第11章

"But, I thought, Susan, he was dead," was my very natural comment upon this outbreak.

"So did I, Master Paul," was Susan's rejoinder; "that was his artfulness."

"Then he isn't buried in Manor Park Cemetery?"

"Not yet; but he'll wish he was, the half-baked monkey, when I get hold of him."

"Then he wasn't a good man?"

"Who?"

"Your husband."

"Who says he ain't a good man?" It was Susan's flying leaps from tense to tense that most bewildered me. "If anybody says he ain't I'll gouge their eye out!"

I hastened to assure Susan that my observation had been intended in the nature of enquiry, not of assertion.

"Brings me a bottle of gin--for my headaches--every time he comes home," continued Susan, showing cause for opinion, "every blessed time."

And at some such point as this I would retire to the clearer atmosphere of German grammar or mixed fractions.

We suffered a good deal from Susan one way and another; for having regard to the admirable position of her heart, we all felt it our duty to overlook mere failings of the flesh--all but my aunt, that is, who never made any pretence of being a sentimentalist.

"She's a lazy hussy," was the opinion expressed of her one morning by my aunt, who was rinsing; "a gulping, snorting, lazy hussy, that's what she is." There was some excuse for my aunt's indignation. It was then eleven o'clock and Susan was still sleeping off an attack of what she called "new-ralgy."

"She has seen a good deal of trouble," said my mother, who was wiping.

"And if she was my cook and housemaid," replied my aunt, "she would see more, the slut!"

"She's not a good servant in many respects," admitted my mother, "but I think she's good-hearted."

"Oh, drat her heart," was my aunt's retort. "The right place for that heart of hers is on the doorstep. And that's where I'd put it, and her and her box alongside it, if I had my way."

The departure of Susan did take place not long afterwards. It occurred one Saturday night. My mother came upstairs looking pale.

"Luke," she said, "do please run for the doctor."

"What's the matter?" asked my father.

"Susan," gasped my mother, "she's lying on the kitchen floor breathing in the strangest fashion and quite unable to speak."

"I'll go for Washburn," said my father; "if I am quick I shall catch him at the dispensary."

Five minutes later my father came back panting, followed by the doctor. This was a big, black-bearded man; added to which he had the knack of looking bigger than even he really was. He came down the kitchen stairs two at a time, shaking the whole house. He brushed my mother aside, and bent over the unconscious Susan, who was on her back with her mouth wide open. Then he rose and looked at my father and mother, who were watching him with troubled faces; and then he opened his mouth, and there came from it a roar of laughter, the like of which sound I had never heard.

The next moment he had seized a pail half full of water and had flung it over the woman. She opened her eyes and sat up.

"Feeling better?" said the doctor, with the pail still in his hand;

"have another dose?"

Susan began to gather herself together with the evident intention of expressing her feelings; but before she could find the first word, he had pushed the three of us outside and slammed the door behind us.

From the top of the stairs we could hear Susan's thick, rancorous voice raging fiercer and fiercer, drowned every now and then by the man's savage roar of laughter. And, when for want of breath she would flag for a moment, he would yell out encouragement to her, shouting:

"Bravo! Go it, my beauty, give it tongue! Bark, bark! I love to hear you," applauding her, clapping his hands and stamping his feet.

"What a beast of a man," said my mother.

"He is really a most interesting man when you come to know him," explained my father.

Replied my mother, stiffly: "I don't ever mean to know him." But it is only concerning the past that we possess knowledge.

The riot from below ceased at length, and was followed by a new voice, speaking quietly and emphatically, and then we heard the doctor's step again upon the stairs.

My mother held her purse open in her hand, and as the man entered the room she went forward to meet him.

"How much do we owe you, Doctor?" said my mother. She spoke in a voice trembling with severity.

He closed the purse and gently pushed it back towards her.

"A glass of beer and a chop, Mrs. Kelver," he answered, "which I am coming back in an hour to cook for myself. And as you will be without any servant," he continued, while my mother stood staring at him incapable of utterance, "you had better let me cook some for you at the same time. I am an expert at grilling chops."

"But, really, Doctor--" my mother began. He laid his huge hand upon her shoulder, and my mother sat down upon the nearest chair.

"My dear lady," he said, "she's a person you never ought to have had inside your house. She's promised me to be gone in half an hour, and I'm coming back to see she keeps her word. Give her a month's wages, and have a clear fire ready for me." And before my mother could reply, he had slammed the front door.

"What a very odd sort of a man," said my mother, recovering herself.

"He's a character," said my father; "you might not think it, but he's worshipped about here."

"I hardly know what to make of him," said my mother; "I suppose I had better go out and get some chops;" which she did.