much. Let me try my hand at it. There, that's it, betwixt and
between. Now, lather again and try it."
This time the unmistakable sand-papery sound of hair-severing
could he heard.
"How is it?" she fluttered anxiously.
"It gets the--ouch!--hair," Billy grunted, frowning and making
faces. "But it--gee!--say!--ouch!--pulls like Sam Hill."
"Stay with it," she encouraged. "Don't give up the ship, big
Injun with a scalplock. Remember what Bert says and be the last
of the Mohegans."
At the end of fifteen minutes he rinsed his face and dried it,
sighing with relief.
"It's a shave, in a fashion, Saxon, but I can't say I'm stuck on
it. It takes out the nerve. I'm as weak as a cat."
He groaned with sudden discovery of fresh misfortune.
"What's the matter now?" she asked.
"The back of my neck--how can I shave the back of my neck? I'll
have to pay a barber to do it."
Saxon's consternation was tragic, but it only lasted a moment.
She took the brush in her hand.
"Sit down, Billy."
"What?--you?" he demanded indignantly.
"Yes; me. If any barber is good enough to shave your neck, and
then I am, too."
Billy moaned and groaned in the abjectness of humility and
surrender, and let her have her way.
"There, and a good job," she informed him when she had finished.
"As easy as falling off a log. And besides, it means twenty-six
dollars a year. And you'll buy the crib, the baby buggy, the
pinning blankets, and lots and lots of things with it. Now sit
still a minute longer."
She rinsed and dried the back of his neck and dusted it with
talcum powder.
"You're as sweet as a clean little baby, Billy Boy."
The unexpected and lingering impact of her lips on the back of
his neck made him writhe with mingled feelings not all
unpleasant.
Two days later, though vowing in the intervening time to have
nothing further to do with the instrument of the devil, he
permitted Saxon to assist him to a second shave. This time it
went easier.
"It ain't so bad," he admitted. "I'm gettin' the hang of it. It's
all in the regulating. You can shave as close as you want an' no
more close than you want. Barbers can't do that. Every once an'
awhile they get my face sore."
The third shave was an unqualified success, and the culminating
bliss was reached when Saxon presented him with a bottle of witch
hazel. After that he began active proselyting. He could not wait
a visit from Bert, but carried the paraphernalia to the latter's
house to demonstrate.
"We've ben boobs all these years, Bert, runnin' the chances of
barber's itch an' everything. Look at this, eh? See her take
hold. Smooth as silk. Just as easy. . . . There! Six minutes by
the clock. Can you beat it? When I get my hand in, I can do it in
three. It works in the dark. It works under water. You couldn't
cut yourself if you tried. And it saves twenty-six dollars a
year. Saxon figured it out, and she's a wonder, I tell you."
CHAPTER VI
The trafficking between Saxon and Mercedes increased. The latter
commanded a ready market for all the fine work Saxon could
supply, while Saxon was eager and happy in the work. The expected
babe and the cut in Billy's wages had caused her to regard the
economic phase of existence more seriously than ever. Too little
money was being laid away in the bank, and her conscience pricked
her as she considered how much she was laying out on the pretty
necessaries for the household and herself. Also, for the first
time in her life she was spending another's earnings. Since a
young girl she had been used to spending her own, and now, thanks
to Mercedes she was doing it again, and, out of her profits,
assaying more expensive and delightful adventures in lingerie.
Mercedes suggested, and Saxon carried out and even bettered, the
dainty things of thread and texture. She made ruffled chemises of
sheer linen, with her own fine edgings and French embroidery on
breast and shoulders; linen hand-made combination undersuits; and
nightgowns, fairy and cobwebby, embroidered, trimmed with Irish
lace. On Mercedes' instigation she executed an ambitious and
wonderful breakfast cap for which the old woman returned her
twelve dollars after deducting commission.
She was happy and busy every waking moment, nor was preparation
for the little one neglected. The only ready made garments she
bought were three fine little knit shirts. As for the rest, every
bit was made by her own hands--featherstitched pinning blankets,
a crocheted jacket and cap, knitted mittens, embroidered bonnets;
slim little princess slips of sensible length; underskirts on
absurd Lilliputian yokes; silk-embroidered white flannel
petticoats; stockings and crocheted boots, seeming to burgeon
before her eyes with wriggly pink toes and plump little calves;
and last, but not least, many deliciously soft squares of
bird's-eye linen. A little later, as a crowning masterpiece, she
was guilty of a dress coat of white silk, embroidered. And into
all the tiny garments, with every stitch, she sewed love. Yet
this love, so unceasingly sewn, she knew when she came to
consider and marvel, was more of Billy than of the nebulous,
ungraspable new bit of life that eluded her fondest attempts at
visioning.
"Huh," was Billy's comment, as he went over the mite's wardrobe
and came back to center on the little knit shirts, "they look
more like a real kid than the whole kit an' caboodle. Why, I can
see him in them regular manshirts."
Saxon, with a sudden rush of happy, unshed tears, held one of the
little shirts up to his lips. He kissed it solemnly, his eyes
resting on Saxon's.
"That's some for the boy," he said, "but a whole lot for you."
But Saxon's money-earning was doomed to cease ignominiously and
tragically. One day, to take advantage of a department store
bargain sale, she crossed the bay to San Francisco. Passing along
Sutter Street, her eye was attracted by a display in the small
window of a small shop. At first she could not believe it; yet
there, in the honored place of the window, was the wonderful
breakfast cap for which she had received twelve dollars from
Mercedes. It was marked twenty-eight dollars. Saxon went in and
interviewed the shopkeeper, an emaciated, shrewd-eyed and
middle-aged woman of foreign extraction.
"Oh, I don't want to buy anything," Saxon said. "I make nice
things like you have here, and I wanted to know what you pay for
them--for that breakfast cap in the window, for instance."
The woman darted a keen glance to Saxon's left hand, noted the
innumerable tiny punctures in the ends of the first and second
fingers, then appraised her clothing and her face.
"Can you do work like that?"
Saxon nodded.
"I paid twenty dollars to the woman that made that." Saxon
repressed an almost spasmo
dic gasp, and thought coolly for a
space. Mercedes had given her twelve. Then Mercedes had pocketed
eight, while she, Saxon, had furnished the material and labor.
"Would you please show me other hand-made things nightgowns,
chemises, and such things, and tell me the prices you pay?"
"Can you do such work?"
"Yes."
"And will you sell to me?"
"Certainly," Saxon answered. "That is why I am here."
"We add only a small amount when we sell," the woman went on;
"you see, light and rent and such things, as well as a profit or
else we could not be here."
"It's only fair," Saxon agreed.
Amongst the beautiful stuff Saxon went over, she found a
nightgown and a combination undersuit of her own manufacture. For
the former she had received eight dollars from Mercedes, it was
marked eighteen, and the woman had paid fourteen; for the latter
Saxon received six, it was marked fifteen, and the woman had paid
eleven.
"Thank you," Saxon said, as she drew on her gloves. "I should
like to bring you some of my work at those prices."
"And I shall be glad to buy it . . . if it is up to the mark." The
woman looked at her severely. "Mind you, it must be as good as
this. And if it is, I often get special orders, and I'll give you
a chance at them."
Mercedes was unblushingly candid when Saxon reproached her.
"You told me you took only a commission," was Saxon's accusation.
"So I did; and so I have."
"But I did all the work and bought all the materials, yet you
actually cleared more out of it than I did. You got the lion's
share."
"And why shouldn't I, my dear? I was the middleman. It's the way
of the world. 'Tis the middlemen that get the lion's share."
"It seems to me most unfair," Saxon reflected, more in sadness
than anger.
"That is your quarrel with the world, not with me," Mercedes
changes. "We mustn't quarrel, my dear. I like you so much. La la,
it is nothing to you, who are young and strong with a man young
and strong. Listen, I am an old woman. And old Barry can do
little for me. He is on his last legs. His kidneys are 'most
gone. Remember, 'tis I must bury him. And I do him honor, for
beside me he'll have his last long steep. A stupid, dull old man,
heavy, an ox, 'tis true; but a good old fool with no trace of
evil in him. The plot is bought and paid for--the final
installment was made up, in part, out of my commissions from you.
Then there are the funeral expenses. It must be done nicely. I
have still much to save. And Barry may turn up his toes any day."
Saxon sniffed the air carefully, and knew the old woman had been
drinking again.
"Come, my dear, let me show you." Leading Saxon to a large sea
chest in the bedroom, Mercedes lifted the lid. A faint perfume,
as of rose-petals, floated up. "Behold, my burial trousseau. Thus
I shall wed the dust."
Saxon's amazement increased, as, article by article, the old
woman displayed the airiest, the daintiest, the most delicious
and most complete of bridal outfits. Mercedes held up an ivory
fan.
"In Venice 'twas given me, my dear.--See, this comb, turtle
shell; Bruce Anstey made it for me the week before he drank his
last bottle and scattered his brave mad brains with a Colt's
44.--This scarf. La la, a Liberty scarf--"
"And all that will be buried with you," Saxon mused, "Oh, the
extravagance of it!"
Mercedes laughed.
"Why not? I shall die as I have lived. It is my pleasure. I go to
the dust as a bride. No cold and narrow bed for me. I would it
were a coach, covered with the soft things of the East, and
pillows, pillows, without end."
"It would buy you twenty funerals and twenty plots," Saxon
protested, shocked by this blasphemy of conventional death. "It
is downright wicked."
"'Twill be as I have lived," Mercedes said complacently. "And
it's a fine bride old Barry'll have to come and lie beside him."
She closed the lid and sighed. "Though I wish it were Bruce
Anstey, or any of the pick of my young men to lie with me in the
great dark and to crumble with me to the dust that is the real
death."
She gazed at Saxon with eyes heated by alcohol and at the same
time cool with the coolness of content.
"In the old days the great of earth were buried with their live
slaves with them. I but take my flimsies, my dear."
"Then you aren't afraid of death? . . . in the least?"
Mercedes shook her head emphatically.
"Death is brave, and good, and kind. I do not fear death. 'Tis of
men I am afraid when I am dead. So I prepare. They shall not have
me when I am dead."
Saxon was puzzled.
"They would not want you then," she said.
"Many are wanted," was the answer. "Do you know what becomes of
the aged poor who have no money for burial? They are not buried.
Let me tell you. We stood before great doors. He was a queer man,
a professor who ought to have been a pirate, a man who lectured
in class rooms when he ought to have been storming walled cities
or robbing banks. He was slender, like Don Juan. His hands were
strong as steel. So was his spirit. And he was mad, a bit mad, as
all my young men have been. 'Come, Mercedes,' he said; 'we will
inspect our brethren and become humble, and glad that we are not
as they--as yet not yet. And afterward, to-night, we will dine
with a more devilish taste, and we will drink to them in golden
wine that will be the more golden for having seen them. Come,
Mercedes.'
"He thrust the great doors open, and by the hand led me in. It
was a sad company. Twenty-four, that lay on marble slabs, or sat,
half erect and propped, while many young men, bright of eye,
bright little knives in their hands, glanced curiously at me from
their work."
"They were dead?" Saxon interrupted to gasp.
"They were the pauper dead, my dear. 'Come, Mercedes,' said he.
'There is more to show you that will make us glad we are alive.'
And he took me down, down to the vats. The salt vats, my dear. I
was not afraid. But it was in my mind, then, as I looked, how it
would be with me when I was dead. And there they were, so many
lumps of pork. And the order came, 'A woman; an old woman.' And
the man who worked there fished in the vats. The first was a man
impatient, and grumbled at his luck. And then, up through the
brine, he drew a woman, and by the face of her she was old, and
he was satisfied."
"It is not true!" Saxon cried out.
"I have seen, my dear, I know. And I tell you fear not the wrath
of God when you are dead. Fear only the salt vats. And as I stood
and looked, and as be who led me there looked at me and smiled
and questioned and bedeviled me with those mad, black,
tired-scholar's eyes of hi
s, I knew that that was no way for my
dear clay. Dear it is, my clay to me; dear it has been to others.
La la, the salt vat is no place for my kissed lips and love-
lavished body." Mercedes lifted the lid of the chest and gazed
fondly at her burial pretties. "So I have made my bed. So I shall
lie in it. Some old philosopher said we know we must die; we do
not believe it. But the old do believe. I believe.
"My dear, remember the salt vats, and do not be angry with me
because my commissions have been heavy. To escape the vats I
would stop at nothing steal the widow's mite, the orphan's crust,
and pennies from a dead man's eyes."
"Do you believe in God?" Saxon asked abruptly, holding herself
together despite cold horror.
Mercedes dropped the lid and shrugged her shoulders.
"Who knows? I shall rest well."
"And punishment?" Saxon probed, remembering the unthinkable tale
of the other's life.
"Impossible, my dear. As some old poet said, 'God's a good
fellow.' Some time I shall talk to you about God. Never be afraid
of him. Be afraid only of the salt vats and the things men may do
with your pretty flesh after you are dead."
CHAPTER VII
Billy quarreled with good fortune. He suspected he was too
prosperous on the wages he received. What with the accumulating
savings account, the paying of the monthly furniture installment
and the house rent, the spending money in pocket, and the good
fare he was eating, he was puzzled as to how Saxon managed to pay
for the goods used in her fancy work. Several times he had
suggested his inability to see how she did it, and been baffled
each time by Saxon's mysterious laugh.
"I can't see how you do it on the money," he was contending one
evening.
He opened his mouth to speak further, then closed it and for five
minutes thought with knitted brows.
"Say," he said, "what's become of that frilly breakfast cap you
was workin' on so hard, I ain't never seen you wear it, and it
was sure too big for the kid."
Saxon hesitated, with pursed lips and teasing eyes. With her,
untruthfulness had always been a difficult matter. To Billy it
was impossible. She could see the cloud-drift in his eyes
deepening and his face hardening in the way she knew so well when
he was vexed.
"Say, Saxon, you ain't . . . you ain't . . . sellin' your work?"
And thereat she related everything, not omitting Mercedes
Higgins' part in the transaction, nor Mercedes Higgins'
remarkable burial trousseau. But Billy was not to be led aside by
the latter. In terms anything but uncertain he told Saxon that
she was not to work for money.
"But I have so much spare time, Billy, dear," she pleaded.
He shook his head.
"Nothing doing. I won't listen to it. I married you, and I'll
take care of you. Nobody can say Bill Roberts' wife has to work.
And I don't want to think it myself. Besides, it ain't
necessary."
"But Billy--" she began again.
"Nope. That's one thing I won't stand for, Saxon. Not that I
don't like fancy work. I do. I like it like hell, every bit you
make, but I like it on YOU. Go ahead and make all you want of it,
for yourself, an' I'll put up for the goods. Why, I'm just
whistlin' an' happy all day long, thinkin' of the boy an' seein'
you at home here workin' away on all them nice things. Because I
know how happy you are a-doin' it. But honest to God, Saxon, it'd
all be spoiled if I knew you was doin' it to sell. You see, Bill
Roberts' wife don't have to work. That's my brag--to myself, mind
you. An' besides, it ain't right."
"You're a dear," she whispered, happy despite her disappointment.
"I want you to have all you want," he continued. "An' you're
goin' to get it as long as I got two hands stickin' on the ends