Wheat and Huckleberries Part 3

"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 cla.s.s 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 surpa.s.sing 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 da.s.sn'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 superst.i.tious 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 gla.s.ses with lids to 'em. She had a closet full that year, an' every gla.s.s 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 thres.h.i.+ng 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 fas.h.i.+on 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. n.o.body 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 ma.s.s, 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 s.p.a.ces 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, das.h.i.+ng 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."