So we began our search for the Quiet Life and the spot wherein to live it. It must be out-of-town, yet not so far but that the Angel and I could get to town for an occasional feast of music or the theatre.
We asked those of our friends who were commuters to exploit the glories of their own particular towns, but to our minds there was always some insuperable objection.
So one day I took down the telephone-book and looked over the names of the towns. Jersey was tabooed on account of its mosquitoes, and both Aubrey and I cared nothing for the seashore. But the Hudson, with its beauty and the delight of its hills rising in such a profusion of loveliness back of it, seemed to draw us irresistibly.
"Anything within an hour of New York," said Aubrey.
The telephone-book should answer. I resolved to read until I got a "hunch." That is not good English, but with me it is good sense, which is better.
Finally I found a number—97 Clovertown—Bucks, Miss Susan. Peach Orchard. The hunch was very distinct. I could fairly see my note-paper with Peach Orchard, Clovertown, stamped on it, for I instantly made up my mind that Susan must be asked to rent Peach Orchard for a term of years and go abroad. I felt sure that Europe would do her good. The more I thought of these names, the more sure I felt that we had arrived.
My next step was to look feverishly through the Clovertown names for a real estate agent. I found one, and without saying a word to the Angel, I called him up.
"Hello, Central. Give me Long Distance. Hello, Long Distance. Give me sixty-five Clovertown, please! Yes! All right. Is this Close and Murphy? Well, this is New York. I want to ask you if Peach Orchard is to let. What? I say, I would like to know if Miss Bucks would like to let Peach Orchard? She would? Well, how large is it? Four? Oh, five? Is there a good house on the place? And a stable? That's nice. I see. Yes. Well, I would like to see it to-day if I could, but it is snowing here. Not snowing there? Well, we might try. What time does a train leave 125th Street? In forty minutes? Well, my husband and I will be on that train. Oh, that's very nice. Our name is Jardine—Mr. and Mrs. Aubrey Jardine. Yes, I understand. Very well. Good-bye."
I hung up the receiver, and rushed into the dining-room.
"Hurry with luncheon, Aubrey!" I said. "I've rented a place in Clovertown, and we go out to take possession to-day. We leave in forty minutes!"
Aubrey looked up with interest.
"I heard you at the telephone. You are a crazy little cat," he said, but I could see that he was charmed. We love to do crazy things.
"He's going to meet us at the station with a carriage," I explained as I struggled into my coat with Mary's help, and Aubrey pawed madly around in the dark closet for overshoes for both of us.
Mary flew about like a distracted hen until she saw us safely started. Most people would have gone mad at our erratic proceedings, but nothing ever disturbed Mary's equanimity. In fact, crises fairly delighted her. In an emergency she rose to the heights of Napoleon.
Finally we started, caught the train, and arrived. The gallant Mr. Close met us, true to his word, and in five minutes we were on our way to Peach Orchard.
As we drove into the grounds, Mr. Close clapped his hand to his forehead with an exclamation.
"What is it?" I said, with a sinking heart.
"I've forgotten the key!"
"Never mind," I said, blithely. "We can easily get in through a window. My husband used to be a burglar."
It never occurred to me that the poor man would take such an idiotic remark seriously, so we neither of us looked at him until we had examined every door and window to find if haply one had been left unlocked. Nor did we notice that we were doing all the work until Aubrey selected the back hall window as the loosest, and opening his knife—the wickedest looking pocket-knife I ever saw, by the way—he proceeded deftly to turn the lock of the window and then to raise it.
I was so proud of his cleverness that I turned to ensure the admiration of Mr. Close also, but the look I encountered froze the smile on my lips and the words on my tongue, for the good man was viewing both Aubrey and me with the liveliest horror and distrust.
Aubrey turned also at my sudden silence, and the light dawned upon us both in the same instant.
Mr. Close had the grace to look quite sheepish to see us both sit down abruptly on the top step and shriek with laughter. But I am sure, in my own mind, that he dismissed the idea of burglars in favour of lunatics.
But Peach Orchard was well named, for the old house was set down in the very midst of it. Trees were everywhere, and, indeed, they grew so close to the house, and they were so tall, that we could not see the house properly. The short winter afternoon was drawing to a close and it looked for a moment as if we would have to come again, when on a shelf, good Mr. Close, whose business instincts were keener than his sense of humour, found an old lamp with about three inches of oil in it. A feverish search for matches resulted in the discovery that his match-box was empty, and Aubrey's held only one.
Right here, let me ask just one question of all the smokers all over the world. Why is it, that, needing them more than you need anything else on earth,—home or friends or wife or mother or money or position or religion or your hope of heaven,—why is it that you never have any matches?
Aubrey's one, which he had been saving, as he told me afterward, to light a cigarette on the return drive, proved friendly, and the lamp smoked instead. Armed with this rather unsatisfactory torch, we explored, and as we went up and down, in and out of the queer old place, built a hundred years ago (Mr. Close said!), we decided to take it, and most unwisely said so, thereby paying, as usual, the top price for something which we could have got at a bargain if we had waited. But such is the perennial foolishness and precipitancy of the Jardines.
Evidently Mary had humoured our going out to Clovertown that afternoon as one of our mad excursions only, and had not fathomed the possibility of our deciding to live there, for when we came home and gaily announced that we had rented Peach Orchard, Mary's jaw fell and her lip pouted sulkily.
This lasted during dinner. We could both see that she intended us to notice it and question her, and when the coffee had been served and we said she might go, she saw that she must open the ball herself, so she fingered her apron and said:
"Missis, I shall be sorry not to go with you to Clovertown, but of all the towns along the Hudson, that is the one I can't bear to go to!"
"Why, Mary?" I said, for the first time in my life suspecting her of the tricks which we afterward came to know were a part of her.
"Because my oldest sister was killed by the railroad right at the station at Clovertown, and I was the one to take her away!"
For about the ten thousandth time Mary held the trump. I felt crushed. I could fairly picture the scene, and I knew that no one could face such harrowing memories. As I gazed at her and she saw I was touched, tears began to gather in her eyes, brim over and run down her pink cheeks. I felt fairly faint and sick to think of parting with Mary.
Then something told me to probe the matter.
"When was your sister killed, Mary?" I said.
"Just twenty-two years ago come Washington's Birthday, Missis dear," whimpered Mary, with her apron at her eye.
I began to laugh heartlessly.
"And wasn't that the sister you fought with and hated—the one you have told me a dozen times you were glad to know was dead?" I went on.
Mary nodded, rather sheepishly. I saw she was weakening, so I became firm.
"Now, Mary," I said, and it was the first time I ever had spoken sternly to her, "put that apron down, and don't let me hear another word about your not going to Clovertown. Of course you are going! Any grief, no matter what, could be cured in twenty-two years,—let alone a grief which never was a grief. And you didnotsee her after she was dead—you told me you wouldn't go. And what made you the maddest was having to pay the funeral expenses when she had a husband who could have paid them if he would only work. So now, you can just stop those onion tears," I said, marching haughtily toward the door, followed somewhat sheepishly by the Angel, who longed to turn back and mitigate my sternness.
The longing finally conquered him.
"Besides, Mary," he said, pacifically, turning back at the door, "we couldn't possibly get along without you. You are absolutely necessary to us. Who, I ask you, would do up my white waistcoat and duck trousers ifyouleft?"
Mary beamed at this seductive flattery, and bridled visibly.
"Tell me all about it, Boss dear," she said.
And in so doing she and we both forgot that she had suggested going, and nothing more was ever said about it.
Seldom can I look back, however, and recall an instance when we obtained more feverish and thrilling joy than from those next few days when we mentally improved and furnished Peach Orchard.
With what excitement did we lay rugs and place furniture in our mind's eye! How we appealed frantically to each other to decide whether there were three or four windows in the library, and with what complacency did we discover that, owing to a shrewd forethought of my own in furnishing the smoking and living rooms in our apartment with similar curtains, we now had enough for the great, light, airy sitting-room at Peach Orchard.
Then we took a long breath and fell with fresh avidity into the subject of improvements. Mr. Close was of the opinion that Susan would do nothing—could do nothing rather, as she had a consumptive brother who must live in the Adirondacks, and her resources were few. Therefore, we recklessly decided that if she would give us an option on the place for another year, we would make the improvements ourselves. Fools!
Yet why fools! Never have we so enjoyed spending money, and as Anthony Hope says that "economy is going without something you want, for fear that sometime you'll want something which probably you won't want," we felt upheld and strengthened in the knowledge that we were never, by any means, economical.
But the Angel was prospering. Those who frankly predicted that we would starve or be divorced were now glad to sit at our well-set table and smoke the Angel's good cigars and sip his excellent wines. And feeling that we might branch out alittle, we promptly branched out a great deal, and nearly went to smash in consequence.
But God watches over children and fools, and we were saved, and sped upon our way in a manner so like a special dispensation of Providence that no lesson was learned to teach us to be more careful next time. In fact, it encouraged us in our recklessness, for in our darkest hour the Angel's first play was accepted, and, being staged, was so instantaneously a success that he gave up novels altogether and began to devote himself to the drama. He devoted to it, I mean to say, all the time he could spare from the improving of Peach Orchard.
Those days, the first of our prosperity and the first of our housekeeping in a real house, were the happiest we had ever known. Susan had been persuaded to let the place for a term of years with an option to buy, so we felt as if we owned it already. But that is a peculiarity of the Jardines.
We tore out the old plumbing, we put in two new bathrooms. We made a laundry out of the storeroom. We cut doors and threw rooms together which never had associated before, and we turned all the windows which gave upon the porches into doors, so that we could step out-of-doors at will. We ordered our porch screened entirely, and planned to furnish it as a study for Aubrey. We put paper-hangers, painters, gas, telephone, and electric men at work all over the house, and made them promise, yea, even swear, to finish their work by a certain time.
But, having, as we thought, learned wisdom by experience, we put no faith in their promises, but engaged Mr. Close in person to go every day to superintend things.
As the day drew near to move we became most agitated as to ways and means. It seemed a gigantic task to crate and barrel everything and move from one town to another, and while we discussed hiring a car, Mary interrupted.
"Excuse me, Boss and Missis dear, for putting in my two cents, but you surely aren't thinking of sending all the furniture by freight, when vans are so much more convenient?"
"Vans?" we cried. "Will vans move us thirty miles?"
"Fifty, if you like," said Mary, promptly.
"From one town to another?"
"From one State to another, and without taking the pins out of the cushions or the sugar out of the bowls."
At once the idea of the sugar-bowls and pincushions fascinated me. I begged Aubrey to investigate, and he agreed with enthusiasm to do it the very next day.
"If I might suggest," said Mary again, "all Boss will have to do is to telephone to two or three different companies to come and estimate the cost. He won't have to run after 'em any farther than the telephone."
We followed her suggestion, and to our delight discovered that all she said was true and more. They agreed to insure against breakage, thieves, and fire; to pack all the stuff in vans one day, take them to their warehouse for the early part of the night, and start at one o'clock for Clovertown,—agreeing to make the whole distance, unload, place the furniture, and unpack the china before leaving that night.
We need not lift a hand. All we had to do was to go to a hotel for one night, and take a train for Clovertown the next morning.
It was almost too easy. I reflected what "moving" meant to people who live in small towns where such conveniences do not exist. Verily, New York might be noisy, but she was a city of superb conveniences. Only Paris excels her in her purveying shops, for in Paris one can buy the wing of a chicken only, and that just around the corner, while in New York one must buy at least the whole fowl (and pay the price of a house and lot in Louisville, let me pause to remark!), but in justice I must also add that such luxuries are also "just around the corner."
By implicitly following Mary's advice we saw everything safely placed in the vans and move majestically from our door. Then we betook ourselves to the Waldorf, with our "glad rags," as Jimmie had commanded, in our suit-cases, and dined in state, and went to Weber and Fields afterward. Jimmie wanted me to hear Weber persuade Lillian Russell to invest in oil.
Now at that, the Angel and Mrs. Jimmie simply smiled indulgently. While Jimmie and I reeled in our seats and clutched each other's sleeves and shrieked (in as ladylike a manner as we could), while tears poured down our cheeks and our ribs cramped and our breath failed. That is the way Jimmie and I enjoy things. That is also why we can stand it to travel in the same party, and not come home hating each other.
But all the time, even in the midst of the fun, my mind turned lovingly toward the warehouse where our precious furniture reposed, safely packed in those huge red vans.
Jimmie noticed my preoccupation, and said:
"If you could take your mind off coal-scuttles long enough, I would like to ask you what you thought of Prince Henry? Aubrey says you met him last week."
"We did, we met him the same day we bought the ice-box," I answered.
"Ye gods!" growled Jimmie, in deep disgust. "Think of remembering a royal prince by the day you bought the ice-box!"
"What most impressed you, dear?" inquired Mrs. Jimmie, sweetly.
"The price!" I answered, cheerfully. "It was a slightly damaged article, so we got it for less than half the original cost of it. You know I do love a bargain, Mrs. Jimmie."
"I meant the prince, dear," said Mrs. Jimmie.
"However, if she prefers to discuss ice-boxes," said Jimmie, politely, "by all means, let us bring the conversation down to her level. It will not be the first time I have had to do it."
"I don't care!" I said, stoutly. "It was far more interesting than seeing the prince. This, you must remember, was ourfirstice-box. The other one was built into the apartment, and we didn't own it."
"I do wish Bee could hear you!" jeered Jimmie. "Gee, but you will be a trial to Bee."
"I always have been," I said. "She got mad at me just before I was married about a thing as foolish as anythingIever heard of. I had calls to pay, and I asked Bee to go with me. She said she'd go if I'd get a carriage, so I said I would, and told her to order it. But it seems that all the good ones were engaged for a funeral, and they sent us a one-horse brougham with the driver not in livery. We didn't notice it until we opened the front door. Then Bee sailed in. 'Why are you not in livery?' she demanded. 'I shall certainly report you to Mr. Overman. He ought to be ashamed to send out a driver without a livery!' 'If you please, ma'am,' said the man, 'I'm Mr. Overman, and rather than disappoint you ladies, as all my men are out, I thought I'd drive you myself.' Well, that was too much for even Bee. So she thanked him, and in we got. The first house we went to was that of a haughty society dame of whose opinion Bee stood much in awe. Personally, I thought her an illiterate old bore. She was newly rich, and laid great emphasis upon such things as maids' caps, while tucking her own napkin under her chin at dinner. She followed us to the door in an excess of cordiality which amused me, considering everything, and there, to our horror, we saw poor old Overman half-way under the horse, examining one of its hoofs! Poor Bee! I gave one look at her face and giggled. That was enough. She was so enraged that she wouldn't pay another call. She took me straight home as if I were a bad child, and the next day I paid my calls alone."
"And yet," said Jimmie, musingly, "can you or any of us ever forget the night that Bee did the skirt dance in Tyrol?"
"Dear Bee!" said Mrs. Jimmie, softly. "How charming she is!"
"Yet she wouldn't approve of your going to Clovertown," said Jimmie."She hates the bucolic. Idyls and pastorals are not in it with our ruede la Paix Bee. I'll bet she will never come to see you at PeachOrchard."
"Let us hope for the best," said Aubrey. "It is dangerous to prophesy."
"We're going to keep a cow, Jimmie!" I said, rapturously.
"Well, don't gurgle about it. You act as if keeping a cow put the stamp of the Four Hundred on you. Did Mary say you might?"
"Mary has given her consent," said Aubrey. "But I'm wondering how that old woman will behave with other servants. Of course she was all right while there was no one else and she was boss of the ranch, but we must have two or three now at Peach Orchard, and she is so jealous, I wonder if she will let us live with her!"
Well might we have wondered. Trouble began the very next day. As we went out on the train I noticed that Mary had on her best dress and hat. She had no bag with her, so I wondered how she meant to "settle" in such clothes. The Angel and I had on our worst.
I comforted myself with the reflection that there would not be very much dirty work to do. This would in reality be a kid-glove moving, for Mr. Close had telephoned the day before that everything was ready for us to move in. I had even sent a cleaning woman for floors and windows.
I had taken the precaution to bring a few silver knives, forks, and spoons in my bag. Then as we got off the train I stopped at a grocery and bought a loaf of bread, a tin of devilled ham, one of sardines, some butter, and a dozen eggs, so we were at least sure of our luncheon.
We jumped out of the carriage almost before it had stopped, and, whileAubrey paid the man, I ran up the steps and into the house.
Such a sight of confusion met my eyes! The old paper was piled in the middle of each floor, and not a new strip on any wall. One ceiling only in the whole house was finished. Not a hardwood floor had been laid. The lumber was piled in the hall. Not a chandelier was up. The ragged wires projected from their various holes in ceilings and walls. Where was my cleaning woman? Where were our workmen? Above all, where was the perfidious Mr. Close?
There was no furnace fire, and the water was not turned on. I ran back and Aubrey shouted for the carriage, just turning out of the grounds, to come back.
"Go to the plumbers!" I said, incoherently, "and to the electric light men, and to the agents, and see where the men are, and bring some brooms and buckets and send me a grocer's boy."
He turned away, breathing vengeance. I felt sorry for Mr. Close.
"And to the telephone company!" I cried, after the departing carriage.
"And to—" but the driver lashed his horses, and I had to give up.
I went back to Mary in her best dress.
"Finished, is it?" she said, sniffing with indignation. "I suppose the agent thought we were flies, and could move in on the ceiling—as that's the only thing I can see about the house that's finished!"
"Wait until Mr. Jardine sees the agent!" I said, ominously. "Then something else will be finished, besides the ceiling."
"I hope he'll kill him!" said Mary, pleasantly.
It was a real pleasure to witness the dismay in Mr. Close's face when Aubrey returned, bringing him, mentally, by the scruff of the neck. I have seen terriers yanked back to look at things they have "worried" in much the same manner that Mr. Close was fetched to Peach Orchard.
"Just look, Mr. Close, if you please," I said, ominously polite. "You telephoned me yesterday and said you had been here personally and seen with your own eyes that everything was finished and the house in perfect readiness for us to move in."
Mr. Close refused to meet my accusing eye. He turned green.
There are more ways than one of calling a man a liar. And some are safer than others.
"Did you really have the smoke test put through the plumbing as you said you did?" I asked.
Mr. Close eagerly produced the bill.
Plumber's bills are conclusive evidence.
"Did you have the range cleaned and the water-back examined?" demandedAubrey.
Mr. Close swore that he did. Aubrey led him captive around the house and showed him the confusion thereof, Mary grimly following. I think Close preferred Aubrey to me, and me or anybody to Mary, for Mary's very spectacles were bristling with anger. She could see herself, in her best dress, having to clean up that mess so that the furniture could be moved in.
Then Aubrey's men began to arrive. The man with the chandeliers. The carpenters to lay the floors. The man from the water office. My negro cleaning woman and the grocer's boy. Fortunately, the cleaning woman had brought a broom, a mop, and a bucket.
As there were no fires, Aubrey and Mr. Close made one in the furnace; Mary and the grocer's boy—or rather the grocer's boy under Mary's direction—built one in the range, while I set the woman to sweeping one floor for the carpenters to begin on.
Suddenly I heard hurried feet running up the cellar stairs. The water man had turned the water on from the street, and it was gaily pouring into the cellar. Mr. Close is a fat man, but he ran like a jack-rabbit to that water main, and shut it off. Then without daring to face—Mary, he started to town for a plumber.
He had not been gone half an hour when the water-back blew up. Fortunately, no one was in the kitchen at the time, but the cleaning woman turned from black to a dirty gray with fright, and without further ado went home. I can't say that I blamed her. Aubrey was busy putting out the furnace fire and bailing out the cellar, so he did not know of that defection.
However, a culmination of such calamities, instead of smiting me to the earth, aroused every drop of fighting blood in my whole body.
I went out on the porch to think it over, and as I thought I began to laugh. I laughed until Aubrey heard me and thought I was crying. He came hurrying out, with a face full of anxiety, saying, before he saw me:
"Never mind, dear! I know this is hard on you, but—"
"Well, I'll be—!"
Both of those remarks were Aubrey's. He was much relieved, however, to discover that I was not cast down by all these disasters. In fact, our moving partook more of the delights of camping out than orthodox housekeeping, and I soon discovered expedients.
The only fire which did not bid fair to blow our heads off was one in the grate in the hall. On this we boiled water and made tea, and for that first luncheon we satisfied ourselves with sardines and devilled ham sandwiches. But as we were obliged to cook on that grate for six days, I may as well record now that we grew into expert cooks, attempting eggs in all forms, batter-cakes, hoe cakes, fried mush, bacon, ham, chops, toast, and fried potatoes,—in fact, no woman knows how much she can cook on a common little hard coal grate until three hungry people are dependent on it for three meals a day.
We supplemented this by the chafing-dish. Aubrey says that I should say the grate fire supplemented the chafing-dish, for nobody knows what can be done with one—in real, urgent housekeeping, I mean, such as ours, until one has tried. It makes a perfect double boiler, and as for abain Marie, well, I used to cream potatoes in the top part, and when they were all done but the simmering of the cream to thicken it, I used to put tomatoes in the bottom part to stew, and put the potato part back on the tomatoes for a cover and to keep hot. Did you ever try that?
The kitchen range was discovered to be ruined, the pipes being completely full and solid with rust. It is a miracle that some of us were not killed by the explosion. Mary cheerfully declared her regret that Mr. Close had not been bending over the stove with his lie in his throat when the water-back remonstrated. Mary is quite firm in her ideas of making "the punishment fit the crime—the punishment fit the crime."
But we enjoyed it—that is, Aubrey and I enjoyed it. Mary wanted us to go to an hotel and stay until things were in order, and send the bill to Mr. Close. But even though her suggestion was made at two o'clock in the afternoon and no vans had yet appeared, I was firm in my decision to sleep in Peach Orchard that night.
My courage had in the meantime been buoyed up by the fact that the telephone had been put in, and my friend, the grocer's boy, had brought me reinforcements in the shape of plates, tumblers, pots, pans, brooms, buckets, and supplies, and had further completed my rapture by promising me a kitten.
About three o'clock, I, as lookout, descried the big red vans, each drawn by four horses, at the foot of the hill.
Now Clovertown is not full of hills, rather it consists of hills. It is not quite as bad as Mt. St. Michel, for that is all one, but Clovertown consists of a series of small Mt. St. Michels, equally steep, precipitous, and appalling to climb, also equally lovely and bewitching when once you have climbed.
The moving men seemed to realize their steepness, for they put all eight of the horses to one van and bravely started up the hill. But alas, they were New York horses, and only capable of dodging elevated pillars and of keeping their footing on icy asphalt. They were not used to climbing trees, as we afterward discovered Clovertown horses to be quite capable of doing. So, after straining and pulling and being cruelly urged to a feat beyond their strength, we had our first taste of the neighbourliness of the people on the next estate. Their head man, called familiarly Eddie Bannon, came to our rescue.
"Take all them horses off," he said, "and I'll pull you up the hill with my team of blacks."
We were grateful, but politely incredulous. What! One pair of horses accomplish a feat which eight had been unable to do.
I grew feverishly excited in watching the exchange. It was a picture to see the incredulity on the countenances of the van men. They tried not to show it, for that would have been impolite, but Eddie Bannon saw it, and grinned at their unbelief.
When the blacks were in the traces, Bannon took the reins. One of the men offered him a long wicked-looking whip, but he spurned it.
"No," he said, "if the blacks won't pull for love, they won't for a beating."
So then he spoke to them. Willing hands started the wheels. The gallant little blacks, looking like a pair of ponies before the huge van, seemed to lie flat on their bellies as they strained forward, digging their sharp little hoofs into the hillside. The van gave an inch—two! A foot! Then urged by their master's voice, and for very pride of home and race and breed, the gallant blacks pulled for dear life, and in a quarter of an hour the van was at our door, and they were switching their tails and stamping their hoofs and shaking their intelligent heads in the pride of victory.
As for Bannon, he stroked and praised them in an ecstasy of self-vindication, and was refusing the van man's offer to buy them at "a hundred dollars apiece more than they cost."
Those horses pulled our three vans up our hill, if you will believe it, and seemed rather to enjoy the grind they had on the other horses, so that, in a fever of appreciation, I had to go and feed apples and sugar to all ten of them, and to remind the blacks that the New York horses had been pulling those vans since midnight, all of which I begged them to take into consideration, while not in the least depreciating their own glorious achievement.
The initiated need not be told how, when hardwood floors are being laid, furniture is moved from room to room to accommodate the carpenters, and the uninitiated will not be interested at the recital. It must be experienced to be appreciated.
We lived through it. We learned not to object when the ice-box was set up in the hall so near the grate that the drip-pan had to be emptied every hour, and the iceman had to come twice a day. We learned to step over rolls of rugs and to bark our shins on rocking-chairs and to trip over hidden objects with only a pleasant smile.
We screened one porch entirely, and furnished it as a study for Aubrey. We had now papered and painted the house from top to bottom. We had put in gas, telephone, and electric light, and when we could no longer think of any further way to spend money, we turned our attention to the garden.
I longed for old Amos, my uncle's gardener and coachman in Louisville. His experience would be invaluable, and as the estate had been divided and no one had any use for the old grizzled negro, they let me have him. I adored Amos. It was he who had attended to all my childish pleasures on the plantation when I went there to visit, and, in turn, he thought "Miss Faith honey" could do no wrong. It is a comfort to have some one in one's childish memory who thinks one can do no wrong, even if it is only a servant.
So old Amos came and made flower-beds, and persuaded us to buy a pair of horses in addition to the one we had hitherto modestly used, and thus, with the aid of friends' and judicious servants' advice, we were by way of being landed proprietors, and came to look upon Peach Orchard as an estate.
Then the grocer's boy gave me the promised kitten, a common tiger kitten, which we named Mitnick, and soon afterward we acquired not only one cow, but several, our especial pride being an imported Guernsey, which figures quite prominently in my narrative further on. And as Aubrey's unwonted prosperity continued, we endeavoured not to let our riches increase too fast, by spending every cent upon which we could lay our hands on the place. But who, who owns a country place, can help it? Or who would help it if he could?
We raised our own flowers and vegetables regardless of expense. We could have ordered American Beauties from New York every day for what our hollyhocks and clove pinks and common annuals cost us. We planted five bushels of potatoes and dug three and a half, which made them come to a dollar a bushel more than if we had bought them at the grocer's. And as to our milk and cream—I once heard the Angel say to Jimmie when they came out for a visit:
"Which will you have, old man? A glass of champagne or a glass of milk? They both cost the same!"
But what of it? Weren't theyourcows which gave the milk? And weren't theyourpotatoes which rotted in the ground, andourchickens which died before we could kill them? It was the pride of ownership which ate into our lives and made us quite sickening to our friends whose tastes ran to pink teas and hotel verandas, while we, poor fools, lived each day nearer to the soil, and loved more dearly the earth which nourished us.
Bee had spent nearly all the time since we were married in Europe, and had never, therefore, paid the Angel and me a visit. But this very afternoon she was to arrive.
The arrival of one's sister need not necessarily mean anything as alarming as a smallpox scare, but if you knew the somewhat revolutionary methods, adopted with a ladylike quiet and a well-bred calm, which characterize Bee's visits to her relatives, you would excuse our somewhat flurried preparations to entertain her. In addition to our natural desire to do our best for her, Bee had sent a letter clearly setting forth the style of entertainment she expected of us, and indicating that no paltry excuses would be taken for our not coming up to her wishes.
Aubrey was at first for open rebellion.
"If she will take us as she finds us, Bee will be welcome to come and stay as long as she likes," he said, while her letter was still fresh in our minds.
"She won't," I said, with conviction. Bee is my sister, or to speak more accurately, I am Bee's sister. "She will come prepared to make radical changes in our mode of living, in everything from our religion to the way we have hung the pictures."
Aubrey used one small unprintable word.
"Furthermore," I added, "she will be so smooth and plausible about it, that you will not object to carrying out her wishes."
The Angel gave me a look.
"If we carry out her wishes, do you think that will be the reason?" he asked, quietly.
"No," I cried, impulsively. "It will be because as a host or as anything else you are an Angel."
But he is also a diplomat, as his next remark will show.
"As we are incapable with such generic instructions," he said, tapping Bee's letter with his pipe, "of knowing just how we must make ourselves over to suit her, and as Bee is never quite happy unless she is managing other people's affairs, suppose we wait until she comes and gives us specific orders?"
This was what I considered the height, climax, and acme of hospitality.
"Only," he warned me as we drove to the station to meet her, "try to remain, within bounds. The only thing I ha—criticize about Bee is that she makes such a coward of you. Remember when she tries to browbeat you, thatIconsider your taste and common sense better than hers, and that in any stand you take I am back of you, no matter what it is."
I pressed the Angel's hand gratefully. Bee's train was appallingly near, and my blissful married independence was rapidly degenerating into my former state of jelly-like sisterly dependence.
Bee is one of those persons who, consciously or unconsciously, make you feel the moment you meet her the difference between your clothes and hers. I had almost forgotten this, but the second she stepped from the train I was invisibly informed of the distance between us. I had put on my best, and Aubrey said I looked very well, but in Bee's first sweeping glance at me I felt sure that my dress was wrong in the back.
The carriage drove up, and, as Bee stepped into it, I noticed, that the horses were too fat, and that, while old Uncle Amos might be a comfort, he certainly was not stylish. I never had thought of these things before.
In other words, Bee brought the city into too close juxtaposition for the country to enjoy without a Mark-Tapley effort to come out strong under trying circumstances.
Our place, Peach Orchard, was old, rambling, and picturesque. But it was also comfortable. Both the Angel and I hate the idea of pioneering or of doing without city comforts. So we had put bathrooms in here and electric lights there, and, by adding city improvements to a country estate, we had made of Peach Orchard a dear old place. It was a place, too, over which some people raved, so I was loth to view it through my critical sister's eyes for fear of permanent disenchantment.
But at first Bee was very polite. She affected an interest in the cows and the number of hens sitting and how many more chickens we got than the people whose estate adjoins. She spoke of the butter, which so filled me with enthusiasm that I sent down to the dairy and had Mary bring up Katie's last churning to show her. I was so interested in the colour of the golden rolls in their cheese-cloth coverings that I did not notice Bee's expression until afterward.
At five Bee asked for tea. There were some hurried whispered instructions before we got it. But we pulled through that all right.
Then Bee said:
"Who is coming out to-night?"
"Coming out where?" I asked, genially.
"Why, to dine. Surely, you don't dine here alone, just you two, every evening?"
I looked at Aubrey, and he looked at me.
"To be sure we do! Do you think we are already so bored by each other that we send to New York for people to amuse us?" I cried, with some spirit.
"Oh, not at all!" answered Bee, politely. "Only, I thought perhaps, now that I am here, you would have some one from town for me to talk to."
"Why, I'll talk to you and so will Aubrey—"
I stopped in confusion. Again it was something in Bee's expression, I felt the same way when I called her attention to the length of the sorrels' tails. It reminded me that Bee preferred them docked.
"It is your first night with us, so nobody will be here to-night," I said, rising to the emergency. "But to-morrow we'll have somebody. I'll ask the Jimmies!"
"Or perhaps you could get Captain Featherstone from Fort Hamilton," suggested Bee.
"That is not likely," I said. "He has so many engagements."
"You might try him—by telephone," suggested Bee again.
"Certainly, I'll ask him," I said, cordially.
Aubrey pressed my handkerchief into my hand with a meaning twinkle in his eyes, and when Bee went in to dress, he said:
"It will be rather nice to see old Featherstone again, don't you think?"
"Yes, if we can get him," I answered.
"You poor little goose," said Aubrey, "don't you know they have it all arranged, and that Featherstone won't go beyond earshot of the telephone until he receives your invitation?"
To be sure! I had forgotten Bee's methods.
Of course it turned out as Aubrey predicted—it always does. CaptainFeatherstone accepted with suspicious alacrity.
For three days Bee was polite, and I, who am most easily gulled for a person who looks as intelligent as I do, was pluming myself upon the fact that our modest mode of living was proving agreeable to Bee's jaded European palate. I wondered if she had noticed my housekeeping. She had not expressed herself in any way, but I wondered if she had observed how scrupulously neat everything was, that there was no lint on the floors and what bully things we had to eat.
I was the more eager to know what she thought from the fact that most of my friends had not hesitated to say that I couldn't keep house, and the Angel would starve. And once when I wrote home for a recipe for tomato soup and one of the girls heard of it, she actually sent me this insulting telegram: "Tomato soup! You! O Lord!"
Which just shows you.
So, on the third day, on seeing Bee cast a critical look around, I said, unable to wait another minute for the praises I was sure would come:
"Well, what do you think of us anyway?"
Then I leaned back with the thought in my mind, "Now here is where, asJimmie would say, I get a bunch of hot air."
Bee wheeled around on me eagerly, and I smiled in anticipation.
"Do you really want to know?"
"Of course I do!" I cried, impatiently.
"You asked me, you know," she said, warningly.
"I know I did. Go ahead. Tell me."
"Tell you what I think of you?" said Bee, looking me over as if to find a sensitive spot for her blow to fall on. "Well, I think that you are the most hopelesslybourgeoisemortal I ever knew."
I sat up.
"Bourgeois!" I exploded.
"From a woman with social possibilities," she went on, "you have degenerated into a mere housewife. And you and Aubrey have become positively—"
She paused in order to be more impressive.
"Domestic!" she hissed at last with such vehemence that I bit my tongue. As I put in no defence she went on, gathering momentum as she talked.
"When I heard that you had come to live in one of the smartest towns along the Hudson, where millionaires are as thick as blackberries, I said to myself: 'Now they will rise to the occasion.' But have you? No! I come, fresh from those gorgeous house-parties in England, to find you and Aubrey no better than farmers and—satisfied with yourselves! If you could only get my point of view and seehowsatisfied you are!"
"We are happy,—that's what it is!" I interpolated, feebly.
"Then be miserable, but progress!" cried Bee. "Such a state of social stagnation as you exist in is a sin against yours and Aubrey's talents."
I was so stunned I forgot to bow at this unexpected compliment.
"Here you are in the midst of smart traps, servants in livery, horses with docked tails and magnificent harnesses, perfectly contented with fat, lazy horses, an old negro coachman in a green coat, and carriages whose simplicity is simply disgusting. There is only one really magnificent thing about Peach Orchard, and that is the dog."
I felt faint. To have earned the right to live in Bee's eyes only by a dog's breadth! It was mortifying.
"I don't care so much for myself," pursued Bee, comfortably, "but whatSir Wemyss and Lady Lombard will say,Idon't know."
"Why, they aren't coming here, are they?" I gasped, sitting up.
"They are, if you will invite them. Of course I have nowhere to entertain them, in return for all they did for me, and I thought possibly you would ask them here for a fortnight, but since I have seen how you live—unless, perhaps, you would be willing to be smartened up a bit?"
Bee looked distinctly hopeful.
"What would you suggest?" I asked, huskily.
Bee cleared her throat in a pleased way.
"First of all, let me be assured that I will not be embarrassing you," she said, politely. "You can afford to—to branch out a little?"
"Yes," I said. But my pleasure in the admission was not keen.
"Then," said Bee, "I would advise a coachman and a footman in livery. I know just where two excellent Englishmen can be got. Then you want all this made into lawns. You want to exercise the horses more, and have their tails docked. And above all you want a victoria."
"We have got that," I said. "I was going to surprise you with it. It came this morning."
"Where is it?" cried Bee, standing up and shaking out her gown.
"In the barn, but perhaps—"
"Let's go and look at it!" exclaimed Bee. Then as we started she laid her hand kindly on my arm. "And please say 'stables,' not 'barn.' Sir Wemyss might not know what you meant."
I giggled at this, for ours is so hopelessly a barn. Nobody but a fool would try to rejuvenate the huge red structure by the word "stables." It sheltered the lovely, soft-eyed Jerseys, a score of sitting hens in one retired corner, the horses, the feed, the carriages, and farm implements. Stables indeed!
Bee walked straight by all the animals, who turned their heads and gave me a welcome after their several kinds, and stood in delighted contemplation before the beautiful shining victoria.
"That is a beauty!" she said, at length. "Aubrey certainly knows what's what, even if you don't. Now I can tell you what has been in my mind all day long. Oh, do leave that cow alone and listen! Call the dog!"
Jack, our snow-white bulldog, came at a word. Bee beamed on him.
"It is the latest—the very latest fad in London to drive in a victoria with a white bulldog on the seat with you!" she said, complacently. "And Jack will be simply perfect for the part."
"Shall I train Aubrey to run behind with his tongue hanging out, inJack's place?" I asked.
"Now there you go—rejecting my simplest suggestion!" cried Bee. "My simplest, my smartest, and my least expensive! This won't cost you a penny, and it will attract attention at once."
I closed my eyes for a moment to contemplate just what sort of attention we would attract if the dog and I drove to the Station to meet Aubrey.
"Suppose we try it now!" suggested Bee. "Will you have Amos bring out the horses?"
Bee is always scrupulously polite about not giving orders to my servants direct, although I have begged her to consider them as her own. I always think that a hostess who neglects to make her guests feel at liberty to give an order either is not accustomed to servants or else stands in too much awe of them.
Jack, the bulldog, assisted in our preparations with much getting under our feet and many hearty tail-waggings. Little he knew what was to follow!
Bee carefully gave me my position at the right, and took her own.
"Now," she said, "there are two equally correct ways of sitting in a victoria, neither of which you are doing."
I was quite comfortable, but I immediately sat up.
"It depends upon what you have on," Bee proceeded. "If you are tailor-made and it is morning, you sit straight like this. If it is afternoon and you are all of a Parisian fluff, you recline like this and put your feet as far out on the cushion as you can. It shows off your instep."
"It comes very near showing off your garter," I said, indignantly. "You needn't expect me to lie down like that and put my feet on the coachman's back. Aubrey would have a fit."
"You are positively low," said Bee, straightening herself. I giggled helplessly at her instructions. They were so beyond my power to carry them out properly.
"Can't I sit like this? Can't I be comfortable? What's a victoria for, anyhow?" I demanded.
"Call the dog!" was Bee's only answer.
I called him. He came to the step, his tongue hanging out, his stumpy tail wagging.
"What'll you have, girls?" he seemed to say.
"Get in here! Come up, Jack!" I coaxed, patting the seat invitingly.
Jack put one paw on the step, and wagged his tail harder. Old Amos's shoulders shook.
"Don' reckon you all will git dat dorg into de kerredge, Miss Faith," he said. "Look lake he smell a trick."
It certainly did look as if he smelled treachery, for nothing could persuade him to enter our chariot. Finally the stable-boy lifted him bodily. Bee seized a paw and I his two ears, and thus protesting we dragged him to a position between us. He was badly frightened by such treatment, but remembering that I had been his friend in times past, his tail fluttered amiably. I gave a hurried order to Amos to drive out quickly, but as the carriage began to move, Jack's big body trembled violently, and he lifted up his voice in a howl of protest which woke the echoes. He tried to jump out, but as both Bee and I had our arms around him, more in anxiety than affection, however, he realized that we desired his society, and forbore to escape. Jack is a good deal of a gentleman, you see, albeit primitive in his methods of showing his discomfort.
"He'll soon stop," said Bee, encouragingly. "He feels strange at first."
But he didn't stop. The more familiar his surroundings became, the more we passed horses and dogs he knew, the keener became his humiliation at driving by in enervating luxury, where once he had trotted pantingly in the dust and heat. His howl changed to a deep bay, and the bay to a long-drawn wailing, which was so full of pain that the passers-by made audible comments. As for me, I was afraid every moment that we would be arrested by a member of the S. P. C. A., but fortunately the populace seemed to think we were on our way to the veterinary surgeon for a dangerous operation.
"Poor fellow!" said one, "you can see he is injured by the way they are holding him!"
"Ain't them ladies kind-hearted now to take that ugly-lookin' old bulldog in that fine carriage to the doctor!" said a factory-girl.
Bee crimsoned.
"Stop laughing!" she said to me in a savage aside. "I wish I could stuff my handkerchief down his throat. Won't he ever stop?"
"It seems not!" I answered, cheerfully. "And we really can't consider that there is any more style to this manner of driving than if we belonged to thehoi polloiwho drive with their husbands, and let their dogs follow, can we?"
Bee gave me a look.
"I believe you are pinching him to make him howl," she said.
At that unjust accusation I took my arms away from Jack's neck, and feeling the affectionate embrace of his lawful mistress relax, he violently eluded Bee's, and with a flying leap he was out and away, safely restored to his doggish dignity.
By this time quite a little crowd had collected, and Amos's shoulders were shaking unmistakably. Both these things annoyed Bee. The crowd was pitying her. Amos was laughing at her,—two things which could not fail to vex. She can bear being envied to the verge of being wished a violent death with equanimity, but to be pitied or ridiculed? Haughty Bee! She forgot herself, and gave the order herself to drive fast, and the way we drove back to Peach Orchard gave Jack something to do to keep up with us. We may have lacked the style of our driving out, but Bee said the pace was good for the sorrels. To me it savoured of the pace of fugitives from justice.
This episode, unfortunate as it had proved, would not have dampened Bee's ardour nor discouraged her in the least, had not Jack taken matters into his own paws. He seemed to connect Bee with his day of humiliation, and not only eyed her with deep aversion, but howled painfully whenever she cornered him. And as for the victoria—to this day, whenever it is taken out, Jack with one leap is under the barn by a private entrance which he tunnelled out for himself on that never-to-be-forgotten day when we endeavoured to introduce a London fashion by means of him.
Nevertheless, her other suggestions were carried out. The lovely wild tangle of berry-bushes and long grass was subdued. Our old-fashioned garden was hidden by a row of firs, while Bee set out beds of cannas and geraniums. To me it was simply hideous, but the look of complacency which Bee habitually wore as she thus brought us within the pale of civilization more than repaid me for any artistic losses we may have sustained. Bee was my sister and our guest, and could only be made happy by feeling that her coming had effected changes for the better and by being constantly entertained. What, then, was more simple than to content her with such entertainment as she had requested before she came, and by permitting her to smarten us up? To be sure, Aubrey used to tell me every night that he was going to dig up the bed of cannas and coleus the moment her back was turned, but as I, too, was quite willing to see that done, it seemed to me that I was treading a somewhat dangerous road with great discretion and a tact I never should get the credit for. Bee, I felt sure, regarded me as a fool for not having done all this at the beginning.
At Bee's request we joined the Country Club and the Copsely Golf Club, and I bought more clothes, and the Angel and I found ourselves in a set we never had cared for before, but which was amusing enough for a few weeks or months at most.
But the episode which broke the backbone of Bee's complacency and virtually gave us back our freedom was this:
True to her word, Bee got us an English coachman and a footman, and put them into a very smart and highly expensive livery. But the coachman only lasted a week, having too eagerly imbibed of the flowing bowl and being discovered by the Angel asleep in his new livery with his head sweetly pillowed on the recumbent body of the gentlest cow. This mortified Bee, for the men were, in a sense, her property, so she dismissed him, had his livery cleaned, and resolutely set herself to the somewhat difficult task of securing a coachman to fit the livery. I could, in this, give her no assistance, or, to speak more accurately, she would permit none, and finally she announced, with an air of triumph which plainly called for congratulations, that she had secured what she wanted.
The first time I saw my new coachman, there was something irritatingly familiar about him. He seemed to know me very well, too, and called me "Mis' Jardine" with a nod of the head as if we had formerly been pals. But under Bee's tutelage I was on terms of distant civility with my menials instead of knowing all their joys and sorrows as in the past.
But Bee was charmed with thetout ensemble. She said he matched the footman better than the Englishman did, because the Englishman was Irish anyway.
So that first afternoon Bee arranged to go to the Copsely Golf Club just at the close of the tournament, and to drive up when the porches would be filled with the players and their friends having tea. Bee likes to make a dramatic entrance, and often relates in tones of positive awe how she once saw a Frenchwoman in an opera-cloak composed entirely of white tulle run the whole length of the Grand Opera House in Paris in order to make the tulle, which was cut to resemble wings, float out diaphanously behind her.
So as we bowled smartly along, the sorrels having been reduced by hard driving until they were models of symmetry, the new victoria shining, our new liveries glittering in the eyes of the populace, and we ourselves ragged out, as Aubrey said, as if our motto had been, "Damn the expense," we certainly felt complacent.
"Now watch him pull the sorrels up," whispered Bee. "I taught him myself."
With that we arrived almost at a fire-engine pace in front of the club-house steps, and the carriage stopped. But to our horror, Bee's coachman leaned so far backward to pull up that his body was perfectly horizontal, and—yes—I was sure of it, he braced his foot against the dashboard to get a leverage. I have seen grocery-boys pull up and turn sidewise on their seats in exactly the same manner.
Bee's face was purple.
The sorrels, unaccustomed to such a jerk of their bits, instantly began to back, and two men rushed down the steps to our assistance. But Jehu was equal to the occasion. He slapped the horses' backs with the reins, and joyously drove our two off wheels up on to the lowest step of the club-house porch.
In that attitude we paused, andIgot out. Bee, after an instant's hesitation, gracefully followed suit. Nor could you tell from her placid face that this was not always the way we made our approach.
As for me, I was in a spasm of laughter which Jehu saw.
"I'm sorry, Mis' Jardine," he said, as the gentlemen released the sorrels' heads, and he prepared to drive off the steps, "but these horses pulls more than Guffin's mare, and I can't get a purchase on 'em with this bad hand of mine."
Then I knew who he was! He drove Guffin's grocery wagon for two months, and had lost three fingers of his right hand!
Poor Bee! But she took it out on me on the way home for not having had presentable servants before she came.
Now that she has gone, Amos is driving the sorrels again, and they are getting fat.