CHAPTER III AN EAST WIND.

THE next morning broke with an east wind blowing and a wet rain falling, but Ethel said that the two days in the country had made her feel like a different woman already, so I did not mind the rain, although a rainy day in the country, unless one be well fortified, either by inner grace or outer books and the good things of life, is apt to be a dreary affair.

Breakfast was delicious. We have never had a cook who had so much—well, you might call it temperament, as Minerva has. She will toss off a roll with the lightness that makes it a work of art, and her fried chicken is better than the broiled chicken of most cooks.

Ethel already better, and the breakfast such a poem: why, I felt that I was to be envied, and I wondered how people could be content to spend their summers on alien piazzas, eating hotel dinners and watching hotel dwellers dress and pose and gossip.

There had been no more bats in Minerva’s belfry, and as she had always seemed like a sensible girl in the city, I made up my mind that she was reconciled to the country and that in a few days she would begin to have very much the same feeling for it that we have—for Ethel and I were born in the city, and the country is an acquired taste with us.

But while I was browsing around in the Wheelocks’ library, Ethel came to me and said:

“The worst has happened, Philip. Minerva says she won’t stay—that she just can’t. She wants you to get a horse and take her to the station right away.”

I laid down my book with a sigh. “What’s the matter now?” said I. “More wild animals?”

“No, it’s the rain and the east wind. She says the moaning of it through the shutters is awful and she can’t stand it.”

“Might have known it,” said I, bitterly. “I might have known it. You’re beginning to feel better and the worst seems to be over, and then Minerva plays her trump card and takes the cake.”

My metaphors were sadly mixed, but I didn’t care. I was not at that moment trying to construct logical metaphors. I foresaw what would happen if Minerva left and Ethel went into the kitchen permanently. A sanitarium for her and I an enforced bachelor in some city room—for we had let our flat for the summer.

I do not often interfere with the household work, for my business keeps me at home most of the time, and I hold that when man and wife are both at home it is better to have but one housekeeper and that one a woman, but now I went out into the kitchen to try to mend matters, and I found Minerva looking at the steadily falling rain that was making Mount Nebo look like a ghost of itself. Now and again the blind rattled and always the wind moaned through it with a wintry effect that would have been admirably adapted to the return of the prodigal daughter.

And with each wail of the wind Minerva answered antiphonally, almost as if she were taking lessons in keening.

“Oh, myomy, myomy!”

Back and forth she rocked, her eyes glued to the dismal prospect (dismal to her, but with a surpassing beauty to sympathetic eyes), and the tears rolling down her face.

“Why, Minerva, what’s the matter? Got a toothache?” said I, affecting to be unwitting of the cause of her sorrow.

“’Deed, suh, it’s wuss’n a toothache. It’s the heartache. I knowed better when I said I’d come. Nance Jawnson told me how haw’ble the country was, but I felt sorry for Mis. Vernon, and so I come. Please get me away in a wagon. That wind whines like it was a dawg howlin’ an’ I can’t stand dawgs howlin’ ’cause my sisteh died of one.”

Her words were ambiguous, but I was in no mood to carp or criticise. She was suffering as acutely as a little child suffers when you throw her doll over the fence and I felt I must cheer her up and keep her if it—if it took all summer.

“Well, Minerva, we can soon stop the wind’s howling by opening the blinds.” I suited the action to the words and the wild moaning of the wind ceased. It was really almost as if the wind had been asking to have the blinds opened.

“Now you see, Minerva, that’s stopped and the rain will stop after awhile.”

“Yas’r, but it’s lonesome an’ I didn’t bring my ’cordeen. I forgot it till now.”

I knew she was a great hand to be trying patent medicines and supposed she referred to some bottled stuff, so I said,

“Oh, well, if that’s all, I can send for your medicine, or perhaps I can get some at Egerton.”

She looked at me in surprise as she said,

“I didn’ say nothin’ ’bout med’cine. I said I left my ’cordeen—”

“Oh, your accordeon. Can you play that?” said I, thankful that she had forgotten it.

“Yes indeedy.”

Her face grew pensive as she thought of the dreadful musical instrument which she had mercifully forgotten. I had never heard her use it at home, but Ethel told me afterward that she had been in the habit of going up on the roof with other cooks and the janitor, and that her departure was always followed by weird strains which Ethel had supposed was the janitor discoursing music that had the dyingest fall of anything ever heard. But it seems that Minerva was the performer, and among those whose ears are ravished by the “linked sweetness long drawn out”—and then pushed back again, she was accounted an adept.

Perhaps I could hold her by means of the accordeon. It was worth trying.

“Minerva,” said I, “Mrs. Vernon tells me that you want me to drive you down to the station and get you a ticket for New York. Now, if you go it will be a discreditable performance and an act unworthy of one who has always been well treated.”

I paused. The words were some of them a little beyond her, but they had made the more impression for that very fact.

“Mrs. Vernon is not strong enough to do the work and she came up here to gain strength. You are a very good cook, but if you left us now we would not care to have you when we returned to the city, and you will not find mistresses like Mrs. Vernon everywhere. There are those who forget that a servant is a human being, and you might happen to get such a mistress as that. I repeat that your going would be distinctly discreditable, utterly reprehensible and in the nature of a bad act. Now, if you must go, I am not the one to keep you, but if you go you go for good, which is not likely to be good for you.”

“Yas’r,” said Minerva, blinking at me.

“Now, if I send for your accordeon, will you give me your word of honour to stay your month out?”

I had used such a severe tone, mingled with what sorrow I could weave into it, and spotted with incomprehensible words, that Minerva was much impressed, and she said in a tone that was already more hopeful, “I give you my word, Mist. Vernon. My ’cordeen is like human folks to me.”

“Very well, I will write for it by the next mail. Where shall I tell Mr. Corson to look for it?”

“Mr. Corson ain’t got it. I lent it to the jan’ter the night befo’ I lef’ an’ he fo’got to give it back an’ I fo’got about it till the wind began to moan at me an’ then I got mo’ homesick ’an ever an’ thought of it.”

Think of being willing to swap the music of the wind for the cacophony of an accordeon! And yet, when some composer of the future introduces one in his Afro-American symphony and Felix Weingartner gives the symphony in Carnegie Hall, there may come a rage for accordeons and we shall no longer associate them with tenement houses and itinerant toughs, white and black.

I hastened to write the letter to the janitor, whose name was George W. Calhoun Lee, and Ethel, being housebound anyway, went into the kitchen to preserve some blueberries. I do not like preserved blueberries; neither does she, but there was nothing else she could think of to do in the kitchen, and Minerva needed “human folks” pending the arrival of the ’cordeen.

The Dalton boy came for the mail at noon and he had with him a string of trout. They were fresh from the brook and were still wriggling. I saw him pass into the house, and I followed him into the kitchen; for a string of trout is a joy to the eye—and I had a suspicion that Minerva would not know what to do with them.

She stared at them with the interest of a child, giggling every time one twitched its tail.

“Wha’ makes ’em move that way?” asked she of no one in particular.

“Why, they’re not dead yet,” I answered.

“An’ come all the way from New York?”

“Why, Minerva, these were caught in the brook down there in the valley. Weren’t they, Bert?”

“Yes, sir. Ketched all five inside an hour.”

Minerva’s eyes opened wider. “What’s a nower?” asked she.

Bert looked puzzled and so did Ethel, but I was able to explain and somehow the explanation struck Minerva as being very funny. She went off into a fit of laughter just like those she had had on the train when the cat howled.

“Inside a nower. That’s one awn me. Inside an hour.”

Ordinarily one does not go into the kitchen and provide amusement for the cook, but the events of the past few hours had so altered the complexion of things that I felt distinctly elated at having, in however humble a way, ministered to the joy of one as leaden hearted as Minerva and her laughter was so unctious, once it had got fairly started that first the Dalton boy, then Ethel, and at last I joined in and the east wind must have been astonished at his lack of power over our temperaments.

After the laughter had subsided and Bert had gone on his way with the precious letter to G. W. C. Lee, I was about to leave the kitchen, forgetful of my errand, when Minerva, in a tone of delightful camaraderie, said,

“Mist. Vernon, I can’t skin them fishes alive. They always come skinned from the fish store.”

“Well, I’ll kill them and scale them and clean them, and you can watch me, and the next time you’ll know how.”

Ethel had finished her berry canning and she now left the kitchen, winking at me as she did so as much as to say it was now my turn at the wheel. It was years since I had dressed a fish, but I snapped each one on the head as I had been taught to do by country boys in my own boyhood, and then I prepared them for the pan, scraping off much of their beauty in the process.

“Do they have North River shad out in that brook?” asked Minerva as I worked.

I thought at first it was a little pleasantry, but, looking at her, I saw she was perfectly serious—in fact, very serious, and I explained to her that cod and blue fish and sturgeon and sword fish never penetrated to these mountain brooks, preferring the sea; and so, with cheerful chat on both our parts, we bridged over the end of the morning and a half a day was gone with Minerva in a better frame of mind than she had been the day before with the sun shining. So valuable a thing is diplomacy.

While I was washing my hands, preparatory to lunch, Ethel being engaged in fixing her hair, I heard Minerva break out into song, and a moment later someone began to whistle in the kitchen.

Our window commanded a view of the side path, and no one had entered the kitchen since I had left it, but nevertheless two people were giving a somewhat unpleasant duet in the kitchen. The whistle did not accord with the voice, which had considerable of the natural coloured flavour—if flavour can have colour.

“Who can it be?” said I. “Minerva doesn’t know a soul up here, and no one up here would be apt to know ‘In the Good Old Summer Time.’”

“It’s positively uncanny,” said Ethel, taking the last hair pin out of her mouth and putting it into her hair. “I’m going to see. I want Minerva to make chocolate for lunch, and I forgot to tell her.”

Ethel went down and I hastily dried my hands and followed. If this fellow musician could be caged I would keep him for Minerva’s delectation. He should hang in the kitchen—so to speak. Minerva was evidently enjoying the duet—even more than we were.

I hurried and came within sight of the kitchen just as Ethel entered it. Ethel turned and came quickly toward me, her hand over her mouth to pen up her mirth.

We both rushed up stairs and sat down and had our second laugh of the morning in spite of the east wind. There was only one person in the kitchen, Minerva by name, and she was providing an obligato for her singing with her own lips. Minerva was performing the hitherto impossible feat of singing and whistling at the same time.

“When the ’cordeen comes,” said Ethel, “Minerva will be a trio.”