_ PART I. MARY LOUISE
CHAPTER VI
Mary Louise had the power of concentration over her determinations as well as over her desires. Once having decided on a course she could keep herself driving at it without ceasing. If she made a digression, it was with eyes set on the goal, and for the reason that to so digress was to find a more facile path and save time in the end. Her past attainments had been gained apparently without effort, for in the little world she had known at Bloomfield all had been hers to do with as she desired. And then had come the eighteen months in Louisville, with its awakenings, its gradual undermining of her old standards and conceptions, and its whetting of the keen edge of her desire.
She had been made to see her facts in another light. Those things that had been wont to be considered as axioms and irrefutable postulates in her daily acceptance were suddenly seen as the most ephemeral hypotheses. The desirability of Bloomfield and the lustre about the name "McCallum"--two rocks upon which she had builded the edifice of her confidence--were found of a sudden to be but shifting sands, hard-packed enough on the surface, but subjected to the most insidious and devastating undertow. Many a weaker spirit would have thrown up his arms and dived with desperation overboard in search of solid footing. But not so Mary Louise. She had a momentary whirl at negation and then a firm and ever-increasing determination to build her own footing. If Bloomfield and the McCallum family were not all they should be, she would make them so, to her own satisfaction at least. Money was the one thing needed, she soon found or thought she found, and money was the thing she was determined to get, enough of it to accomplish her purpose. When she had started the tea room she had not had the slightest idea that she could possibly fail to do just exactly what she wanted.
As she read the note that Joe had left for her, the news of Miss Susie's illness caused her temporary distress. But her mind did not dwell for long on the distressing part of it, but got busy with the problem in hand, went into conference with itself over it, analyzed and dissected it to its complete satisfaction, and then put out the resulting dicta on the bulletin board of her consciousness. The particular "Thou must" was in this case "Go to Bloomfield." And inasmuch as Mary Louise never under any circumstances thought of disregarding these highly accurate mental dicta, go to Bloomfield she did. She went the following morning, which was Friday. And it must be said that in spite of the attention which was focused on the immediate difficulty before her, which was, "What to do with Miss Susie," her mind kept straining at this barrier for continued and reassuring glimpses of the ultimate goal ahead. Still, she loved her aunt, and the realization of her suffering was to her genuine pain.
As she entered the sitting-room door, she found the little old lady propped in a rocking chair just inside the doorway with a patchwork quilt across her lap, tucking her in. There was no appreciable change. She was as yellow, as parchment like as ever. Her eyes perhaps were brighter; indeed they seemed almost to have a heat of their own as Mary Louise stooped to kiss the cheek held up to her.
"Why didn't you let me know sooner?" she chided.
"There was no reason for you to come at all," Miss Susie responded briskly. "Some people haven't enough questions to decide for themselves. Have to go about hunting for other people's problems."
"But you weren't going to sit up here and not let me know anything about it?" Mary Louise took off her hat and came over to the rocking chair, toward which she dragged another, and seated herself. She reached out and took one of the little blue-veined hands and stroked it gently. "You weren't going to sit up here and let me know nothing about it? That's not what you promised."
Miss Susie's fixed, inexorable expression did not change. But she was pleased--was feeling softer. Unconsciously she liked Mary Louise to assume that patronizing, superior air toward her. She said nothing and began to rock softly to and fro, staring through the doorway.
Mary Louise continued the gentle stroking. Bye-and-bye she ventured softly, "You're right sure you're feeling all right now? What did the doctor say?"
Miss Susie turned on her, mouth snapping shut. "Doctor! Who said I had to have a doctor?" The look in her eyes, as she turned them full upon the girl, was one in which defiance mingled with alarm and struggled for mastery. For Miss Susie had waged a long and losing warfare with disease and she quailed before the emblems of surrender if not from the enemy itself.
Mary Louise for the moment let it go at that. After the air had appreciably cooled she ventured again: "I don't suppose Mrs. Mosby knew how to reach me?" Miss Susie looked puzzled and she continued in explanation, "I had a note from Joe Hooper saying you had had a little spell--I suppose Mrs. Mosby 'phoned him."
Miss Susie gave a little snort. "And what would Loraine Mosby be doing meddling in my affairs? She hasn't called on me for years. Like as not it was that fool Lavinia Burrus. You would think she owned and was running the town. The salvation of Bloomfield weighs mighty heavy on her shoulders these days--with her '
Dear Miss McCallum,' and her 'Poor dear Mrs. Hamilton!' I've a mind to tell her that charity, even of thought, begins at home--where it's needed."
Mary Louise felt a sudden sort of displeasure. She had adopted the devious method of getting at the true state of affairs, for that was the only way any one could get anything out of Miss Susie. And now she found herself getting interested on her own account. She had once supposed that it had been through Mrs. Mosby's agency that she had been apprised. It now appeared that someone else--an outsider and a parvenu at that--had linked her name with that of Joe Hooper's to send her word through him. It gave her rank displeasure. To be officially tagged as "Such and such" by a "one-horse" little town. Yes it was a "one-horse" little town. Her assurance slipped from her and in confusion she sought to investigate no further.
"Where's Mattie? You ought to have something about your shoulders." She rose to her feet and began poking about on the wardrobe shelf.
"Mattie's not here," said Miss Susie.
Mary Louise turned around. "Mattie's not here?--And what's the reason she's not here?"
Miss Susie's voice was acquiring calm. "She decided that this wasn't good enough place for her. She couldn't bear to think of all the money servants were getting down in Louisville--so she left."
Mary Louise came back and stood before her chair. She looked at her aunt intently. "You mean to say she
left you?"
"She did."
It was too much for Mary Louise's comprehension and she contemplated the fact bleakly. "Why, her people have been here on the place for four generations!"
Miss Susie's face was grim. "Ten dollars a week was too much for her."
Slowly the conviction was taking root. "And she has really left?"
Miss Susie nodded.
"And taken Omar with her?"
Miss Susie nodded again.
"And Landy?"
There was a moment's silence. Miss Susie, it seemed, would for the dramatic effect have preferred that the defection had been universal. "No," she said half regretfully, "Landy's stayed with me."
"And done the cooking, I suppose?"
"He did--after Wednesday."
"And Wednesday?
You tried it until then, I suppose?" Mary Louise's tone was all reproach.
Miss Susie did not deny it.
They sat for a moment in dismal accord. Mary Louise had a sudden feeling as though the family were breaking up. All during the war the little corps of servants had remained intact. She had felt that, the war over, the danger point had been passed. Also the reason for Miss Susie's little spell was now apparent.
Directly she asked more briskly, "D' you try to get any one else?--Zibbie Tuttle?"
"Zibbie's gone to town, too."
Another moment's depressed silence.
"And how about Zenie? She used to cook."
Miss Susie sighed. "Zenie's got her head all full of fool notions. She thinks she has to stay home and look after that worthless Zeke."
"And she won't come? You've tried her?"
Miss Susie shook her head grimly.
Mary Louise suddenly laughed. It was a dry, mirthless sort of laugh. "Looks like the Negroes are getting all the latest notions of progress, too. I must have put the idea into their heads."
"All except Zenie," amended Miss Susie. "She's old-fashioned."
"Perhaps I'd better be coming back." She stood by the door, musing.
Miss Susie reached over for her spectacles. There was an almost imperceptible flash in her eyes. "And be like Zenie?"
The shot missed. Mary Louise was turning over many things in her mind. Her little plans were being threatened and by circumstances which she had previously scorned to notice. Irritation and a restless desire to be up and at her obstacles were prevailing over all other feelings. For several moments she pondered, gazing through the glass half of the sitting-room door, and then with a hurried, "I'll be back," she bolted from the room, out toward the kitchen.
When she returned some fifteen minutes later there was a look of settled calm on her face, and she busied herself making Miss Susie comfortable; for she had reached a decision and could think about other things. And the things that old Landy had told her had sobered her while they strengthened that decision.
That night she lay on a restless pillow. The sudden change from the rattle and bang of the city where all the little noises were swallowed up in a general roar was hard on her ravelled nerves. She missed the noise. She found herself painfully acute to all the little tickings and crackings and buzzings that an open country window brings to one's ears. There was an unpleasant smell of damp matting there in the dark room. And the wind, as it came soughing down from the hill behind, caught a loose end of the roof somewhere over her head and made as though to roll it back. But it never did. Her bed was lumpy. It had never seemed so before. And there was not enough ventilation in the room. The two windows, placed side by side in the eaves, allowed no circulation. People in the country did not know how to live. Now she would knock that partition away. There was no use having a hall at the head of the stairs, a hall that led nowhere except into one room. She would knock that partition away and make a single big room of the whole attic. And then the window in the hall would serve for additional light and air for the one room. Or would it be better to cut another window and run the partition lengthwise, thus making two rooms of it? That might be better. Two rooms were better than one great big barn of a room. Later on, perhaps, she would have it done. She fell asleep over the complexity of the problem.
The next morning she set out with dispatch to carry out her plan. She went to see Zenie Thompson.
She found that much maligned and misunderstood woman cheerily rocking her leisure away at the front door of her home. The air was warm and Zenie had, contrary to the tenets of her race's religion, thrown open all the front of her house, windows and all. The neck of her waist, which was a very old white one of Mary Louise's, was likewise frankly open, and as there was considerable difference in the respective sizes, Zenie seemed on the point of bursting from its doubtful whiteness into all her full-blown coffee-coloured creamness. She hastily pinned up the bosom of it a little as Mary Louise turned in at her gate.
"How do, Mis' Ma'y Louise," she beamed, rising to her feet and holding her offspring clutched at a precarious angle to her shoulder. She stood with one hand resting on the doorpost and in her eyes expectancy. "Won' you-all come in?"
"Just for a minute," said Mary Louise, refusing the proffered chair and giving the room a hasty, critical look. Even in that critical look she could find naught to criticize. The cabin was a small three-room affair, set back from the street, between two vacant old storehouses. Zeke had whitewashed it without and calcimined it within, and with the free air that circulated the place this treatment was enough to make the front rooms passable. Over the iron mantel hung Zeke's "Knights of Macabre" sword in its scabbard. Mary Louise looked for the white-plumed hat but it had evidently been put away. On the left wall, in a brilliant gilt frame, hung a coloured portrait of Admiral Dewey. The artist had in some way inspired a look of malign cunning on the face by shifting the position of the left eye a hair's breadth below normal, but the mouth and smile were benign. On a table to the right reposed a glass case with a base of felt and a rounded top--the mausoleum for an ancient bird creature that looked like a prairie chicken, very droopy and, in spite of its interment, quite dingy with dust. It was vaguely familiar to her somehow.
Zenie was watching the inspection with an eager, expectant look. When Mary Louise had apparently finished and turned to her again, she smiled.
"You ain' eveh see ouh house befo', is you?"
Mary Louise admitted she never had. And then to disarm any suspicion that she might have come for social reasons only, she attacked the matter in hand with characteristic vigour:
"Zeke's not home much, is he?"
"Right smaht he ain', no'm." Zenie's face was all expectant smiles. Not a shadow seemed to linger near it.
Mary Louise allowed her gaze to travel about the room. In the entire atmosphere of the place was no besmirching suggestion of toil. She returned again to Zenie. The latter was like some tropical flower in full bloom. She began, selecting carefully her ground: "You haven't any place to put your baby, no one to watch him while you work, have you?" This was spoken with all the force of conviction.
Zenie's face wreathed itself in another smile. "I ain' do no mo' wuk--not ontil Zeke he come home."
Mary Louise paused and drew breath. She began again: "If there was somewhere you could put him, someone who could look out for him, or if it was so that you could keep an eye on him yourself--why, you could go to work again, like you used to."
The brightness of Zenie's smile began to fade. "Yas'm. Yas'm, reckon I could." She turned her attention to the child in her arms and her voice, as she continued, was liquid soft. "Zeke's doin' so good--I ain' aim to wuk out no mo'. Jes' keep house heah fo' him."
Then Mary Louise, sensing defeat, struck; struck unerringly for her objective which she judged to be the vulnerable spot; struck with characteristic vigour and direct: "I'll give you six dollars a week if you'll come and do the cooking for Miss Susie, for this summer." She paused and observed the effect.
Zenie had suddenly acquired all the coy graces of a maid receiving a long-expected proposal. She cast her eyes discreetly down, toyed at the rocker edge with her shoe, and smiled.
"You won't have to clean up the house. Landy does that. You won't have to do a single thing but cook." The speech ended with a rising inflection. Mary Louise's eloquent picture inspired even herself with hope.
"Mis' Burrus done offa me seven."
There was a momentary silence, during which time Mary Louise marshalled her routed forces. Directly she gallantly renewed the attack: "I'll give you seven then. And you can have all the time off you want, whenever you get through with the dishes." She had come, in a way, prepared for shocks, but the whirlwind manner of her recklessness was leaving her a bit breathless.
Zenie's face at once assumed a look of concern and lifting her head she pondered far-off possibilities. "Zeke, he home so little," she began, and her voice had an ineffable sadness, "I likes to be home when he come."
"But you
can be at home when he comes," Mary Louise explained with a patience which she far from felt. "You can get off directly dishes are done--seven o'clock every evening, I'm sure."
"I know," responded Zenie, still doubting. "But Zeke, he gone at night. Mos' eve' night. He home in de day, mos' de day."
It ended by Mary Louise's offering and Zenie's accepting ten dollars a week, and with a promise of starting in on the following Monday. Mary Louise descended the cabin steps with the hollow pomp of one who has bought his victory too dearly. Zenie, from the steps, called cheerily: "Mis' Ma'y Louise. You bring me some goods fuh a dress? Sometime when you come up ag'in?"
Mary Louise paused at the gate and speculated on the humble creature on whom she had wreaked her will. "I guess I might, Zenie. What kind do you want?"
Zenie beamed. "Oh, mos' any kin'. Whateveh you think is pritty. I pay you fo' it."
Mary Louise promised and departed. She walked home very thoughtfully. Ten dollars a week! Ten dollars just to get the cooking done! She had had her eyes fixed very clearly indeed on the coveted goal to brush aside such an expensive obstacle.
That afternoon, as she busied herself with little chores about the house--she was sweeping the side porch at the time--she chanced to look up and saw Joe Hooper driving by in a low-swung phaeton behind a sleepy old horse. Beside him sat Mr. Mosby, very prim and very erect, and Joe's arm lay along the back of the seat behind him. The street was rather shady and it was quite a distance from where she was to where he was passing. But somehow it seemed to her that there was a singularly cheerful, quite happy expression on his face as he lolled back against the cushion. And he did not look in as he passed. _