It Pays to Smile

by Nina Wilcox Putnam

I recall upon one occasion my dear father having said that love in a cottage was better than politeness in a mansion, and this came at once to mind upon the occasion of our visit to Sebastian Markheim's palace on the banks of the upper section of the Hudson River.

This took place just six months after that wonderful night when my dear nephew, as I was now convinced he was, returned, so to speak, with the armistice in his pocket. Sebastian, as I was now instructed to call Mr. Markheim, had desired us to come sooner, in order that Peaches might herself assist in selecting the plans and furnishings incident to the remodeling of what was to be her home.

But Peaches was reluctant to go. Of course there was a good deal of readjustment to be done on all her father's ranches, and while he was in the south, where the big orchards were, we set in order the home ranch, which had been practically in our charge for a year and a half, and she gave as excuse for the delay the necessity for making these readjustments herself. Richard was to be left in complete charge and she busied herself quite unnecessarily in showing him a thousand details. Every week she would promise to be ready, and when the time came she would have discovered something that nobody else could take care of, which was all nonsense, because a citrus ranch practically takes care of itself during the winter months. But by hook and crook she held us off until April, and then at last we were ready to go.

I will state that I for one was unreservedly eager to go home—to go East. I was, in point of fact, so excited at the prospect that on the night before our departure I found myself unable to compose myself to slumber, and rising from my uneasy couch I donned a robe and ventured forth from my bedchamber, which was upon the ground floor.

The moonlight, which flooded the garden, gave it an uncanny distorted aspect, and all at once as I sat there, huddled upon a bench close to the wall of the house, I seemed to see the ranch and its surroundings with the same eyes which envisioned it upon my arrival so long ago. This sudden clarity of vision was doubtless due to the subconscious influence of my impending departure. At any rate the place, which I had grown so accustomed to that I beheld it only with the blindness of familiarity, seemed once more the impossibly crude wilderness that it appeared to be upon my arrival.

For in the northern part of California there is little of the induced luxuriance of the South. There is something of the Eastern farmer's fight with the elements and a Nature that is not always overly kind or utterly dependable, and our garden was not a thing of lovely lawns, dense shrubs and misty glades. Far from it. Our flower beds were as practically irrigated as our orchards, standing deep in mud and lifting their wonderful blossoms from the mire we so religiously provided for them. There was none of the trimness of an Eastern estate about our more than practical, enterprising organization. Rather it bore the general aspect of Boston Common after an August holiday. It was, in plain truth, shockingly untidy, and I was horrified to realize that even I, who had been so carefully reared by the immaculate Euphemia, had made only the most feeble sort of effort to tidy up. I had been unable to see the molehills for the mountains, as one might say. But now, with the thought of the concentrated, condensed East before me, I perceived the unevenness of our paths, the forgotten bundle of old papers outside the storehouse, the broken gate which everyone cursed at but forgot to mend; and the olive and orange clad hills beyond grew dim in my mind's eye even as they formed but indistinguishable black patches in the cloud-changing moonlight. A deep longing for my own kind of living swept over me, and I even went so far as to experience a desire for Euphemia's breakfast room on Chestnut Street, and the mended table linen—the careful little things of life grown dear through years of painstakingly careful usage.

Moved by this overwhelming impulse I was on the verge of rising and gathering up that disgracefully untidy bundle of papers and carrying it to the trash bin where it belonged, thus at once satisfying a normal impulse and proving to myself that my upbringing had not been in vain, when I became aware that the window above my head had been opened softly and that someone—Peaches, without a doubt, since that was her chamber—was standing there, crying softly.

My first impulse was to speak—to go to her with what comfort I was capable of offering, but having for an instant refrained I could not do so. Since the announcement of her betrothal to Markheim a wall had sprung up between us as far as her intimate life was concerned. Indeed she seemed to have withdrawn into herself curiously, though I doubt that anyone realized it as keenly as did I.

And then having failed to speak immediately I found myself in an awkward predicament. Should I move or not? I had no desire to eavesdrop for the confidence she withheld, and yet I felt it my bounden duty as her chaperon and guardian and older woman generally to know all about her by one means or another, for her own good, and not out of mere female curiosity. And so allowing my sense of responsibility to conquer my delicacy I kept very still, and before long my diligence was rewarded.