Oldfield: A Kentucky Tale of the Last Century

by Nancy Huston Banks

Tripping briskly out of the room carrying the peas and the pea-shells (to which Miss Sophia had secretly transferred her expectation), she entered the kitchen, full of thoughts of the delicate cooking of the peas, and was surprised to find Merica missing. Yet the day was Monday, and the smoke from the invisible and mysterious wash-kettle floated up from a newly kindled fire behind the gooseberry bushes. Miss Judy did not know what to make of Merica's absence at such a time; and she stepped down from the rear door of the passage to the grass of the back yard and called. There was no answer, and Miss Judy stood hesitating a moment in puzzled astonishment, but as she turned there was a sudden rush—sounds of scuffling, a smothered shriek—and the girl fell over the fence, striking the ground with limbs outstretched, like some clumsy bird thrown while trying to fly. The fence, which divided Miss Judy's garden from old lady Gordon's orchard, was a very high one, but Miss Judy was more shocked than alarmed at seeing Merica come over it in so indecorous a manner.

"What does such conduct mean, Merica?" she said severely.

The girl had never heard her gentle mistress speak so sharply—but she herself was past mistress of deceit. She therefore gathered herself up as slowly as possible, in order to gain time, deliberately smoothing down her skirt and carefully brushing off the dirt. The mask of a dark skin has served in many an emergency. Merica could not entirely control the guilty shiftiness of her eyes, but she did it in a measure, and she was quite ready with a deceitful explanation almost as soon as she had recovered her breath. She knew from long experience how easy it was to deceive Miss Judy, the most innocent and artless of mistresses. She also knew—as all servants know the sources of their daily bread—the weak spot in Miss Judy's armor of innocence and artlessness. Accordingly, looking her mistress straight in the face, Merica now said brazenly that she had been over to old lady Gordon's to get the strange young gentleman's clothes; and Miss Judy, blushing rosy red, dropped the subject in the greatest haste and confusion, precisely as Merica expected her to do. The little lady was indeed so utterly routed that she gave the order for the steaming of the peas very timidly; and when Merica, seeing her advantage, followed it up in a most heartless manner by insisting upon boiling them instead, Miss Judy gave way without a struggle, and went silently back to the house as meek as any lamb.

She did not mention the matter to her sister; the delicate subject was, in fact, rarely mentioned between them, and it was, of course, never spoken of to any one else. To be sure, everybody in Oldfield had seen Merica coming and going with carefully covered baskets, which, nevertheless, proclaimed the laundry with every withe—as some baskets do, somehow or other, quite regardless of shape; but the fetching and the toting, as Merica phrased these transactions, were usually in the early morning when the neighbors were busy in the rear of their own houses; or in the dusk of evening when the gloaming cast its shadow of softening mystery over the most prosaic aspects of life. And everybody also saw the smoke arising every Monday morning from beneath the wash-kettle, hid in its bower of gooseberry bushes; but no one in all the village would have been unkind enough to ask or even to wonder, whether all the white bubbles arising with the steam could be portions of the two little ladies' own meagre wardrobe. It is true that on one occasion, when Sidney was very, very hard pressed for a new story,—as the most resourceful of professional diners-out must be now and again,—she had been overly tempted into the spinning of a weird and amusing yarn, about seeing a long, ghostly pair of white cotton legs, of unmistakably masculine ownership, flapping over the gooseberry bushes in a high wind as she went home after dark on a certain wild and stormy night. But she could hardly sleep on the following night, her uneasy conscience pricked her so sorely, and, setting out betimes the next morning, she made a round over the complete circuit of the previous day, unreservedly taking back the whole story. And never again did she yield to the never ceasing temptation to make capital of Miss Judy's little ways, about which, indeed, many a good story might have been excellently told.

That small gentlewoman herself, naturally, never dreamt of doing anything so indelicate as to look behind the gooseberry bushes while the clothes were in the tubs or the kettle or drying on the line. Sometimes, when she was compelled to send Merica away on an errand while the wash-kettle was boiling, she would take the girl's post temporarily and would punch the white bubbles gingerly with the clothes-stick to keep them from being burned against the side of the kettle; but she always blushed very much and was heartily glad when Merica returned to her duty. The simple truth was that Miss Judy thought it right to allow Merica, on her own proposal, to earn in this manner the wages which she and her sister were unable to pay, since they could give her but a nominal sum out of their little pension, which was all that they had. And yet, although this was the case, she saw no reason for talking about a disagreeable thing which she was thus forced to put up with. She never spoke of anything unrefined if she could help it. And those who knew her shrinking from all the more sordid sides of household affairs, and from all the commonplace and unbeautiful aspects of life, seldom if ever approached her with anything of the kind.

Far, indeed, then, would it have been from the rudest of the Oldfield people to have hinted to Miss Judy of certain matters which were plain enough to every one else. Miss Pettus alone thought Miss Judy ought to be told of Merica's scandalous "goings-on."

"I saw her and Eunice yesterday, in old lady Gordon's orchard, a-fighting over Enoch Cotton like two black cats—right under that poor little innocent's nose—and she never knowing a blessed thing about it!" Miss Pettus fumed.

But Sidney put her foot down. Miss Judy should not be told: and there was to be "no if or and" about it, either. "What's the use of worrying Miss Judy? She could no more understand than a baby in long clothes. And what's the odds, anyway?" demanded this village philosopher. "If they ain't a-fighting about Enoch Cotton they'll be a-fighting about somebody else."

Mrs. Alexander sided with Sidney. It would be a shame to tell Miss Judy; as Sidney said, it would be like going to a little child with such a tale; and the doctor's wife strengthened the impression made by her own opinion by saying that the doctor said Miss Judy must not be told. He simply would not allow it—that was all.

Kitty Mills, too, opposed the telling of Miss Judy earnestly enough, but she could not help laughing at the recollection of a scene which she had witnessed a few days before; and which she now went on to describe to the ladies who were holding this conclave.