"Each has his own one path in life,
A circle small within his ken—
And a small circle too, perchance—
We cannot all be famous men."
No unimportant personage in the household of the Claremont's was Kate Drummond, the cook. Of Irish descent, she was full of the mirthful humor of her race, with which was combined much of the sober, solid sense of the Anglo-Saxon. Never given to fine-spun theories or useless regrets, she turned every accident into a joke, and practised the philosophy others spent their time in preaching. Having talent that would ennoble any occupation, if it had been developed and cultivated, she never subjected herself to the discipline of a thought that would check the wild exuberance of her nature. She had a quick perception of facts and could make a correct application of principles, which, however, had no more connection with each other than the random strokes of a fiddle with the element of music.
A trustworthy servant, and scrupulously exact in every duty devolving upon her, she was not so fully developed in the region of conscientiousness as to be always careful of the propriety of speech, or wounding the feelings of others, when she could thus serve a turn for indulging her fun-loving disposition.
This was a source of annoyance to Walter, whose fastidiousness about any approach to dissimulation and strict regard for truth, often led him to reprove her, but with no other effect than to have a fresh joke served on himself.
He was a great favorite of hers, whom she was ever ready to serve, whether up to her elbows in suds, or engaged in the more delicate art of cakes and pastry, the most tempting specimens of which were always reserved for him.
Another inmate of the family was Milly Dayton, The opposite of Kate in every respect, singularly enough they contracted quite an intimate friendship.
In both existed a prevalent vein of good humor that was never out of sorts with anybody or anything; one passing by trivial vexations as not worthy of notice; the other laughing them down as the most philosophical way of disposing of them, meeting here on the same level. Milly was a philosopher whose ideas were founded on principle and method. Quiet and reserved, theoretical rather than practical, possessing a mind of great depth and refinement, cultivated as her own private property rather than for the advantages it might confer on others, she was one of those gentle, meek spirits that resemble the modest little flowers growing in the clifts of the rock, which elude the superficial gaze of the world's busy throng, but attract the attention of the student of nature, who discovers even here the embodiment of that great law of symmetry and beauty which stamps every created object with the divine purpose of its being.
She belonged to the order of dumb prophets who stand on the threshold of eternity, gazing into the divine purpose which reveals fragmentary glimpses of what we are and what we must become; by their own innate perceptions comprehending the boundless capacities of the soul with its susceptibility to the slightest sway of virtue or passion; and praying for a touch of inspiration that shall serve as a key to unlock the prison doors of their divine conceptions, that they may come forth to elevate and purify the grosser, outward life of themselves and others. To such the ordinary routine of worldly cares and the bustle of a mere business life, is like a crushing millstone, grinding continually the finer sensibilities with a secret, acute pain. The part assigned them in the universe often leads through paths diverse from the rest of the world, as if they stood aloof from choice, when in reality compelled to it by a necessity of their spiritual organization. Enjoying society, it is so seldom they meet with those to whom they can unfold their innermost thoughts without being misunderstood, they shun it as if no power of response existed in their souls.
Doubtless if Milly had spent her youth in an atmosphere calculated to develope rather than suppress her true nature, her inner life would have asserted itself more strongly; while on the other hand had she been less submissive, or her experience more painful, forcing nature to assert her rights, the hour of utterance might have come.
Left an orphan at an early age, she was deprived of those tender home influences which childhood so so insatiately craves, and to which it is entitled. The family who took her out of pity, having many children of their own, were well disposed and intended to discharge their duty towards her. Belonging to that large class who consider business the paramount aim of life, from which childhood had no immunity, their sons were taken from school as soon as they were able to work in the field, and their daughters sent to assist them in pitching hay and gathering potatoes. Fortunately they were not endowed with the delicate, sensitive organization of Milly, and the words of command or sharp rebuke issuing from the lordly head, were received as the most familiar household dialect known among them. As they grew up, imbibing the same ideas that governed the parents, the world received a new accession to its business thrift and house-wifely tact. Better so than to fall into pernicious habits or slovenly neglect of domestic duties, which have driven many a man to dissipation, but it is not among such natures the finer emotions of the soul are developed. Milly's imaginative mind was not at home under these influences, and suffered continually in its silent craving for sympathy. Possessing little of the boisterous element of childhood, she had an intense yearning to be loved and cared for, as in sunny dreams she felt again the warm embrace of her mother's arms and listened to her fond words of endearment, from which the shrill voice of the house-maid summoned her to the dreaded, monotonous round of toil; when a cloud sometimes rested on her spirit, but it was only transient, always looking forward to a future which somehow would respond to this unanswered longing of the present.
All dreamy, poetic natures have this prophetic insight, which the unthinking aspirant after mere worldly treasures can neither attain nor comprehend. It was impossible for people, whose constant motto was work, an hour of Sunday for religious reading being observed very much as a disagreeable duty, the cross that would ensure their salvation and which comprised the extent of their intellectual pursuits, to understand this child seer, this prophet maiden, whose sublime and beautiful trust buoyed her above her trials and imparted a degree of cheerfulness that was mistaken for content.
From eighteen to twenty she lived with an aunt, a sister of her father, who treated her with very little kindness. Unwilling to take her when a friendless orphan, on account of the trouble, she was little disposed to atone for it now by acting the part of a mother and friend. Besides her incessant habit of fault-finding, the family jars between herself and husband grated harshly on the ear of one who was ever dwelling on the beauty and harmony of life, as it might be, if the supremacy of love were acknowledged.
The bone of contention was often very trifling, such as the state of the weather, one saying it was warm, and the other cold; and one pleasant Sunday was embittered by their different opinions about the wind, he maintaining that it blew west by the sound of the bell, and she, that it blew east because her head felt so bad. She was nervous, and he obstinate, two very uncongenial qualities.
In one particular they agreed,—the tenets of Calvinism. Here they met at the same altar, and bowed before the same God. Grace was regularly said at every meal, the morning and evening devotions punctiliously observed.
She was more self-righteous than he, and consequently more exacting. Unmindful of her own faults, she held others to the most rigid standard of profession and morality. Even towards woman, who, through the pressure of want or any other cause yielded to temptation, she was severe and inexorable in her judgment, tolerating no palliation of the act from whatever source it came. Milly could scarcely have found a more uncongenial home. Her boundless charity sought to exonerate every one from the charge of being as bad as appearances indicated, a point upon which they differed so widely as to provoke an estrangement of feeling whenever the subject was mentioned. Her devotional feelings could easily have been moulded to any creed embodied in a loving spirit, and had her aunt manifested the least interest in her happiness, she would have twined around her with all the intensity of an ardent nature craving something to love. As it was, an insuperable barrier existed between them which it was impossible to remove. Milly was so sensitive, that every unkind word forced back the natural flow of affection which would otherwise have been manifested under these circumstances, and might possibly have disarmed some of her aunt's coldness and harshness.
It was a pleasant contrast to her former life when she went to reside in Mrs. Claremont's family, and one that fostered the ideal element of her nature which sought expression in writing. Sympathizing through her own experience with those sensitive, bleeding spirits that dot here and there the pathway of life, lacking the strength to buffet its stormy waves and faint by the wayside, whom we tread on daily without knowing it, and the world passes by as unworthy of notice because it cannot appreciate the wealth of soul, nor discern the delicate fibres quivering beneath the unprepossessing exterior, she wished to plead their cause, but, unfortunately, lack of the power of expression so dwarfed the natural language of the soul as to rob it of its vitality in the attempt to give it utterance. At length she hit on the idea of writing a novel which furnished amusement enough for Kate, who had no sympathy with abstract theories and metaphysical speculation, and yet liked to hear Milly's views, which gave her something to criticize and dissect. Enjoying new ideas which she chose to embellish in her own careless style, her impulses came out in a rough diamond way; sparkling, uncouth, yet vigorous and racy. Above all was that dominant love of fun which appropriated every thing to its service, no matter how serious, with which was mingled no small share of good sense.
"You write a novel!" said she, "I should as soon think of Walter settin' himself up for a stage' player, or Miss Rosalind as a pattern young miss in a coquettin' shop. You'd make it as solemn as a fresh made widder with borrowed weeds and onions in her eyes; but never mind, I'll make the fun for you that'll make it as green as a country landscape."
"I have already commenced it with too romantic an affair I fear; it sounds so sentimental and school girl-like. It is so hard to find a beginning."
"If you can write anything of that sort you ought to thank your stars and take courage. The charm of a story is to have somethin' in it that never did happen nor never could, and it must be full of all manner of shines to make it take."
"I don't know about that. Stories are most successful that represent the real passions and emotions of the soul, and are most true of life."
"Fudge! who cares whether they are true or not, if they are only funny, but I want to hear yours to see what you can write, whether its worth cryin' over."
"It opens with a widower, Mr. Buzport and his daughter, Merilinda."
"Capital choice o' names! I like 'em, they sound so merry. Buzport, that means buss."
"Mr. Buzport is her father, not her lover, so you needn't come to the kissing part yet."
"That's just like you, can't think of anything but a lover connected with a buss, while all I was thinkin' on was a good hearty smack, seems as if I could hear it now."
"The place where they lived was one of traditionary interest. In the times of the skirmishes between the early settlers and the savages, a man had lived there, a Quaker by birth, who was a great friend of the Indians and suffered very little from their depredations. In one of these skirmishes, when the whites were victorious, one of the savages fled to him for protection, whom he concealed in a little cave that had recently been discovered in the rear of his house, just large enough for a man to crawl into. He was so grateful for this act of kindness, that some years afterwards when a plot was formed by the savages for a general massacre of the whites, he stole away from his tribe to inform his benefactor and have him raise a signal from the mouth of the cave that they might spare him and his family. The humane hearted man revolted at the idea of saving his own life while his brethren were sacrificed, and he immediately set out for the wigwam of the chief bearing such messages of good will and pledges in the name of the whites, that they were deterred from their murderous purposes, and he returned in safety to exact the fulfilment of his pledges. Around this cave an enclosure was built"—
"I don't like your sentiments there, I should call the whites the savages. What business had they to come and drive off them that had more right here than they had. I'd a skinned 'em all alive an' sent 'em back to where they come from till they could come and trade like decent folks, and show that they was civilized themselves."
"Oh Kate, it makes me crawl to hear you make such expressions as skinning alive."
"Oh yes, you are very feeling then, but it wouldn't make ye feel so bad to think of the poor savages bein' driv' from their old homes they loved so well, an' had a right to."
"I don't think that was right and have not said anything to sanction it, but let me go on. 'Around this cave an enclosure was built to commemorate the event, which Mr. Buzport had removed, and substituted in its stead a hedge supplied with seats.'"
"That don't sound right. That enclosure might as well a' been a hedge as anything else, and then it sounds as if the seats was put right into the hedge, and them would smash it all down."
"It was a favorite retreat of Merilinda's, and a delightful spot, exceedingly so on the night alluded to here.
Gently the zephyrs breathed the wooing melodies of that bland Indian Summer day, as the sun set in his regal splendor behind the western waves, while a few fleecy clouds lingered behind to do the worshipful honors of his departure; and as the twilight deepened into the shades of evening, not a single mist dimmed the twinkling of the stars as they gradually made their appearance; the Milky Way with its myriad worlds suggested its mysterious wonders to the fertile imagination of Merilinda, soon to be eclipsed by the modest glory of the moon, which, shedding her soft, silvery light over spire and terrace, mountain and meadow, gently banishes all this splendid retinue from her train that she may reign supreme. Merrily the waves danced their joy around a magnificent steamer proudly completing her maiden trip over the peaceful waters of the beautiful river which stretched far and wide in silent adoration."
"I'm afraid somethin' awful sentimental is comin' now, after such a perigation."
"While Merilinda sat there enjoying the scene, Mr. Melrose walked round the other side of the hedge opposite to where she was sitting, when catching a glimpse of her he was entranced by her extraordinary beauty. Her neck looked like alabaster and her"
"You don't mean to say she sat there with her neck bare at that time o' year do ye. If consumptions had been as common in them days as they be now, she'd a' catched her death o' cold dressed as warm as could be, settin' there so long that time o' year in the moonshine."
"I'll alter that, but then in a story there must be some play of the fancy."
"I suspect that ain't all fancy. I 'spose you've heard about Mr. Claremont and his wife first meetin' in a wood the first time they ever see each other."
"No indeed! they did? I should like to know all about it, do tell me. How did you know?"
"Yes, I knew that would be what you'd like, but then I promised never to tell of it. You see my cousin used to live here, and one time when she was goin' by that piece of woods out there she see 'em walkin' arm in arm, and heard him say, 'there's no place on earth seems to me like this wood 'cause here I first saw you.' He didn't say anything about any hedge, I guess that had been pulled down afore his time, nor about any seats; I guess they stood up. I don't believe they had any such moonshiny courtin' as you tell about. Now that's just what I like, lovers and moonshine, one is just as fickle as the other."
"Do you call moonshine fickle?"
"Yes, if you should agree to walk out with your lover some bright, moony night, it would be sure to go into a cloud."
"You needn't dwell so much on that, for mine is not intended for a love story."
"I'd like to see you write one that wan't. It would pop in some how, just as it has into your'n at the beginnin'. Don't you 'spose I could see through that Mr. Melrose, what was first in your mind, whether you meant it or not. Folks don't see alabaster necks without a cause, I reckon."
"I shan't have that in. I want something more sensible and dignified. There's too much of such trash written already for the benefit of young people."
"I guess if you don't have any thing in but what's goin' to benefit somebody, a pretty lean kind of a mess you'd have of it, but you want some poetry to start with, and I've got some for the first chapter. You know you want a place to lay your siege."
"Scene, you mean."
"No, that's what I call a siege. I 'spose you think I don't know what that means.
Oh, blessed Killarney,
Flowin' with lassos an' honey,
And nice gulden butter made of skim-milk."
"Butter made of skim-milk! Couldn't you "have gone a little wider of the mark?"
"No matter, that'll do for a play of the fancy, and sounds rich, as if we could almost taste the melted butter and molasses runnin'. And then it makes a kind of a puzzle whether lasses means molasses or country girls.
Now I've thought of a capital character to last you all the way through. Ben Sykes, or, as he was always called, Sykes, 'cause his father was dead and the title of the family descended on him. He was study in' for a minister, but he didn't know preachin' from prayin', and I've cut up the most shines with him and he never found it out. He wanted to know one day what we was goin' to have for dinner, and I told him, a dead calf."
"A dead calf!" says he, "I shan't eat any of it."
"'Very well,' says I, 'you can do just as you like, but I guess the rest on 'em will be glad enough to eat it.' So he didn't eat any, and looked at 'em so wishful as if he wanted to tell 'em, which was just what I wanted, but he didn't. The next day we was goin' to have a chicken for dinner, and there was a little bit of a hen coop out in the yard which I got and cleaned up to put on the table with alive chicken in it, and says I to him, 'thinkin' you wouldn't eat a dead chicken I've got a live one for you,' and then I guess he understood what the dead calf meant."
"Where did he preach when he got through studying?"
"In the kitchen. He was the awkwardest man you ever did see, besides bein' so scatter-brained. His hands come down half-way between his knees and' his toes, and his shoulders reached the top of his ears. He had green eyes, white eyebrows, and yellow hair that stuck up like the quills of a porcupine on his head. He used to come into the kitchen to practice, and the way he'd fling his arms np, they'd touch the plasterin', and he'd bring his feet down with such vengeance they shook down the stove-pipe once."
"'Thar,' says he, 'don't you see, the judgment's a comin', close follerin' at our heels?'
"'And you are the very old feller himself, I do b'lieve,' says I."
"What were his doctrines, did they correspond with himself?"
"A-hem y-e-s,—his doctrines was enough to set the world a-fire without any stove-pipe with the smell o' the brimstone as the words come out of his mouth. His favorite text was the lake of brimstone and fire that come rainin' down out of heaven. I said to him one day, says I, 'Sykes, rain and fire don't agree very well together and seems to me it would be more consistent and sort o' christian-like to take for your text where it says,
"He sendeth his rain on the evil and on the good; on the just and on the unjust."
"'Yes,' says he, 'that's pleasin' to the ear, and shows that you are born of your father, the adversary and devil, thinkin' you shall escape the burnin' lake.'
"'Why Sykes,' says I, 'we can't have but one father, and if God is our father, how can the devil be too?' That sort o' staggered him, though I don't pretend to be divine, nor know nothin' about necrology or what you call it, but I could talk him down any day, and make him go and study his cataplasm all over again."
"If you should try I wonder if you couldn't use words more at random. This is a profitable way of spending time listening to your raillery."
"A great deal more profitable than writin' novels. I don't think much of these literary genuses whose heads are always in the clouds and never know nothin' of what's goin' on here. I don't believe some on 'em, if they should starve, could get a meal o' victuals. Now I take a great deal more pride in gettin' up a good dinner than I should in bein' the most prodigious literary genus that ever lived."
"There's a great deal of good done by writing, or books would not be such a source of enjoyment and instruction to us. It opens a communication between ourselves and other minds which could not be done in any other way, besides being good mental discipline for the writer."
"Oh get out with your discipline. I get enough of that from Walter. He had the impudence to tell me to day that Dinah, Miss Daggett's cook, was as good as I was. I'll bear anything in the world from Walter, but when he goes to comparin' me with a nigger I won't stan' it no how, not if it come from the holy Virgin Mother herself. I'm goin' to fry some jack-flints for breakfast as black as the king's crow for him, and I'll see if he thinks black cakes are as good as white ones."
"Then it's time for you to retire, and I begin to grow sleepy. I've had enough of your nonsense for one night."
"No not yet, I see you are bound to go on with your novel, and I've got a little anecdote for you. Where I lived at a country parson's once there come a young couple to be married, not very young though, forty or the like, but real green, they didn't know nothin' about tyin' the knot."
"So when the minister asked the woman if she would promise to love, honor and obey, she flew into a teapot and out at the nose; 'did you 'spose,' says she, 'that I was so sheepish as to come here for that? No! I come here to be married, an' I'll be bound if I'll ever promise to obey any man. No! that's what I won't, I'll live an old maid and turn into ashes an' fly out o' the top of the chimney fust!'"
"'An I'll be bound if you shan't have the chance afore I'll marry ye, Sal,' says the man an' took his hat and walked off, leavin' the astonished parson to mourn over the awful depravity of human natur', instead of regalm' himself on the marriage fee."
"Not much love there, but then there's no truth in it; you made it up."
"You little innocent fool, you don't 'spose every body marries for love do you?"
"They ought to."
"Did you know I was married once?"
"No! how did that happen, and what became of your husband?"
"What become of him?. I don' know. He died and I never troubled myself to know what 'come on him afterwards. I thought 'twould be a sort o' pretty notion to have somebody to wait upon me, bring in wood an' chips and draw a pail o' water, but what do you think, if I didn't have it all to do and take care o' him into the bargain. That's the way, all honey aforehand, sour grapes afterwards."
"It was good enough for you if you had no higher motive than that."
"Half the folks in the world does jest so, only they don't come out honest an' say so. But I come off rather worse than some on 'em, for he was a mean old scamp; but then I was lucky, he didn't live long."
"And you were glad of it?"
"Of course I was. What did you 'spose I wanted to be harnessed to him all my life for?"
"You have made up this story to impose on my credulity. If true you would not make so light of it."
"Jest as you like, but I guess if you'd had to live with him, you'd believe it fast enough. He come home one night with one of his drunken cronies, and set up and talked and laughed till he put his jaw out, and how he did look."
"Was that what caused his death?"
"No indeed, I guess he didn't die so easy as that. The other man went after the doctor, an' he, poor soul had just gone to bed, and didn't want to be disturbed I 'spose for a drunken man's frolic, or may be he thought 'twas nothin' but the ager, and instead o' comin' he sent two big black pills, an' then I thought I should'a died laughin' to think how they was goin' to set a man's jaw when it was out o' jint."
"How heartless that was in you when he was suffering so much."
"My laughin' didn't hurt him any, and it made me feel better. 'Twas bad enough for it to happen and get the doctor out o'bed such a cold night without nay makin' myself miserable over it."
"Then the doctor came afterwards; did you go after him?"
"Me go after him! no, guess I didn't. I'd a' set it myself first. One o' the neighbors happenin' to be out late come home jest then and see what was goin' on, and he went and got him. I guess he thought he never should grow very rich on such practice for he never got his pay. I might have paid him."
"Why didn't you? I should have thought you would from a sense of honor, if nothing more, when he had to get up at midnight too, which is worse than daytime."
"Did you 'spose I'd be so green as that, to pay him when I had all the wust of it."
"He was not to blame for what your husband did, and I think he had the worst of it."
"Yes he was to blame, or somebody else jest like him, to let such stuff be sold that will make a man act so like a heretic, and then throw all the trouble of him on his wife. No, he didn' come that over me. Once they brought him, so drunk they wouldn't have him in the rum shop, home to me to take care of, and that was all well enough."
"Let that be as it may; you married him, which you ought not to have done unless you loved him; and then, if he had lived as long, and acted as bad as Amelia's father, you wouldn't have it in your heart to talk so about him now he is dead."
"Oh dear, now I pray, don't go to preachifyin'. I'd 'a just hung him up in a slip-a-noose on a beanpole. If he'd been somebody else's husband I should have called him an upright mean feller, and the sooner the world was rid on him the better, and his bein' my husband don't alter the case. That's good common sense doctrine. I did all I could for my old man when he was livin', and now he's dead, peace to his ashes and greater peace to me. Good night and pleasant dreams."