Free Who Is Mark Twain? by Mark Twain Page A

time to begin a thing, and that is on the spot. Ah yes, by Gott, as your grace was saying only yesterday—”
    “There—do be still! It is as much as a person’s life is worth to make even the triflingest remark to you, it brings such a flood. And any moment your chatter may wake my husband, and he”—after a little pause, to gather courage for a deliberate mis-statement—“he can’t abide it.”
    “I will be as the grave! I will, indeed, for sleep is to the tired, sleep is the medicine that heals the weary spirit. Heilige Mutter Gottes! before I—”
    “Be still! ”
    “Zu befehl. If—”
    “Still! ”
    After a little pause the Executive began a tactful and low-temperature lecture which had all the ear-marks of preparation about it. I know that easy, impromptu style, and how it is manufactured, for I have worked at that trade myself. I have forgotten to mention that Wuthering Heights has not always served in a subordinate position; she has been housekeeper in a rich family in Vienna for the past ten years; consequently the habit of bossing is still strong upon her, naturally enough.
    “The cook and Charlotte complain that you interfere in their affairs. It is not right. It is not your place to do that.”
    “Oh, Joseph and Mary, Deuteronomy and all the saints! Think of that! Why, of course when the mistress is not in the house it is necessary that somebody—”
    “No, it is not necessary at all. The cook says that the reason the coffee was cold yesterday morning was, that you removed it from the stove, and that when she put it back you removed it again.”
    “Ah, but what would one do, gnädige Frau? It was all boiling away.”
    “No matter, it was not your affair. And yesterday morning you would not let Madame Blank into the house, and told her no one was at home. My husband was at home. It was too bad—and she had come all the way from Vienna. Why did you do that?”
    “Let her in?—I ask you would I let her in? and he hard at his work and not wishing to be disturbed, sunk in his labors up to his eyes and grinding out God knows what, for it is beyond me, though it has my sympathy, and none feels for him more than I do when he is in his lyings-in, that way—now would I let her in to break up his work in that idle way and she with no rational thing in the world to pester him about? now could I?”
    “How do you know what she wanted?”
    The shot struck in an unprotected place, and made silence for several seconds, for W.H. was not prepared for it and could not think of an answer right away. Then she recovered herself and said—
    “Well—well, it was like this. Well, she—of course she could have had something proper and rational on her mind, but then I knew that if that was the case she would write, not come all the way out here from Vienna to—”
    “Did you know she came from Vienna?”
    I knew by the silence that another unfortified place had been hit. Then—
    “Well, I—that is—well, she had that kind of a look which you have noticed upon a person when—when—”
    “When what?”
    “She—well, she had that kind of a look, anyway; for—”
    “How did you know my husband did not want to be disturbed?”
    “Know it? Oh, indeed, and well I knew it; for he was that busy that the sweat was leaking through the floor, and I said to the cook, said I—”
    “He didn’t do a stroke of work the whole day, but sat in the balcony smoking and reading.” [In a private tone, touched with shame: “reading his own books—he is always doing it.”]
    “You should have told him; he would have been very glad to see Madame Blank, and was disappointed when he found out what had happened. He said so, himself.”
    “Oh, indeed, yes, dear gnädige Frau, he would say it, that he would, but give your heart peace, he is always saying things which—why, I was saying to the butcher’s wife no longer ago than day before yesterday—”
    “Ruhig! and let me go on. You do twice as much of the talking