Martha By-the-Day

by Julie Mathilde Lippmann

  CHAPTER XVI

  "Most like it's the Spring," said Martha. It was Memorial Day. She andMiss Lang were at home, sitting together in Claire's pretty room,through the closed blinds of which the hot May sun sent tempered shaftsof light.

  Claire regarded Mrs. Slawson steadily for a moment, seeming to make somesort of mental calculation meanwhile.

  "Well, if it _is_ the Spring," she observed at length with a whimsicallittle frown knitting her brows, "it's mighty forehanded, for it beganto get in its fine work as far back as January. Ever since the time Samwent to the Sanatorium you've been losing flesh and color, Martha,and--I don't know what to do about it!"

  "Do about it!" repeated Mrs. Slawson. "Why, there ain't nothin' _to_ doabout it, but let the good work go on. I'm in luck, if it's true whatyou say. Believe _me_, there's lots o' ladies in this town, is starvin'their stummicks an' everythin' else about 'em, an' payin' the doctorshigh besides, just to get delicate-complected, an' airy-fairy figgers,same's I'm doin' without turnin' a hand. Did you never hear o' bantin'?It's what the high-toned doctors recommend to thin down ladies who haveit so comfortable they're uncomfortable. The doctors prescribes exercisefor'm, an' they take it, willin' as doves, whereas if their husbandssaid, 'Say, old woman, while you're restin', just scrub down thecellar-stairs good--that'll take the flesh off'n you quicker'n anythin'else _I_ know!' they'd get a divorce from him so quick you couldn't see'em for dust. No, they'd not do anythin' so low as cellar-stairs, tosave their lives. You couldn't please 'em better'n to see another womandown on her marra-bones workin' for 'em, but get down themselves? Not onyour sweet life, they wouldn't. They'd rather _bant_. Bantin' sounds somuch more stylisher than scrubbin'."

  Claire smiled, but her eyes were very serious as she said, "All thesame, Martha, I believe you are grieving your heart out for Sam. I'vebeen watching you when you didn't know it, and I've seen the signs andthe tokens. Your heart has the hunger-ache in it!"

  "Now, what do you think o' that!" exclaimed Mrs. Slawson. "What do _you_know about hearts an' hunger-aches, I should like to know. You, anunmarried maiden-girl, without so much as the shadder or the skelegan ofa beau, as far as _I_ can see. What do _you_ know about a womanhungerin' an' cravin' for her own man? You have to have reelly felt themthings yourself, to know the signs of 'em in other folks."

  Claire's lip trembled, but she did not reply.

  When Martha spoke again it was as if she had replied.

  "O, go 'way! _You_ ain't never had a leanin' in any gen'l'man'sdirection, I'd be willin' to wager. An' yet, I may as well tell you, youbeen gettin' kinder white an' scrawny yourself lately, beggin' yourpardon for bein' so bold as notice it. Mind, I ain't the faintest notionof holdin' it against you! I know better than think you been settin'your affections on anybody. There's other things _besides_ love givesyou that tired feelin'. What you need is somethin' to brace you up, an'clear your blood, like Hoodses Sassperilla. Everybody feels the way youdo, this time o' year. I heard a young saleslady (she wasn't a woman,mind you, she was a sales_lady_), I heard a young saleslady in the carthe other mornin' complain--she was the reel dressy kind, you know, withmore'n a month's pay of hair, boilin' over on the back of her head inpuffs an' things--the gallus sort that, if you want to buy a yard o'good flannen off her, will sass you up an' down to your face, as freshas if she was your own daughter--she was complainin' 'the Spring alwaysmade her feel so sorter, kinder, so awful la-anguid.'"

  "Martha, dear," broke in Claire irrelevantly, "I wonder if you'd mindvery much if I told Mr. Ronald the truth. He thinks you were an oldfamily servant. He thinks you nursed me till I was able to walk."

  Martha considered. "Well, ain't that the truth?" she asked blandly. "Ilived out from the time I was twelve years old. That was in Mrs.Granville's mother's house. When I was sixteen I went to Mrs.Granville's. I was kitchen-maid there first-off, an' gradjelly shepromoted me till I was first housemaid. I never left her till I gotmarried. If that don't make me an old family servant, I'd like to know."

  "But he thinks you were an old family servant in _our_ house."

  "Well, bless your heart, that's _his_ business, not mine. How can I helpwhat he thinks?"

  "Didn't you tell him, Martha dear, that you nursed me till I was able towalk?"

  "Shoor I did! An' it's the livin' truth. What's the matter with that?Believe _me_, you wasn't good for more than a minit or two more on yourlegs, when I got you into your bed that blessed night. You was cleanbowled over, an' you couldn't 'a' walked another step if you'd beenkilled for it. Didn't I nurse you them days you was in bed, helplesslikeas a baby? Didn't I nurse you till you could walk?"

  "Indeed you did. And that's precisely the point!" said Claire. "If Mr.Ronald--if Mrs. Sherman knew the truth, that I was poor, homeless,without a friend in New York the night you picked me up on the street,and carried me home and cared for me without knowing a thing about me,they mightn't--they _wouldn't_ have taken me into their house and givenme their little boy to train. And because they wouldn't, I want to tellthem. I want to square myself. I ought to have told them long ago. Iwant--"

  "You want 'em to bounce you," observed Mrs. Slawson calmly. "Well,there's always more'n one way of lookin' at things. For instanceany good chambermaid, _with experience_, will tell you there's threeways of dustin'. The first is, do it thora, wipin' the rungs o' thechairs, an' the backs o' the pictures, an' under the books on thetable like. The second is, just sorter flashin' your rag over the placesthat shows, an' the third is--pull down the shades. They're all goodenough ways in their own time an' place, an' you foller them accordin'to your disposition or, if you're nacherelly particular, accordin' tothe other things you got to do, in the time you got to do 'em _in_.Now, _I'm_ particular. I'm the nacherelly thora kind, but if I'mpressed, an' there's more important things up to me than the dustin',I give it a lick an' a promise, same as the next one, an' let it go atthat, till the time comes I can do better. Life's too short to fuss an'fidget your soul out over trifles. It ain't always what you _want_, butwhat you _must_. You sometimes got to cut short at one end so's you canpiece out at another, an' you can take it from me, you only pester folksby gettin' 'm down where they can't resist you, an' forcin' a lot ofhard facks down their throats, which ain't the _truth_ anyhow, an' whichthey don't want to swaller on no account. What do they care about themachinery, so long as it turns out the thing they want? Believe _me_,it's foolishness to try to get 'em back into the works, pokin' aboutamong the inside wheels an' springs, an' so forth. You likely getknocked senseless by some big thing-um-bob you didn't know was there.Now I know just eggsackly what's in your mind, but you're wrong. Youthink I told Mr. Ronald fibs. I didn't tell'm fibs. I just give'm thetruth the way he'd take it, like you give people castor-oil that's toodainty to gullup it down straight. Some likes it in lemon, an' somein grobyules, but it's castor-oil all the same. He wanted to know thetruth about you, an' I let him have it, the truth bein' you're as finea lady as any in the land. If I'd happened to live in Grand Rapids atthe time, I'd most likely of lived out with your grandmother, an' beenan old family servant in your house like I was at Mrs. Granville's,an' I certainly would of nursed you if I'd had the chanct. It was justa case o' happenso, my _not_ havin' it. The right kind o' folks herein New York is mighty squeamish about strangers. They wantrecommendations--they want 'em because they want to be sure the onesthey engage is O.K. That's all recommendations is for, ain't it? Now Iknew the minit I clapped eye to you, that, as I say, you was as grand alady as any in the land, an' that bein' the case, what was the use o'frettin' because I hadn't more than your sayso to prove it. But if I'dpulled a long face to Mrs. Sherman, an' told her, hesitatin'-like an'nervous, about--well, about what took place that night, she, not havin'much experience of human nature (only the other kind that's more commonhere in New York City), she'd have hemmed, an' hawed, an' thought she'dbetter not try it, seein' Radcliffe is such an angel-child an' not to betrained except by a A-I Lady."

  "But the truth," persisted Claire.

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bsp; "I tell the truth," Mrs. Slawson returned with quiet dignity. "I onlydon't waste time on trifles."

  "It is not wasting time on trifles to be exact and accurate. Anarchitect planning a house must make every little detail _true_, elsewhen the house goes up, it won't stand."

  "Don't he have to reckon nothin' on the _give_ or _not-give_ of thethings he's dealin' with?" demanded Martha. "I'm only a ignorant woman,an' I ask for information. When you're dress-makin' you have to allowfor the seams, an' when you're makin'--well, other things, you have todo the same thing, only spelled a little different--you have to allowfor the _seems_. Most folks don't do it, an' that's where a lot o'trouble comes in, or so it appears to me."

  Claire twisted her ring in silence, gazing down at it the while as ifthe operation was, of all others, the most important and absorbing.

  "We may not agree, Martha dear," she said at last, "but anyway I knowyou're good, good, _good_, and I wouldn't hurt your feelings for theworld."

  "Shoor! I know you wouldn't! An' they ain't hurt. Not in the least. Yougot one kinder conscience an' I got another, that's all. Consciences islike hats. One that suits one party would make another look like a guy.You got to have your own style. You got to know what's best for you, an'then _stick to it_!"

  "And you won't object if I tell Mr. Ronald?"

  "Objeck? Certainly not! Tell'm anything you like. _I_ always was fond o'Mr. Ronald myself. I never thought he was as hard an' stern with a bodyas some thinks. Some thinks he's as hard as nails, but--"

  "O, I'm _sure_ he's not," cried Claire with unexpected loyalty. "Hismanner may seem a little cold and proud sometimes, but I know he's verykind and generous."

  "Certaintly. So do I know it," said Mrs. Slawson. "I don't say I mayn'tbe mistaken, but I have the highest opinion o' Lor--Mr. Ronald. I thinkyou could trust'm do the square thing, no matter what, an' if he waskinder harsh doin' it, it's only because he expects a body to be perfectlike he is himself."

  In the next room Sabina was shouting at the top of her lungs--"Come backto ear-ring, my voornean, my voornean!"

  "Ain't it a caution what lungs that child has--considerin'?" Marthareflected. "Just hear her holler! She'd wake the dead. I wonder if she'stryin' to beat that auta whoopin' it up outside. Have you ever noticedthem autas nowadays? Some of them has such croupy coughs, before I knowit I'm huntin' for a flannen an' a embrercation. 'Xcuse me a minit whileI go answer the bell."

  A second later she returned. A step in advance of her was Mr. Ronald.

  "I am lucky to find you at home, Martha," were the first words Claireheard him say.

  Martha, by dint of a little unobservable maneuvering, managed tosuperimpose her substantial shadow upon Claire's frail one.

  "Yes, sir. When I get a day to lay off in, you couldn't move me outerthe house with a derrick," she announced. "Miss Lang's here, too. Bein'so dim, an' comin' in outer the sunlight, perhaps you don't make out tosee her."

  "She ain't had time yet to pull herself together," Mrs. Slawson inwardlynoted. "But, Lord! I couldn't stand in front of her forever, an' even ifa girl _is_ dead in love with a man (more power to her!), that's noreason she should go to the other extreme to hide it, an' pertend she'sa cold storage, warranted to freeze'm stiff, like the artificial icethey're makin' these days, in the good old summertime."

  The first cold greetings over, Claire started to retreat in thedirection of the door.

  "Excuse me, please--I promised Francie--She's expecting me--she'swaiting--"

  "Pshaw now, let her wait!" said Martha.

  "Don't let me detain Miss Lang if she wishes to go," interposed Mr.Ronald. "My business is really with you, Martha."

  "Thank you, sir. But I'd like Miss Lang to stay by, all the same--thatis, if you don't objeck."

  "As a witness? You think I need watching, eh?"

  "I think it does a body good to watch you, sir!"

  "I didn't know before, you were a flatterer, Martha. But I see you're alineal descendant of the Blarney Stone."

  Claire felt herself utterly ignored. She tried again to slip away, butMartha's strong hand detained her, bore her down into the place she hadjust vacated.

  "How is Francie?" inquired Mr. Ronald, taking the chair Mrs. Slawsonplaced for him.

  "_Fine_--thank you, sir. The doctors says they never see a child getwell so fast. She's grown so fat an' big, there ain't a thing belongs toher will fit her any longer, they're all shorter, an' she has to gowhacks with Cora on her clo'es."

  "Perhaps she'd enjoy a little run out into the country this afternoon inmy car. The other children, too? And--possibly--Miss Lang."

  "I'm sure they'd all thank you kindly, sir," began Martha, when--"I'msorry," said Claire coldly, "I can't go."

  Mr. Ronald did not urge her. "It is early. We have plenty of time todiscuss the ride later," he observed quietly. "Meanwhile, what I have inmind, Martha, is this: Mr. Slawson has been at the Sanatorium nowfor--?"

  "Goin' on five months," said Martha.

  "And the doctors think him improved?"

  "Well, on the whole, yes, sir. His one lung (sounds kinder Chineesy,don't it?), his one lung ain't no worse--it's better some--only he keepslosin' flesh an' that puzzles'm."

  "Do you think he is contented there?"

  "He says he is. He says it's the grand place, an' they're all as goodto'm as if he was the king o' Harlem. _You_ seen to that, sir--he says.An' Sam, he's always pationate, no matter what comes, but--"

  "Well--_but_?"

  "But--only just, it ain't _home_, you know, sir!"

  "I see. And the doctors think he ought to stay up there? Not returnhome--_here_, I mean?"

  "That's what they say."

  "Have you--the means to keep him at the Sanatorium over the five monthswe settled for in January?"

  "No, sir. That is, not--not _yet_."

  "Would you like to borrow enough money to see him through the rest ofthe year?"

  Martha deliberated. "I may _have_ to, sir," she said at last with avisible effort. "But I don't like to borrer. I notice when folks getsthe borrerin'-habit they're slow payin' back, an' then you don't getthanks for a gift or you don't get credit for a loan."

  This time it was Mr. Ronald who seemed to be considering. "Right!" heannounced presently. "I notice you go into things rather deep, Martha."

  Mrs. Slawson smiled. "Well, when things _is_ deep, that's the way yougot to go into them. What's on your plate you got to chew, an' if youdon't like it, you can lump it, an' if you don't like to lump it, youcan cut it up finer. But there it _is_, an' there it stays, till youswaller it, somehow."

  "Do you enjoy or resent the good things that are, or seem to be, heapedon other people's plates?"

  "Why, yes. Certaintly I enjoy 'em. But, after all, the things taste bestthat we're eatin' ourselves, don't they? An' if I had money enough likesome, so's I didn't have to borrer to see my man through, why, I don'tgo behind the door to say I'd be glad an' grateful."

  "Would you take the money as a gift, Martha?"

  "You done far more than your share already, sir."

  "Then, if you won't _take_, and you'd rather not borrow, we must findanother way. A rather good idea occurred to me last night. I've anuncommonly nice old place up in New Hampshire--in the mountains. It wasmy father's--and my grandfather's. It's been closed for many years, andI haven't given it a thought, except when the tax-bills came due, or thecaretaker sent in his account. It's so far away my sister won't livethere, and--it's too big and formidable for one lone man to summer in byhimself. Now, why wouldn't it be a capital idea for you to pack up yourgoods and chattels here, and take your family right up there--make thatyour home? The lodge is comfortable and roomy, and I don't see why Mr.Slawson couldn't recover there as well, if not better, than where he is.I'd like to put the place in order--make some improvements, do a littleremodeling. I need a trusty man to oversee the laborers, and keep an eyeand close tab on the workmen I send up from town. If Mr. Slawson wouldact as superintendent for me, I'd pay him what
such a position is worth,and you would have your house, fuel, and vegetables free. Don't try toanswer now. You'd be foolish to make a decision in a hurry that youmight regret later. Write to your husband. Talk it over with him. Hemight prefer to choose a job for himself. And remember--it's 'way out inthe country. The children would have to walk some distance to school."

  "Give 'em exercise, along of their exercises," said Martha.

  "The church in the village is certainly three miles off."

  "My husband don't go to church as reg'lar as I might wish," Mrs. Slawsonobserved. "I tell'm, the reason men don't be going to church so muchthese days, is for fear they might hear something they believe."

  "You would find country life tame, perhaps, after the city."

  "Well, the city life ain't been that _wild_ for me that I'd miss thedizzy whirl. An' anyhow--we'd be _together_!" Martha said. "We'd betogether, maybe, come our weddin'-day. The fourth o' July. We never beenparted oncet, on that day, all the fifteen years we been married," shemused, "but--"

  "Well?"

  "But, come winter, an' Mis' Sherman opens the house again, an' wantsMiss Claire back, who's goin' to look out for _her_?"

  "Why--a--as to _that_--" said Mr. Ronald, so vaguely it sounded almostsupercilious to Claire.

  In an instant her pride rose in revolt, rebelling against the notion hemight have, that she could possibly put forth any claim upon hisconsideration.

  "O, please, _please_ don't think of me, Martha," she cried vehemently."I have entirely other plans. You mustn't give me, or my affairs, athought, in settling your own. You must do what's best for _you_. Youmustn't count for, or _on_, me in the least. I have not told you before,but I've made up my mind I must resign my position at Mrs. Sherman's,anyway. I'll write her at once. I'll tell her myself, of course, but Itell you now to show that you mustn't have me in mind, at all, in makingyour plans."

  Martha's low-pitched voice fell upon Claire's tense, nervous one withsoothing calmness.

  "Certaintly not, Miss Claire," she said.

  "And you'll write to your husband and report to him what I propose,"suggested Mr. Ronald, as if over Claire's head.

  "Shoor I will, sir!"

  "And if he likes the idea, my secretary will discuss the details withhim later. Wages, duties--all the details."

  "Yes, sir."

  "And you may tell the children I'll leave orders that the car be sentfor them some other day. I find it's not convenient, after all, for meto take them myself this afternoon. I spoke too fast in proposing it.But they'll not be disappointed. Mr. Blennerhasset will see to that. Ileave town to-night to be gone--well, indefinitely. In any case, untilwell on into the autumn or winter. Any letter you may direct to me, careof Mr. Blennerhasset at the office, will be attended to at once.Good-by, Martha!--Miss Lang--" He was gone.

  When the car had shot out of sound and sight, Martha withdrew from thewindow, from behind the blinds of which she had been peering eagerly.

  "He certainly _is_ a little woolly wonder, meaning no offense," sheobserved with a deep-drawn sigh. "Yes, Mr. Ronald is as good as theymake 'em, an' dontcher forget it!"

  She seated herself opposite Claire, drawing her chair quite close.

  "Pity you an' him is so on the outs. I'm not speakin' o' _him_, s'much,but anybody with half an eye can see _you_ got a reg'lar hate on'm. _Anyone_ can see that!"

  A moment of silence, and then Claire flung herself, sobbing andquivering, across Martha's lap, ready to receive her.

  "O, _Martha_!" she choked.