At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern Part 18

"I knowed it," she said to herself, excitedly. "Ebeneezer was a hard man, but he always kep' his word. Dear me! What makes me so trembly!"

She removed all the bedclothes and pounded the pillows and mattress in vain, then turned her attention to the furniture. It was almost one o'clock when Mrs. Dodd finally retired, worn in body and jaded in spirit, but still far from discouraged.

"Ebeneezer must have mistook the room," she said to herself, "but how could he unless his mind was failin'? I've had this now, goin' on ten year."

In the night she dreamed of finding money in the bureau, and got up to see if by chance she had not received mysterious guidance from an unknown source. There was money in the bureau, sure enough, but it was only two worn copper cents wrapped in many thicknesses of old newspaper, and she went unsuspiciously back to bed.

"He's mistook the room," she breathed, drowsily, as she sank into troubled slumber, "an' to-morrer I'll have it changed. It's just as well I've scared them others off, if so be I have."

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 opportunity offered. Dorothy became accustomed to an odorous lantern which stood near the back door in the daytime and bobbed about among the shrubbery at night.

There was definite method in the madness of Mrs. Smithers, however, for she had once seen the departed Mr. Judson going out to the orchard with a tin box under his arm and her own spade but partially concealed under his long overcoat. When he came back, he was smiling, which was so unusual that she forgot all about the box, and did not observe whether or not he had brought it back with him. Long afterward, however, the incident a.s.sumed greater significance.

"If I'd 'ave 'ad the sense to 'ave gone out there the next day," she muttered, "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 old skinflint wasn't doin' no work, 'e wasn't, and 'e lived on 'ere from year to year, a-payin' 'is bills like a Christian gent, and it stands to reason there's money 'id somewheres. Findin' is keepin', and it's for me to keep my 'ead shut and a sharp lookout. Them Carrs don't suspect nothink."

She was only half right, however. Harlan, lost in his book, was heedless of everything that went on around him, but Mrs. Dodd's reference to the diamond pin, and her own recollection of the money she had found in the bureau 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 the sanitarium now, for eleven people, as students of domestic economics have often observed, eat more than one or two. d.i.c.k was also affected by the current financial depression, and at length conceived the idea that Uncle Ebeneezer's worldly goods were somewhere on the premises.

Mrs. Holmes spent a great deal of time in the attic, while the care-free children, utterly beyond control, rioted madly through the house. Dorothy discovered Mr. Perkins, the poet, half-way up the parlour chimney, and sat down to see what he would do when he came out and found her there. He had seemed somewhat embarra.s.sed when he wiped the soot from his face, but had quickly explained that he was writing a poem on chimney-swallows and had come to a point where original research was essential.

Even Elaine, not knowing what she sought, began to investigate, idly enough, the furniture and hangings in her room, and Mrs. Dodd, eagerly seizing opportunities, was forever keen on the scent. Uncle Israel, owing to the poor state of his health, was one of the last to be affected by the surrounding atmosphere, but when he caught the idea, he made up for lost time.

He was up with the chickens, and invariably took a long afternoon nap, so that, during the night, there was bound to be a wakeful interval.

Ordinarily, he took a sleeping potion to tide him over till morning, but soon decided that a little mild exercise with some pleasant purpose animating it, would be far better for his nerves.

Mrs. Dodd was awakened one night by the feeling that some one was in her room. A vague, mysterious Presence gradually made itself known. At first she was frightened, then the Presence wheezed, and rea.s.sured her. Across the path of moonlight that lay on her floor, Uncle Israel moved cautiously.

He was clad in a piebald dressing-gown which had been so patched with various materials that the original fabric was uncertain. An old-fas.h.i.+oned nightcap was on his head, the ta.s.sel bobbing freakishly in the back, and he wore carpet slippers.

Mrs. Dodd sat up in bed, keenly relis.h.i.+ng the situation. When he opened a bureau 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 am a-walkin' in my sleep, I guess. I was a-dreamin' of money that I was to find and give to you, and I suppose that's why I've come to your room. You lay still, Belinda, and don't tell n.o.body. I am a-goin' right away."

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

"I don't mis...o...b.. it had sunthin' to do with payin'," returned Mrs. Dodd, greatly pleased with her own poor joke, "an', as you say, it might have been dretful. But I am a friend to you, Israel, an' I don't 'low to make your 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, pleasantly enough, "but I don't intend to have it happen to you again. Sunthin' can surely be done that'll cure you of it."

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

"Don't you fret about it, Israel, 'cause you ain't goin' to have it no more. I'll attend to it. It 's a most distressin' disease an' must be took early, but I think I know how to fix it."

During her various investigations, she had found a huge bunch of keys beneath 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 keys should fit the somnambulist's door.

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

On her first visit to "town" she made it her business to call upon Lawyer Bradford and inquire as to Mr. Judson's last will and testament. She learned that it did not concern her at all, and was to be probated, in accordance 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, beady eyes, "they ain't holdin' the house legal. Any of us has the same right to stay as them Carrs."

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

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

Willie was sliding down the railing part of the time, and at frequent intervals coasting downstairs on Mrs. Smithers's tea tray, vocally expressing his pleasure with each trip. The twins, seated in front of the library door, were pounding furiously on a milk-pan, which had not been empty when they dragged it into the hall, but was now. Mrs. Smithers was singing: "We have our trials here below, Oh, Glory, Hallelujah," and a sickening odour from a fresh concoction of Uncle Israel's permeated the premises. Having irreverently detached the false front from the keys of the melodeon, Mr. Perkins was playing a sad, funereal composition of his own, with all the power of the instrument turned loose on it. Upstairs, d.i.c.k 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, his temper not improved by stumbling over the twins and the milk-pan, and above their united wails loudly censured Dorothy for the noise and confusion. "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 whisked back into the library 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've been 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 it so hard. You may think men folks is all different, but there's a dretful sameness to 'em after they've been through a marriage ceremony. Marriage is just like findin' a new penny on the walk. When you first see it, it's all s.h.i.+ny an' a'most like gold, an' it tickles you a'most to pieces to think you're gettin' it, but after you've picked it up you see that what you've got is half wild Indian, or mebbe more--I ain't never been in no mint. 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 a cemetery lot for a weddin' present, with a n.o.ble grey marble monumint in it shaped like a octagon--leastways that's what a school-teacher what boarded with us said it was, but I call it a eight-sided piece. I'm speakin' of my first marriage now, my dear. My father never give me no weddin' present but the once. An' I can't never marry again, 'cause there's a husband lyin' now on seven sides of the monumint an' only one place left for me. I was told once that I could have further husbands cremationed an' set around the lot in vases, but I don't take to no such heathenish custom as that.

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

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

"Because I hadn't no other way to get my livin' an' I was kinder in the habit of it. There's some little variety, even in savages, an' it's human natur' 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 to take real pleasure out'n their queer notions. When you've learned to enjoy seein' your husband make a fool of himself an' have got enough self-control not to tell him he's doin' it, nor to let him see where your pleasure 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 right now, my dear, them's the worst kind. A man what's queer about his food is goin' to be queerer about a'most everything else. Give me any man that can eat three square meals a day an' enjoy 'em, an' I'll undertake to live with him peaceful, but I don't go to the altar again with no food crank, if I know it.