Martha By-the-Day Part 4

got the karrysene-can, an' she poured out two thurrbl big doses, an' she stood over me son Sammy an' I, till we swalleyed it down, an' since ever we tuk it, me an' Sammy ain't never had a retur-rn. Sometimes I have a sharp twinge o' somethin' in me leg or me arrm, but it ain't rheumatiz, an' I wouldn't like for me son Sammy's wife to be knowin' it, for the very sight of her startin' for the karrysene--if it's only to fill the lamp, is enough to make me gullup, an' I know it's the same wit' me son Sammy, though we never mention the subjeck between us."

"But if your son didn't want to take the stuff," Claire said, trying to hide her amus.e.m.e.nt, "why didn't he stand up and say so? He's a man. He's much bigger and stronger than his wife. How could she make him do what he didn't want to?"

The question was evidently not a new one to Ma.

"That's what annywan'd naturrly think," she returned promptly. "But that's because they wouldn't be knowin' me son Sammy's wife. It ain't size, an' it ain't stren'th--it's just, well, _Martha_. There's that about her you wouldn't like to take any chances wit'. Perhaps it's the thing manny does be talkin' of these days. Perhaps it's _that_ got a holt of her. Annyhow, she says she's _in_ for't. They does be callin' it Woman Sufferrich, I'm told. In my day a dacint body'd have thought shame to be discoursin' in public to the men. They held their tongues, an' let their betthers do the colloguein', but Martha says some of the ladies she works for says, if they talk about it enough the men will give them their rights, an' let 'em vote. I'm an old woman, an' I never had much book-learnin', but I'm thinkin' one like me son Sammy's wife has all the rights she needs wit'out the votin'. She goes out worrkin', same's me son Sammy, day in, day out. She says Sammy could support _her_ good enough, but she won't raise her childern in a teniment, along wit' th'

low companions. Me son Sammy, he has it harrd these days. He'd not be able to pay for such a grrand flat as this, in a dacint, quiet neighborhood, an' so Martha turrns to, an' lends a hand. An' wance, when me son Sammy was sick, an' out av a job entirely, Martha, she run the whole concern herself. She wouldn't let me son Sammy give up, or get down-hearted, like he mighta done. She said it was her _right_ to care for us all, an' him, too, bein' he was down an' out, like he was. It seems to me that's fairrly all the rights anny woman'd want--to look out for four childern, an' a man, an' a mother-in-law. But if Martha wants to vote, too, why, I'm thinkin' she will."

It was particularly encouraging to Claire, just at this time, to view Martha in the light of one who did not know the meaning of the word fail, for Mrs. Slawson had a.s.sured her that if she would give up all attempt to find employment on her own account, she, Mrs. Slawson, felt she could safely promise to get her "a job that would be satisfacktry all round, only one must be a little pationate."

But a week, ten days, had gone by, since Martha announced she had _an idea_, and still the idea had not materialized. Meanwhile, Claire had ample time to unpack her trunk and settle her belongings about her, so "the pretty lady's room" took on a look of real comfort, and the children never pa.s.sed the door without pausing before the threshold, waiting with bated breath for some wonderful chance that would give them a "peek" into the enchanted chamber. As a matter of fact, the transformation was effected with singularly few "properties." Some good photographs tastefully framed in plain, dark wood. A Baghdad rug left over from her college days, some sc.r.a.ps of charming old textiles, and such few of the precious home trifles as could be safely packed in her trunk. There was a daguerreotype of her mother, done when she was a girl. "As old-fas.h.i.+oned as your grandmother's hoopskirt," Martha called it. A sampler wrought by some ancient great-aunt, both aunt and sampler long since yellowed and mellowed by the years. A della Robbia plaque, with its exquisite swaddled baby holding out eager arms, as if to be taken. A lacquer casket, a string of Egyptian mummy-beads--what seemed to the children an inexhaustible stock of wonderful, mysterious treasures.

But the object that appeared to interest their mother more than anything else in the whole collection, was a book of unmounted photographs, snap-shots taken by Claire at college, during her travels abroad, some few, even, here in the city during those first days when she had dreamed it was easy to walk straight into an art-editors.h.i.+p, and no questions asked.

Mrs. Slawson scrutinized the prints with an earnestness so eager that Claire was fairly touched, until she discovered that here was no aching hunger for knowledge, no ungratified yearning "for to admire and for to see, for to be'old this world so wide," but just what looked like a perfectly feminine curiosity, and nothing more.

"Say, ain't it a pity you ain't any real good likeness of you?" Martha deplored. "These is so aggeravatin'. They don't show you up at all. Just a taste-like, an' then nothin' to squench the appet.i.te."

"That sounds as if I were an entree or something," laughed Claire. "But, you see, I don't want to be _shown up_, Martha. I couldn't abear it, as my friend, Sairy Gamp, would say. When I was little, my naughty big brother used to tease me dreadfully about my looks. He invented the most embarra.s.sing nicknames for me; he alluded to my features with every sort of disrespect. It made me horribly conscious of myself, a thing no properly-const.i.tuted kiddie ought ever to be, of course. And I've never really got over the feeling that I am a 'sawed-off,' that my nose is 'curly,' and my hair's a wig, and that the least said about the rest of me, the better. But if you'd actually like to see something my people at home consider rather good, why, here's a little tinted photograph I had done for my dear Daddy, the last Christmas he was with us. He liked it, and that's the reason I carry it about with me--because he wore it on his old-fas.h.i.+oned watch-chain."

She put into Martha's hand a thin, flat, dull-gold locket.

Mrs. Slawson opened it, and gave a quick gasp of delight--the sound of triumph escaping one who, having diligently sought, has satisfactorily found. "Like it!" Martha e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

Claire deliberated a moment, watching the play of expression on Martha's mobile face. "If you like it as much as all that," she said at last, "I wish you'd take it and keep it. It seems conceited--priggish--to suppose you'd care to own it, but if you really _would_ care to--"

Mrs. Slawson closed one great, finely-formed, work-hardened fist over the delicate treasure, with a sort of ecstatic grab of appropriation.

"Care to own it! You betcher life! There's nothin' you could give me I'd care to own better," she said with honest feeling, then and there tying its slender ribbon about her neck, and slipping the locket inside her dress, as if it had been a precious amulet.

The day following saw her started bright and early for work at the Shermans'. When she arrived at the area-gate and rang, there was no response, and though she waited a reasonable time, and then rang and rang again, n.o.body answered the bell.

"They must be up," she said, settling down to business with a steady thumb on the electric b.u.t.ton. "What ails the bunch o' them in the kitchen, I should like to know. It'd be a pity to disturb Eliza. She might be busy, gettin' herself an extry cup o' coffee, an' couple o'

fried hams-an'-eggs, to break her fast before breakfast. But that gay young sprig of a kitchen-maid, _she_ might answer the bell an' open the door to an honest woman."

The _gay young sprig_ still failing of her duty, and Martha's patience giving out at last, the _honest woman_ began to tamper with the spring-lock of the iron gate. For any one else, it would never have yielded, but it opened to Martha's hand, as with the dull submission of the conquered.

Mrs. Slawson closed the gate after her with care. "I'll just step light," she said to herself, "an' steal in on 'em unbeknownst, an' give 'em as good a scare as ever they had in their lives--the whole lazy lot of 'em."

But, like Mother Hubbard's cupboard, the kitchen was bare, and no soul was to be found in the laundry, the pantry or, in fact, anywhere throughout the bas.e.m.e.nt region. Softly, and with some real misgiving now, Martha made her way upstairs. Here, for the first time, she distinguished the sound of a human voice breaking the early morning hush of the silent house. It was Radcliffe's voice issuing, evidently, from the dining-room, in which imposing apartment he chose to have his breakfast served in solitary grandeur every morning, what time the rest of his family still slept.

Martha, pausing on her way up, peeped around the edge of the half-closed door, and then stopped short.

Along the wall, ranged up in line, like soldiers facing their captain, or victims of a hold-up their captor, stood the household servants--portly Shaw the butler, Beatrice the parlor-maid, Eliza the "chef-cook"--all, down to the gay young sprig, aforesaid, who, as Martha had explained to her family in strong disapproval, "was engaged to do scullerywork, an' then didn't even know how to scull." Before them, in an att.i.tude of command, not to say menace, stood Radcliffe, brandis.h.i.+ng a carving-knife which, in his cruelly mischievous little hand, became a weapon full of dangerous possibilities.

"Don't dare to budge, any one of you," he breathed masterfully to his cowed regiment. "Get back there, you Shaw! An', Beetrice, if you don't mind me, I'll carve your ear off. You better be afraid of me, all of you, an' mind what I say, or I'll take this dagger, an' dag the life out of you! You're all my servants--you're all my slaves! D'you hear me!"

Evidently they did, and not one of them cared or dared to stir.

For a second Radcliffe faced them in silence, before beginning to march Napoleonically back and forth, his savage young eye alert, his naughty hand brandis.h.i.+ng the knife threateningly. A second, and then, suddenly, without warning, the scene changed, and Radcliffe was a squirming, wriggling little boy, shorn of his power, grasped firmly in a grip from which there was no chance of escape.

"Shame on you!" exclaimed Martha indignantly, addressing the spellbound line, staring at her blankly. "Shame on you! To stand there gawkin', an'

never raisin' a finger to this poor little fella, an' him just peris.h.i.+n'

for the touch of a real mother's hand. Get out of this--the whole crowd o' you," and before the force of her righteous wrath they fled as chaff before the wind. Then, quick as the automatic click of a monstrous spring, the hitherto unknown--the supposed-to-be-impossible--befell Radcliffe Sherman. He was treated as if he had been an iron girder on which the ma.s.sive clutch of a steam-lift had fastened. He was raised, lowered, laid across what seemed to be two moveless iron trestles, and then the weight as of a mighty, relentless paddle, beat down upon him once, twice, thrice--and he knew what it was to suffer.

The whole thing was so utterly novel, so absolutely unexpected, that for the first instant he was positively stunned with surprise. Then the knowledge that he was being spanked, that an unspeakable indignity was happening him, made him clinch his teeth against the sobs that rose in his throat, and he bore his punishment in white-faced, s.h.i.+vering silence.

When it was over, Martha stood him down in front of her, holding him firmly against her knees, and looked him squarely in the eyes. His colorless, quivering lips gave out no sound.

"You've got off easy," observed Mrs. Slawson benevolently. "If you'd been my boy Sammy, you'd a got about twict as much an' three times as thora. As it is, I just kinder favored you--give you a lick an' a promise, as you might say, seein' it's you and you ain't used to it--_yet_. Besides, I reely like you, an' want you to be a good boy.

But, if you should need any more at any other time, why, you can take it from me, I keep my hand in on Sammy, an' practice makes perfect."

She released the two small, trembling hands, rose to her feet, and made as if to leave the room. Then for the first time Radcliffe spoke.

"S-say," he breathed with difficulty, "s-say--are you--are you goin' to _t-tell?_"

Martha paused, regarding him and his question with due concern. "Tell?"

"Are y-you going to--t-tell on me, t-to ev-everybody? Are y-you going to t-tell--S-Sammy?"

"Shoor I'm not! I'm a perfect lady! I always keep such little affairs with my gen'lemen friends strickly confidential. Besides--Sammy has troubles of his own."

CHAPTER V

All that day, Martha held herself in readiness to answer at headquarters for what she had done.

"He'll shoor tell his mother, the young villyan," said Eliza. "An' then it'll be Mrs. Slawson for the grand bounce."

But Mrs. Slawson did not worry. She went about her work as usual, and when, in the course of her travels, she met Radcliffe, she greeted him as if nothing had happened.

"Say, did you know that Sammy has a dog?"

No answer.

"It's a funny kind o' dog. If you begged your head off, I'd never tell you where he come from."

"Where did he come from?"

"Didn't you hear me say I'd never tell you? I do' know. He just picked Sammy's father up on the street, an' follered him home, for all the world the same's he'd been a Christian."

"What kind of dog is he?"

"Cur-dog."

"What kind's that?"