INTO TRAINING FOR MARY ELLEN
Bertram told a friend afterwards that he never knew the meaning of the word ``chaos'' until he had seen the Strata during the weeks immediately following the laying away of his old servant.
``Every stratum was aquiver with apprehension,''
he declared; ``and there was never any telling when the next grand upheaval would rock the whole structure to its foundations.''
Nor was Bertram so far from being right. It was, indeed, a chaos, as none knew better than did Bertram's wife.
Poor Billy! Sorry indeed were these days for Billy; and, as if to make her cup of woe full to overflowing, there were Sister Kate's epistolary ``I told you so,'' and Aunt Hannah's ever recurring lament: ``If only, Billy, you were a practical housekeeper yourself, they wouldn't impose on you so!''
Aunt Hannah, to be sure, offered Rosa, and Kate, by letter, offered advice--plenty of it.
But Billy, stung beyond all endurance, and fairly radiating hurt pride and dogged determination, disdained all assistance, and, with head held high, declared she was getting along very well, very well indeed!
And this was the way she ``got along.''
First came Nora. Nora was a blue-eyed, black-haired Irish girl, the sixth that the despairing Billy had interviewed on that fateful morning when Bertram had summoned her to his aid.
Nora stayed two days. During her reign the entire Strata echoed to banged doors, dropped china, and slammed furniture. At her departure the Henshaws' possessions were less by four cups, two saucers, one plate, one salad bowl, two cut glass tumblers, and a teapot--the latter William's choicest bit of Lowestoft.
Olga came next. Olga was a Treasure. She was low-voiced, gentle-eyed, and a good cook.
She stayed a week. By that time the growing frequency of the disappearance of sundry small articles of value and convenience led to Billy's making a reluctant search of Olga's room--and to Olga's departure; for the room was, indeed, a treasure house, the Treasure having gathered unto itself other treasures.
Following Olga came a period of what Bertram called ``one night stands,'' so frequently were the dramatis person<ae> below stairs changed. Gretchen drank. Christine knew only four words of English:
salt, good-by, no, and yes; and Billy found need occasionally of using other words. Mary was impertinent and lazy. Jennie could not even boil a potato properly, much less cook a dinner.
Sarah (colored) was willing and pleasant, but insufferably untidy. Bridget was neatness itself, but she had no conception of the value of time.
Her meals were always from thirty to sixty minutes late, and half-cooked at that. Vera sang--when she wasn't whistling--and as she was generally off the key, and always off the tune, her almost frantic mistress dismissed her before twenty-four hours had passed. Then came Mary Ellen.
Mary Ellen began well. She was neat, capable, and obliging; but it did not take her long to discover just how much--and how little--her mistress really knew of practical housekeeping.
Matters and things were very different then.
Mary Ellen became argumentative, impertinent, and domineering. She openly shirked her work, when it pleased her so to do, and demanded perquisites and privileges so insolently that even William asked Billy one day whether Mary Ellen or Billy herself were the mistress of the Strata:
and Bertram, with mock humility, inquired how _soon_ Mary Ellen would be wanting the house.
Billy, in weary despair, submitted to this bullying for almost a week; then, in a sudden accession of outraged dignity that left Mary Ellen gasping with surprise, she told the girl to go.
And thus the days passed. The maids came and the maids went, and, to Billy, each one seemed a little worse than the one before. Nowhere was there comfort, rest, or peacefulness. The nights were a torture of apprehension, and the days an even greater torture of fulfilment. Noise, confusion, meals poorly cooked and worse served, dust, disorder, and uncertainty. And this was _home_, Billy told herself bitterly. No wonder that Bertram telephoned more and more frequently that he had met a friend, and was dining in town. No wonder that William pushed back his plate almost every meal with his food scarcely touched, and then wandered about the house with that hungry, homesick, homeless look that nearly broke her heart. No wonder, indeed!
And so it had come. It was true. Aunt Hannah and Kate and the ``Talk to Young Wives''
were right. She had not been fit to marry Bertram.
She had not been fit to marry anybody.
