Martha By-the-Day Part 20

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

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

"Well, if it _is_ the Spring," she observed at length with a whimsical little frown knitting her brows, "it's mighty forehanded, for it began to get in its fine work as far back as January. Ever since the time Sam went 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_ do about it, but let the good work go on. I'm in luck, if it's true what you say. Believe _me_, there's lots o' ladies in this town, is starvin'

their stummicks an' everythin' else about 'em, an' payin' the doctors high 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 have it so comfortable they're uncomfortable. The doctors prescribes exercise for'm, an' they take it, willin' as doves, whereas if their husbands said, 'Say, old woman, while you're restin', just scrub down the cellar-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, to save their lives. You couldn't please 'em better'n to see another woman down on her marra-bones workin' for 'em, but get down themselves? Not on your sweet life, they wouldn't. They'd rather _bant_. Bantin' sounds so much more stylisher than scrubbin'."

Claire smiled, but her eyes were very serious as she said, "All the same, Martha, I believe you are grieving your heart out for Sam. I've been watching you when you didn't know it, and I've seen the signs and the 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, an unmarried maiden-girl, without so much as the shadder or the skelegan of a beau, as far as _I_ can see. What do _you_ know about a woman hungerin' an' cravin' for her own man? You have to have reelly felt them things 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's direction, I'd be willin' to wager. An' yet, I may as well tell you, you been gettin' kinder white an' scrawny yourself lately, beggin' your pardon for bein' so bold as notice it. Mind, I ain't the faintest notion of holdin' it against you! I know better than think you been settin'

your affections on anybody. There's other things _besides_ love gives you that tired feelin'. What you need is somethin' to brace you up, an'

clear your blood, like Hoodses Sa.s.sperilla. Everybody feels the way you do, 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 car the other mornin' complain--she was the reel dressy kind, you know, with more'n a month's pay of hair, boilin' over on the back of her head in puffs an' things--the gallus sort that, if you want to buy a yard o'

good flannen off her, will sa.s.s you up an' down to your face, as fresh as if she was your own daughter--she was complainin' 'the Spring always made her feel so sorter, kinder, so awful la-anguid.'"

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

Martha considered. "Well, ain't that the truth?" she asked blandly. "I lived 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 she promoted me till I was first housemaid. I never left her till I got married. 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 help what he thinks?"

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

"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 your legs, when I got you into your bed that blessed night. You was clean bowled over, an' you couldn't 'a' walked another step if you'd been killed for it. Didn't I nurse you them days you was in bed, helplesslike as 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 given me their little boy to train. And because they wouldn't, I want to tell them. I want to square myself. I ought to have told them long ago. I want--"

"You want 'em to bounce you," observed Mrs. Slawson calmly. "Well, there's always more'n one way of lookin' at things. For instance any good chambermaid, _with experience_, will tell you there's three ways of dustin'. The first is, do it thora, wipin' the rungs o' the chairs, an' the backs o' the pictures, an' under the books on the table like. The second is, just sorter flas.h.i.+n' your rag over the places that shows, an' the third is--pull down the shades. They're all good enough ways in their own time an' place, an' you foller them accordin'

to your disposition or, if you're nacherelly particular, accordin' to the 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'm pressed, 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 at that, 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_, but what you _must_. You sometimes got to cut short at one end so's you can piece out at another, an' you can take it from me, you only pester folks by gettin' 'm down where they can't resist you, an' forcin' a lot of hard facks down their throats, which ain't the _truth_ anyhow, an' which they don't want to swaller on no account. What do they care about the machinery, 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' about among the inside wheels an' springs, an' so forth. You likely get knocked 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. You think I told Mr. Ronald fibs. I didn't tell'm fibs. I just give'm the truth the way he'd take it, like you give people castor-oil that's too dainty to gullup it down straight. Some likes it in lemon, an' some in grobyules, but it's castor-oil all the same. He wanted to know the truth about you, an' I let him have it, the truth bein' you're as fine a lady as any in the land. If I'd happened to live in Grand Rapids at the time, I'd most likely of lived out with your grandmother, an' been an 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 just a case o' happenso, my _not_ havin' it. The right kind o' folks here in New York is mighty squeamish about strangers. They want recommendations--they want 'em because they want to be sure the ones they engage is O.K. That's all recommendations is for, ain't it? Now I knew the minit I clapped eye to you, that, as I say, you was as grand a lady 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'd pulled 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 common here in New York City), she'd have hemmed, an' hawed, an' thought she'd better not try it, seein' Radcliffe is such an angel-child an' not to be trained except by a A-I Lady."

"But the truth," persisted Claire.

"I tell the truth," Mrs. Slawson returned with quiet dignity. "I only don't waste time on trifles."

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

"Don't he have to reckon nothin' on the _give_ or _not-give_ of the things 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 allow for the seams, an' when you're makin'--well, other things, you have to do the same thing, only spelled a little different--you have to allow for 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 if the operation was, of all others, the most important and absorbing.

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

"Shoor! I know you wouldn't! An' they ain't hurt. Not in the least. You got one kinder conscience an' I got another, that's all. Consciences is like 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 body as some thinks. Some thinks he's as hard as nails, but--"

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

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

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

"Ain't it a caution what lungs that child has--considerin'?" Martha reflected. "Just hear her holler! She'd wake the dead. I wonder if she's tryin' to beat that auta whoopin' it up outside. Have you ever noticed them autas nowadays? Some of them has such croupy coughs, before I know it I'm huntin' for a flannen an' a embrercation. 'Xcuse me a minit while I 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 Claire heard him say.

Martha, by dint of a little un.o.bservable maneuvering, managed to superimpose her substantial shadow upon Claire's frail one.

"Yes, sir. When I get a day to lay off in, you couldn't move me outer the 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 to see her."

"She ain't had time yet to pull herself together," Mrs. Slawson inwardly noted. "But, Lord! I couldn't stand in front of her forever, an' even if a girl _is_ dead in love with a man (more power to her!), that's no reason she should go to the other extreme to hide it, an' pertend she's a cold storage, warranted to freeze'm stiff, like the artificial ice they're makin' these days, in the good old summertime."

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

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

"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."