CHAPTER I A COERCED COOK.

AT the last minute we learned that the girl we had counted upon to do our cooking at Clover Lodge had scarlet fever, and as she was the only local girl that we could hire—New England girls preferring to work in a “shop” to domestic service—we were at our wits’ end.

In our extremity Mrs. Vernon (my wife) made a last appeal to Minerva. She went into the kitchen of our New York flat and said,

“Minerva, Mamie Logan, the girl we expected to have up at Clover Lodge, has scarlet fever.”

Minerva was blacking the stove (as I could see from the dining room), but she stopped and turned around as she always did when her mistress spoke to her, and said “Yas’m.”

“Well, do you know what that means, Minerva?”

“Means she’s sick, ma’am.”

“Yes, but it also means that I haven’t anybody to cook for me up there.”

“Yas’m.”

“Well, don’t you think you could go up if we gave you five dollars a month more than you’re getting now?”

Minerva rubbed her already black arm with the blacking brush in an absent-minded sort of way as she said,

“’Deed I hate the country. It’s so dismal.”

I would have given up trying to get her to come then, as her tone sounded final to me, but Mrs. Vernon caught a gleam of willingness in her expression, and she said,

“Some country places may be doleful, Minerva, but Clover Lodge is in one of the most beautiful places in the world, and there’s a light kitchen and you can take ‘Miss Pussy,’ you know. I’m sure you’ll like it and the work won’t be as hard as it is here and there’s lots of fresh air. And I’ll lend you books to read. If you won’t come we’ll have to give up going, as I won’t take a stranger up from the city.”

“Yas’m,” said Minerva, turning to the stove and beginning to use the brush again.

“Well, will you go, Minerva?”

“Yas’m.”

“Oh, you dear good thing,” said my wife, and I fully expected her to hug Minerva.

She came in to where I was finishing my second cup of coffee and said,

“Minerva is a jewel. She’s going up. Do you know, in some ways it’s better than if we had Mamie Logan because Minerva is a much better cook and she won’t have any beaux from the village to make a noise in the kitchen in the evening—”

“No, but you may have to import beaux from Thompson Street to solace her loneliness,” said I. “If I know the kind at all, Minerva will die one day away from New York.”

“Nonsense,” said Ethel. “She can’t help falling in love with the view from the kitchen windows. That lovely old purple Mount Nebo.”

I had my doubts of a New York born and bred colored cook falling in love with any view that did not comprehend a row of city houses somewhere in its composition, but I said nothing. The doctor had told me that Ethel absolutely needed a long rest in the “real country,” hill country preferred, and even if I had to go out and help Minerva in the kitchen I was going up.

We had spent a delightful week at Clover Lodge the year before with the Chauncey Wheelocks, but this year they were going to Europe and had proposed our renting it furnished and had promised Mamie Logan as cook. But a cordon bleu is not immune from scarlet fever, as we had found to our vexation—although I doubt if we felt it as much as Mamie did. She, by the way, had actually liked scenery and had told Mrs. Vernon that the distant old mountain peak was company for her while she was washing dishes. But a purple peak would not take the place of the yellow lights of a great city to Minerva and I looked forward to varied experiences, although I said nothing about my expectations to Ethel.

I half expected Minerva to back out when it came to going, but she did not. Possibly the excitement of going on the cars had something to do with her fortitude. Possibly the diversion that “Miss Pussy” afforded made her forget that she was leaving her beloved city.

The cat was a startler and no mistake. While the train was in motion she kept quiet, but whenever we stopped at a station she let forth ear splitting shrieks, acting exactly as if she were being tortured. More than one non-smoking man sought refuge in the smoker and many were the black looks cast at Minerva.

I was glad that she sat behind us, for I did not wish to be mixed up in the affair. As for her she shrieked with laughter every time that the cat shrieked with dismay, and I felt that the cat, though unpleasant, was really making our journey easier, as it kept Minerva from dwelling upon her exile.

We took a branch road at Springfield and a half hour later we were in a wagon, climbing the steep ascent that leads to Clover Lodge.

The cat, sniffing fresh air and longing to be at liberty, redoubled its howls, but Minerva no longer laughed. She looked at the distant hills in an awed sort of way and sighed.

I sat with the driver, and Mrs. Vernon told Minerva interesting bits about the locality through which we were passing, but a languid “Yas’m” was the only reply she vouchsafed. She was fast falling a prey to nostalgia.

Upon our arrival at Clover Lodge there was enough to do to keep every one busy. The frantic cat was set free as soon as we arrived and she scudded under the house and we saw no more of her for some time. I did not think much of it at the moment, but when after our somewhat picnic dinner I heard Minerva at the back of the house calling in heart breaking tones “Miss Pussy, Miss Pussy, woan’ you come out? Come ou—t,” I realized that I should have chained the cat in the kitchen. It might stay away for a day or two in order to express its contempt for people who could subject it to such humiliation.

I was enjoying a smoke and Ethel was lying down. Oh, what a blessed relief this was from the noise and odours and bustle of the city!

“I can’t get out. Mist. Vernon! Mist. Vernon! I can’t get out. Ow.”

The sounds seemed to come from under the kitchen. I side-tracked my peaceful thoughts, laid my cigar on the railing of the piazza and ran around to the kitchen door and beheld Minerva wedged fast under the house. Clover Lodge has a very diminutive cellar which does not extend as far as the kitchen. There is a space of some two feet between the kitchen floor and the ground, used as a receptacle for various odds and ends in the way of boxes, clothes poles and the like, and our stout Minerva had attempted to creep under there in order to get Miss Pussy, whose tell-tale eyes gleamed at her from the darkness. She had failed to take into account the fact that her head could go where her body could not follow and she had become stuck.

“It’s all right, Minerva. I’ll get you out. There’s very little room for promenading there. I’ll have to knock a board out. I’ll get an axe.”

She kept up her groaning and at last Ethel was aroused by it, and, somewhat alarmed, hurried into the kitchen and saw the sprawling figure of Minerva with Clover Lodge on her back. The spectacle appealed to her sense of humour and she retreated to where she could laugh.

I had a somewhat ticklish job to get Minerva out unhurt. It was awkward splitting the board without touching her, but I compassed it at last, although each stroke of the axe was followed by a groan from Minerva, a spit from the cat and a suppressed laugh from Ethel, who was viewing the proceedings from a little distance.

When the board fell away and had been removed, Minerva, like an alligator, crawled in a little farther, so as to turn around, and then she crawled out face foremost, leaving Miss Pussy saying most ungenerous things there in the dusk.

“The cat will come out in a while, Minerva,” said I. “Are you hurt?”

Minerva was sitting on the ground, listening intently.

“What’s dem noises?” said she; “Oh, dis ain’ no place for me. Heah dem moanin’s in de grass.”

“Dem moanin’s in de grass” were bull frogs in a little pond not far away, but I dare say she pictured the meadows as full of people who had been enticed from the city and were now expiring under the evening sky, far from their friends.

I explained what the noise was and she returned to the kitchen, while I resumed consumption of my cigar and Ethel returned to her room, but in a few minutes:

“Mis. Vernon. Mis. Vernon. Ain’t there no more lights?”

Ethel had dropped asleep, so I went out into the kitchen. Minerva had lighted two lamps, and to me the kitchen looked like a ball room, it was so light, but the dusky maid from the Metropolis was seeing New York in her mind’s eye, and two kerosene lamps did not take the place of the firmament of gas and electric lights to which she had been used all her life.

“It is the first night and I will humour her,” thought I, and so I brought out a lamp from the parlour and another from the sitting room. I had the light from my cigar and needed no other.

When all four lamps had united to cast their radiance upon the kitchen Minerva was satisfied and thanked me in a die-a-way tone that, being interpreted, meant “Give me back New York with its crowds, and its noise and its glitter and its entertaining ‘gentlemen’ and its ice cream and soda.” Poor Minerva! Our joy and happiness came from the very things that were the abomination of desolation to her.

Meanwhile Ethel awoke from her nap and came down stairs. “Mercy, how dark it is. Why didn’t you light a lamp? Where are you, Philip?”

“I’m out on the piazza. Come out?”

“No, dear, I want to finish that story of Mrs. Everard Cotes’. I’m fascinated with it.”

“Ethel, come here,” said I, in a tone full of meaning.

She felt her way out.

“Minerva needed the gleam of many lights in the kitchen and I’ve plucked a lamp from every room. You’ll tire your eyes reading. Come and sit with me.”

Ethel gave a little chuckle and sat down in the chair I provided.

“Dear, it will end by our becoming her slaves.”

“Anything to keep her,” said I. “Who wants a light but the great light of stars. I suppose that to-night on all this broad continent there is no soul so wretched as poor Minerva, deprived of her elevator man and the girl across the hall—and all, that we may live in comfort. Who are we, Ethel, that we should do this thing?”

“Oh, stop your nonsense. Minerva will be all right when the sun shines.”

The light from the kitchen window shone away down the hill and lighted up the pool in which the bull frogs were “moaning.” Above their chorus we heard a wail.

“What’s that, an owl?”

“No, Ethel, that’s a howl. It’s Minerva again.”

We could now distinguish “So dismal!”

“You go and hold her in your lap and rock her to sleep. I can’t,” said I.

Ethel sighed herself. It was becoming monotonous. She rose and went into the kitchen, feeling her way cautiously through the dark sitting room, yet stumbling over a foot stool.

It looked to me as if we would be forced to take turns sitting outside of Minerva’s bedroom door, guarding her against the horrors of a country night, but after a time Ethel returned to me and told me that “Miss Pussy” had come in for dinner and that Minerva was perfectly happy and was going to take her to bed with her.

Soon after that she retired, and, being tired out with the labours and tribulations of the day, she slept like a log all night, and we were enabled to enjoy our repose undisturbed.

I rose early next morning and sang gaily, and I sang with a purpose. It might disturb Mrs. Vernon’s last nap, but it could not fail to make Minerva realize that she was not alone in the country, whereas if she had risen first and had seen nothing in the world but the great silent mountain she might have fled incontinently to the city.

When she came down to the kitchen, carrying the cat in her arms, I had already started the fire.

“Good morning, Minerva,” said I. “I haven’t built a kitchen fire since I was a small boy, and I wanted to see if I could do it. Excellent draught. Did you sleep well?”

“Yas’r.”

The laconic answer was in itself a symptom that she felt better.

“And the cat came back?” said I.

“Yas’r.”

I left the kitchen and took a walk in the cool morning air. All was well with the world. Minerva had slept and had learned that a night in the country was not fatal and Miss Pussy had recovered her equanimity. I sought for an appetite in the pine woods, and I found one.