Susan Clegg and Her Love Affairs. Warner Anne
skirts as is most plainly divided, and not a gore has she got to her name or her figure. She is a Chinese and no mistake, and you may believe me or not, just as you please, Mrs. Lathrop, but Jathrop without a so much as by-your-leave dumped her onto me for breakfast, and she's asleep on father's floor now."
"On your – " gasped Mrs. Lathrop.
"No, on father's," said Susan, "and now, Mrs. Lathrop, you see what he is at last. He not only marries a Chinese when if he'd been patient he might have got a white one, but he brings her home, and don't even tell you he's brought her home, or even that he's got her, or even that he's married her, or anything. A man might line my house with furnaces and have his baby picture done big in every room, and I'd never forgive his acting in such a way. I never hear the beat. It throws all the other calamities as ever come upon anybody in this community clean out of the shade. What will be the use of your having a pew in church; you won't even be able to face the minister now with your son's marrying one of them as we have to give our good money to teach to wear clothes. What good will your having the parlor papered be with everybody ashamed to go to see a woman who has got a Chinese daughter. To my order of thinking, you was better off poor. Why, they eat the hen's nests, the Chinese do, and prefer 'em to the eggs. It's small wonder I dreamed Jathrop was a cat, with him descending on us like the wrath of heaven married to a China woman. Jathrop's no fool though, and if you'd seen that humble heathen going along back of him with his big valise, you'd have to see as the man as picks out a wife like that never could have been a fool. I felt for her, I really did, only she was watching me with the wrong eye all the time, and it made me dizzy to try and look at her kindly. I'll tell you what, Mrs. Lathrop, when Jathrop comes back, you'll just go for him and give it to him good. Men must learn as they can't bring their Chinese wives into this community. There's a principle as we'd ought to live up to whether we enjoy it or not, and it's all against marrying Chinese. The Chinese are all right, I hope and trust, but nothing as feeds itself with a toothpick had ever ought to be held pressed to the bosom of families like you and me, Mrs. Lathrop. It isn't the way we're brought up to look at them, and it's a well-known fact as no matter what the leopard does to the Ethiopian, he sticks to his spot just the same as before – "
"But – " broke in Mrs. Lathrop.
"I don't want to hurt your feelings, Mrs. Lathrop, – we've been friends too long for me not to feel kindly to you, – but Mrs. Macy is a witness to his bringing her, even if I wasn't well known to be one as never lies. Mrs. Macy is a witness, too, to how he's got her dressed, and a more burning disgrace than this keeping your chosen wife in loose overalls and a jacket as any monkey on a hand-organ would weep to see the fit of, I never see. It may be the custom in the Klondike and may be convenient for sliding, but this is no sliding community, and, to my order of thinking, Jathrop would have showed you more affection and us more respect if he'd bought his wife a bonnet and a shawl before he brought her here."
Susan paused for breath. Mrs. Lathrop continued speechless. Mrs. Macy tried to lighten the atmosphere by remarking, "Lands, she's got a pigtail, too."
Susan picked up the cudgels afresh at that. "Wound twice around her head," she said bitterly; "oh, she is a figure of fun and no mistake. I d'n know, I'm sure, what Jathrop was ever thinking of the day he picked her out, but this I do know, and that is, that he'd better pick her off of me pretty quick. You know, Mrs. Lathrop, as a friend is a friend and I've always been a good friend to you, but I never was one to stand any nonsense – not now and not never – and when a man writes, 'I'm rich' and 'How's Susan Clegg?' he gets me where no Chinese wife ain't going to please me in a hurry. I'm glad Jathrop is rich, on your account, Mrs. Lathrop, but his being rich don't alter my views of him a mite. I look upon him as a gray deceiver, that's what I look upon him as, and if he's brought a piece of carnelian or anything back to me, you can tell him to give it to his lawfully wedded wife, for I don't want to have nothing more to do with him."
"But, Susan – " broke in poor Mrs. Lathrop.
"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