John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein Part 11

"At last we returned to the house. 'Now, Anita,' said I, 'we are here in our little cot--'

"'Where we are going to be as happy as two kittens,' she interrupted.

"'And as I want everything to suit you,' I continued, 'I am going to leave the whole matter of the domestic arrangements in your hands. You have seen the house, and you will know what will be necessary to do.

Mention what servants you want, and I will send for them.'

"'First tell me,' said Anita, 'what you did with the people who were here? You said there were three of them.'

"I could not very well answer this question, for I did not know exactly what Baxter had done with them. I was inclined to think, however, that he had sent them to the hotel until arrangements could be made for them to go somewhere else. But I was able to a.s.sure Anita that they had gone away.

"'Good,' said she. 'I have been thinking about them, and I was afraid they might find some reason or other to stay about the place, and that would interfere with my plans. And now I will tell you what servants I want. I don't want any. I am going to do the work of this house myself.

Now don't open your mouth so wide. There is nothing to frighten you in what I have said. I am thirty-two years old, and although I am not very large, I am perfectly strong and healthy, and I cannot imagine anything in this world that would give me more pleasure than to live in this cot with you for two weeks, and to cook our meals and do everything that is necessary to be done. There are thousands and hundreds of thousands of women who do all that and are just as happy as they can be. That is the kind of happiness I have never had, and I want it now.'

"I sat upright in my slippery horsehair chair and spoke no word. Surely Anita had astonished me more than I could possibly astonish her! Before me sat my beautiful wife: the mistress of my great house in town, with its butlers and footmen, its maids and its men, its horses, its carriages, its grand company, and its stately hospitality; the lady of my famous country estate, with more butlers and footmen and gardeners and stewards and maids and men and stables and carriages and herds and flocks, its house-parties of distinguished guests--here was this wife of mine, so well known in so many fas.h.i.+onable centres; a social star at home and abroad; a delicately reared being, always surrounded by servitors of every grade, who had never found it necessary to stoop to pick up so much as a handkerchief or a rosebud; and here was this superfine lady of high degree, who had just announced to me that she intended to cook our meals, to pare our potatoes, to wash our dishes, and, probably, to sweep our floors. No wonder I opened my mouth.

"'I hope, now,' said Anita, putting her feet out in front of her to keep herself from slipping off the horsehair sofa, 'that you thoroughly understand. I do not want any a.s.sistance while we are in this cot. I have sent away Maria, who has gone to visit her parents, and no woman in service is to come on this place while I am here. I have been studying hard with Mrs. Parker at the hotel, who seems to be an excellent housekeeper and accustomed to homely fare, and I have learned how to make and to cook a great many things which are simple and nutritious; I have had appropriate dresses made, and Maria has gone to town and bought me a great variety of household linen, all good and plain, for our damask table-cloths would look perfectly ridiculous here. I have also laid in a great many other things which you will see from time to time.'"

"What a wonderful moment this would have been for a great slump in stocks!" remarked the Master of the House. "Everything swept away but the cot and the rill and the dear little wife with her coa.r.s.e linen and her determination to keep no servant. The husband of your Anita would have been the luckiest fellow on Wall Street. If I were working on this story I would have the blackest of Black Fridays just here."

"'Now, Harold,' said Anita, 'I do not in the least intend to impose upon you. Because I choose to work is no reason why you should be compelled to do so.'

"'I am glad to hear that,' said I.

"'I knew you would be,' continued Anita. 'But of course neither of us will want very much done for us if we live a cotter's life with these simple surroundings, and so I think one man will be quite enough to do for you all you will want done. But of course if you think it necessary to have two I shall not object.'

"'One will be enough,' said I, 'and I will see about sending for him this afternoon.'

"'I am so glad,' said Anita, 'that you have not got him now, for we can have our first meal in the cot all by ourselves. I'll run up-stairs and dress, and then I will come down and do my first cooking.'

"In a very short time Anita appeared in a neat dress of coa.r.s.e blue stuff, a little short in the skirts, with a white ap.r.o.n over it.

"'Come, now,' said she, gayly, 'let us go into the kitchen and see what we shall have for dinner. Shall it be dinner or lunch? Cotters dine about noon.'

"'Oh, make it lunch,' said I. 'I am hungry, and I do not want to wait to get up a dinner.' Anita agreed to this, and we went to work to take the lid off a hamper which she told me had been packed by Mrs. Parker and contained everything we should want for several days.

"'Besides,' she said, 'that widow woman has left no end of things, all in boxes and cans, labelled. She must have been a very thrifty person, and it was an excellent piece of business to buy the house just as it stood, with everything in it.'

"Anita found it difficult to make a choice of what she should cook for luncheon. 'Suppose we have some tea?'

"'Very good,' said I, for I knew that was easy to make.

"'Then,' said she, on her knees beside the hamper, with her forefinger against her lips, 'suppose--suppose we have some croquettes. I know how to make some very plain and simple croquettes out of--'

"'Oh, don't let us do that,' said I; 'they will take too long, and I am hungry.'

"'Very well, then,' said Anita. 'Let us have some boiled eggs; they are quick.'

"I agreed to this.

"'The next thing,' said Anita, 'is bread and b.u.t.ter. Would you like some hot soda-biscuit?'

"'No,' said I; 'you would have to make some dough and find the soda, and--isn't there anything ready baked?'

"'Oh, yes,' she answered; 'we have Albert biscuit and--'

"'Albert biscuit will do,' I interrupted.

"'Now,' said she, 'we will soon have our first meal in the cot.'

"'This is a very una.s.suming lunch,' she said, when we were at last seated at the table, 'but I am going to give you a nice dinner. If you want more than three eggs I will cook you some in a few minutes. I put another stick of wood in the fire so as to keep the water hot.'

"I was in considerable doubt as to what sort of man it would be best for us to have. I would have been very glad to have my special valet, because he was an extremely handy man in many ways; but I thought it better to consider a little before sending for him: he might be incongruous. I had plenty of time to consider, for Anita occupied nearly the whole afternoon in getting up our dinner. She was very enthusiastic about it, and did not want me to help her at all, except to make a fire in the stove. After that, she said, everything would be easy. The wood was all in small pieces and piled up conveniently near. As I glanced around the kitchen I saw that Baxter had had this little room fitted up with every possible culinary requirement.

"We had dinner a little before eight. Anita sat down, hot, red, but radiant with happiness.

"'Now, then,' said she, 'you will find I have prepared for you a high-grade cotter's dinner; by which I mean that it is a meal which all farmers or country people might have every day if they only knew enough, or were willing to learn. I have looked over several books on the subject, and Mrs. Parker told me a great deal. Maria told me a great many things also. They were both poor in early life, and knew what they were talking about. First we will have soup--a plain vegetable soup. I went into the garden and picked the vegetables myself.'

"'I wish you had asked me to do that,' said I.

"'Oh, no,' she answered; 'I do not intend to be inferior to any countrywoman. Then there is roast chicken. After that a lettuce salad with mayonnaise dressing; I do not believe cotters have mayonnaise dressing, nor shall we every day; but this is an exceptional meal. For the next course I have made a pie, and then we shall have black coffee.

If you want wine you can get a bottle from the wine-hamper; but I shall not take any: I intend to live consistently through the whole of this experience.'

"There was something a little odd about the soup: it tasted as if a variety of vegetables had been washed in it and then the vegetables thrown away. I removed the soup-plates while Anita went out to get the next course. When she put the dish on the table she said something had given way while the fowl was cooking, and it had immediately stuck its legs high in the air. 'It looks funny,' she remarked, 'but in carving you can cut the legs off first.'

"I found one side of the fowl much better cooked than the other,--in fact, I should have called it kiln-dried,--and the other side had certainly been warmed. The mayonnaise was very peculiar and made me think of the probable necessity of filling the lamps, and I hoped Baxter had had this attended to. The pie was made of gooseberry jam, the easiest pie in the world to make, Anita told me. 'You take the jam just as it is, and put it between two layers of dough, and then bake it.' The coffee was very like black writing-ink, and, having been made for a long time, was barely tepid.

"Strange as it may appear, however, I ate a hearty dinner. I was very hungry.

"'Now,' said Anita, as she folded her napkin, 'I do not believe you have enjoyed this dinner half as much as I enjoyed the cooking of it, and I am not going to wash up anything, for I will not deprive myself of the pleasure of sitting with you while you smoke your after-dinner cigar on the front porch. These dishes will not be wanted until to-morrow, and if you will take hold of one end of the table we will set it against the wall. There is a smaller table which will do for our breakfast.'

"I drank several gla.s.ses of wine as I smoked, but I did not feel any better. If I had known what was going to happen I should have preferred to go hungry. I did not tell Anita I was not feeling well, for that would have made her suffer in mind more than I was suffering in body; but when I had finished my smoke, and she had gone into the house to light the parlor lamp, I hurried over to the barn, where Baxter had had a telephone put up, and I called him up in town, and told him to send me a chef who could hoe and dig a little in the garden.

"'I thought you would want a man of that kind,' Baxter telephoned. 'Will Isadore do? He is at your town house now, and can leave by the ten-o'clock train.'

"I knew Isadore. He was the second chef in my town house, a man of much experience, and good-natured. I told Baxter to make him understand what sort of place he was coming to, and to send him on without delay.

"'Do you want him to live in the house?' asked Baxter. And I replied that I did not.

"'Very good,' said he; 'I will have a tent put up for him near Baldwin's.'

"When I went to the house I told Anita I had engaged a man.

"'I am glad,' said she; 'but I have just thought of something: I cannot possibly cook for a man.'

"'Oh, you won't have to do that,' I answered. 'He will live near here, just the other side of the road.'

"'That will do very well,' said she. 'I do not mind being your servant, Harold, but I cannot be a servant's servant.'"

"Do you know," said the Master of the House, "as this story goes on I feel poorer and poorer every minute--I suppose by comparison. In fact, I do not know that I can afford to light another cigar. But one thought comforts me," he continued: "if I had been living in that cot with my wife I would not have had the stomach-ache; so that balances things somewhat."