Kitabı oku: «Paste Jewels», sayfa 2
“Good!” said Thaddeus, with a pleased smile. “It isn’t a bad idea to save, particularly when you are staying at the sea-shore.”
In this contented frame of mind they lived for several weeks. The boy grew stronger every day, and finally Thaddeus felt that the child was well enough to warrant his running back home for a night, “just to see how things were going.” That the girls were faithful, of course, he did not doubt; the regularity with which letters addressed to him at home—and they were numerous—reached him convinced him of that; but the hamper containing the week’s wash, which Ellen and Jane were to send, and which had been expected on Thursday of the preceding week, had failed for once to arrive; the boy had worn one dress four days, Thaddeus’s collars were getting low, and altogether he was just a little uneasy about things. So he availed himself of his opportunity and went home, taking with him a friend, in consideration of whom he telegraphed ahead to Ellen to prepare a good breakfast, not caring for dinner, since he and his companion expected to dine at the club and go to the theatre before going out to his home.
The result would have been fatal to Bessie’s peace of mind had she heard of it during her absence from home. But Thaddeus never told her, until it was a matter of ancient history, that when he arrived at home, a little after midnight, he found the place deserted, and was compelled to usher his friend in through the parlor window; that from top to bottom the mansion gave evidence of not having seen a broom or a dust-brush since the departure of the family; that Jane had not been seen in the neighborhood for one full week—this came from those living on adjoining property; that Ellen had been absent since early that morning, and was not expected to return for three days; and, crowning act of infamy, that he, Thaddeus, and his friend were compelled to breakfast next morning upon a half of a custard pie, a bit mouldy, found by the lord of the manor on the fast-melting remains of a cake of ice in the refrigerator. Whether it would have happened if Thaddeus had not been accompanied by a friend, whose laughter incited him to great deeds, or not I am not prepared to say, but something important did happen. Thaddeus rose to the occasion, and committed an act, and committed it thoroughly. The Thaddeus of old, the meek, long-suffering, too amiable Thaddeus, disappeared. The famous smile was given no chance to play. His wife was absent, and the smile was far away with her. Thaddeus, with one fell blow, burst his fetters and became free.
That afternoon, when he had returned to the seaboard, Bessie asked him, “How was the house?”
“Beautiful,” said Thaddeus, quite truthfully; for it was.
“Did Ellen say anything about the hamper?”
“Not a word.”
“Did you speak to her about it?”
“Nope.”
“Oh, Teddy! How could you forget it?”
To the lasting honor of Thaddeus be it said that he bore up under this unflinchingly.
“Did you have a good breakfast, Ted?” Bessie asked, returning to the subject later.
“Very,” said Thaddeus, thinking of the hearty meal he and his fellow-sufferer had eaten at the club after getting back to town. “We had a tomato omelet, coffee, toast, rice cakes, tenderloin steak, and grits.”
“Dear me!” smiled Bessie; she was so glad her Teddy had been so well treated. “All that? Ellen must have laid herself out.”
“Yes,” said Thaddeus; “I think she did.”
All the following week Thaddeus seemed to have a load on his mind—a load which he resolutely refused to share with his wife—and on Friday he found it necessary to go up to town.
“I thought this was your vacation,” remonstrated Bessie.
“Well, so it is,” said Thaddeus. “But—but I’ve got one or two matters to attend to—matters of very great importance—so that I think I’ll have to go.”
“If you must, you must,” said Bessie. “But I think it’s horrid of your partner to make you go back to town this hot weather.”
“Don’t be cross with my partner,” said Thaddeus; “especially my partner in this matter.”
“Have you different partners for different matters?” queried Bessie.
“Never mind about that, my dear; you’ll know all about it in time, so don’t worry.”
“All right, Teddy. But I don’t like to have you running away from me when I’m at a hotel. I’d rather be home, anyhow. Can’t I go with you? Little Ted is well enough now to go home.”
“Not this time; but you can go up next Wednesday if you wish,” returned Thaddeus, with a slight show of embarrassment.
And so it was settled, and Thaddeus went to town. On Wednesday they all left the sea-shore to return to Phillipseburg.
“Oh, how lovely it looks!” ejaculated Bessie, as she entered the house, Norah having opened the door. “But—er—where’s Jane, Norah?”
“Cookin’ the dinner, mim.”
“Why, Jane can’t cook.”
“If you please, mim, this is a new Jane.”
Bessie’s parasol fell to the floor. “A wha-a-at?” she cried.
“A new Jane. Misther Perkins has dispinsed with old Jane and Ellen, mim.”
Bessie rushed up-stairs to her room and cried. The shock was too sudden. She longed for Thaddeus, who had remained at the station collecting the bath-tubs and other luxuries of the baby from the luggage-van, to come. What did it all mean? Jane and Ellen gone! New girls in their places!
And then Thaddeus came, and made all plain to the little woman, and when he was all through she was satisfied. He had discharged the tyrants, and had supplied their places. The latter was the important business which had taken him to town.
“But, Teddy,” Bessie said, with a smile, when she had heard all, “how did poor mild little you ever have the courage to face those two women and give them their discharge?”
Teddy blushed. “I didn’t,” he answered, meekly; “I wrote it.”
Five years have passed since then, and all has gone well. Thaddeus has remained free, and, as he proudly observes, domestics now tremble at his approach—that is, all except Norah, who remembers him as of old. Ellen and Jane are living together in affluence, having saved their wages for nearly the whole of their term of “service.” Bessie is happy in the possession of two fine boys, to whom all her attention—all save a little reserved for Thaddeus—is given; and, as for the dubious, auburn-haired, and distinctly Celtic Norah, Thaddeus is afraid that she is developing into a “treasure.”
“Why do you think so?” Bessie asked him, when he first expressed that fear.
“Oh, she has the symptoms,” returned Thaddeus. “She has taken three nights off this week.”
MR. BRADLEY’S JEWEL
Thaddeus was tired, and, therefore, Thaddeus was grumpy. One premise only was necessary for the conclusion—in fact, it was the only premise upon which a conclusion involving Thaddeus’s grumpiness could find a foothold. If Thaddeus felt rested, everything in the world could go wrong and he would smile as sweetly as ever; but with the slightest trace of weariness in his system the smile would fade, wrinkles would gather on his forehead, and grumpiness set in whether things were right or wrong. On this special occasion to which I refer, things were just wrong enough to give him a decent excuse—outside of his weariness—for his irritation. Norah, the housemaid, had officiously undertaken to cover up the shortcomings of John, who should have blacked Thaddeus’s boots, and who had taken his day off without preparing the extra pair which the lord of the manor had expected to wear that evening. It was nice of the housemaid, of course, to try to black the extra pair to keep John out of trouble, but she might have been more discriminating. It was not necessary for her to polish, until they shone like Claude Lorraine glasses, two right boots, one of which, paradoxical as it may seem, was consequently the wrong boot; so that when Thaddeus came to dress for the evening’s diversion there was nowhere to be found in his shoe-box a bit of leathern gear in which his left foot might appear in polite society to advantage. Possibly Thaddeus might have endured the pain of a right boot on a left foot, had not Norah unfortunately chosen for that member a box-toed boot, while for the right she had selected one with a very decided acute angle at its toe-end.
“Just like a woman!” ejaculated Thaddeus, angrily.
“Yes,” returned Bessie, missing Thaddeus’s point slightly. “It was very thoughtful of Norah to look after John’s work, knowing how important it was to you.”
Fortunately Thaddeus was out of breath trying to shine up the other pointed-toe shoe, so that his only reply to this was a look, which Bessie, absorbed as she was in putting the studs in Thaddeus’s shirt, did not see. If she had seen it, I doubt if she would have been so entirely happy as the tender little song she was humming softly to herself seemed to indicate that she was.
“Some people are born lucky!” growled Thaddeus, as he finished rubbing up the left boot, giving it a satin finish which hardly matched the luminous brilliance of its mate, though he said it would do. “There’s Bradley, now; he never has any domestic woes of this sort, and he pays just half what we do for his servants.”
“Oh, Mr. Bradley. I don’t like him!” ejaculated Bessie. “You are always talking about Mr. Bradley, as if he had an automaton for a servant.”
“No, I don’t say he has an automaton,” returned Thaddeus. “Automatons don’t often work, and Bradley’s jewel does. Her name is Mary, but Bradley always calls her his jewel.”
“I’ve heard of jewels,” said Bessie, thinking of the two Thaddeus and she had begun their married life with, “but they’ve always seemed to me to be paste emeralds—awfully green, and not worth much.”
“There’s no paste emerald about Bradley’s girl,” said Thaddeus. “Why, he says that woman has been in Mrs. Bradley’s employ for seven weeks now, and she hasn’t broken a bit of china; never sweeps dust under the beds or bureaus; keeps the silver polished so that it looks as if it were solid; gets up at six every morning; cooks well; is civil, sober, industrious; has no hangers-on—”
“Is Mr. Bradley a realist or a romancer?” asked Bessie.
“Why do you ask that?” replied Thaddeus.
“That jewel story sounds like an Arabian Nights tale,” said Bessie. “I don’t believe that it is more than half true, and that half is exaggerated.”
“Well, it is true,” said Thaddeus. “And, what is more, the girl helps in the washing, plays with the children, and on her days out she stays at home and does sewing.”
Bessie laughed. “She must be a regular Koh-i-noor,” she said. “I suppose Mr. Bradley pays her a thousand dollars a month.”
“No, he doesn’t; he pays her twelve,” said Thaddeus.
“Then he is just what I said he was,” snapped Bessie—“a mean thing. The idea—twelve dollars a month for all that! Why, if she could prove she was all that you say she is, she could make ten times that amount by exhibiting herself. She is a curiosity. But if I were Mrs. Bradley I wouldn’t have her in the house. So many virtues piled one on the other are sure to make an unsafe structure, and I believe some poor, miserable little vice will crop out somewhere and upset the whole thing.”
“You are jealous,” said Thaddeus; and then he went out.
The next day, meeting his friend Bradley on the street, Thaddeus greeted him with a smile, and said, “Mrs. Perkins thinks you ought to take up literature.”
“Why so?” asked Bradley.
“She thinks De Foe and Scott and Dumas and Stevenson would be thrown into the depths of oblivion if you were to write up that jewel of yours,” said Thaddeus. “She thinks your Mary is one of the finest, most imaginative creations of modern days.”
“She doubts her existence, eh?” smiled Bradley.
“Well, she thinks she’s more likely to be a myth than a Smith,” said Thaddeus. “She told me to ask you if Mary has a twin-sister, and to say that if you hear of her having any relatives at all—and no domestic ever lived who hadn’t—to send her their addresses. She’d like to employ a few.”
“I am sorry Mrs. Perkins is so blinded by jealousy,” said Bradley, with a smile. “And I regret to say that Mary hasn’t a cousin on the whole police force, or, in fact, any kind of a relative whatsoever, unless she prevaricates.”
“Too bad,” said Thaddeus. “I had a vague hope we could stock up on jewels of her kind. Where did you get her, anyhow—Tiffany’s?”
“No. At an unintelligence office,” said Bradley. “She was a last resort. We had to have some one, and she was the only girl there. We took her for a week on trial without references, and, by Jove! she turned out a wonder.”
Thaddeus grinned, and said: “Give her time, Bradley. By-the-way, at what hours is she on exhibition? I’d like to see her.”
“Come up to-night and test the truth of what I say,” said Bradley. “I won’t let anybody know you are coming, and you’ll see her just as we see her. What do you say?”
The temptation was too strong for Thaddeus to resist, and so it was that Bessie received a telegram that afternoon from her beloved, stating that he would dine with Bradley, and return home on a late train. The telegram concluded with the line, “I’m going to appraise the escaped crown-jewel.”
Bessie chuckled at this, and stayed up until long after the arrival of the last train, so interested was she to hear from Thaddeus all about the Bradley jewel, who, as she said, “seemed too good to be true”; but she was finally forced to retire disappointed and somewhat anxious, for Thaddeus did not return home that night.
Somewhere in the neighborhood of eight o’clock the next morning Bessie received a second telegram, which read as follows:
“Do not worry. I am all right. Will be home about nine, Have breakfast.”
“Now I wonder what on earth can have kept him?” Bessie said. “Something has happened, I am sure. Perhaps an accident on the elevated, or maybe—”
She did not finish the sentence, but rushed into the library and snatched up the morning paper, scanning its every column in the expectation, if not hope, of finding that some horrible disaster had occurred, in which her Thaddeus might have been involved. The paper disclosed nothing of the sort. Only a few commonplace murders, the usual assortment of defalcations, baseball prophecies, and political prognostications could Bessie discover therein. Never, in fact, had the newspaper seemed so uninteresting—not even a bargain-counter announcement was there—and with an impatient, petulant stamp of her little foot she threw the journal from her and returned to the dining-room. It was then half-past eight, and, hardly able to contain herself with excitement, Bessie sat down by the window, and almost, if not quite, counted every swing of the pendulum that pushed the hands of the clock on to the desired hour. She could not eat, and not until curiosity was gratified as to what it was that had detained Thaddeus, and that, more singular still, was bringing him home instead of sending him to business at nine o’clock in the morning, could she, in fact, do anything?
Finally, the grinding sounds of carriage wheels on the gravel road without were heard, and in an instant Bessie was at the door to welcome the prodigal. And what a Thaddeus it was that came home that morning! His eyes showed conclusively that he had had no sleep, save the more or less unsatisfactory napping which suburban residents get on the trains. His beautiful pearl-gray scarf, that so became him when he left home the previous morning, was not anywhere in sight. His cheek was scratched, and every button that his vest had ever known had taken wings unto itself and flown, Bessie knew not whither. And yet, tired out as he was, dishevelled as he was, Thaddeus was not grumpy, but inclined rather to explosive laughter as he entered the house.
“Why, Thaddeus!” cried Bessie, in alarm. “What on earth is the matter with you? You look as if you had been in a riot.”
“That’s a pretty good guess, my dear,” returned Thaddeus, with a laugh, “but not quite the right one.”
“But tell me, what have you been doing? Where have you been?”
“At Bradley’s, my love.”
“You haven’t been—been quarrelling with Mr. Bradley?”
“No. Bradley’s jewel has proved your husband’s Waterloo, as well as the Sedan of Bradley himself,” returned Thaddeus, throwing his head back and bursting out into a loud guffaw.
“I am not good at riddles, Thaddeus,” said Bessie, “and I haven’t laughed much myself since that last train came in last night and didn’t bring you. I think you might tell me—”
“Why, my dear little girl,” said Thaddeus, walking to her side and kissing her, “I didn’t mean to keep you in suspense, and of course I’ll tell you.”
Then, as they ate their breakfast, Thaddeus explained. “I told Bradley that you were a sceptic on the subject of his jewel,” he said, “and he offered to prove that she was eighteen carats fine by taking me home with him, an unexpected guest, by which act he would test her value to my satisfaction. Of course, having cast doubts upon her excellence, I had to accept, and at half-past five he and I boarded an elevated train for Harlem. At six we stood before Bradley’s front door, and as he had left his keys at the office, he rang the bell and waited. It was a long wait, considering the presence of a jewel within doors. It must have lasted fifteen minutes, and even that would have been but the beginning, in spite of repeated and continuous pulling of the bell-handle, had we not determined to enter through the reception-room window.”
“Did you try the basement door?” queried Bessie, with a smile, for it pleased her to hear that the jewel was not quite flawless.
“Yes,” said Thaddeus. “We rang four times at the basement, and I should say seven times at the front door, and then we took to the window. Bradley’s is one of those narrow English-basement houses with a small yard in front, so that the reception-room window is easy to reach by climbing over the vault leading to the basement door, which is more or less of a cellar entrance. Fortunately the window was unlocked. I say fortunately, because it enabled us to get into the house, though if I were sitting on a jury I think I should base an indictment—one of criminal negligence—of the Jewel on the fact that it was unlocked. It was just the hour, you know, when policemen yawn and sneak-thieves prowl.”
“How careless!” vouchsafed Bessie.
“Very,” said Thaddeus. “But this time it worked for the good of all concerned, although my personal appearance doesn’t give any indication that I gained anything by it. In fact, it would have been better for me if the house had been hermetically sealed.”
“Don’t dally so much, Thaddeus,” put in Bessie. “I’m anxious to hear what happened.”
“Well, of course Bradley was very much concerned,” continued Thaddeus. “It was bad enough not to be able to attract the maid’s attention by ringing, but when he noticed that the house was as dark as pitch, and that despite the clanging of the bell, which could be heard all over the neighborhood, even his wife didn’t come to the door, he was worried; and he was more worried than ever when he got inside. We lit the gas in the hall, and walked back into the dining-room, where we also lighted up, and such confusion as was there you never saw! The table-cloth was in a heap on the floor; Bradley’s candelabra, of which he was always so proud, were bent and twisted out of shape under the table; glasses broken beyond redemption were strewn round about; and a mixture of pepper, salt, and sugar was over everything.”
“‘I believe there have been thieves here,’ said Bradley, his face turning white. And then he went to the foot of the stairs and called up to his wife, but there no answer.
“Then he started on a dead run up the stair. Above all was in confusion, as in the dining-room. Vases were broken, pictures hung awry on the walls; but nowhere was Mrs. Bradley or one of the Bradley children to be seen.
“Then we began a systematic search of the house. Everywhere everything was upside-down, and finally we came to a door on the third story back, leading into the children’s play-room, and as we turned the knob and tried to open it we heard Mrs. Bradley’s voice from within.
“‘Who’s there?’ she said, her voice all of a tremble.
“‘It is I!’ returned Bradley. ‘Open the door. What is the meaning of all this?’
“‘Oh, I’m so glad you have come!’ returned Mrs. Bradley, with a sob, and then we heard sounds as of the moving of heavy furniture. Mrs. Bradley, for some as yet unexplained reason, seemed to have barricaded herself in.
“Finally the door was opened, and Mrs. Bradley buried her face on her husband’s shoulder and sobbed hysterically.
“‘What on earth is the matter?’ asked Bradley, as his children followed their mother’s lead, except that they buried their faces in his coat-tail pockets. ‘What has happened?’
“‘Mary!’ gasped Mrs. Bradley.”
“The jewel?” asked Bessie.
“The same,” returned Thaddeus, with a smile. “She was the jewel, alas! now deprived of her former glorious setting.
“‘What’s the matter with Mary?’ asked Bradley.
“‘She’s been behaving outrageously. I found her this morning,’ said Mrs. Bradley, ‘rummaging through my escritoire, throwing things all over the floor; and when I remonstrated she said she was looking for a sheet of paper on which to write a letter. I told her she should have asked me for it, and she replied impertinently that she never asked favors of anybody. I told her to leave the room, and she declined to do it, picking up a sofa-pillow and throwing it at me. I was so overcome I nearly fainted.’”
“I should think she would have been overcome! Such impudence!” said Bessie.
“Humph!” said Thaddeus. “That isn’t a marker to what followed. Why, according to Mrs. Bradley’s story, that escaped Koh-i-noor called her all sorts of horrible names, threw an empty ink-pot at a photograph of Bradley himself, that stood on the mantel, and then, grabbing up a whisk-broom, literally swept everything else there was on the mantel off to the floor with it. This done, she began to overturn chairs with an ardor born of temper, apparently; and, finally, Mrs. Bradley got so frightened that she ran from the room, and the jewel started in pursuit. Straight to the nursery ran the lady of the house—for there was where the children were, playing house, no doubt, with little idea that jewels sometimes deteriorated. Once in the nursery, Mrs. Bradley slammed the door to, locked it, and then, still fearful, rolled before it the bureau and the children’s cribs. After that the actions of the jewel could only be surmised. The door was pounded and the atmosphere of the hall was rent with violent harangues; then a hurried step was heard as the jewel presumably sailed below-stairs; then crashings were heard—crashings which might have indicated the smashing of windows, of picture-glass, of mirrors, chairs, and other household appurtenances, after which, Mrs. Bradley observed, all became still.”
“Mercy! what a trial!” said Bessie.
“And was she locked up in the nursery all day?”
“From twelve until we rescued her at a little after six,” said Thaddeus. “Then Bradley and I started out to find the jewel, if possible, and I regret to say that it was possible. We found her asleep on the kitchen table, and Bradley hadn’t any more sense than to try and wake her up. He succeeded too well. For the next ten minutes she was the most wide-awake woman you ever saw, and she kept us wide awake too. The minute she opened her eyes and saw us standing before her, she sprang to her feet and made a rush at Bradley, for which he was totally unprepared, the consequence of which was that in an instant he found himself sitting in a very undignified manner, for the head of the house, on the kitchen floor, trying to collect his somewhat scattered faculties.
“When she had persuaded Bradley to take a seat, she turned to shower her attentions on me. I jumped to one side, but she managed to grab hold of my vest, and hence its buttonless condition. By this time Bradley was on his feet again, and, having had the temerity to face his jewel the second time, he again came off second best, losing one of the button-holes of his collar in the mêlée. I rushed in from behind, and flirtatiously, perhaps, tried to grab hold of her hands, coming off the field minus a necktie, but plus that picturesque scratch you see on my nose. Stopping a moment to count up my profit and loss, I let Bradley make the next assault, which resulted in a drawn battle, Bradley losing his watch and his temper, the jewel losing her breath and her balance. So it went on for probably three or four minutes longer, though we certainly acquired several years of experience in those short minutes, until finally we managed to conquer her. This done, we locked her up in a closet.”
“Had she been at the cooking-sherry?” asked Bessie.
“We thought so at first, and Bradley sent for a policeman,” said Thaddeus “but when he came we found the poor creature too exhausted to be moved, and in a very short while Mrs. Bradley decided that it was a case for a doctor and not for a police-justice. So the doctor was summoned, and we waited, dinnerless, in the dining-room for his verdict, and finally it came. Bradley’s jewel was insane!”
“Insane!” echoed Bessie.
“Mad as a hatter,” replied Thaddeus.
“Well, I declare!” said Bessie, thoughtfully. “But, Thaddeus, do you know I am not surprised.”
“Why, my dear?” he asked.
“Because, Teddy, she was too perfect to be in her right mind.”
And Thaddeus, after thinking it all over, was inclined to believe that Bessie was in the right.
“Yes, Bess, she was perfect—perfect in the way she did her work, perfect in the way she smashed things, and nowhere did she more successfully show the thoroughness with which she did everything than when it came to removing the buttons from my vest. Isn’t it too bad that the only perfect servant that ever lived should turn out to be a hopeless maniac? But I must hurry off, or I’ll miss my train.”
“You are not going down to town to-day?” asked Bessie.
“To-day, above all other days, am I going down,” returned Thaddeus. “I am enough of a barbarian to be unwilling to lose the chance of seeing Bradley, and asking him how he and his jewel get along.”
“Thaddeus!”
“Why not, my dear?”
“It would be too mean for anything.”
“Well, perhaps you are right. I guess I won’t. But he has rubbed it into me so much about our domestics that I hate to lose the chance to hit back.”
“Has he?” said Bessie, her face flushing indignantly, and, it may be added, becomingly. “In that case, perhaps, you might—ha! ha!—perhaps you might telegraph and ask him.”
And Thaddeus did so. As yet he has received no reply.
