Making Over Martha 16

Making Over Martha 16

"Could it possibly have been the psychological moment?" suggested Miss

Crewe.

 

"The very one!" Mrs. Slawson took her up triumphantly. "The

sykeylogical moment! Mrs. Sherman was dead stuck on it. She used to

talk to her brother, Mr. Frank Ronald, about the sykeylogical moment,

till you’d think it’d stop the clock. Now if you know what a

sykeylogical moment is, an’ reco’nize it when it comes along, why, you

can take it from me, that’ll be a good chance for you to give the doctor

the letters in, but not before."

 

Katherine laughed. "I’m sure you’re right, Mrs. Slawson," she said.

"I’ll wait for the psychological moment. And I’ll wash my soiled linen

alone, too. You’ve given me a lot of good advice. I’m much, _much_

happier than I was before you came."

 

"Well, good-night then, an’ God bless you!" said Martha, rising. "Now

I’ll go back to my—_other_ childern."

 

Halfway between Crewesmere, and the main road, she came to a standstill.

 

"Hello!" exclaimed Dr. Ballard. "What are you doing so far from home at

the witching hour of eight o’clock? It looks suspicious. Don’t you

think you’d better stand and deliver?"

 

Martha beamed, as she always did at sight of those she liked.

 

"I’ll _stand_, all right, all right, sir, but you can search _me_ for

anything to deliver. My husban’ he went to New York this mornin’, an’

before he went, with all my worldly goods I he endowed, accordin’ to

scripture, as Mrs. Peckett says."

 

"Ho! Slawson’s gone to New York, has he?" Dr. Ballard exclaimed.

"Well, I’m off for Boston, myself, to-morrow. I’m on my way now to

tell—Madam Crewe."

 

Martha nodded.

 

"Certaintly you are. You’ll find Miss Katherine on the back porch, if

you hurry. But the ol’ lady makes her close the house at nine sharp, so

you’ve not much time to waste on me. Good luck to you, sir. A safe

journey, an’ quick return."

 

The doctor chuckled as she left him.

 

"That woman’s a _case_!" he said to himself, but under the stimulus of

her suggestion he hurried his steps.

 

"Going to Boston?" Katherine repeated, her brows contracting in a

troubled, triangular way which always gave a touching, childlike look to

her fine eyes. "Isn’t that rather sudden? You didn’t tell me anything

about it this afternoon—down Cherry Lane."

 

"No, I’d not made up my mind then. The resolve came later."

 

"You’ll return?"

 

"Oh, yes. Very soon, if I get what I’m going after. Less soon, if I

don’t."

 

Katherine turned her face away.

 

"That sounds mysterious. But I remember you like mysteries."

 

"’Sure I do,’ as Mrs. Slawson would say. I like mysteries for the fun

of clearing them up. It’s to clear up a mystery I’m going to Boston."

 

Katherine withheld the question on her lips.

 

"You don’t ask what mystery."

 

"If you wanted me to know, you’d tell me."

 

"Well, then—I’m going _to discover the secret of me life_. In other

words, I’m going to see if I can get a line on my grandfather—the

unfortunate gentleman—no, of course he couldn’t have been a _gentleman_,

because he was a bailiff!—the unfortunate beggar who got himself

disliked by his employer, and Madam Crewe. Personally, I’ve no social

use for defunct forbears. It’s a bit curious, because I’m a Bostonian.

But professionally I’m all right on them. They have their uses

scientifically. If my grandfather had a bug—I mean _germ_ (disease or

vice germ) I needn’t necessarily inherit that particular insect, but

there’s no denying that if it happens along, I’m more open to infection,

than a fellow whose grandad hadn’t specialized as an entomologist. I’ve

a notion I’d like to read my title clear. So I’m going to Boston to dig

up dead deeds—in both senses, and see what I have back of me."

 

"I’d much rather see what I have ahead," Katherine laughed mirthlessly.

 

Dr. Ballard’s chin went up with a jerk.

 

"Oh, I’m not afraid of what’s before me. I’m willing to stand and face

the future. If a fellow’s straight goods on his own account, he has

nothing to fear. He’ll win out, somehow. But I wouldn’t care to look

forward, if I’d lied, or was a coward, or taken what belonged to some

other fellow, or had any other sort of dirty rag of memory trailing

after me. You never can tell when such a thing will trip you up. I

say, you’re not cold this broiling night, are you?"

 

"No. Why?"

 

"You shivered."

 

"Did I? It makes me nervous to hear you talk about ’dirty rags of

memory.’ I didn’t suppose any one lived who hadn’t regrets. I know _I_

have."

 

"No doubt. I can imagine what for. _I’m_ talking of real offenses.

The sort of thing Madam Crewe hints at in connection with my

grandfather. By Jove, I wonder what the poor old duffer was guilty of.

Perhaps, to put it euphemistically, he appropriated funds not his

own—swiped from _your_ great-grandfather’s till. Seriously, that’s no

joke! I can imagine that even if a chap didn’t care much about his

family-tree, it might be a rather scorching reflection to know you’d

descended—_fallen_—from a rotten apple of a thief, or something. You’d

be forever looking for some taint of it to crop out in you. I confess,

it wouldn’t rejoice even my democratic soul. But that’s what I’m going

out for to discover. So, when next you see me, perhaps you won’t."

 

Katherine’s hand went toward him in an impulse too strong to resist.

 

"You know better than that," she said in a voice not wholly steady.

 

Dr. Ballard’s large, firm grasp closed about her slender trembling

fingers.

 

"I know better than that," he repeated gravely. "But there’s something

else, not your friendship, I can’t be so confident of. When I come

back, if everything’s all right, as I believe it will be, I hope you’ll

be kind to me, and set my heart at rest about that too."

 

Katherine could not answer. After a moment of silent waiting, the

doctor gently released her hand.

 

"I met Mrs. Slawson as I came along," he said in his usual manner.

"She’s a trump, that woman. The most normal human creature I’ve ever

met."

 

"Her English isn’t normal," Katherine said, trying to control the

helpless trembling that was shaking her from head to foot.

 

"She’s an impressionist. That’s what’s the matter with Hannah!—I should

say, Martha. She gets and produces her effects in the large. She

doesn’t trouble with details. After all, I wonder if we’d like her

better, given the possibility of making a grammarian of her."

 

Katharine smiled.

 

"She told me, the other day, that she was being made over. She

mentioned the people concerned in it, and the different things they were

making her over into. I don’t recollect that grammarian was in the

list."

 

"If the rest succeed as well in their efforts as I would in mine, if I

attempted to make a Lindley Murray of her, I don’t think we need worry.

She’ll progress along her own lines. But she’s not various. You can’t

make a complex organism out of an elemental creature like Mrs. Slawson,

any more than you could make a contemporaneous ’new woman’ out of

Brunnhilde."

 

"Fancy _Martha_ mounted on a celestial steed, bearing the souls of dead

heroes to Walhalla!"

 

Dr. Ballard laughed.

 

"Well, I can tell you this, if she saw ’twas for the good of the souls,

not the celestial steed, nor the dead heroes, nor Walhalla itself, would

faze her. If you ever should need some one to stand by in an emergency,

I couldn’t think of a better than Martha Slawson. I hope you’ll

remember that, when I’m gone."

 

A moment, and he was gone, had turned abruptly, and left her without

even so much as good-by.

 

Katherine bent her head to look down at the hand he had held, on which

presently two tears plashed.

 

"She’ll shut me off from that, too," she murmured bitterly. "She’ll

shut me off from that too—_if she can_!"