Part 4

Mrs. Slawson laughed. "'Like you best'! Well, I guess you won't have to lose no sleep on that account, Miss Claire. But Miss Katherine's certaintly good-lookin', I'll say that for her. When I come home the next mornin', after seein' her firstoff, Cora says to me, 'What did she look like? was she anything like Miss Claire?' An' I told her: 'Miss Katherine's the han'somest appearin', but Miss Claire is the delicatest. Miss Claire's the most refinder-lookin'. An' that's God's truth. Miss Katherine's tall. The sorta grand, proud-lookin', I-would-n't-call-the-queen-my-cousin kind. An' _you_----! Well, you'll know how a body feels about _you_, when the blessed lamb comes home in August, which, believe _me_, the news of it is the joyfulest ever I heard in my life. You'll know how a body feels about _you_, by the way you feel about _it_. Like pertectin' it, an' caressin' it, an'--an'--keepin' harm away from the innercent heart of it. If you don't believe me, ask Lord Ronald."

"'Ask Lord Ronald,' _what_?"

Mrs. Slawson turned composedly to face the master of the house, as if his appearance in the doorway, just at that precise moment, had been "according to specifications." "I was tellin' Miss Claire--beggin' your pardon, _Mrs. Ronald_--about ol' lady Crewe, up-the-road-a-ways."

Mr. Ronald disposed of his long person in a cretonne-covered lounging chair.

"Do you know her, Frank?" As Claire spoke she slipped into her adjoining dressing-room, to arrange her hair and put on a fresh frock.

"Why, yes--and no," he replied. "Of course all the neighborhood knows about Madam Crewe. I used to hear my father talk about her. But she is rather a formidable little person. She is not to be approached lightly. I doubt if any one _knows_ her. She was Idea Stryker. An only child. 'Very beautiful,' the governor said,--'a great match.' Her father was exceedingly high and mighty. An English _younger son_, with feudalistic notions. Nobody over here was good enough for him, except my father, with whom he was uncommonly friendly. Stryker was difficult, a choleric, fiery-tongued individual, much disliked in the state, though, my father always said, he meant well."

"Somehow, I ain't no use for folks that mean well," observed Mrs. Slawson. "That is, o' course, I don't mean I ain't no use for'm, but I think they're kinda nuisances. When you have to explain that a fella _means well_, you can take it from me, he ain't makin' himself very clear on his own account."

Mr. Ronald laughed. "Well, perhaps that's true. In any event, Squire Stryker made himself so cordially disliked that when, one day, he and his bailiff, as he called him, had a big scene, and Ballard, the bailiff, was turned out, neck and crop, public sympathy was all on his side, though no one knew anything about the facts in the case. My father said Squire Stryker spoke of the man as 'scamp' and rapscallion,' but, he never really openly accused him of misdemeanor. There was the scene, and the next day Stryker closed his place, and took himself and his girl off, to parts unknown. The dismissed bailiff, a handsome, prepossessing chap, my father said, disappeared, and nothing more was heard of him. Idea married, and came back Mrs. Crewe. Young Mrs. Crewe, in those days. 'Ol' lady Crewe up-the-road-a-ways,' now."

"Well, what do you think of that!" ejaculated Martha. "So that's the reason why, when she hears it, the name Ballard's like a rag to a red bull! Now, what do you think of that!"

"What do you mean?" Mr. Ronald asked.

"Why, the ol' lady was took sick suddently a few weeks ago, an' Sam, he couldn't get Dr. Driggs, who was out at the time, an', besides, wasn't achin' to go to the poor ol' body, anyhow, to have his head snapped off, an' then haggle over the bill, into the bargain. So he took the best he could get, meanin' Sam did, which was Dr. Ballard, a fine young fella from Boston. The minute the ol' lady clapped eye to'm, an' heard his name, she up an' had a kinda Dutch fit. Wouldn't see'm. It was all I could do, what with talkin' an' contrivin', to make her, an' _then_ she set about layin' down the law to Miss Katherine, forbiddin' her parley with'm, or see'm at all, which is as good as sayin', 'Bless you, my childern!' over their married heads, if she but knew it!"

Frank Ronald laughed. "The wisdom of Socrates! I tell you what it is, Martha, we'll make a philosopher of you, yet!"

"Anything you like, sir. Sever'l has lately mentioned wantin' to make things outa me. The more the merrier. An' if, in the end, I ain't good for nothin' else, maybe they'll hire me in a circus, for a side-show freak.--THE MADE OVER LADY. WHICH, SHE WAS ONCET JUST PLAIN MARTHA SLAWSON. BUT IS NOW SO MANY DIFFERENT THINGS, IT'D MAKE YOU DIZZY TO LOOK AT HER. But I must be goin'. Them childern o' mine will 'a' turned the house upside down with their rapchers over the presents you brought'm."

Mrs. Ronald laid a hand upon her husband's shoulder. "I'd like to take a walk, Frank. Won't you come?"

"An' on the way I'll show you my new hen-house," promised Martha. "One o' the things I'm learnin' to be, is a chicken-raiser. I'm learnin' hard, an', you might say, the chicks is learnin' harder. But it'll all come out right in the end, if both parties hang on, an' keep a stiff upper lip. The first time a brood died on me, I 'most fretted myself sick. But now I learned not to hitch my heart to no hen. I do the best I can by 'em, an' leave the rest to proverdence, an' the inkerbater. Only, you can take it from me, them inkerbaters may be a improvement on the old way, but they certaintly is death to the mother-instinc' in hens. Hens is like women. The less they have to do, the less they do, especially if they keep well. The minute you begin turnin' your offsprings over to other parties, to be brought up, that's the time your sect is goin' to run down. An' the chicks don't grow up with no more feelin' o' reverence for their elders, an' them that bore'm, then the childern we're raisin' nowadays. It's all wrong, these modren contrivances is. We think we're smart, shovin' our ways in, ahead o' nature's, but just you wait, an' see what comes o' this generation o' kids, give'm time to grow up to be men, an' women, an' so forth. You can take it from me, George Washin'ton an' Abraham Linco'n wasn't brought up in cotton-wool, so that every time somebody crossed'm, an' they got red in the face with temper, there'd be a trained nurse to pop a the'mometer under their tongues, to see if they had a 'temperachure.' What kep' their childish fevers down was a good fannin' with mother's slipper, an' they grew up to tell the truth an' fear the devil, along with the other grown-up members of the fam'ly. But, these days, everything's for the kids, an' they know it. Believe me, my heart bleeds for my grandchildern. An', talkin' o' grandchildern, here's the model henhouse o' New England. Internal decoratin' done by Mr. Sammy Slawson's son, junior."

Martha held her little party back long enough to relate the tale of Sammy and the whitewashing.

"An' I told'm," she concluded, "he could walk his little self back, with his little pail o' whitewash, an' his little brush, an' get busy an' _keep_ busy, till every last thing in the place got a good coat. I told'm, 'Don't you leave a thing go free, young man!' so I guess we'll see a thora job _this_ time, or I'm mistaken."

A spotless interior, gleaming, white, proved her surmise correct. Sammy had evidently made "a thora job" of it this time.

Claire would have been satisfied with a brief glance, but her husband detained her.

"I say, Martha," he addressed Mrs. Slawson, "what is it you told young Sam? 'Not to let a thing go free'?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, he's a model boy. He has obeyed you to the letter. Look here!"

Martha, looking in the direction indicated, saw a bunch of animate white, huddled disconsolately against a far corner of the white wall.

"What is it?" she asked.

Mr. Ronald made a clucking sound, and the bunch separated sluggishly, proving itself to be two very thoroughly whitewashed hens.

Martha stared a moment aghast. Then gradually, as the truth dawned upon her, her broad shoulders began to shake.

"The joke's on you, Martha!" Mr. Ronald said, smiling quizzically.

Martha turned grave in a moment. "Beggin' your pardon, sir," she returned, "I'm afraid it's on the _hens_. But, what'll I do to Sammy? He's a young villain, o' course, only I ain't a leg to stand on, for to punish'm. He's just been mindin' his mother."

"'And the moral of that is,' as Alice would say, that even obedience can sometimes be too complete," observed Mr. Ronald with relish.

Whatever misgivings young Sam might have entertained, nothing in his mother's demeanor, when she, Miss Claire, and Lord Ronald arrived at the Lodge a little while later, seemed to justify them.

Perhaps she hadn't seen the hens. Perhaps the hens had licked or lapped the whitewash off, an inspiration derived from his experience with Flicker, the dog, and Nixcomeraus, the cat. In any case, Mrs. Slawson was apparently undisturbed, standing by (young Sam noticed his mother never sat in the presence of ladies and gentlemen "like Mr. and Mrs. Ronald, Dr. Ballard, or Miss Katherine") as Miss Claire inquired after Ma's health.

"Fair-rly, fair-rly, thank you kindly," the old woman was responding, "I'm thryin' a new remidy, now, an' I think it's goin' to help me. Ol' Mis' Harris says, 'no matther who ye a-are, or what ails ye, if ye get a nutmeg, an' bore a hole through't, an' string it on a white-silk t'read, an' a black-silk t'read, an' hang't 'round your neck, ye'll be surprised,' ol' Mis' Harris says."

"I'd be surprised anyhow," observed Martha. "I'm always surprised."

"And you like living up here?" Mrs. Ronald gently put to the old woman.

"Well, tolerabl', tolerabl'. I don't mind the livin' in it, as ye might sa', but----"

"Ma means, as long as she lives she'll never die in the country," Martha supplied.

"Well, if it comes to dyin' itself, I'd rather die where there was moar to be folla'in' me. I sa' to me son Sammy's wife, often an' often, 'When I die don't ye go to anny gr'reat expense for me funerll. I should want ye lay me out decent, but plain, an'----'"

Martha shrugged good-naturedly. "An' I always answer back, 'Don't ye trouble yourself. In such cases they ain't accustomed to consult the corpse.'"

"But you're not thinking of dying yet," Claire said. "I'm sure you're not."

The old woman shook her head. "No, I don't wanta die--not while the sun shines so bright, an' the evenin' star's so pretty."

"Of course you don't. And you're not going to die for ever and ever so long. You only feel a little low-spirited sometimes, perhaps. Isn't that it? The country seems strange to you, I have no doubt. Why don't you make some visits to your other sons and daughters?" Mrs. Ronald suggested craftily. "That would be a fine plan, I think. How glad they would be to see you after your long separation. And, oh, Martha, talking of visits--you know the visitor I told you we are expecting in August? I'm thinking of fitting up a little room especially for--for her. I have sent to Grand Rapids for all my dear old things, because I've a fancy they'll help to make her feel as happy as they used to make me, and perhaps then she won't get homesick, and want to slip away from us as--as visitors do, sometimes. My curtains were lovely, but I think they need a stitch here and there. If you will put them in order for me--mend them thoroughly, and launder them in your finest style, I'll give you--let me see! the cleaners in town asked me fifteen dollars. I'll pay you fifteen dollars."

Fifteen dollars! Martha's eyes gleamed. Here was her opportunity to earn the price of her ticket to New York and back.

"You'll do it?"

"You betcher--I'll do it with pleasure, an' thank you for the chance, Miss Claire. An'--my! but if here ain't Dr. Ballard, comin' up the walk!"

Martha performed the act of introduction with dignity, then quietly effaced herself, silently signaling her family to "fade away, an' make room for your betters."

Claire "took" to the newcomer at once, predisposed in his favor by a certain shadow of resemblance she saw, or thought she saw, to a friend of her youth, a certain Bob Van Brandt who, once upon a time, had laid his heart at her feet. There was the same manly frankness, the same touch of boyish impetuosity. She wondered if there were the same fatal lack of determination.

What time she pondered, her husband was harking back to otherwhiles, when a Ballard had lived in the neighborhood.

"My grandfather," the young man said quite simply. "He was bailiff, as they called it in those days, to Squire Stryker."

Frank Ronald liked that. It rang true.

Martha was not listening to the conversation. Her mind was full of the thought that now she could conscientiously go honeymooning with Sam.

"It wouldn'ta been right to take the money outa the little we got saved," she ruminated. "That's gotta stay where it is, no matter what. But if I do the curtain-job, I'll have my own cash. I can go with my own man, an' I wouldn't call the queen my cousin."

When, at length, the Ronalds took leave, Dr. Ballard, lingering, said:

"I'm in a hole, Mrs. Slawson." He paused, hesitated, then colored. "I say I'm in a hole--really it's Miss Crewe. My difficulty is, I want to help her out, and, up to date, haven't been able. Madam Crewe is fretting herself into a fever because the fruit on the place is going to waste. Confound it! She's making Miss Crewe's life miserable, teasing her to 'do it up.' Miss Crewe doesn't know how to do it up, she tells me, and, there you are!"

"What about Eunice Youngs? The girl I got to _accommodate_ for'm, at four dollars per," inquired Mrs. Slawson.

The doctor laughed. "Nothing doing, I gather, else Miss Crewe wouldn't be in so deep. This morning I managed to kidnap her--Miss Crewe, not Eunice. Took her for a drive. She needs fresh air and change. I took her to Mrs. Peckett's, because I knew Mrs. Peckett boasts she's the best housekeeper in New England."

Martha folded her arms across her bosom, and half closed her eyes.

"'If I do say it as shouldn't,'" she repeated in Mrs. Peckett's fat, self-satisfied voice. "'If I do say it as shouldn't, no one can beat me on jells and perserves. My jells and perserves have took first prize at the country fair, as far back as I can remember.' I ran in oncet to ask, would she give me a helpin' hand, or, rather, a helpin' tongue, on the perserve question. 'Why, certaintly,' says she. 'I'm always delighted to oblige, I'm sure. My rule is simple as ABC. There's no art in it at all. It's just _my_ way o' doin', I s'pose, for every time I give my rule to anybody else, it never comes out right.' An' then she give me her rule, an' I knew the reason why.

"'You take what you're goin' to jar, and you wash it, if it's berries, or pare an' cut up if it's pit-fruit. Add water, an' set on the stove in a kettle till you come to a boil. Add sugar an'----'

"'How much sugar?' says I.

"'Accordin' to conscience,' she says.

"'How about if you haven't got a conscience?' I says. Mrs. Peckett looked like she'd drop in her tracks with shock. 'Why, _Mrs. Slawson_!' says she, 'everybody's got a conscience.'

"'Oh,' I says. 'You see, comin' from the city I didn't know. I suppose some keeps theirs just to measure by, when they're puttin' up fruit,' for I was tired o' seein' her dodge from the table to the stove, always tryin' to shut me off from seein' how she done things. As if she couldn't o' refused firstoff, if she didn't want to help. _I_ wouldn't 'a' minded. If she done the same to Miss Katherine, I don't wonder she's just about where she was before--in the same old hole."

"That's just where she is," Dr. Ballard admitted. "Have you any suggestions for getting her out?"

Martha pondered a moment. "Well, I never took a prize at no country fair, or city one either, for my jells, or perserves, or anything else. I ain't a boss housekeeper, an' I don't pertend to be, but my suggestion is--bright an' early to-morra mornin', me an' my perservin' kettle will wanda out to Crewesmere, as they call it. I'll bring Sammy with me to pick, an' sort the fruit, an' Cora to wash, an' heat the jars. They're used to it. An'--you just tell Miss Katherine, if you'll be so good, that she can heave the perserve-trouble off'n her chest. Tell her don't worry. Mrs. Peckett ain't the only one's got a 'rule.'"

*CHAPTER V*

The day had been sultry, and sunset brought no relief. Evening fell windstill, breathless.

For once Katherine was glad to obey her little martinet grandmother's arbitrary regulation: Lights out at nine. She sat by her bedroom window looking out over a white, moonlit world, thinking black thoughts. Suddenly she rose, for no better reason, apparently, than that a quick, inner impulse of impatience against herself, must find vent in some outward act.

"It's dreadful! I'm growing bitter, hard, deceitful. I'm living a lie. Acting as if I were obedient, and respectful to her, and--feeling like a rebel every minute in the day. I've got to end it, somehow. I can't go on like this any longer."

Just outside her window a little balcony (the railed-in roof of the porte-cochere) shone like a silver patch against the darker foliage. The shadows of leaves cast an intricate pattern upon the moonlit space, and Katherine gazed at it abstractedly until a moving speck in the motionless night caught her attention, and fixed it. As she watched, the speck became a shape, the shape an automobile moving rapidly, almost noiselessly, toward the house, along the white ribbon of a driveway. Just before her window it stopped.

"Hello!" called Dr. Ballard softly.

Katherine hid a radiant smile in the folds of her shadowy curtain. "Sh!" she cautioned. "You'll wake grandmother."

"Then come down. I've something to tell you."

"No. Too late!"

"Nonsense!"

"I can't."

"Oh, very well."

His instant acceptance of her negative was not altogether agreeable.

One moment, and he was bending over his steering-wheel, busying himself with the gear, probably preparatory to driving on and away. The next, he was out of the car, had scaled the porch-pillar, vaulted the low railing, and was calmly sitting not two feet away from her, Turk-fashion, upon the balcony floor.

Katherine laughed. "I didn't know you could climb like that."

"I can't. That wasn't a climb. 'Twas a scramble. Bad work. But I'm out of practice."

"You mustn't stay. Grandmother wouldn't like it. Remember, she forbade my having anything to do with you."

"Sorry, but I don't feel obliged to conform, on that account. If _you_ don't like it, that's another story."

Katherine was silent.

Dr. Ballard did not press the point.

"You said you had something to tell me."

"On second thought I'll postpone it."

"Why?"

"The moonlight suggests mystery. Let's leave it a mystery."

"I hate mysteries."

"As I diagnose your case, you're by way of 'hating' most things, nowadays. Come. Confess. Aren't you?"

Katherine nodded mutely.

"Don't do it," advised Dr. Ballard.

"I can't help it," she burst out with quite uncharacteristic impetuosity. "So much in life is hateful. Sometimes, I feel one isn't bound to endure things, when they make one so detestable. I was thinking about it just before you came. Thinking about the sort of thing life can make of one. Everything one oughtn't to be. I hate _myself_, along with all the rest."

Dr. Ballard sat with his hands clasped around his knees, and gazed straight up above him into the great stretch of dusky sky, spangled over with constellations.

"I wonder what Mrs. Slawson would say to that?" he ruminated.

Katherine started. "Mrs. Slawson?"

"Yes. I've made it out that she's rather a specialist, when it comes to life, and that sort of thing. Really, I think it might pay you to consult her. By the way, she asked me to say that you 'can heave the perserve trouble off'n your chest.' She is going to see you get a 'rule,' or something."

"Oh, good! That _is_ a load off one's mind. And, speaking of chests, it can't be very good for yours, to be doing heavy gymnastics, such as climbing porch-posts. Can it?"

"Why not? My chest's O.K. Nothing in the least 's the matter with my chest."

"Oh,--I thought----" blundered Katherine awkwardly.

"What?"

"Somebody told me--I don't recollect who--that you had a 'spot' or something, on your lung. I'm so sorry."

Dr. Ballard flung back his head with a low, boyish chuckle.

"Somebody's got hold of the wrong case. My nerves, mixed with another chap's bellows. No, I'm not up here on account of any one _spot_--it's the whole rundown machine that needs repairing. I'm used up. Tired out."

"Tired out--waiting for patients?" asked Katherine mischievously.

Dr. Ballard gave her a quick look. "That's it. Waiting for patients," he quoted with perfect good humor.

"I suppose it's hard work building up a practice in a city as big as Boston."

"Quite hard work."

"Don't you get discouraged?"

"Why should I?"

"Oh, there must be so many obstacles, hindrances. Even if you are clever, there must be so many older men with established reputations. Great physicians, great surgeons."

"Precisely. That's the fun of it. The game wouldn't be worth playing, if 'twas easy to win out. It's hard. That's why I like it."

Katherine rose slowly, and stood in the window embrasure, looking down upon him thoughtfully.

"You've given me something to sleep on," she said. "I'll remember what you've said. 'The game wouldn't be worth playing, if 'twas easy.' And I have been whining because it is hard."

"Katherine!" shrilled a petulant voice, breaking rudely through the soft evening hush.

"Coming, grandmother."

"_Good_ night!" exclaimed Dr. Ballard with slangy intention.

The next moment, Katherine saw his agile figure disappear over the rim of the balustrade. She turned quickly to answer the imperative call, all the old miserable feelings returning in a rush.

"I want a drink of water."

If Martha Slawson had been in Katherine's place, the mother-heart in her would have understood that childish call at once. But the girl had no experience that would help her to interpret the meaning of it. She supplied the drink with as much promptness, and as little sentiment, as a nickel-in-the-slot machine.

Madam Crewe drained the glass thirstily.

"It's a warm night," she observed socially.

"Very warm."

"Queer the way my head acts," continued the lonely old woman, obviously making conversation to detain Katherine. "Sometimes it seems full of sounds, so I think I hear real voices speaking. A little while ago, I heard a man's laugh, as clear as could be. You weren't downstairs with a caller, were you?"

"I haven't been out of my room since supper-time, grandmother."

The words seemed to Katherine to burn her lips, as she uttered them. She turned abruptly to the door. Her grandmother called her back.

"You know what I've been thinking?"

Katherine stood at attention, but silent, unequal to the task of counterfeiting interest.

"I've been thinking, I'm going to give the cow to Slawson. It bothers me when I can't pay my debts, and the woman won't take a cent for what she's done. Besides, it's expensive keeping live-stock these days, with fodder so high, and labor even worse. We don't need a cow, just you and I. Cheaper to buy milk than feed the creature through the winter, and hire Peter to come and milk. It counts up. Slawson can keep her, and turn an honest penny letting us have milk at lowest price. See?"

"Yes, grandmother."

"You don't like the plan?"

"Giving the cow to Mrs. Slawson is very nice, I think, but I always hate presents with strings to them. Having to supply us with milk takes the cream off the cow."