TALKING IT OVER
Mrs. Northmore was at the gate to greet her daughters when the great
wagon stopped.
“We knew you would find some one to bring you home,” she said, smiling
up at them. “Your father was disappointed that he couldn’t come for you
himself, but he took our friends to the station, and then, just as he
was ready to start for you, he was called to the other end of the town.
Come in, Morton,” she added, turning to the young man, who was helping
the girls over the wheel; “I must have a full account of the doings
to-day, and it may be a one-sided report if I have only the family
version of it.”
“But there is only one side, Mrs. Northmore,” said the young man.
“Everything went gloriously,—specially the dinner,—and everybody behaved
beautifully except me. Kate’ll tell you how bad I was. No, I can’t stay.
There’s an errand I must do before dark.”
“I shan’t take anybody’s report against _you_, Morton, unless it’s your
own, and I’m not sure that I’ll admit even that,” said Mrs. Northmore.
It was in her eyes as well as her voice how much she liked the big brown
fellow. “Well, if you must go—but come and see us soon. Don’t work so
hard this summer that you’ll have no time for your friends.”
She took an arm of each of the girls and walked with them up the gravel
path between the rows of blossoming catalpas. “So the day has gone
well?” she said, glancing from one to the other.
“As if you had been there yourself, mother,” said Esther, and Kate
added: “It’s been a regular picnic. I never enjoyed a day more in my
life.”
In different ways each of the girls resembled her strongly. Esther had
the broad, low forehead and serious eyes, but Kate had the resolute
mouth with a touch of playfulness lurking at the corners. A girl, much
younger than either, rolled sleepily out of the hammock as they stepped
on the veranda.
“Oh, I’m glad you’ve come,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “This has been
the longest, stupidest day I ever saw. Papa’s been away, and mamma’s
been busy with the company, and Aunt Milly’s been so cross because she
couldn’t go out to the farm, that she’s been ready to snap my head off
every time I looked in at the kitchen. Even the cat went off visiting.”
“What a dull day you’ve had of it, Virgie!” said Esther, kissing the
child’s flushed cheek. “But what ailed Aunt Milly? She knows she
couldn’t be spared to go out there to-day.”
“Of course she knows it,” said Mrs. Northmore, “and she would have felt
even worse to be spared from here, but I suspect the real grievance was
the cheerfulness with which you girls left her behind. She wanted to
feel that she was needed in both places. Poor old Milly, she can’t
reconcile herself to the idea that we can really get along without her
anywhere.”
“Why didn’t we think of that?” cried Kate. “If we’d asked her advice
about a lot of things, and shaken our heads over the difficulties we
should get into, with her out of our reach, she’d have been happy all
day. Esther, you and I are a pair of stupids, but I’ll make it up to her
yet.”
“Oh, she’s forgiven you already,” said Mrs. Northmore; “and if she
punishes you at all, it’ll be by way of showing you some special favors,
you may be sure of that.”
“There she comes now,” said Kate, as footsteps were heard approaching on
the tiled floor of the hall; and she added, listening to the thud of the
heavy feet, whose stout slippers dropping at the heels doubled the fall
with a solemn tap, “walking as if she went on two wooden legs and a pair
of crutches.”
The comparison was not bad, and the laugh that followed it had hardly
ended when the old servant showed a lugubrious face at the door.
“Howdy, Aunt Milly?” cried Kate before the other had a chance to speak.
“Here we are, you see, home again. I was just coming out to the kitchen
to tell you how we got along, and see if you could give us a bite to
eat. I suppose you think we had our suppers at the farm, and so we did;
but it wasn’t like one of your suppers, and I guess you know how much
appetite you have when you’re all mixed up with the cooking. Don’t
bother to bring anything in here, but just let us sit out in the kitchen
with you.”
At this artful proposal Milly’s face shortened unmistakably. “Don’t
know’s I’ve got anything you’d keer about,” she began with a show of
reluctance, “but I’ll knock round and see what I can find for you.”
“Oh, you’ll find something—you always do,” said Kate. “By the way, I
thought I smelled something good when I was coming up to the house.”
“It was the catalpa blossoms, and you know it,” said Esther, laughing,
and looking at her sister with a reproving glance, when the door had
closed behind Milly.
“Well, but she did make a spice cake, and it smells awfully good,” said
Virgie. “It’s warm now, and she wouldn’t break a crumb of it for me.”
“There!” said Kate, triumphantly. “You see how people are helped out,
when they prevaricate for high moral ends. Come on to the kitchen. I’ll
never pretend to be smart again if I can’t put Aunt Milly in good
spirits before we’ve been there long.”
It would have been an incomplete picture indeed of the Northmore
household which did not include old Aunt Milly. An important figure she
was and had been ever since the girls could remember. But in truth her
connection with the family was of much older date than that. She had
been born and reared a slave on the Kentucky plantation which had been
the home of Dr. Northmore’s boyhood. He had left it earlier than she,
having before the war gone out from the large circle of brothers to
establish himself in his profession in a neighboring state. But when, in
the changed times, the servants had scattered from the old place, Milly
had made her way to the home of her favorite, and urged with many
entreaties that she might fill a post of service there.
Dr. Northmore could not resist the appeal, nor his young wife his wish
in the matter, and though the service had been a trying one at first to
the energetic Northern girl, yet, as time went on, and children, one
after another, were added to the household, she learned to set truer
value on the faithful, affectionate servant, whose devotion nothing
could tire; and now, when Milly was old and infirm, her place was as
secure as it had been in her palmiest days. She herself had full
confidence in her ability to fill it still, and her one fear for the
future was that she might be forced to share it with one of those
“transients” who rendered their service by the week,—a class for which
her high-bred contempt knew no bounds.
Kate had not misjudged the effect of her stratagem on the simple old
soul. It was a long time since her young ladies had done her the honor
of eating at her own pine table, and Milly forgot the grief of the day
in the zest of her hospitality, and accepted their praises for the feast
she furnished, with a delight quite different from the forgiving dignity
with which she had meant to pierce the hearts of her darlings.
“Well, yes, I did stir up a little cake for you,” she admitted, when
Kate, after due admiration of the fresh and fragrant loaf, accused her
of misrepresenting the extent of her supplies. “Laws, I knew you’d be
wantin’ a bite of somethin’ afore you went to bed. It allers makes my
stomach feel powerful empty to ride in one o’ them wagons, jouncin’
round in them straight-backed cheers.”
“And you must have named it for me, Aunt Milly,” said Kate, with her
eyes on the cake.
This was an allusion to one of Milly’s culinary secrets, and she
received it with a smile which fairly transfigured the dusky old face.
She had her own theories of cake-making, theories which she maintained
with the unanswerable logic of her own surpassing skill.
“You see, Miss Kate,” she had said years before, when the girl had come
to the kitchen with a request to be instructed in the mysteries of the
art, “there’s somethin’ curus about makin’ cake. It ain’t all in havin’
a good receipt, though it stan’s to reason if you don’t take the right
things there’s no use puttin’ ’em together. An’ it ain’t all in the way
you put ’em together neither, though I ’low that makes a heap o’
difference. Folks has their ’pinions, an’ there’s some that says you
must take your hand to the mixin’, an’ some that says you must use a
wooden spoon, an’ I knew one cook that would have it you must stir the
batter all one way, or ’twould be plumb ruined. But I can’t say as I
_jest_ hold with any o’ them idees, nor yet with the notions folks has
about the bakin’, though it’s true as you live, a body’s got to be
mighty keerful on that p’int. Laws, I’ve known folks dassn’t let a cat
run across the kitchen floor while the cake’s in the oven.
“I tell you, Miss Kate,” Milly had proceeded, growing more impressive,
as the greatness of her subject loomed before her, “there’s a heap o’
things to be looked to in the makin’ o’ cake, but there’s somethin’
besides all them p’ints I’ve mentioned. It takes the _right person_ to
make it! There’s some that’s been ’lected to make cake an’ some that
hasn’t. There ain’t no other doctrine to account for the luck folks has.
I’ll show you my way, but I can’t tell beforehand how it’ll work with
you. There’s one thing, though, I’ll jest say private between you’n me,”
she added, lowering her voice to a mysterious whisper, “an’ I ain’t one
to take up with no superstitious notions neither; when you want to make
an extra fine cake, you name it for somebody that loves you jest as
you’re shettin’ the oven door, an’ if you’ve made that cake all right,
an’ if you ain’t deceived in that person, your cake’ll come out
splendid.”
“But if you _are_ deceived?” Kate had suggested solemnly.
“Then,” said Milly, lifting her finger, and shaking it with slow
emphasis, “as sure’s you’re born that cake’ll fall in the pan an’ be
sad. There can’t nothin’ on earth prevent it.”
“But that is such an uncertain way,” Kate had objected. “You can’t
always tell whether or not a person loves you. Why don’t you name it for
somebody that you love yourself? Then you could be sure.”
But Milly had shaken her head wisely. It was the nature of cake, as it
was of love, to be uncertain, and she refused to reconstruct her charm.
All this had happened years before, but when, by some lucky turn of
memory, Kate recalled it now, and suggested that this perfect specimen
of cake had been baked under the inspiration of her own love for Milly,
the last shadow of the old woman’s melancholy vanished. “Well, Honey,”
she said radiantly, “I reckon I shouldn’t have missed it fur if I had.”
She was prepared now to enjoy to the full the account which the girls
gave of the experiences at the farm, including everything of importance,
from Kate’s exaltation on the machine to Morton Elwell’s capture of the
doughnuts. Over the latter incident her eyes fairly rolled with delight,
and she interrupted the narrator to exclaim, “That chile’s boun’ to make
a powerful smart man. Puts me in mind of Mars Clay, your uncle, you
know, what got to be kunnel in the army. That chile did have the most
’mazin’ faculty for comin’ roun’ when a body was cookin’, an’ the
beatin’est way findin’ out where things was kep’ an’ helpin’ hisself
that ever I did see. I never will forgit how he fooled your grandma one
year ’bout the jelly. Ole Miss she allus put her jelly in glasses with
lids to ’em. She had a closet full that year, an’ every glass of it
would turn out slick an’ solid. Mars Clay, he foun’ he could turn the
jelly out on the lid, an’ cut a slice off’m the bottom, an’ jist slide
the jelly back again. I seed him do it one day, but I never let on, and
your grandma she never foun’ out, but she ’lowed ’twas mighty strange
how her jelly did shwink that year.”
She shook with glee at that remembrance, and Kate forgave Morton Elwell
over again for outwitting her, since the act had been the means of
giving her one more story of the old days. But Milly’s delight reached
its climax when Kate told of the favor with which the various dishes had
been received at dinner, and how Farmer Giles, after helping himself to
the third piece of corn-bread, had declared it the best he ever tasted,
to which she had replied that it ought to be; it was made by Aunt
Milly’s own receipt.
“Bless your heart, chile,” cried the old woman; “you didn’t tell him
that now, did you? You mustn’t make the old darky too proud!”
She did not enter with quite as much enthusiasm into Kate’s description
of the threshing machine, and reverted with a sigh to the days when the
thresher was content with his flail, an instrument which she extolled as
being “a heap safer than that great snorting machine” (she persisted in
confounding its functions with those of the engine); and she refused to
share in Kate’s wonder that people didn’t starve in those days waiting
for the grain to be threshed.
The two were still discussing harvests past and present when Esther,
feeling that she had done her full duty there, left the kitchen. She had
never held quite the place in Milly’s affections which Kate enjoyed, nor
had she of late years listened with her sister’s contentment to the old
woman’s thrice-told tales. She left them now and went to seek her
mother.
Mrs. Northmore was seated on the cool veranda with her hands in her lap,
and that look of tired content which tells of a busy but successful day.
A generous hospitality had left her a little worn. Esther sat down on
the step at her feet and leaned her arms across her lap in a childish
fashion she had never outgrown.
“I wish I didn’t get so tired of people whom I really like,” she said.
“It would break Aunt Milly’s heart if she knew how she bores me. It
seems to me sometimes I get tired of everybody—everybody but you, mother
dear.”
Mrs. Northmore looked into her daughter’s eyes with a smile.
“I don’t think I should feel hurt, my dear, if you wanted to get away
from me, too, sometimes. Nobody quite suits all our moods. I wouldn’t
reproach myself on that score, if I were you.”
“But it seems so disloyal, when it’s anybody—anybody that you really
care a great deal about,” said Esther. Her mother’s smile kept its tinge
of amusement, and the girl’s face grew more serious.
“I wonder sometimes if I’m made like other girls,” she said. “It isn’t
just getting tired of people. It’s getting tired of things in general,
and longing for something larger than anything that comes into my life.
I don’t know as I can make you understand quite what I mean,” she went
on, a strained note creeping into her voice, “but somehow it came over
me to-day more strongly than it ever did before that I could never be
satisfied just to live out my life in the common humdrum way. Perhaps it
was the talk of those women. I suppose they’re just as good and useful
as the average, but it seemed as if they thought there was nothing in
the world for women to do but to be married, and keep house, and take
care of children. Even Mrs. Elwell, nice as she is, appeared to think
so, and it all seemed to me so poor and small. I almost despised them,
mother.”
The smile had gone now from Mrs. Northmore’s eyes. “Oh, my dear!” she
said; and then she was silent. Of what use would it be to tell this
child, with the experiences of life all untried, that the common lot,
which she despised, had in its round the truest joys and deepest
satisfactions? Years and love and happy work must bring the knowledge of
that. She stroked the brown head for a moment without speaking. It was
Esther who found words first.
“You never felt like those women, did you, mother? You don’t seem a bit
like them. You are always reading and thinking, and you know about a
thousand things they’ve never thought of.”
The smile came back to Mrs. Northmore’s eyes, but there was a touch of
sadness in it. “My dear girl,” she said, “I’m not half as wise as you
think I am; but if I have any wisdom I’m sure I’ve found most of it, and
my happiness too, in those same common things. There isn’t such a
difference between me and those friends of ours as you imagine.”
The girl looked unconvinced. Presently she said, with a sigh, “If one
could only _be_ something or _do_ something! When I think of the people
who have been great—the heroes, the poets, the artists, people who have
accomplished something that lasted—they seem to me the only ones who
have been really happy. Just to be one of the mass, and live, and die,
and be forgotten, seems so pitiful.”
There had never been any closed doors between Mrs. Northmore’s heart and
her daughters. She had been the friend and confidante of each, and she
knew this mood of Esther’s; but the day had deepened its color to an
unusual sombreness. The girl had never before disclosed a feeling quite
like this, and for once the mother was at a loss how to help her. To say
that all could not be great was trite, and had no comfort in it.
“I think we often make a mistake in our envying of the great,” she said
gently. “The happiness to them was not in being known and remembered
beyond others; few of them knew in their lifetime that this would be
true of them, or even the value of their work to the world. The real
happiness lay in doing with success the thing they cared to do. To know
our work and do it, Esther, not the sort of work nor the reward, but the
finding and doing—_that_ is the true joy of the greatest, and it is open
to us all.”
She had spoken with simple seriousness, as she always did when others
brought her their troubles, however fanciful. Perhaps the girl did not
grasp the thought, or, grasping, find the comfort in it.
“But it seems to me that some of us have no special work to do, nor any
special faculty for doing it,” she said. “Here am I, for instance. What
am I good for? I seem to myself to be just one of those creatures who
are made for nothing but to fill up the spaces between the people who
amount to something.”
Mrs. Northmore pressed her hand for a moment lightly on the dark
appealing eyes of the girl. “If we are in earnest,” she said gently,
“and if it is usefulness, not praise that we are caring about, we shall
find our work; and be sure it will seem special to us if we love it as
we ought.”
There were a few minutes of silence; then the girl said more quietly,
but with a note of despondence in her voice: “If I had gone to school
longer and tried to fit myself for something, perhaps I might have found
out what I was good for. I didn’t care much when I left Lance Hall, and
I never studied as hard as I might while I was there; but I’ve thought
more about it since then.”
A look of pain came into Mrs. Northmore’s face. It was a regret the girl
had never expressed before, but one which had been often in her own
thoughts. Yet the year in boarding-school, which had followed Esther’s
graduation from the high school, had been all that Dr. Northmore could
afford to give his daughter. She was considered in the region quite an
accomplished girl, but her mother, at least, realized what a broader and
more serious education might have done for her. She realized it at this
moment with unusual force.
“I wish you might have had the best the schools can give, and some other
things you have missed, Esther,” she said. And then she added, “If we
were only a little richer!”
There was a tone in Mrs. Northmore’s voice which one heard but seldom,
and the girl noted it with a sudden compunction. “I haven’t missed
anything that I deserved to have,” she said quickly, “and I’ve had more
than most girls. I know that. It’s _you_ who go without things, mother.
You’re always planning and saving, and pretending you don’t want to have
anything or go anywhere.” And then the impatience came into her tone
again, though she was not thinking of herself, as she added, “Sometimes
I can’t see how it is that we have so little money to spend, when father
has such a good practice.”
Mrs. Northmore sighed. “Your father has never looked very sharply after
his own interests in money matters. He has been too busy with other
things, and too generous, for that,” she said. And then she added,
almost gayly: “But I have never lacked for anything; and it is so much
easier to bear the sort of mistakes your father makes than it would be
to bear some others! The ’handle’—you remember what Epictetus says about
the ’two handles’—why, the handle to bear _our_ sort of trouble with
stands out all round, and is so big one can’t help laying hold of it.”
Perhaps it was the light-heartedness with which she spoke, more than the
slight reproof which the words contained, that made Esther’s head drop
in her mother’s lap. “I wish I were half as good as you are, mother,”
she whispered.
The voices of Kate and Virgie from the direction of the kitchen made her
spring to her feet a minute later. “I don’t want to be here when they
come,” she said, dashing her handkerchief across her eyes. “I’m tired
and disagreeable. Good night.”
She was off before the others had reached the porch, and a half hour
later, when Kate followed her to her room, she was in bed, more than
willing that her sister should think her closed eyelids drowsy with
sleep, an impression which did not, however, prevent the other from
indulging in some lively monologue as she undressed. Her father had come
home, she said, and was delighted with the report of the day, but there
was a lot left to tell him in the morning. “Besides,” she added, “I
could see there was something on mother’s mind that she wanted to talk
over with him alone, so I came away.”
She was silent for fully two minutes, then burst out, “I say, wasn’t it
great, what Mort Elwell said about Stella Saxon’s picture?” She chuckled
at the remembrance, then added: “By the way, did it occur to you that he
wasn’t particularly enthusiastic over the idea of our going to
grandfather’s? My, but I wish we could go.”
“I don’t know what difference our plans make to him,” said Esther, in a
tone which indicated that her sleepiness had not reached an acute stage.
“Oh, they make plenty of difference to him; at least yours do,” said
Kate, sagely.
“Well, he might spare himself the trouble,” said Esther. “I must say I
think Morton Elwell takes too much for granted, lately.”
Kate stopped braiding her hair and stared at her sister. “I don’t know
what he takes for granted, except that old friends don’t change,” she
said. She continued to stare for a minute, then remarked slowly: “I know
what ails you, Esther. You want to have a lot of romance and all that
sort of thing. For my part I never could see that romance amounted to
anything but getting all mixed up and having a lot of trouble.” And
having delivered herself of this she apparently resigned herself to her
own reflections.
On the porch, still sitting in the evening darkness, Mrs. Northmore was
saying to her husband at that moment: “Philip, what do you say to
letting the girls go to New England? We’ve talked about it a good deal;
why not settle on it? Now that the wheat has turned out so well,
couldn’t we afford it?”
“Why, I think ’twould be an excellent plan, Lucia,” said the doctor,
cordially. “I’ve thought so all along, but I was under the impression
that you wanted the wheat money to go another way.”
She gave a little sigh. “Yes,” she said, “I did want to reduce that
mortgage, but some things can wait better than others. It would do the
girls good to go, and I believe Esther really needs a change.”
“You think the child is not well?” queried the doctor, with a note of
surprise in his voice.
“Oh, not ill,” said Mrs. Northmore, quickly, “but”—she hesitated a
moment, “she is rather restless and inclined to be a little morbid and
moody. It might be worth a good deal to her to have a change of scene,
and get some new ideas.”
“By all means pack her off,” said the doctor. “It’s a prescription I
always like to give my patients; and if that is yours for her I’ll fill
it with all confidence.” He rose and stretched his long arms with a
tired gesture. “I believe it’s bedtime for me,” he said, “and I rather
think it ought to be for you too.”