At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern

by Myrtle Reed

  XI

  Mrs. Dodd's Third Husband

  Insidiously, a single idea took possession of the entire household. Mrs.Smithers kept a spade near at hand and systematically dug, as opportunityoffered. Dorothy became accustomed to an odorous lantern which stood nearthe back door in the daytime and bobbed about among the shrubbery atnight.

  There was definite method in the madness of Mrs. Smithers, however, forshe had once seen the departed Mr. Judson going out to the orchard with atin box under his arm and her own spade but partially concealed under hislong overcoat. When he came back, he was smiling, which was so unusualthat she forgot all about the box, and did not observe whether or not hehad brought it back with him. Long afterward, however, the incidentassumed greater significance.

  "If I'd 'ave 'ad the sense to 'ave gone out there the next day," shemuttered, "and 'ave seen where 'e 'ad dug, I might be a rich woman now,that's wot I might. 'E was a clever one, 'e was, and 'e's 'id it. The oldskinflint wasn't doin' no work, 'e wasn't, and 'e lived on 'ere from yearto year, a-payin' 'is bills like a Christian gent, and it stands to reasonthere's money 'id somewheres. Findin' is keepin', and it's for me to keepmy 'ead shut and a sharp lookout. Them Carrs don't suspect nothink."

  She was only half right, however. Harlan, lost in his book, was heedlessof everything that went on around him, but Mrs. Dodd's reference to thediamond pin, and her own recollection of the money she had found in thebureau drawer, began to work stealthily upon Dorothy's mind, surrounded,as she was, by people who were continually thinking of the same thing.

  Then, too, their funds were getting low. There was little to send to thesanitarium now, for eleven people, as students of domestic economics haveoften observed, eat more than one or two. Dick was also affected by thecurrent financial depression, and at length conceived the idea that UncleEbeneezer's worldly goods were somewhere on the premises.

  Mrs. Holmes spent a great deal of time in the attic, while the care-freechildren, utterly beyond control, rioted madly through the house. Dorothydiscovered Mr. Perkins, the poet, half-way up the parlour chimney, and satdown to see what he would do when he came out and found her there. He hadseemed somewhat embarrassed when he wiped the soot from his face, but hadquickly explained that he was writing a poem on chimney-swallows and hadcome to a point where original research was essential.

  Even Elaine, not knowing what she sought, began to investigate, idlyenough, the furniture and hangings in her room, and Mrs. Dodd, eagerlyseizing opportunities, was forever keen on the scent. Uncle Israel, owingto the poor state of his health, was one of the last to be affected by thesurrounding atmosphere, but when he caught the idea, he made up for losttime.

  He was up with the chickens, and invariably took a long afternoon nap, sothat, during the night, there was bound to be a wakeful interval.Ordinarily, he took a sleeping potion to tide him over till morning, butsoon decided that a little mild exercise with some pleasant purposeanimating it, would be far better for his nerves.

  Mrs. Dodd was awakened one night by the feeling that some one was in herroom. A vague, mysterious Presence gradually made itself known. At firstshe was frightened, then the Presence wheezed, and reassured her. Acrossthe path of moonlight that lay on her floor, Uncle Israel movedcautiously.

  He was clad in a piebald dressing-gown which had been so patched withvarious materials that the original fabric was uncertain. An old-fashionednightcap was on his head, the tassel bobbing freakishly in the back, andhe wore carpet slippers.

  Mrs. Dodd sat up in bed, keenly relishing the situation. When he opened abureau drawer, she screamed out: "What are you looking for?"

  Uncle Israel started violently. "Money," he answered, in a shrill whisper,taken altogether by surprise.

  "Then," said Mrs. Dodd, kindly, "I'll get right up and help you!"

  "Don't, Belinda," pleaded the old man. "You'll wake up everybody. I ama-walkin' in my sleep, I guess. I was a-dreamin' of money that I was tofind and give to you, and I suppose that's why I've come to your room. Youlay still, Belinda, and don't tell nobody. I am a-goin' right away."

  Before she could answer in a way that seemed suitable, he was gone, andthe next day he renewed his explanations. "I dunno, Belinda, how I evercome to be a-walkin' in my sleep. I ain't never done such a thing since Iwas a child, and then only wunst. How dretful it would have been if I hadgone into any other room and mebbe have been shot or have scared someyoung and unprotected female into fits. To think of me, with myuntarnished reputation, and at my age, a-doin' such a thing! You don'treckon it was my new pain-killer, do you?"

  "I don't misdoubt it had sunthin' to do with payin'," returned Mrs. Dodd,greatly pleased with her own poor joke, "an', as you say, it might havebeen dretful. But I am a friend to you, Israel, an' I don't 'low to makeyour misfortune public, but, by workin' private, help you overcome it."

  "What air you a-layin' out to do?" demanded Uncle Israel, fearfully.

  "I ain't rightly made up my mind as yet, Israel," she answered, pleasantlyenough, "but I don't intend to have it happen to you again. Sunthin' cansurely be done that'll cure you of it."

  "Don't, Belinda," wheezed her victim; "I don't think I'll ever have itagain."

  "Don't you fret about it, Israel, 'cause you ain't goin' to have it nomore. I'll attend to it. It 's a most distressin' disease an' must be tookearly, but I think I know how to fix it."

  During her various investigations, she had found a huge bunch of keysbeneath a pile of rubbish on the floor of a closet in an unoccupied room.It was altogether possible, as she told herself, that one of these keysshould fit the somnambulist's door.

  While Uncle Israel was brewing a fresh supply of medicine on the kitchenstove, she found, as she had suspected that one of them did fit, andthereafter, every night, when Uncle Israel had retired, she locked him in,letting him out shortly after seven each morning. When he remonstratedwith her, she replied, triumphantly, that it was necessary--otherwise hewould never have known that the door was locked.

  On her first visit to "town" she made it her business to call upon LawyerBradford and inquire as to Mr. Judson's last will and testament. Shelearned that it did not concern her at all, and was to be probated, inaccordance with the dead man's instructions, at the Fall term of court.

  "Then, as yet," she said, with a gleam of satisfaction in her small, beadyeyes, "they ain't holdin' the house legal. Any of us has the same right tostay as them Carrs."

  "That's as you look at it," returned Mr. Bradford, squirming uneasily inhis chair.

  Try as she might, she could extract no further information, but she atleast had a bit of knowledge to work on. She went back, earnestly desiringquiet, that she might study the problem without hindrance, but,unfortunately for her purpose, the interior of the Jack-o'-Lanternresembled pandemonium let loose.

  Willie was sliding down the railing part of the time, and at frequentintervals coasting downstairs on Mrs. Smithers's tea tray, vocallyexpressing his pleasure with each trip. The twins, seated in front of thelibrary door, were pounding furiously on a milk-pan, which had not beenempty when they dragged it into the hall, but was now. Mrs. Smithers wassinging: "We have our trials here below, Oh, Glory, Hallelujah," and asickening odour from a fresh concoction of Uncle Israel's permeated thepremises. Having irreverently detached the false front from the keys ofthe melodeon, Mr. Perkins was playing a sad, funereal composition of hisown, with all the power of the instrument turned loose on it. Upstairs,Dick was whistling, with shrill and maddening persistence, and Dorothy,quite helpless, sat miserably on the porch with her fingers in her ears.

  Harlan burst out of the library, just as Mrs. Dodd came up the walk, histemper not improved by stumbling over the twins and the milk-pan, andabove their united wails loudly censured Dorothy for the noise andconfusion. "How in the devil do you expect me to work?" he demanded,irritably. "If you can't keep the house quiet, I'll go back to New York!"

  Too crushed in spirit to reply, Dorothy said nothing, and Harlan whiskedback into the librar
y again, barely escaping Mrs. Dodd.

  "Poor child," she said to Dorothy; "you look plum beat out."

  "I am," confessed Mrs. Carr, the quick tears coming to her eyes.

  "There, there, my dear, rest easy. I reckon this is the first time you'vebeen married, ain't it?"

  "Yes," returned Dorothy, forcing a pitiful little smile.

  "I thought so. Now, when you're as used to it as I be, you won't take itso hard. You may think men folks is all different, but there's a dretfulsameness to 'em after they've been through a marriage ceremony. Marriageis just like findin' a new penny on the walk. When you first see it, it'sall shiny an' a'most like gold, an' it tickles you a'most to pieces tothink you're gettin' it, but after you've picked it up you see that whatyou've got is half wild Indian, or mebbe more--I ain't never been in nomint. You may depend upon it, my dear, there's two sides to all of us, an'before marriage, you see the wreath--afterwards a savage.

  "I've had seven of 'em," she continued, "an' I know. My father give me acemetery lot for a weddin' present, with a noble grey marble monumint init shaped like a octagon--leastways that's what a school-teacher whatboarded with us said it was, but I call it a eight-sided piece. I'mspeakin' of my first marriage now, my dear. My father never give me noweddin' present but the once. An' I can't never marry again, 'causethere's a husband lyin' now on seven sides of the monumint an' only oneplace left for me. I was told once that I could have further husbandscremationed an' set around the lot in vases, but I don't take to no suchheathenish custom as that.

  "So I've got to go through my declinin' years without no suitablecompanion an' I call it hard, when one's so used to marryin' as what Ibe."

  "If they're all savages," suggested Dorothy, "why did you keep onmarrying?"

  "Because I hadn't no other way to get my livin' an' I was kinder in thehabit of it. There's some little variety, even in savages, an' it's humannatur' to keep on a-hopin.' I've had 'em stingy an' generous, drunk an'sober, peaceful an' disturbin'. After the first few times, I learned totake real pleasure out'n their queer notions. When you've learned to enjoyseein' your husband make a fool of himself an' have got enoughself-control not to tell him he's doin' it, nor to let him see where yourpleasure lies, you've got marryin' down to a fine point.

  "The third time, it was, I got a food crank, an' let me tell you rightnow, my dear, them's the worst kind. A man what's queer about his food isgoin' to be queerer about a'most everything else. Give me any man that caneat three square meals a day an' enjoy 'em, an' I'll undertake to livewith him peaceful, but I don't go to the altar again with no food crank,if I know it.

  "It was partly my own fault, too, as I see later. I'd seen him a-carryin'a passel of health food around in his pocket an' a-nibblin' at it, but Isupposed it was because the poor creeter had never had no one to cookproper for him, an' I took a lot of pleasure out of thinkin' how tickledhe'd be when I made him one of my chicken pies.

  "After we was married, we took a honeymoon to his folks, an' I'll tell youright now, my dear, that if there was more honeymoons took beforehand toeach other's folks, there'd be less marryin' done than what there is. Theywas all a-eatin' hay an' straw an' oats just like the dumb creeters theydisdained, an' a-carryin' wheat an' corn around in their pockets to pieceout with between greens.

  "So the day we got home, never knowin' what I was a-stirrin' up formyself, I turned in an' made a chicken an' oyster pie, an' it couldn't bebeat, not if I do say it as shouldn't. The crust was as soft an' flaky an'brown an' crisp at the edges as any I ever turned out, an' the inside wasall chicken an' oysters well-nigh smothered in a thick, creamy yellowgravy.

  "Well, sir, I brung in that pie, an' I set it on the table, an' I chirpedout that dinner was ready, an' he come, an'--my dear! You never saw suchgoins'-on in all your born days! Considerin' that not eatin' animals makespeople's dispositions mild an' pleasant, it was sunthin' terrible, an' meall the time as innercent as a lamb!

  "I can't begin to tell you the things my new-made husband said to me. Ifchickens an' oysters was human, I'll bet they'd have sued him for slander.He said that oysters was 'the scavengers of the sea'--yes'm, them's hisvery words, an' that chickens was even worse. He went on to tell me howthey et worms an' potato bugs an' beetles an' goodness knows what else,an' that he wa'n't goin' to turn the temple of his body into noslaughter-house. He asked me if I desired to eat dead animals, an' when heinsisted on an answer, I told him I certainly shouldn't care to eat 'emless'n they _was_ dead, and from then on it was worse 'n ever.

  "He said that no dead animal was goin' to be interred in the insides ofhim or his lawful wife, an' he was goin' to see to it. It come out thenthat he'd never tasted meat an' hadn't rightly sensed what he wasmissin'.

  "Well, my dear, some women would have took the wrong tack an' would haveargyfied with him. There's never no use in argyfyin' with a husband, an'never no need to, 'cause if you're set on it, there's all the rest of theworld to choose from. When he'd talked himself hoarse an' was beginnin' tocalm down again, I took the floor.

  "'Say no more,' says I, calm an' collected-like. 'This here is your housean' the things you're accustomed to eatin' can be cooked in it, no matterwhat they be. If I don't know how to put the slops together, I reckon Ican learn, not being a plum idjit. If you want baked chicken feed andboiled hay, I'm here to bake 'em and boil 'em for you. All you have to dois to speak once in a polite manner and it'll be done. I must insist onthe politeness, howsumever,' says I. 'I don't propose to live with any manwhat gets the notion a woman ceases to be a lady when she marries him. Acreeter that thinks so poor of himself as that ain't fit to be myhusband,' says I, 'nor no other decent woman's.'

  "At that he apologised some, an' when a husband apologises, my dear, it'sthe same as if he'd et dirt at your feet. 'The least said the soonestmended,' says I, an' after that, he never had nothin' to complain of.

  "But I knowed what his poor, cranky system needed, an' I knowed how to getit into him, especially as he'd never tasted meat in all his life. Fromthat time on, he never saw no meat on our table, nor no chickens, nor seascavengers, nor nothin', but all day, while he was gone, I was busy withmy soup pot, a-makin' condensed extracts of meat for flavourin' vegetablesan' sauces an' so on.

  "He took mightily to my cookin' an' frequently said he'd never et suchexquisite victuals. I'd make cream soups for him, an' in every one,there'd be over a cupful of solid meat jelly, as rich as the juice youfind in the pan when you cook a first-class roast of beef. I'd stewpotatoes in veal stock, and cook rice slow in water that had had a chickenboiled to rags in it. Once I put a cupful of raw beef juice in a can oftomatoes I was cookin' and he et a'most all of 'em.

  "As he kep' on havin' more confidence in me, I kep' on usin' more an'more, an' a-usin' oyster liquor for flavourin' in most everything durin'the R months. Once he found nearly a bushel of clam-shells out behind thehouse an' wanted to know what they was an' what they was doin' there. Itold him the fish man had give 'em to me for a border for my flower beds,which was true. I'd only paid for the clams--there wa'n't nothin' saidabout the shells--an' the juice from them clams livened up his soup an'vegetables for over a week. There wa'n't no day that he didn't have thevital elements of from one to four pounds of meat put in his food, an' allthe time, he was gettin' happier an' healthier an' more peaceful to livewith. When he died, he was as mild as a spring lamb with mint sauce onit.

  "Now, my dear, some women would have told him what they was doin', eitherafter he got to likin' the cookin' or when he was on his death-bed an'couldn't help himself, but I never did. I own that it took self-controlnot to do it, but I'd learned my lesson from havin' been married twicetbefore an' never havin' fit any to speak of. I had to take my pleasurefrom seein' him eat a bowl of rice that had a whole chicken in it,exceptin' only the bones and fibres of its mortal frame, an' a-lappin' upmebbe a pint of tomato soup that was founded on eight nice pork chops. I'ma-tellin' you all this merely to show you my point. Every day, Henry wasmakin' a blame fool of himself without
knowin' it. He'd prattle by thehour of slaughter-houses an' human cemeteries an' all the time he'd behonin' for his next meal.

  "He used to say as how it was dretful wicked to kill the dumb animals forfood, an' I allers said that there was nothin' to hinder his buyin' asmany as he could afford to an' savin' their lives by pennin' 'em up in theback yard, an' a-feedin' 'em the things they liked best to eat till theydied of old age or sunthin'. I told him they was all vegetarians, the sameas he was, an' they could live together peaceful an' happy. I even pointedout that it was his duty to do it, an' that if all believers would do thesame, the dread slaughter-houses would soon be a thing of the past, but Iain't never seen no food crank yet that's advanced that far in hishumanity.

  "I never told him a single word about it, nor even hinted it to him, nortold nobody else, though I often felt wicked to think I was keepin' somuch pleasure to myself, but my time is comin'.

  "When I'm dead an' have gone to heaven, the first thing I'm goin' to do isto hunt up Henry. They say there ain't no marriage nor givin' in marriageup there, but I reckon there's seven men there that'll at least recognisetheir wife when they see her a-comin' in. I'm goin' to pick up my skirtsan' take off my glasses, so's I'll be all ready to skedaddle, for I expectto leave my rheumatiz behind me, my dear, when I go to heaven--leastways,no place will be heaven for me that's got rheumatiz in it--an' then I'mgoin' to say: 'Henry, in all the four years you was livin' with me, youwas eatin' meat, an' you never knowed it. You're nothin' but a humancemetery.' Oh, my dear, it's worth while dyin' when you know you're goin'to have pleasure like that at the other end!"