The Last of Mrs. DeBrugh

Excerpt

"Letty," Mr. DeBrugh remarked between long puffs on his meerschaum, "you've been a fine maid. You've served Mrs. DeBrugh and me for most of fifteen years. Now I haven't much more time in this life, and I want you to know that after Mrs. DeBrugh and I are gone, you will be well taken care of."

Letty stopped her dusting of the chairs in Mr. DeBrugh's oak-paneled study. She sighed and turned toward the man, who sat on a heavy sofa, puffing on his pipe and gazing across the room into nothingness.

"You mustn't talk that way, Mr. DeBrugh," she said. "You know you're a long time from the dark ways yet." She paused, and then went on dusting and talking again. "And me—humph—I've only done what any ordinary human would do to such a kind employer as you, sir. Especially after all you've done for me."

He didn't say anything, and she went on with her work. Of course she liked to work for him. She had adored the kindly old man since first she had met him in an agency fifteen years before. A person couldn't ask for a better master.

But there was the mistress, Mrs. DeBrugh! It was she who gave Letty cause for worry. What with her nagging tongue and her sharp rebukes, it was a wonder Letty had not quit long before.

She would have quit, too, but there had been the terrible sickness she had undergone and conquered with the aid of the ablest physicians Mr. DeBrugh could engage. She couldn't quit after that, no matter what misery Mrs. DeBrugh heaped on her. And so she went about her work at all hours, never tiring, always striving to please.

She left the study, closing the great door silently behind her, for old Mr. DeBrugh had sunk deeper into the sofa, into the realms of peaceful sleep, and she did not wish to disturb him.

"Letty!" came the shrill cry of Mrs. DeBrugh from down the hall. "Get these pictures and take them to the attic at once. And tell Mr. DeBrugh to come here."

Letty went for the pictures.

"Mr. DeBrugh is asleep," she said, explaining why she was not obeying the last command.

"Well, I'll soon fix that! Lazy old man! Sleeps all day with that smelly pipe between his teeth. If he had an ounce of pep about him, he'd get out and work the flowers. Sleeps too much anyway. Not good for him."

She stamped out of the room and down the hall, and Letty heard her open the door of the study and scream at her husband.

"Hector DeBrugh! Wake up!"

There was a silence, during which Letty wondered what was going on. Then she heard the noisy clop-clop of Mrs. DeBrugh's slippers on the hardwood floor of the study, and she knew the woman was going to shake the daylights out of Mr. DeBrugh and frighten him into wakefulness. She could even imagine she heard Mrs. DeBrugh grasp the lapels of her husband's coat and shake him back and forth against the chair.

Then she heard the scream. It came quite abruptly from Mrs. DeBrugh in the study, and it frightened Letty out of her wits momentarily. After that there was the thud of a falling body and the clatter of an upset piece of furniture.

Letty hurried out of the room into the hall and through the open door of the study. She saw Mrs. DeBrugh slumped on the floor in a faint, and beside her an upset ash-tray. But her eyes did not linger on the woman, nor the tray. Instead, they focussed on the still form of Mr. DeBrugh in the sofa....