Susan Clegg and Her Love Affairs

She had just finished washing and scouring the pots and pans and was flushing the waste-pipe of Mrs. Lathrop's new porcelain sink with lye-water so strong that her eyes ran tears from the fumes, when the voices growing more and more audible told her that Jathrop was leading his mother and his guest toward the kitchen. She just had time hurriedly to dry her hands on the roller towel when they appeared.

"Well, well," exclaimed Jathrop, in apparent surprise, "if here ain't our old friend, Susan Clegg!"

There is no question that Miss Clegg was slightly flustered at thus being taken unawares, but she recovered herself promptly, and shook hands cordially with Jathrop and not less cordially with the little millionaire, whom he introduced as Mr. Kettlewell. And Mr. Kettlewell was cordiality itself. Everybody sat down, right there in the kitchen and talked for a full hour, and in the course of the talk, Jathrop told Susan that he had arranged with a department store in New York to let her have whatever she needed for her built-over house and charge the same to his account. She could select the things from the firm's catalogue, or go to the city at his expense and pick out the actual articles. It was his Christmas present to his mother's and his own oldest friend. In conclusion, Jathrop joined with his mother in an invitation to Susan to take Christmas dinner with them; and Mr. Kettlewell smilingly begged her, for his sake, not to refuse. Altogether Susan had the pleasantest evening she had experienced in years, and the next morning, while Jathrop and Mr. Kettlewell were off in the car after evergreens with which to decorate the two houses, she ran over with the express purpose of telling Mrs. Lathrop so.

"Jathrop mayn't have much judgment when it comes to selecting architects," she began, "nor again when it comes to selecting servants, as was proved by his bringing that Hop Loo all the way from the Klondike. Nor again, neither, when it comes to wives, if it's a real fact that he's going to marry a brown-baked señora; but there's no getting away from the fact that he's a king in choosing his men friends. I've seen men in my life of all sorts and descriptions, from the minister to the blacksmith, but I ain't never see before such a handsome, high-minded, superior gentleman as Jathrop's friend, Mr. Kettlewell. I never thought much of bald-headed men before, but his head is so white and shiny, it's a pleasure to look at it. And I always just hated a red beard; but Mr. Kettlewell's beard is of a different red. It's a nice, warm, comforting red as makes you feel as cosy as the glow of a red-hot stove when the thermometer's down around zero. I can't say either, Mrs. Lathrop, as I wasn't more or less prejudiced against men as never rightly grew up, but stopped in the women's sizes. But there's a something about Mr. Kettlewell's proportions as gives you the idea he's really taller than he seems. And there's only one thing to compare his voice to. It's milk and honey. My lands, what a sweet, clear-rolling, liquid voice that Mr. Kettlewell has!"

"Ja – " began Mrs. Lathrop.

"Yes, I heard him. But I don't put that against Mr. Kettlewell, not a tall. I'm sure he made every penny of it honestly, and if he's retired from business now, it don't mean he's quit work. It's no easy job cutting coupons off all the bonds he must have, and collecting rents is a occupation I don't envy nobody. It's the penalty that rich men have to pay for their success. They work hard to get the principal, and then they're made to work twice as hard to get the interest. There's no such thing as rest for the rich any more'n there is for the poor. I used to think before Father died as I'd like to roll in wealth, but it ain't no easy rolling, I can tell you that, Mrs. Lathrop, especially when you've got a tenant like Mrs. Macy, who won't buy so much as a gas-tip or do so much as drive a nail without charging it up to the owner."

Miss Clegg's participation in the Christmas dinner at her neighbors' was twofold. She took part in its preparation as well as in its discussion. It was her soup which began it, it was her "stuffing" which added zest to the roast turkey, it was her cranberry sauce which sweetened contrastingly the high seasoning, and it was her mince pie which brought the repast to a fitting and enjoyable close. Seated opposite to Mr. Kettlewell, where she could revel in a full view of his shining pate and his warmly comforting whiskers, her enjoyment was ocular as well as gustatory; and under the caressing sweetness of his voice it was likewise auricular. For the occasion Jathrop had provided a fine vintage champagne, and though Miss Clegg, whose total-abstinence principles forbade her to even taste, refrained from so much as touching her lips to the edge of her glass, she unquestionably warmed in the stimulating atmosphere of the sparkling, bubbling, golden juice of the grape. To her it was indeed the red-letter Christmas of her life, and every incident, of the dinner especially, was a matter for reflection and rumination in the succeeding hours.

In this vale of tears, however, there is apparently no great joy without its compensating sorrow; and in Susan Clegg's case the one followed swiftly on the heels of the other. In the pale gray of the dawn of the following day, Susan Clegg dashed wildly out of her kitchen door and flitted with lifted skirts across the brief intervening space that led to Mrs. Lathrop's back door. As pallid as the morning itself, her scant hair streaming, her eyes wide with mixed terror and indignation, she burst into her neighbor's kitchen, where to her great relief she found her old friend already up and occupied.

One glimpse of Susan was enough for Mrs. Lathrop. Up went her hands and down went she on to the nearest chair with an inarticulate gasp of horrified yet questioning astonishment, while Miss Clegg flopped limply into another at the end of the kitchen table.

There she must have sat for a full minute before she could get breath to utter a word, which, being contrary to all her habits, was in itself terrifying to her friend. Eventually, however, she forced herself to assume an upright position and simultaneously attained a somewhat feeble attempt at speech.

"Well, of all things in this world to happen to me!" Then she paused for a fresh breath, which being utterly without precedent, added mightily to Mrs. Lathrop's alarm. "And even now at this minute I don't really know whether I'm more dead than alive, or more alive than dead."

Mrs. Lathrop, believing that the situation being extraordinary, some extraordinary effort on her part was demanded, stirred herself to a prolonged speech.

"Don't tell me I'm looking – "

"No, I'm not a ghost, if that's what you mean. You are looking at Susan Clegg in the flesh – all the flesh that ain't been scared clean off her. But it's the greatest miracle as ever happened in this community that it's my body and not my spirit as is here to tell the tale. My house was broken into by a burglar, Mrs. Lathrop, and I was tied up and gagged in one of my own chairs."

Mrs. Lathrop just gasped. Susan drew herself up a little straighter, gaining courage from the sound of her own voice, and striking something like her old oral gait.

"I was gagged for five hours, Mrs. Lathrop, and knowing me as you do for all these years and years, maybe you can feel what being gagged for five hours and not able to say even 'boo' meant to a active person like me. Every one of those hours was like a eternity in a Spanish inferno of torture. And everything I possess in this world, from my bonnet and striped silk dress to Father's deeds at the mercy of that gagger. And all I've got to say is this: If I hadn't of been built over, it never in the wide creation would have happened. And if your son Jathrop thinks he can ever make up to me for being gagged by inviting me to a Christmas dinner, most of which I cooked with my own hands, and offering to give me strange pieces of furniture to take the place of pieces as is old friends and dearer than the apples of my two eyes, he'd better do some more thinking. There never was nothing about the house I was born in and my mother and father died in to make a burglar look at it twice. No burglar as had any respect for himself or his calling, Mrs. Lathrop, would have looked at it once or knowed as it was there. But built over it's as different as diamon's is from pebbles. It looks money from the tips of its lightning rods to its cellar windows and is as inviting to robbers as if it had a sign on the gatepost, reading: 'Walk in!' So, however you look at it, there's nobody responsible for my gagging and for whatever is missing but one man, and that man is Jathrop Lathrop. It's easy to be seen as he's no more fit to have money than a crow as steals gold trinkets that cost fortunes and goes and hides 'em in hollow trees. He was born poor, and the Lord meant him to stay poor, no matter what Mrs. Allen and her Persian religion has to say about things as happens being meant to happen. The Lord hadn't nothing to do with Jathrop going to the Klondike and getting rich, you can be certain about that. If he hadn't been fool enough to take a kicking cow for a perfectly good debt and then let it loose to ride over a peaceful and long-suffering community, he'd 'a' lived and died a pauper in this here very town. So's far as I can see it was the devil and not the Lord as guided Jathrop from the first, and everything as has happened since shows the devil is still guiding him. Everything he turns his mind to goes by contraries. I'm not saying anything against the goodness of Jathrop's intentions, mind you, Mrs. Lathrop, but no matter how good they are, evil and misery certainly seems sure to follow."

The tirade stirred Mrs. Lathrop to her feet, but she was not resentful. She knew that Susan Clegg's bitterness was confined to her tongue, and that even with that she could salve as well as sting.

"Can't I – ?" she suggested.

"Indeed you can," answered Miss Clegg. "I never felt as I needed a cup of tea more, and if the doughnuts I brought you ain't all eat up, I'd relish four or five of 'em right now."

"You haven't – " began Mrs. Lathrop, taking down the teapot.

"No; but I'm coming to it. I begun with the cause, and the effect'll come trailing after like the tails of Mary's little lambs. Only the tails in this case was bigger than the sheep. It may have been hearing the noise Jathrop makes when he eats, or it may have been your turkey gravy or your biscuits, Mrs. Lathrop, or all of 'em put together. Not knowing which, I'm not foolish enough to blame one more'n the other. But it's a fact as is undeniable that I never slept poorer than last night. I was in bed by nine, but I never closed my eyes till eleven, and I certainly heard the clock strike midnight. I counted goats jumping over a stile, and I counted 'em backward as well as forward, but I heard one struck, and I heard two. And then I heard something as set my hair up on end and the gooseflesh sprouting all over me. It sounded like footsteps in the 'But. Pan.,' and they was too heavy for the cat's, I could tell that at once, though at two in the morning it's surprising how loud a cat's footsteps can sound, especially when it's reached the pouncing stage, and the rat ain't got no hole to run to. I'd forgot to put the turkey leg in the ice-box as I'd carried home with me, and all I could think of was that if it was the cat, there'd be nothing left on that bone by morning, unless I stopped things right then and immediately. You'd never believe how cold a house can be at two o'clock in the morning of the day after Christmas unless you'd got up in it as I did; and now to look back at it, I see how lucky it was as it was as cold as it was, for if it hadn't of been, I'd a gone down just as I was, and I was in no trim to meet a man burglar, I can tell you that. So I just slipped into this flannel wrapper and a old pair of slippers, which I've got on now under these arctics, and I picked up the candle as I'd lit, and down-stairs I went. Well, Mrs. Lathrop, I hope you may never in your born days in this world or the other have such a shock as met me there face to face in my own new, built-over kitchen. If there wasn't the biggest giant of a man I ever see coming out of the shadows between the cookstove and the cellar door. And he with his head all wrapped around in one of my best plaid roller towels, so that nothing of him was to be seen but two fierce, staring, bloodshot eyes as gleamed like a wild beast's. Oh, my soul and body, Mrs. Lathrop, that minute! How I ever kept my senses I don't pretend to say, more especially as he was on me with one jump. There was no such thing as holding on to the candle, you can see that. It dropped, and I never knew I dropped it. For, of course, I shut my eyes, and when your eyes is shut, there's no knowing whether there's a lighted candle about or whether there isn't."

In her agitation over the recital, Mrs. Lathrop, who was placing cups and saucers on the table, let one of the cups slide crashing to the floor. "Oh, Su – !" she exclaimed.

"You may well say: 'Oh, Susan!'" Miss Clegg continued. "There is times when 'Oh, Susan' don't half express the state of affairs, and this was one of 'em, Mrs. Lathrop. It wasn't in nature for me not to scream, so I screamed, and it was that scream that did the business. It showed the burglar I wasn't deaf and dumb, and people as isn't deaf and dumb is looked on by burglars as their natural enemies. Maybe some people can scream without opening their mouths, but I never was one of that kind, and the kind as open their mouths when they scream is the kind that all burglars prefer. It saves 'em the trouble of forcing apart their jaws. I never shut my mouth after opening it; for the burglar just shoved something in it as quick as scat, and then he tied a bandage around back of my head so I couldn't spit it out. Then he picked me up and plumped me down hard in a chair and tied me fast to it with my own clothesline. And all the time he never no more opened his lips to speak than if he couldn't. It's my opinion he must have had a cold and lost his voice. Either that, or his voice was such a unpleasant voice he was ashamed to let anybody hear it. For it ain't in common sense as a man, even if he is a burglar, could keep as still as he did, if he had a speaking voice that's in any way fit for use. I know in the time he took there was a lot of things I felt to say to him, and would if I could, and common sense'll tell you, Mrs. Lathrop, that he must have felt to say a lot of things to me. But he didn't make so much as a peep behind his roller towel."

"Did – ?" asked Mrs. Lathrop, pouring the tea.

"I can't say as he did or he didn't. I haven't missed nothing yet, but then I haven't looked. Still, if he didn't I can't say as I'd have much respect for him. What sort of a burglar would a burglar be to take all that trouble of breaking in, binding and gagging, and then go away without helping himself to something for his trouble. I ain't got no love for burglars in general or in particular. But any burglar as 'ld do a fool trick like that I ain't got no respect for neither."

"How – ?" queried her neighbor as she passed Susan her cup.

"It was something of a job I can tell you, but when I sets my mind to a thing I sets my mind to it, and ropes and a kitchen chair ain't got the power to stop me. I begun wriggling as soon as I heard the burglar shut the door behind him, and I kept on wriggling for every minute of the five hours. A tramped-on worm never did more turning and wriggling than I did between two and seven this morning, and at last wriggling being its own reward, I wriggled free, first with my hands and then with my feet. But before I got my feet free, I undid the band and ungagged myself and said just a few of the things that was bottled up all that time. The Bible says there's a time to talk and a time to be still, but there's such a thing as overdoing the still time, I think, and when you're gagged by a burglar is one of 'em."

Susan sipped her tea for a moment in silence.

"Where's Jathrop and Mr. Kettlewell?" she asked at length. "Ain't they up yet?"

Mrs. Lathrop nodded. "They start – " she began.

"You don't mean they've both lit out already?" asked Susan in surprise. Then: "I was hoping to see Mr. Kettlewell again. But it's a long journey back to New York, so I suppose they set off before light."

Mrs. Lathrop nodded once more.

"Aren't – ?" she questioned.

"I certainly am. I'm going to report the burglary at once. I've got a clue, and it ought to be easy enough to run down that burglar." She drew from her bosom a rather damp handkerchief. "That's what he left me to chew on for five hours," she said, as she spread it out. "And there's the clue right there in the corner."

Mrs. Lathrop took it to the window and inspected it through her glasses. The handkerchief was initialed with a "K."

The New Year came and January was passing and, so far as Susan Clegg cared to divulge at least, there was no news of her burglar. It was noted, however, not only by Mrs. Lathrop, but by Mrs. Macy and Gran'ma Mullins, and indeed by all the ladies of the Sewing Society, that Miss Clegg had adopted an air of secretiveness concerning the matter that was quite foreign to her usual frank, unreserved communicativeness. But the curiosity provoked by this strangely unfamiliar attitude was swallowed up in the sensational tidings which spread throughout the community shortly after. Without so much as a hint of warning, Susan Clegg had vanished between dark and dawn, leaving her house locked, bolted, and barred, the blinds drawn, and the shutters fast closed.

For once Mrs. Lathrop, thus deprived of her prop and her stay, evinced sufficient initiative to have the cellar door forced and a search of the premises made; a rumor having got abroad that the burglar had returned, this time more murderously inclined, and that Miss Clegg's mangled corpse would be found stiff and stark within her own darkened domicile. To every one's infinite relief the search proved the rumor utterly unfounded; and it proved something more, as well. It proved that Susan's departure was plainly premeditated – "with malice prepense," to quote Judge Fitch – since all her best clothes had gone with her. Whereupon sentiment switched to the opposite pole, and it was openly declared that Miss Clegg had gone after the burglar.

The wonder was of a magnitude calculated to extend far beyond the proverbial nine days, and it probably would have greatly exceeded that limit, had not the heroine of the affair chosen to cut it short of her own volition by reappearing quite as suddenly as she had vanished, at the end of a single week.

Mrs. Lathrop, looking across from her bedroom window as she arose from her night's sleep on the morning of the eighth day, was joyously startled to see the Clegg windows unshaded, and the house otherwise displaying signs of rehabitation. Nor did she have long to wait for the explanation of the mystery, which to the exclusion of everything else had filled her mind ever since her friend's going. With a shawl over her head and shoulders, she hastened through the pergola, and the next moment was facing her neighbor with glad eyes across four yards of kitchen floor space.

"Oh, Susan! Such a fri – " These were her four and a half words of greeting.

"I knew it would," Miss Clegg caught her up, beaming as Mrs. Lathrop couldn't remember ever to have seen her beam before. "I knew it would frighten you all half to death, but when a thing's to be done, it's to be done, and there ain't no use shirking. I had to go, and I had to go quick, and I was never so glad of anything in my life, past or present, as that I went. Of course, it was all along of that burglary, as any fool might have guessed if they took the trouble. In the first place, I don't mind telling you now, I went straight to Mr. Weskin the morning after it happened, and I took him the clue and showed it to him. The way he spun around in his spinning chair was fit to make even a level-headed person like me dizzy. He examined the linen, and he examined the way the K was worked, and then he says, no it couldn't possibly be Mr. Kimball's. Now, what do you think of that? Just as if I ever suspected it was. I guess I know Mr. Kimball well enough to know him, even if he has got his head wrapped up in one of my new roller towels, and I told Lawyer Weskin so. Mr. Kimball, indeed! But Lawyer Weskin said as he didn't never hear of a burglar whose name commenced with K, and he didn't know a soul in these parts either, burglar or no burglar, whose name did, except Mr. Kimball. There's only one way to ferret out the perpetrator of a crime, he says, and that's by deduction, and the first rule of deduction is to guess what the K stands for. I never thought much of Lawyer Weskin, I'm free to admit that, but if he don't know nothing else, it's as clear as shooting that he does know about education. For in the end it worked out just as he said, and the Lord be praised for it."

"You don't – " began Mrs. Lathrop in astonishment.

"I don't say as Mr. Kimball had a thing to do with it. I certainly don't. In the first place, Mr. Kimball would never dare to come to my house at such a hour of the morning, and in the second place Mr. Kimball never carried as fine a handkerchief as the one I chewed on. So that put it past Mr. Kimball. And the only other K I could possibly think of was old Mrs. Kitts over to Meadville, who could no more of got over here than could the king of the Sandwich Islands, whose name begins with K, too. There was the Kellys, of course, but the Kellys couldn't qualify neither, for they're too rich to need to do any burglarizing. Well, I can tell you, I soon come to a point where I didn't know where to turn, and I never would of turned neither, if it hadn't of been for a letter I got the day of the night I went away. You'd never guess in the world, Mrs. Lathrop, who that letter was from so I may as well tell you first as last. It was from Mr. Kettlewell."

Mrs. Lathrop opened her mouth in astonishment, but no sound came forth.

"I knew it'ld surprise you, but it's as true as we're both standing in this kitchen at this minute. It was a very nice letter, and it said as how he had admired me from the first minute he saw me, but more particularly after he'd sat opposite to me at the table and eat my cranberry sauce. He said he'd always loved cranberry sauce, but as he felt he'd never tasted none until he tasted mine. I certainly never see a more complimentary letter than that letter of Mr. Kettlewell's. But it was the end of the letter where he signed his name that lit me up with the clear light of revelation. Until I see his name spelled out there in black and white, I never once believed it begun with a K. I'd thought all along as his name was Cattlewell, with a C. Far be it from me, Mrs. Lathrop, to ever have suspected as Jathrop's friend would stoop to housebreaking and to binding and gagging a lone woman, but there's other ways as his handkerchief might have got to my mouth, and I felt to know the truth. His address was on the letter, and there was nothing as could have stayed me from getting to that address as fast as steam and steel could carry me. I left in the middle of the night, and I got to New York in the morning, and I didn't have that feeling for nothing. Mr. Kettlewell was at his hotel, and in all my born days I never see a person gladder to see anybody than Mr. Kettlewell was to see me. It's marvelous what a impression a little good cooking will make on a man, even if it's only in cranberry sauce. His mouth actually hadn't stopped watering yet. Leastwise he said it hadn't, and I'd be a fool not to believe him. He begun talking about it right away, and I let him talk, just so's I could look at his shiny bald head and his red whiskers without having to think of anything else except the sound of his milk-and-honey voice. Finally he said he supposed I'd come to the city to select Jathrop's Christmas present of furnishings, and if I'd like him to help me select 'em, he'd be glad enough to go along and lend a hand. Well, nothing could of been nicer than that, now, could it? But I told him I wasn't one as traveled all the way to New York under false pretences, and that if he must have the truth, I'd never give one thought to Jathrop's present since he mentioned it. All my thought, I said, had been give to finding a handkerchief with a K onto it, which I'd washed and ironed with my own hands and brought to him, believing I must of picked it up at the Christmas dinner by mistake, and not wanting him to feel the need of it any longer. And you can believe me or not, Mrs. Lathrop, just as you feel about it, if he didn't right then and there on seeing that clue, confess that it did belong to him, and that he couldn't for the life of him remember where he'd left it."