Anne Warner - Susan Clegg and Her Love Affairs

Mrs. Lathrop sat on her front piazza, and Susan Clegg sat with her. Mrs. Lathrop was rocking, and Susan was just back from the Sewing Society. Neither Mrs. Lathrop nor Susan was materially altered since we saw them last. Time had moved on a bit, but not a great deal, and although both were older, still they were not much older.

They were not enough older for Mrs. Lathrop to have had a new rocker, nor for Susan to have purchased a new bonnet. Susan indeed looked almost absolutely unaltered. She was a woman of the best wearing quality; she was hard and firm as ever, and if there were any plating about her, it was of the quadruple kind and would last.

If the reader knows Susan Clegg at all, he will surmise that she was talking. And he will be right. Susan was most emphatically talking. She had returned from the Sewing Society full to the brim, and Mrs. Lathrop was already enjoying the overflow. Mrs. Lathrop liked to rock and listen. She never went to the Sewing Society herself – she never went anywhere.

"We was talking about dreams," Susan was saying; "it's a very curious thing about dreams. Do you know, Mrs. Lathrop," wrinkling her brow and regarding her friend with that look of friendship which is not blind to any faults, "do you know, Mrs. Lathrop, they said down there that dreams always go by contraries. We was discussing it for a long time, and they ended up by making me believe in it. You see, it all began by my saying how I dreamed last night that Jathrop was back, and he was a cat and your cat, too, and he did something he wasn't let to, and you made one jump at him, and out of the window he went. Now that was a very strange dream for me to have dreamed, Mrs. Lathrop, and Mrs. Lupey, who's staying with Mrs. Macy to-day and maybe to-morrow, too, says she's sure it's a sign. She says if dreams go by contraries, mine ought to be a sign as Jathrop is coming back, for the contraries is all there: Jathrop wasn't a cat, and he never done nothing that he shouldn't – nor that he should, neither – and you never jump – I don't believe you've jumped in years, have you?"

"I – " began Mrs. Lathrop reminiscently.

"Oh, that time don't count," said Susan, "it was just my ball of yarn, even if it did look like a rat; I meant a jump when you meant it; you didn't mean that jump. Well, an' to go back to the dream and what was said about it and to tell you the rest of it, there wasn't any more of it, but there was plenty more said about it. All of the dream was that the cat went out of the window, and I woke up, but, oh, my, how we did talk! Gran'ma Mullins wanted to know in the first place how I knew that the cat was Jathrop. She was most interested in that, for she says she often dreams of animals, but it never struck her that they might be any one she knew. She dreamed she found a daddy-long-legs looking in her bureau drawer the other night, but she never gave it another thought. She'll be more careful after this, I guess. Well, then I begun to consider, and for the life of me I can't think how I knew that that cat was Jathrop. As I remember it was a very common looking cat, but being common looking wouldn't mean Jathrop. Jathrop was common looking, but not a common cat kind of common looking. It was a very strange dream, Mrs. Lathrop, the more I consider it, the more I can't see what give it to me. I finished up the doughnuts just before I went to bed, for I was afraid they'd mold in another day with this damp weather, but it don't seem as if doughnuts ought to result in cats like Jathrop. If I'd dreamed of mice, it'd been different, for some of the doughnuts was gnawed in a way as showed as there'd been mice in the jar. It does beat all how mice get about. Maybe it was the mice made me think Jathrop was a cat. But even then I can't see how I did come to dream that dream. Unless it was a sign. Mrs. Lupey's sure it was a sign. We talked about signs the whole of the Sewing Society. Dreams and signs. Everybody told all they knew. Mrs. Macy told about her snow dream. Whenever Mrs. Macy has her snow dream, somebody dies. She says it's so interesting to look in a paper the next time she gets hold of one and see who it was. One time she thought it was Edgar Allen Poe, but when she read it over twice, she see that it was just that he'd been born. She says her snow dream's a wonderful sign; it's never failed once. She dreamed it the night before the earthquake in Italy, and she says to think how many died of it that time!

"This started Gran'ma Mullins, and Gran'ma Mullins told about that dream she had the year before she met her husband. That was an awful dream. I wonder she met her husband a tall after it. She thought she was alone in a thick wood, and she saw a man coming, and she was scared to death. She says she can feel her trembling now. She didn't know what to do, 'cause if she'd hid among the trees he couldn't have seen her, and that idea scared her as bad as the other. So she just stood and shook and watched the man coming nearer and nearer. I've heard her tell the story a hundred times, but my blood always sort o' runs cold to hear it. The man come nearer and nearer and, my, but she says he was a man! She was just a young girl, but she was old enough to be afraid, and old enough not to want to hide from him, neither. She says it was an awful lesson to her about going in woods alone, because of course you can't never expect any sympathy if the man does murder you or kiss you – everybody'll just say, 'Why didn't she hide in the woods?' Well, Gran'ma Mullins says there she stood, and she can see herself still standing there. She says she's never been in the woods since just on account of that dream – and then, too, she's one of those that the mosquitos all get on in the woods. And then, besides, she doesn't like woods, anyway. And then, besides, there ain't no thick woods around here. But, anyhow, you know what happened – just as he got to her she woke up, and I must say of all the tame stories to have to sit and listen to over and over, that dream of Gran'ma Mullins is the tamest. I get tired the minute she begins it, but my dream had started every one to telling signs, and so of course Gran'ma Mullins had to tell hers along with the rest.

"When she was done Mrs. Lupey told us about her mother, Mrs. Kitts, and a curious kind of prophetic dream she used to have and kept right on having up to the day she died. Mrs. Lupey said she never heard the like of those dreams of her mother's, and I guess nobody else ever has, either. No, nor never will. Well, it seems Mrs. Kitts used to dream she was falling out of bed, and the curious part is that she always did fall out of bed just as she dreamed it, so it never failed to come true. She'd dream she hit the floor bang! and the next second she'd hit the floor bang! Mrs. Lupey said she never saw such a dream for coming true; if old Mrs. Kitts dreamed she hit her head, she'd hit her head, and the time she dreamed she sprained her wrist, she sprained her wrist, and the time she had her stroke, as soon as her mind was got back in place she told them she'd dreamed she had a stroke in her chair just before she fell out of her chair with the stroke. Even the minister's wife didn't have a word to say.

"Mrs. Lupey said her mother was a most remarkable woman. She's very sorry now she didn't board that painter for a portrait of her. The painter was so awful took with old Mrs. Kitts that he was willing to do her for six weeks and with the frame for two months. But Mrs. Lupey was afraid to have a painter around. She'd just read a detective story about a painter that killed the woman he was painting because he didn't want any one else to paint her. Mrs. Lupey said it was a very Frenchy story – there was a lot between the lines and on the lines, too – as she couldn't make out, but it taught her never to have painters around, for you never could be sure in a house with four other women that he'd kill the one he was painting. But she's sorry now, for she's older now and wiser and a match for any painter going, long-haired, short-haired or no hair at all. But it's too late now, and there's Mrs. Kitts dead unpainted, and all they've got left is a sweet memory and that cane she used to hit at 'em with when they weren't spry enough to suit her, and her hymn-book which she marked up without telling any one and left for a remembrance. Mrs. Lupey says such markings you never heard of.