not to talk to her of Mother Anastasia's good sense."

"You may rest a.s.sured," said I, "that I shall not say a word to her."