Susan Clegg and Her Love Affairs

"I must say I'm far from altogether liking him," Susan said to her friend, a very real note of disapproval in her voice, one day toward the end of the week. Mrs. Lathrop was rocking in her new old-gold-plush stationary rocker and listened as usual with interest. "He's on the woodpile now, drawing a three-quarter profile of the woodshed. The way he perches anywhere and then goes to work and draws anything would surely make an English snail pull his castle right into his house along with him, for I've got a feeling as there's nothing about me as he hasn't got in his book by this time, and there's many things he's drawn as I never would choose to have the world in general looking over. I'm sure I don't want no view of my woodshed going down to posterity for one thing. I've had to have a woodshed, but I've never admired it, and the way I've nailed anything handy over holes in it is far from my usual way of mending. You've always mended 'hit or miss,' Mrs. Lathrop, and after years of such doings as was more worthy a poorhouse than a Christian, heaven has seen fit to reward your patching with a son fresh from the Klondike, but I've always darned blue with blue and brown with brown, and the only spot in my whole life that I haven't carefully and neatly matched the stripes in is my woodshed, and now to-day when I was thinking very seriously of using it up for the kitchen-stove next winter, if there isn't a young man from New York out drawing it in black and white, and ten to one he'll print it in some unexpected Sunday paper marked 'Jathrop Lathrop's mother's friend Susan Clegg's woodshed!' That'll be a pretty kettle of fish, and you needn't tell me that there won't be somebody to perk up and say, 'No smoke without some fire,' which will be as good as throwing it in my teeth that I'm one of those as use a safety pin when a button's off, when it's a thing as I've never done and never would do even if there is a proverb that a pin's a pin for all that."

Susan paused here and looked upon her friend in serious question. Mrs. Lathrop, however, merely continued to rock pleasantly. A change had come over the spirit of her rocking since the return of Jathrop. She had rocked for years with a more or less apologetic air, as if she knew that there were those who might criticize her action and yet she couldn't personally feel that she really ought to give it up. But now she rocked with a wide, free swing as if life was life and if she liked to rock, she was going to rock, and if there were those who objected, they could object – she didn't care. There is nothing that so quickly develops an independent standpoint as the possession of money; there is nothing that so fully produces a conviction that one is thoroughly justified in doing just exactly what one pleases; there is nothing that leads to quite the same lofty indifference as to whether what pleases one pleases or displeases all the rest of the world.

We have but to look at Jathrop to see that this is true. Of all the tame, mild-eyed, listless young individuals, Jathrop was the worst, falling asleep on an average of three times an afternoon in school, and never keeping conscious a whole evening. Whether a sudden change in Jathrop's character was the cause of making him a financial power or whether his Klondike-acquired bank account was the cause of his awakening, it still is a fact that now in his quiet way he was a very live person.

Jathrop was indifferent to a degree, also, as witness his appearance with his Chinese boy whom everybody took to be his wife with his great baggy trousers and pigtail that no respectable boy, Chinese or otherwise, should wear. Of course, it must be acceded that Jathrop was indifferent in that case from ignorance. He did not know what the world was saying.

Perhaps that accounts for the lofty attitude, one might say lofty altitude, of so many of our millionaires. They are so far removed from the world that their ears cannot hear what is being said. People talk in whispers about the "very rich," which makes it doubly hard for them to hear, or hearing, to think that it matters very much, else people would shout. However, when all is said, money does make a difference.

Mrs. Lathrop had been a silent, sat-upon, unaggressively-rocking person for years; now Jathrop had come back from the Klondike and altered all that; it was not that she had turned talkative, it was not that she had so far altered the very foundations of her being as to presume ever to try to contradict any other body's opinions, but the return of Jathrop and the wealth of Jathrop had found expression in his mother through the one medium of almost all expression with her. Mrs. Lathrop had ceased to concern herself as to the length or the vigor of her rocking. It was beautiful to see the energy of independence with which she went back and forth, bringing her feet down with an audible clap whenever she desired fresh impetus.

Susan Clegg did not seem to sympathize. Instead, sitting on her straight chair opposite, she shook her head severely, further discontent making itself visible in the manner of her shake.

But Mrs. Lathrop was proof against all manifestations of disapproval now. She flew back and forth in the old-gold-plush stationary rocker like the happy pendulum of some beatific clock. Jathrop was home. Jathrop was rich. Jathrop would buy her anything she wanted.

"I d'n know, I'm sure, Mrs. Lathrop," Susan went on, the discontent ringing somewhat more distinctly in her tone, "as I'm much taken with this idea of building us over, even if Jathrop does mean it kindly. I know there's a many as would nigh to go out of their senses at the very idea of being made over new for nothing, but I was never one to go out of my senses easy, and that young man on the woodpile doesn't give me any kind of secure feeling as to what he'll make out of my house. He looks to me like the kind of young man as will open doors square across windows where the knob'll smash the glass sure if you're trying to carry a bureau out at the time of the house-cleaning. The kind of cravats he's got looks to me like his chimneys would be very likely not to draw, and their color gives me a feeling that doughnuts in his house will smell in shut-up closets a week after the frying. You know what shut-up fryings is like after they've had no fresh air for a week, but I wasn't raised that way. When I have fish I have fish and done with it, and when I have onions I have onions, and I ain't very wild over maybe boarding my fish and my onions in my best bonnet henceforth and forever.

"Mrs. Brown was telling me yesterday as she heard of some city woman as had a system of ventilation put into her house, and the rats and mice used it so freely that you couldn't sleep nights. They nested in it, and they fought in it, and they died in it, all as happy and gay as you please, and the family had to have it picked out of the walls in the end and all new paper put on. That's the kind of ideas young men call modern improvements, and that young man on the woodpile is about as modern and improving as they make 'em, I take it.

"I can't say what it is about that young man that I don't like, but, being as I'm always frank and open with you, I will remark that so far I ain't found one thing about him as I do like. He's been down cellar hammering on the wall wherever the wind blew him to listeth to hammer, and I had to sit up-stairs and listen without no chance to blow myself. I caught him down on all fours this morning peeking under my front porch, and he didn't even have the manners to blush. As to the way he makes free with the outside of your house, I wouldn't waste breath with trying to tell you, but my own feeling is that an architect learns his trade on a tight-rope to judge from that young man's manner, and from what I've seen while he was swinging by one arm from your premises, I wouldn't feel safe to take a bath even on top of a chimney, myself."

Susan rose at this and went to the window and looked out; from her expression as she turned, it was plain to be seen that the artist was still at his task.

"I don't know, Mrs. Lathrop," she said, coming back to her seat, "I d'n know, I'm sure, as I'm took with this idea a tall. I never was one for favors either given or asked, and although I know this isn't no favor, but just a evidence of what I've been through with you first and last, still it's done in spite of me and I've got no feeling that I'm going to enjoy it. There's something about kindness as is always most trying to the people who've got no choice but to stand up and be tried. People who get freely given to is in the habit of getting what they don't want and can't use, but I ain't. I'm very far from it. There's nothing in me that's going to be pleased with getting a green hat when I needed a pink coat – no, sir.

"And I don't need nothing. Or if I do, I can buy it. I know Jathrop means it kindly, but Jathrop can't enter into my ways of thinking. Jathrop is looking into life from the Klondike gold-fields and I'm looking at it from my back stoop. That young man was out swishing his pocket handkerchief about and sucking his thumb and holding it up all yesterday afternoon, and about the time I'd made up my mind to bolt him out of the kitchen for a lunatic, he come in and told me he really thought there was wind enough in your back yard and my back yard together to run a windmill, in which case a water system could be easy inaugurated. I told him I didn't know you could inaugurate anything but a president, but he said anything as you hadn't had before and thought was going to work fine and be a great improvement could be inaugurated. I told him I supposed I could stand a windmill if you could.

"What do you think – what do you think, Mrs. Lathrop, if that young man didn't ask if he might go and look up the parlor fireplace! Well, I told him he could, and I give him a newspaper to shake his head on after he was done looking, too. He's been in my garret until I bet he knows every trunk label by heart, and I must say I feel as if I'd have very little of my own affairs to tell on Judgment Day if he gets dressed and out of his grave quicker than I get dressed and out of mine. But that isn't all, whatever you may think. There's a many other things about him as I don't like and don't like a tall.

"For one thing, he's got a way of looking around as if it was my house that was the main thing and I was the last and smallest piece of cross-paper tied in the kite's tail. To my order of thinking, that's a far from polite way for a young man as Jathrop's hiring and boarding to look on a woman whose house he may thank his lucky stars if he may get the chance to build over. Mrs. Macy says Mrs. Lupey says architects is all like that, but I'm far from seeing why. I don't consider that young man superior a tall. I consider his brains as very far from being equal to my own. When he asks me to hold the other end of his tape-line and does it just as if a pin would do as well, only I was handier at the moment, I'm very far from feeling flattered. I never saw just such a young man before, and when I think of being delivered up to him – house and all – for the summer, I'm also very far from feeling easy. I d'n know, I'm sure, what will be the end of this, but I do know that it looks to me like a pretty bad business."

Susan paused again and looked at her friend, but Mrs. Lathrop just rocked onward. Life had widened so tremendously for her that she couldn't possibly be perturbed in any way or by anything. If the roof fell in, Jathrop would buy her another, and if she were smashed by it, Jathrop would have her put together again. Why worry?

The young man remained ten days in all, and when his visit of investigation was completed, he returned to New York. Jathrop took him to the Lotus Club to wash and to the Yacht Club to lunch and to Claremont in the afternoon (in his motor), and they talked it all over. The young man had his sketches, ideas, ideals, and plans all tied into a neat patent cover with cost-estimates lightly glued in the back. Jathrop was deeply interested, and the young man expounded the inmost soul of all his measurements and proposed altitudes and alterations. The young man reminded Jathrop of his pertinent hypothesis that a house should express its owner. Jathrop's own view of "express" was that if you could pay the bill, it beat freighting all out of sight, but he felt that perhaps the young man meant something different, so he merely gave him a cigar.

The young man took the cigar and proceeded to elucidate his hypothesis by explaining that, having carefully studied both Mrs. Lathrop and Miss Clegg, he should suggest that Miss Clegg's house express her by being severely Doric and that Mrs. Lathrop's should be rambling and Queen Anne with wide, free floor spaces. He further suggested a hyena-headed door-knocker for Miss Clegg and an electric button to press, so that the door opened of itself for Mrs. Lathrop. Also a roofless pergola to connect the two houses. Jathrop liked all his ideas and sketches very much, but as he was really good-hearted and had not the least desire to present green hats to those who wanted pink coats, he had the whole book sent down to his mother and begged her to carefully inspect it in company with Susan Clegg. They inspected it.

"Well," said Susan, "all I can say is I'll have to carry this book home and sit down and try and make out what he does mean. He's done it very neat, that I will say, but between crosses and dotted lines and your house behind mine like two Roman emperors on a cameo pin, I can't make head or tail of what's going to be done to either of us. I can't even find my own house in this plan on some pages, and as for this bird-cage walk that I'm supposed to run back and forth in like a polar bear in a circus all day long, my own opinion is that if it's got no roof, it's going to be very hard indeed about the snow in winter, for I'll have to carry every single solitary shovelful to one end or the other so as to throw it out of either your kitchen window or mine. That's all the good that will do us."

Mrs. Lathrop swung to and fro, totally unconcerned. No sort of proposition could disconcert her now. If the house when built over proved a failure, Jathrop would build her another.

Susan took the prettily-bound portfolio home with her and spent the evening over it. She studied it profoundly and to some purpose, for the next morning when she brought it back to Mrs. Lathrop, it held but few secrets, other than those of a purely technical character, for her.

"I've been all through it," she said to her friend, "and now I can't really tell what I think a tall. But this I do know, if we ever really get these houses, I will be running back and forth from dawn to dark through that wire tunnel in a way as'll make the liveliest polar bear that ever kept taking a fresh turn look like a petrified tree beside me. Why, only to keep the conveniences he's got put in scoured bright would take me all of every morning in my house, to say nothing of wiping up the floors, for Jathrop isn't intending to buy us no carpets ever. We're to sit around on cherry when we ain't on Georgia pine, and he's got every mantelpiece marked with the kind of wood we're to burn in it, and he's been kind enough to tell us what colored china we're to use in each bedroom. We're to shoot our clothes into the cellar through a hole from up-stairs and wash 'em there in those two square boxes as we couldn't make out. That thing I read 'angle-hook' is a 'inglenook,' and so far from sitting in it to fish we're to set in it to look at the fire, if we can get any mahogany to burn in that particular fireplace.

"Those fans are stairs, we're to go up 'em the way the arrow points, and heaven knows where or how we're to get down again. What we thought was beds is closets, and what we thought was closets is beds, and it's evident with all his hopping and hanging he didn't really charge his mind with us a tall, for he's got a bedroom in your house marked 'Mr. Lathrop,' when the last bit of real thought would have made him just have to remember as you're a widow. He's give me a sewing-room when he must have seen that I always do my mending in the kitchen, and he's give us each enough places to wash to keep the whole community clean. I must say he's tried to be fair, for he's give both houses the same number of rooms and the same names to each room. We've each got a summer kitchen, but he left the spring and autumn to scratch along anyhow; we've each got a bathtub, and we've each got a china-closet as well as a pantry, which shows he had very little observation of the way you keep things in order."

Mrs. Lathrop absorbed all this with the happy calm of a contented (and rocking) sponge.

"But what takes me is the way he's not only got a finger, but has just smashed both hands, into every pie on the place," Susan continued. "He's moved the chicken-house and give us each a horse and give the cow a calf without even so much as 'by your leave.' I don't know which will be the most surprised if this plan comes true – me with my horse, or the cow finding herself with a calf in the fall as well as the spring this year. Then it beats me where he's going to get all his trees, for both houses is a blooming bower, and the way tree-toads will sing me to sleep shows he's had no close friends in the country. Trees brushing your window mean mosquitos at night and spiders whenever they feel so disposed. And that ain't all, whatever you may think, for you haven't got a window-pane over four inches square and, as every window has fifty-six of them, I see your windows going dirty till out of very shame I get 'em washed for your funeral. And that ain't all, whatever you may think, either, for the snow is going to lodge all around all those little gables and inglenooks he's trimmed your roof with, and you'll leak before six months goes by, or I'll lose my guess."

But it was impossible to impress Mrs. Lathrop. If things leaked, Jathrop would have them mended. She just rocked and rocked.

"I don't know what to write Jathrop about these plans," Susan Clegg said slowly. "Of course, I've got to write him something, and I declare I don't know what to say. He means it kindly, and there's nothing in the wide world that makes things so hard as when people mean kindly. You can do all sorts of things when people is enemies, but when any one means anything kindly, you've got to eat it if it kills you. Mrs. Allen was telling me the other day that since she's took a vow to do one good action daily, she's lost most all of her friends.

"That just shows how people feel about being grabbed by the neck and held under till you feel you've done enough good to 'em. Jathrop means this well, but I've got a feeling as we'll go through a great deal of misery being built over, and I really don't think we'll be so much better off after we've survived. You'll have to be torn right down, and the day that that young man was up on my porch post, he said he couldn't be positive that I'd keep even my north wall. He pounded it all over in the dining-room until the paper was a sight, and then when he saw how very far from pleased I was, he tried to get out of it by saying the wall would have to come down, anyhow. I think he saw toward the last that he'd gone too far in a many little ways. I didn't like his taking the hens off their nests to measure how wide the henhouse was. I consider a hen is one woman when she's seated at work and had ought not to be called off by any man alive. But, laws, that young man wasn't any respecter of work or hens or anything else! He called himself an artist, and since I've been studying these plans, I've begun to think as he was really telling the truth, for artists is all crazy, and anything crazier than these plans I never did see. Not content with having us wash in the sink and the cellar, we're to wash under the front stairs, too, not to speak of all but swimming up-stairs."

Mrs. Lathrop just smiled and rocked more.

"I'm not in favor of it," said Miss Clegg, rising to go. "I don't believe it'll be any real advantage. We'll be like the Indians that die as soon as you civilize 'em – that's what we'll be. The windmill will keep us awake nights, and you don't use any water to speak of, anyhow. So I don't see why I should be kept awake. As for that laughing tiger he's give me on my front door, I just won't have it, and that's all there is about it. A laughing tiger's no kind of a welcome to people you want, and when people come that I don't want, I don't need no tiger to let 'em know it. No, I never took to that young man, and I don't take to his plans. I don't like those four pillars across my front any more than I do that mouse-hole without a roof that he's give me to go to you in. I consider it a very poor compliment to you, Mrs. Lathrop, that he's fixed it so if I once start to go to see you, I've got to keep on, for I can't possibly get out so to go nowhere else."

Susan Clegg paused. Mrs. Lathrop rocked.

"Well?" said Miss Clegg, impatiently.

But Mrs. Lathrop just rocked. If Susan didn't like it, she needn't like it. Jathrop would pay the bill.

Susan Clegg went home, her mind still unconvinced.