The Dust Flower Part 14

Mrs. Courage saw her advantage. "We ain't 'ere to accuse n.o.body of nothink. If it's 'intin' that I'd tyke awye anyone's character it's a thing I've 'ardly ever done, and no one can sye it _of_ me. All we want is to give our notice----"

"Then why don't you do it--and go?"

Once more Steptoe intervened, diplomatically. "That's what Mrs.

Courage is a-doin' of, madam. She's finished, ain't you Mary Ann?

Jynie and Nettie is finished too----"

But it was Letty now who refused this mediation.

"No, they ain't finished. Let 'em go on."

But no one did go on. Mrs. Courage was now dumb. She was dumb and frightened, falling back on her two supporters. All three together they huddled between the portieres. If Steptoe could have calmed his protegee he would have done it; but she was beyond his control.

"Am I the ruin and shame to this house that you was talkin' about just now? If I am, why don't you speak out and put it to me plain?"

There was no response. The spectators looked on as if they were at the theater.

"What have you all got against me anyhow?" Letty insisted, pa.s.sionately. "What did I ever do to you? What's women's hearts made of, that they can't let a poor girl be?"

Mrs. Courage had so far recovered as to be able to turn from one to another, to say in pantomime that she had been misunderstood. Jane began to cry; Nettie to laugh.

"Even if I was the bad girl you're tryin' to make me out I should think other women might show me a little pity. But I'm not a bad girl--not yet. I may be. I dunno but what I will. When I see the hateful thing bein' good makes of women it drives me to do the other thing."

This was the speech they needed to justify themselves. To be good made women hateful! Their dumb-crambo to each other showed that anyone who said so wild a thing stood already self-condemned.

But Letty flung up her head with a mettle which Steptoe hadn't seen since the days of the late Mrs. Allerton.

"I'm not in this house to drive no one else out of it. Them that have lived here for years has a right to it which I ain't got. You can go, and let me stay; or you can stay, and let me go. I'm the wife of the owner of this house, who married me straight and legal; but I don't care anything about that. You don't have to tell me I ain't fit to be his wife, because I know it as well as you do. All I'm sayin' is that you've got the choice to stay or go; and whichever you do, I'll do different."

Never in her life had she spoken so many words at one time. The effort drained her. With a torrent of dry sobs that racked her body she dropped back into her chair.

The hush was that of people who find the tables turned on themselves in a way they consider unwarranted. Of the general surprise Steptoe was quick to take advantage.

"There you are, girls. Madam couldn't speak no fairer, now could she?"

To this there was neither a.s.sent or dissent; but it was plain that no one was ready to pick up the glove so daringly thrown down.

"Now what I would suggest," Steptoe went on, craftily, "is that we all go back to the kitchen and talk it over quiet like. What we decide to do we can tell madam lyter."

For consent or refusal Jane and Nettie looked to Mary Ann, whose att.i.tude was that of rejecting parley. She might, indeed, have rejected it, had not Letty, bowing her head on the arms she rested on the table, begun to cry bitterly.

It was then that you saw Mrs. Courage at her best. The gesture with which she swept her subordinates back into the hall was that of the supremacy of will.

"It shan't be said as I crush," she declared, n.o.bly, directing Steptoe's attention to the weeping girl. "Where there's penitence I pity. G.o.d grant as them tears may gush out of an aichin' 'eart."

Chapter IX

By the time Letty was drying her eyes, her heart somewhat eased, Steptoe had come back. He came back with a smile. Something had evidently pleased him.

"So that's all over. Madam won't be bothered with other people's cat-nasty old servants after to-dye."

She felt a new access of alarm. "But they're not goin' away on account o' me? Don't let 'em do it. Lemme go instead. Oh, mister, I can't stay here, where everything's so different from what I'm used to."

He still smiled, his gentle old man's smile which somehow gave her confidence.

"Madam won't sye that after a dye or two. It's new to 'er yet, of course; but if she'll always remember that I'm 'ere, to myke everythink as easy as easy----"

"But what are you goin' to do, with no cook, and no chambermaid----?"

Standing with the corner of the table between him and her, he was saying to himself, "If Mr. Rash could only see 'er lookin' up like this--with 'er eyes all starry--and her cheeks with them dark-red roses--red roses like you'd rubbed with a little black...." But he suspended the romantic longing to say, aloud:

"If madam will permit me I'll tyke my measures as I've wanted to tyke 'em this long spell back."

Madam was not to worry as to the three women who were leaving the house, inasmuch as they had long been intending to leave it. Both Mrs.

Courage and Jane, having graduated to the stage of "accommodating,"

were planning to earn more money by easier work. Nettie, since coming to America, had learned that housework was menial, and was going to be a milliner.

Madam's remorse being thus allayed he told what he hoped to do for madam's comfort. There would be no more women in the house, not till madam herself brought them back. An English chef who had lost an eye in the war, and an English waiter, ready to do chamberwork, who had left a foot on some battlefield, were prepared under Steptoe's direction to man the house. No woman whose household cares had not been eased by men, in the European fas.h.i.+on, knew what it was to live.

A woman waited on by women only was kept in a state of nerves. Nerves were infectious. When one woman in a household got them the rest were sooner or later their prey. Unless strongly preventative measures were adopted they spread at times to the men. America was a dreadful country for nerves and it mostly came of women working with women; whereas, according to Steptoe's psychology, men should work with women and women with men. There were thousands of women who were bitter in heart at cooking and making beds who would be happy as linnets in offices and shops; and thousands of men who were dying of boredom in offices and shops who would be in their element cooking and making beds.

"One of the things the American people 'as got back'ards, if madam'll allow me to sye so, is that 'ouse'old work is not fit for a white man.

When you come to that the American people ain't got a sense of the dignity of their 'omes. They can't see their 'omes as run by anything but slyves. All that's outside the dinin' room and the drorin' room and the masters' bedrooms the American sees as if it was a low-down thing, even when it's hunder 'is own roof. Colored men, yellow men, may cook 'is meals and myke 'is bed; but a white man'd demean 'imself.

A poor old white man like me when 'e's no longer fit for 'ard outdoor work ain't allowed to do nothink; when all the time there's women workin' their fingers to the bone that 'e could be a great 'elp to, and who 'e'd like to go to their 'elp."

This was one reason, he argued, why the question of domestic aid in America was all at sixes and sevens. It was not considered humanly. It was more than a question of supply and demand; it was one of national prejudice. A rich man could have a French chef and an English butler, and as many strapping indoor men--some of them much better fitted for manual labor--as he liked, and find it a social glory; while a family of moderate means were obliged to pay high wages to crude incompetent women from the darkest backwaters of European life, just because they were women.

"And the women's mostly to blyme," he reasoned. "They suffers--n.o.body knows what they suffers better nor me--just because they ain't got the s.p.u.n.k to do anything _but_ suffer. They've got it all in their own 'ands, and they never learn. Men is slow to learn; but women don't 'ardly ever learn at all."

Letty was thinking of herself, as she glanced up at this fount of wisdom with the question:

"Don't none of 'em?"

Having apparently weighed this already he had his answer. "None that's been drilled a little bit before 'and. Once let woman feel as so and so is the custom, and for 'er that custom, whether good or bad, is there to stye. They sye that chyngin' 'er mind is a woman's privilege; but the woman that chynged 'er mind about a custom is one I never met yet."

She took him as seriously as he took himself.

"Don't you like women, mister--I mean, Steptoe?"

He pondered before replying. "I don't know as I could sye. I've never 'ad a chance to see much of women except in 'ousework, where they're out of their element and tyken at a disadvantage. I don't like none I've ever run into there, because none of 'em never was no sport."

The inquiry in her golden eyes led him a little further.

"No one ain't a sport what sighs and groans over their job, and don't do it cheerful like. No one ain't a sport what undertykes a job and ain't proud of it. If a woman _will_ go into 'ousework let 'er do it honorable. If she chooses to be a servant let 'er _be_ a servant, and not be ashymed to sye she _is_ one. So if madam arsks me if I like 'em I 'ave to confess I don't, because as far as I see women I mostly 'ear 'em complyne."