"Don"t interrupt me, Mrs. Lathrop; I"m in no mood to listen to no one just now. I ain"t mad, but I"m hurt. It"s no wonder I dreamed he was a cat, for of all the sly, back-door things a cat is the meanest. And there was always something very cat-like about Jathrop Lathrop--something soft and slow and creepy--nothing bold and out-spoken. I might have known as even if he did come home rich, he"d find a way to even it up. And now look how he has evened it up. Think of your grandchildren; there won"t be one of "em able to ever look anybody straight in more"n one eye at once. Marrying Chinese is terrible, anyway--in some States it"s forbidden. It"s to be hoped Jathrop"ll keep out of those States or he may land in the penitentiary yet."
Just here the front door slammed, and Jathrop"s voice was heard calling, "Where are you, mother?"
He didn"t wait for an answer, but came straight through the kitchen.
Entering there, what he saw startled him so much that he came to a sudden halt.
"We"ve been telling your--" began Mrs. Macy.
"--mother about your wife," finished up Susan.
Jathrop looked at all three in great astonishment. "About my _wife_!" he repeated. "Did you say "my wife"?"
"Yes," said Susan, absolutely undaunted. "I think it would have been kinder in you to have broke it to her yourself; but anyhow, we"ve done it now."
"Oh, Jathrop, my son, my son!" wailed poor Mrs. Lathrop in heart-wringing Biblical paraphrase.
"But I haven"t got any wife," said Jathrop. "What under the sun do you mean?"
There was a clammy pause; Susan and Mrs. Macy clasped hands.
"What made you think I had one?" Jathrop asked, quite bewildered. "Who said I had one?"
Susan rose with dignity and coughed. Mrs. Macy rose, too, looking at Susan. Poor Mrs. Lathrop seemed fairly terror-stricken.
"I think I"ll go now," said Susan. "I hope I needn"t board her much longer, that"s all. Even if she"s only using the floor, it"s a floor as has been sacred to my dead father up to now, and a dead father is not to be lightly took in vain by a heathen Chinee."
"But what does it all mean?" asked Jathrop, appearing genuinely bewildered. "I don"t understand. What are you talking about?"
Susan moved toward the door; Mrs. Macy faltered. "Maybe it was all right in the Klondike," she began, trying to put a brace under the situation.
"Maybe what was all right in the Klondike?" asked Jathrop.
"To buy her with beads."
"To buy who with beads? Who"s her?" Jathrop"s voice was becoming exasperated.
"Hop Loo," said Susan, in a tone of piercing scorn, "the Chinese lady as you brought with you and gave me to board."
Jathrop looked at them all in amazement. "But Hop Loo"s a boy--my boy,"
he said.
"Your boy!" said Susan.
"Yes, my boy."
Miss Clegg turned and gave him a long look fraught with disgust, pity, and hopeless resignation.
"Jathrop Lathrop," she said, "I _did_ suppose you had some sense even in the view of all that"s dead and gone, but I guess now I"ll have to give up. I did have some respect for you while I thought she was maybe your wife, but if you"ve gone so clean crazy that you believe that that is your boy--well!"
Susan thereupon sailed out of Mrs. Lathrop"s house with Mrs. Macy wobbling in her wake.
III
SUSAN CLEGG SOLVES THE MYSTERY
Susan Clegg and Mrs. Macy walked down to Mrs. Lathrop"s gate, and out of her gate and to Miss Clegg"s gate; the whole in a silence deadly and impressive. Mrs. Macy paused there.
"I don"t believe I"ll come in," she said doubtfully.
"I don"t blame you," said Susan, "I wouldn"t if it was me. Jathrop"s boy, indeed! What kind of a man is it as"ll have a Chinese family and go forcing them onto the true and long-tried friends of his one and only mother!"
"I can"t see why he didn"t leave the boy in the Klondike," said Mrs.
Macy slowly and reflectively. "I thought men always left their Chinese families just where they found "em. It"s strange Jathrop brought him home with him."
"You see now what my dream meant," said Susan darkly, "a cat, indeed.
It"s small wonder I knew the cat was Jathrop Lathrop. Of all the mean, sly, creeping creatures that ever come up against the back of your legs sudden a cat is the worst. A snake is open and aboveboard beside a cat.
You can see a snake. You don"t see "em often around here, thank heaven."
"Well, we haven"t seen Jathrop often around here for a long time," said Mrs. Macy, whose mind was as given to easy logical deduction as many of her mental caliber, "and we do see a lot of cats--you know that, Susan."
""How"s Susan Clegg?"" quoted Susan in a tone of reflective wrath. "I don"t know whether you know it or not, Mrs. Macy, but Jathrop asked after me in his letter to his mother, and him with a Chinese wife.
"How"s Susan Clegg?" What did he write that for if he was married, I"d like to know."
"Maybe he wanted to know how you were," suggested Mrs. Macy.
The look she received in recognition of this offered explanation led to her immediately proposing to go on home. "You"ve got the Chinaman to look after, anyhow," she added.
"You"d better come in while I go up and look at him again," said Susan shortly. "It"s a very strange sensation to be alone in your house with what you fully and freely take to your dead father"s bed and board, supposing it"s a wife, and then find out as it"s her son instead. Come on in."
Mrs. Macy was easily persuaded, and they thereupon went up the walk. "I guess I"ll go see if he"s still asleep," Susan said when they reached the piazza, and Mrs. Macy forthwith sat down to await what might come of it.
Susan was absent but a few minutes; she returned with a fresh layer of disapproval upon her face.
"Is he still sleeping?" Mrs. Macy asked.
"Yes, he"s still sleeping," Miss Clegg replied, jerking a chair forward for herself. "You"d know he was Jathrop Lathrop"s child just by the way he sleeps. You remember what a one Jathrop always was for sleeping. I don"t know as I remember Jathrop"s ever being awake till he was fairly grown. Whatever you set him at always just made him more sleepy. You know yourself, Mrs. Macy, as he wouldn"t be no gra.s.shopper with Mrs.
Lathrop for his mother, but a coc.o.o.n is a comet beside what Jathrop Lathrop always was. I don"t know whether he"s rich or not, but I do know that heathen Chinee is his son, and I know it just by the way he sleeps."
"And so Jathrop"s rich," said Mrs. Macy, rocking agreeably to and fro, and evidently striving toward more pleasant conversation.
"Yes," said Susan darkly, "rich and with a Chinese wife somewhere. Just as often as I think of Jathrop Lathrop writing, "How"s Susan Clegg,"
with a Chinese wife I feel more and more tempered, and I can"t conceal my feelings. I never was one to conceal anything; if I had a Chinese wife the whole world might know it."
Just here Gran"ma Mullins hove in sight, coming slowly and laboriously up the street.