in most instances, in the matter of obtaining and retaining efficient
domestics the citizens of that charming town find it much like all other
communities of its class. Civilization brings with it everywhere, it
would seem, problems difficult of solution, and conspicuous among them
may be mentioned the servant problem. It is probable that the only
really happy young couple that ever escaped the annoyance of this
particular evil were Adam and Eve, and as one recalls their case it was
the interference of a third party, in the matter of their diet, that
brought all their troubles upon them, so that even they may not be said
to have enjoyed complete immunity from domestic trials. What quality it
is in human nature that leads a competent housemaid or a truly-talented
culinary artist to abhor the country-side, and to prefer the dark,
cellar-like kitchens of the city houses it is difficult to surmise; why
the suburban housekeeper finds her choice limited every autumn to the
maid that the city folks have chosen to reject is not clear. That these
are the conditions which confront surburban residents only the
exceptionally favored rustic can deny.
In Dumfries Corners, even were there no rich red upon the trees, no
calendar upon the walls, no invigorating tonic in the air to indicate
the season, all would know when autumn had arrived by the anxious,
hunted look upon the faces of the good women of that place as they ride
on the trains to and from the intelligence offices of the city looking
for additions to their _ménage_. Of course in Dumfries Corners, as
elsewhere, it is possible to employ home talent, but to do this requires
larger means than most suburbanites possess, for the very simple reason
that the home talent is always plentifully endowed with dependents.
These latter, to the number of eight or ten--which observation would
lead one to believe is the average of the successful local cook, for
instance--increase materially the butcher's and grocer's bills, and, one
not infrequently suspects, the coal man's as well.
Years ago, when he was young and inexperienced, the writer of this
narrative, his suspicions having been aroused by the seeming social
popularity of his cook, took occasion one Sunday afternoon to count the
number of mysterious packages, of about a pound in weight each, which
set forth from his kitchen and were carried along his walk in various
stages of ineffectual concealment by the lady's visitors. The result was
by no means appalling, seven being the total. But granting that seven
was a fair estimate of the whole week's output, and that the stream
flowed on Sundays only, and not steadily through the other six days, the
annual output, on a basis of fifty weeks--giving the cook's generosity a
two weeks' vacation--three hundred and fifty pounds of something were
diverted from his pantry into channels for which they were not
originally designed, and on a valuation of twenty-five cents apiece his
minimum contribution to his cook's dependents became thereby very
nearly one hundred dollars. Add to this the probable gifts to similarly
fortunate relatives of a competent local waitress, of an equally
generously disposed laundress with cousins, not to mention the genial,
open-handed generosity of a hired man in the matter of kindling-wood and
edibles, and living becomes expensive with local talent to help.
It is in recognition of this seemingly cast-iron rule that local service
is too expensive for persons of modest income, that the modern
economical house-wife prefers to fill her _ménage_ with maids from the
metropolis, even though it happen that she must take those who for one
reason or another have failed to please her city sisters. It may be,
too, that this is one of the reasons for the constant changes in most
suburban houses, for it is equally axiomatic that once an alien becomes
acclimated she takes on a _clientèle_ of adopted relatives, who in the
course of time become as much of a drain upon the treasury of the
household as the Simon-Pure article.
The Brinleys had been through the domestic mill in its every phase.
They had had cooks, and cooks, and cooks, and maids, and maids, and
maids, plus other maids; they had been face to face with arson and
murder; Mrs. Brinley had parted a laundress armed with a flat-iron from
a belligerent cook armed with an ice-pick, and twice the ministers of
the law had carried certain irate women bodily forth with the direst of
threats lest they should return later and remove the Brinley family from
the list of the living.
All of which contributed to Mrs. Brinley's unhappiness and rather
increased than diminished her natural timidity. Brinley, on the other
hand, professed to know no fear, but according to his theory that ways
and means were his care, and that the domestic affairs of his household
were his wife's, and beyond his jurisdiction, held himself aloof and
said never a word to the recalcitrant servant, confining what upbraiding
he did exclusively to Mrs. Brinley.
"Why don't you scold Bridget?" cried Mrs. Brinley one morning, after
Brinley had made a few remarks to his wife which were not to her taste,
inasmuch as she felt that she had done nothing to deserve them. "I
didn't burn the steak."
"That is very true, my dear," said Brinley, "but you are responsible for
the cook who did. It would never do for me to interfere. I have troubles
enough with my office-boys. This is your bailiwick, not mine, and until
I ask you to scold my clerks you mustn't ask me to scold your servants."
With this sage remark the valiant Brinley at once took his departure.
Time passed, and it so happened one autumn that the once happy household
found itself in the throes of a particularly aggravated case of cook.
She was a sixteen-dollar cook, and had been recommended as being
"splendid." In just what respect she showed her splendor, save in her
regal lack of manners and the marvellous coloring of her costumes on her
Sundays out, was never perceptible, but one thing that was wholly clear
at the end of a three-weeks' service was her independence of manner.
Meals were never ready on time, and the dinner-hour, instead of being a
fixed time beneath her sway, seemed to become a variable point,
according to the lady's whim. In the observance of the breakfast-hour
she was equally erratic, and on several trying occasions Brinley was on
the verge of the dilemma of either failing to keep an appointment in
town or going without his morning meal. Sometimes the coffee would come
to the table a thin, amber fluid that tasted like particularly bad
consommé. Again it would be served with all the thickness of a _purée_.
Her bread was similarly variable in its undesirability. There were
biscuits that held all the flaky charm of a snowball. There were loaves
of bread that reminded one of the stories of hardtack in Cuba during the
late unpleasantness. There were English muffins that rested upon poor
Brinley's digestion as the world may fairly be presumed to rest upon the
shoulders of Atlas, and, indeed, it is a tradition in the Brinley family
that one of this cook's pie-crusts rivalled Harveyized steel in its
impenetrability.
Indeed, Brinley, usually a silent sufferer, commented upon this cohesive
quality of Ellen's pastry on two different occasions. On the first he
advised Mrs. Brinley to learn the secret of Ellen's manipulation of the
ingredients of a pie-crust, and have herself capitalized to rival the
corporations which provide the government with armor-plate. On the
second he made the sage though disagreeable remark that the "next
apple-pie we have should be served with individual steam-drills." And he
one day accompanied Mrs. Brinley to a quiet golf links, and, when he had
teed up, that good lady observed one of Ellen's doughnuts upon the
little mound of sand before him instead of his favorite ball.
"I cut up the Silverton ball so," he said, as he addressed the tee,
"that I'm ashamed of myself. I may not play any better with this
doughnut, but it will never show the marks of the irons as a bit of mere
gutta-percha would."
"If you feel that way about Ellen," Mrs. Brinley observed, just as
Brinley was about to drive off with a real ball, "I don't see why you
don't discharge her."
Brinley took his eye off the ball to look indignantly upon his wife, and
consequently foozled.
"Discharge her? Why should I discharge her?" he demanded, his temper
growing as he observed where he had landed his ball. "I'm not running
the house, my dear. You are. I didn't ask you to tell Miss Flossie
Fairfax that, as she couldn't spell, she was no longer useful as a
stenographer in the office of Brinley & Rutherford. Why should you ask
me to tell a cook that her services are no longer required in the
establishment of Brinley & Brinley, of which you are the manager?"
"It isn't easy to discharge a girl," Mrs. Brinley began. "Particularly a
quarrelsome woman like Ellen."
"Oh, that's it," said Brinley. "You are afraid of her."
"Not exactly," said Mrs. Brinley. "But--"
"Of course, if you are afraid of her, I'll get rid of her," persisted
Brinley, valiantly. "Just wait until we get home. I'll show you a thing
or two when it comes to ridding one's self of an unfaithful servant. The
steak this morning looked like a stake that martyrs had been burned at,
and I am not afraid to say so."
And so it was decided that Brinley, on his return home, should interview
Ellen and inform her that her services would not be required after the
first of the month. "Now let's play golf," he said. "I'll settle Ellen
in a minute. Fore!"
How Brinley fulfilled his promise is best shown by his talk with Mrs.
Brinley the next morning when, somewhat red of face, he rejoined her in
the dining-room after his interview with Ellen.
"Well?" said Mrs. Brinley.
"It's all right," Brinley replied, with an uneasy glance at his wife.
"She's going to stay."
"Going to stay?" echoed Mrs. Brinley, her eyes opening wide in a very
natural astonishment. "Why, I thought you were going to discharge her?"
"Well--I was," he said, haltingly. "I was, of course. That's what I went
down for--but--er--you know, my dear, that there are two sides to every
question."
"Even to Ellen's biscuits?" Mrs. Brinley laughed.
"Never mind that. She's going to do better," said Brinley. "You'll find
that hereafter we've got a cook, and not an incendiary nor a forger of
armor-plate."
"And may I ask how this wonderful reform has been worked in the brief
space of ten minutes?" asked Mrs. Brinley. "Have you hypnotized her?"
"No," said Brinley. Then he looked rather sheepishly out of the window.
"I've given her an incentive to do better. I've increased her wages."
Mrs. Brinley gazed at him silently in open-mouthed wonder for a full
half-minute.
"You did what?" asked Mrs. Brinley.
"I told her we'd give her twenty dollars a month instead of sixteen,"
said Brinley. "You needn't laugh," he added. "I began very severely.
Asked her what she meant by ignoring our wishes as to hours. I dilated
forcefully upon her apparent fondness for burning steaks to a crisp,
and sending broiled chicken to the table looking as if somebody had
dropped a flat-iron on them."
"Good!" exclaimed Mrs. Brinley. "And what did she say? Was she
impertinent?"
"Not a bit of it," said Brinley "She took it very nicely until I spoke
of the muffins, after which I had intended to give her notice to quit,
but she took the wind completely out of my sails by asking me what I
expected at sixteen dollars a month."
"Ah!" said Mrs. Brinley.
"Exactly," said Brinley. "That was a point I had not considered at all.
After all, she was right. What can you expect for sixteen dollars?"
"Well, what next?" asked Mrs. Brinley, her eyes a-twinkle.
"I asked her if she thought she could do better on twenty dollars," he
answered. "She thought she could, and that's the way it stands now."
"I see," said Mrs. Brinley, and then she burst into a perfect explosion
of laughter, which she soon curbed, however, as she noticed the
expression on poor Brinley's face. "I've no doubt you have acted with
perfect justice in this matter, my dear George," she said. "But I think
hereafter I'll do my own discharging. Your way is rather
extravagant--er--don't you really think so?"
"Perhaps," said Brinley, and departed for town.
"The madam is right about that," he said to himself later in the day, as
he thought over the incident. "But extravagant or not, I couldn't have
discharged that woman if somebody had offered me a clear hundred. Mrs.
B. doesn't know it, but I was in a blue funk from start to finish."
In which surmise Brinley was wrong. Mrs. B. did know it, and when two
weeks later Ellen became absolutely impossible, and demanded a
kitchen-maid as the perquisite of a twenty-dollar cook, Mrs. Brinley
didn't think of calling upon her husband to perform the function of the
executioner, but like a brave woman actually summoned the cook into her
presence and did it herself. A less courageous woman would have gone
downstairs into the kitchen to do it.
WILKINS
It was a rather remarkable affair, taken altogether. Wilkins was not
what one would call an attractive man, and none of the young women of
Dumfries Corners who had met him had ever manifested anything but a
pronounced aversion to his society.
"I'd rather be a wall-flower than dance with Sam Wilkins," one of these
young women had said. "He not only can't dance, but, what is infinitely
worse, he doesn't know that he can't dance, and as for his
conversation--well, give me silence."
"You are perfectly right about that," said another. "Whenever I see him
about to waltz or two-step, I immediately remove myself from the scene,
and pray for the girl he's dancing with. He is a train-wrecker, and the
favorite resting-place for his heels is on some one else's foot. I've
heard that he steps on his own feet, too, he's so awkward, and I hope he
does if it hurts him as much as he hurts me when he steps on mine."
For Wilkins's sake I am very sorry to say that this feeling towards him
was invariable. I never cared much for him myself, but I felt rather
sorry for him when I perceived the persistent snubbing with which he was
everywhere received. He never seemed aware of it himself, happily,
however, and accepted my merely sympathetic attentions with that
superciliousness which always goes with conscious rectitude.
Conscious rectitude, I think, was Wilkins's trouble. He was good, and he
was aware of it, but he was not content with that. He wanted everybody
else to be good. I really believe that Wilkins could have carried on a
Platonic love affair with an auburn-haired girl for ten weeks without an
effort, he was so terribly good, which did not at all contribute to his
popularity. A fellow who talks about ritualism while walking in the
moonlight with a sentimental woman, doesn't count for much, and Wilkins
was always doing things like that. It was even whispered last winter
when he went sleigh-riding with that fascinating little widow, Mrs.
Broughton, that he let her do the driving, clasped his own hands in
front of him, and talked of nothing but the privations of the
missionaries in China, and never mentioned oysters or cold birds and a
bottle.
"And worst of all," snapped Mrs. Broughton, "he really seemed to enjoy
it. I never saw such a man!"
I have mentioned all these details for the purpose of indicating how
unpopular Wilkins was and how it was that he had become so, for with
this knowledge the reader will share the surprise which we all felt when
Wilkins suddenly blossomed forth as the most popular man of Dumfries
Corners. It was really a knockdown blow to the most of us, for while we
may have been jealous on occasions of each other, it never occurred to
any of us to be jealous of the train-wrecker.
I didn't like it when Araminta smiled upon Harry Burnham, but it was not
injurious to my self-respect that she should do it, because Harry
Burnham averages up as good a fellow as I am, and then Harry and I could
drown our differences in the flowing bowl later on. On the other hand,
if Harry's Fiametta cast side glances at me, of course Harry would be
wroth, but he could understand why Fiametta should be so affected by the
twinkle in my eye--an affection by the way which has often got me
unconsciously into trouble--that she should for the moment forget
herself and respond to it.
But when Araminta and Fiametta on a sudden, just after the leap-year
dance, wholly, and, as we thought, basely, deserted us for that emblem
of conscious rectitude, Sam Wilkins, a man whose eye couldn't learn to
twinkle in a thousand years, a mere human iceberg, then it was that we
were astounded. Nor was this secession limited to Araminta and Fiametta.
The conversion of the girls of Dumfries Corners to Wilkins was as
complete, as comprehensive, as it was startling to the men. Jack Lester,
as Bob Jenks expressed it, was "trun down" by Daisy Hawkins, who
appeared to have eyes for none but Wilkins, while Bob, in turn, when
going to make his usual Thursday evening call upon Miss Betsy Wilson,
discovered that Miss Betsy had gone to the University extension lecture
with the train-wrecker, an act unprecedented, for it had long been the
custom for Bob to spend his Thursday evenings at the Wilson mansion,
and, while nothing had as yet been announced, everybody in town was
getting his congratulations ready for Bob as soon as that which was
understood became a matter of common knowledge.
For a week or two we none of us let on that we had observed the
remarkable change that had come o'er the spirit of our dreams. Harry has
always been remarkable for his ability to conceal his feelings, and in
that respect I am a good second, and except for the fact that we spent
more time at the club playing pool nobody would have suspected that we
cared whether Araminta or Fiametta still loved us or not. Besides, we
each had a feeling that two could play at this Wilkins game, and I had
made up my mind that if Araminta could so easily find a substitute for
me I, with my twinkle, could as speedily replace her. That is to say, I
felt that I could create that impression in Araminta's mind, and that
was all I was after. I didn't really intend, however easy it would be
to do so, to create a flutter of a permanent nature in any other woman's
heart--that is, not until I was sure that Araminta was lost to me
forever. After a decent period of mourning I might have used my twinkle
for permanent effect, but at that moment my only idea was to show
Araminta that if one could be fickle, two could be twice as fickle.
Harry had the same course of treatment in store for Fiametta, and we
both made a strong bid for the company of Mary Brown, who, it must be
confessed, was a charming girl, and stood second in the affections of
every man in Dumfries Corners.
It was the opportunity of Mary Brown's life, for even as Harry and I had
decided, so had all the other jilted swains, but that curious girl
either could not or would not grasp it. She, too, had become a
Wilkinsite, and would have nothing to do with any of us. She declined to
attend the Beldens's musicale with me, and went bicycling with the
iceberg. She told Robinson she hated lectures, and went to a
stereopticon show with the train-wrecker. All the other men met with a
similar rebuff, and at the last meeting of the Chafing Dish Club she
capped the climax by refusing my lobster à la Newburg and Harry's
oysters poulet, to have a second helping to the sole-leather welsh
rarebit which Wilkins had constructed; Wilkins, a rank outsider, who had
been asked to come to the meeting by every blessed girl in the club,
although heretofore he had not been considered as a possible member, and
in fact had been black-balled by the girls themselves! And when it came
time for the girls to go home, instead of each one being escorted by a
single male member, Wilkins corralled the whole lot of them in a huge
omnibus which he had hired, and drove off with them, leaving us
disconsolate. He smiled so broadly you could see his teeth in the dark.
This, as I have said, capped the climax.
"That settles it," said Burnham. "I'm going to New York for a rest.
These Dumfries Corners girls needn't think they're the only women in the
world. There are others."
"I'm going to stay and stick it out," said I. "I've got my sister left.
She'll never succumb to the Wilkins influence." But alas! I leaned upon
a broken reed. My sister is a sensible girl, but she is "literary." She
had a joke in _Life_ once, and since that time she has neglected almost
everything but writing and her brother. She doesn't neglect me, and
altogether I'm glad she writes, since it fills her with enthusiasm until
the articles come back, and up to now she had not written poetry. But,
as I say, I leaned upon a broken reed, for when, the next day, I asked
her what she was writing, she laughed and showed me a sonnet.
"Poetry, eh?" I said, disapprovingly, as I looked over her manuscript.
"Yes," she answered, modestly. "A sonnet."
And I read, "To S.W."
"Who's 'S.W.?'" I asked, with a frown, although I little suspected what
her answer would be.
"Sam Wilkins," she replied.
I then realized the full force of Caesar's "Et tu, Brute?" and fled.
Meanwhile Wilkins was becoming insufferable. If Bunthorne was an ass, he
was at least clever, but this Wilkins--he was a whole drove of asses,
and not a redeeming feature to the lot. He could no more account for
his sudden popularity than we could, but he could not help realizing it
after a week or two, and then, for the first time in his life, he began
to take notice. We men all wanted to thrash him, and I think Burnham
would have done it if the rest of us hadn't prevented him.
"He needed a licking before this," said Harry, "but now he's worse than
ever. It isn't conscious rectitude now, it's triumphant virtue. He makes
me tired. He was telling me the other day that while girls might be
captivated by flippant, superficial, prancing dudes for a while, in the
end solid worth would win, and then he went on to say that the youth of
modern times cultivated his feet to the exclusion of his head, and that
while he had, of course, learned to dance, he had not devoted all his
time to it, and regarded it, after all, as a very minor sort of an
attraction as far as women are concerned. 'I don't rely on my dancing,
Burnham,' he said. 'It's the head, and the heart, my boy, that
triumphs.' And when I asked him where he learned all this he answered,
'from personal experience.'"
I immediately let go of Burnham. "Go and half-lick him, Harry," said I.
"And when you've done with him pass him over to me, and I'll finish him.
The supercilious ass."
That was the way Wilkins affected us.
The other men took their dose in different ways. Jenks began to drink a
little more; Lester drank a little less. Hicks didn't care much about it
one way or the other, and Wilson swore that if Wilkins came to call on
his sister again he'd kick him out of the house.
Six weeks rolled by thus, and finally Easter Sunday came. No mitigation
of the Wilkins visitation had entered into our lives. As the days wore
on the girls became more devoted to him than ever, and he became
correspondingly unbearable. The condescension with which he would treat
his fellow-men was something hardly to be tolerated, and the worst of it
was there didn't seem to be any way of bringing the girls to terms.
There wasn't anybody left for us to flirt with now that Mary Brown had
gone over to the enemy, she who had always been willing to flirt with
anybody.
"There's only one hope," said Jenks. "If he'll only marry one of 'em,
the others will come back. He can't marry 'em all, thank Heaven."
"Suppose it was Fiametta he married?" said I.
"Or Araminta!" was his preposterous retort.
"He'll never do that," said Lester. "He's in clover now, and for the
first time in his life, and the more of an ass he is the more he'll like
clover. He's paying attention to the lot. He'll never settle down to
one. It's all up with us--unless he bankrupts himself."
"He won't," observed Harry Burnham. "Conscious rectitude won't do
anything like that. I'm going to New York to call on an old flame, and I
advise the rest of you to do the same."
"Well, I don't know but what you are right," said I, "but Araminta shall
have one more chance. I'm going to church to-morrow. It's Easter Sunday,
and I'll offer to escort her home. If she says 'yes,' all right. If she
doesn't, I'm lost to her forever."
"Good scheme," quoth the others. "We're with you."