# Brown Bread from a Colonial Oven/Chapter 10

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THE OLD KITCHEN
Out towards the tip of a certain bare, seaward-stretching promontory, there stands a thick, dark tuft of pines, and within the pines an old farm, painted white. Years and years ago, when Kiteroa, the scattered settlement inland, was still green virgin Bush, a young man planted the pines, which a very little child could then have jumped over, set up a wharé in their midst, and brought home his bride. The wind blew furiously across those open slopes upon the adventurous plantation, the driven rains beat on and through the wharé weatherboards, as yet so unprotected. But the young couple fetched up clay from the creekside and built double walls to their home, with a solid lining of earth between; while for their precious trees they reared a stout bulwark of planks. The planks have decayed long since, and the wharé has given place to a large old rambling house, which, deep within its tall and spicy green breakwind, can sleep in peace now through the wildest weather. One of ​its rooms, however, is still warm with earth-lined walls, and looks out far to sea.
The young couple throve and prospered. Children were born in the single room of the little low dwelling; played about between its walls of bare brown wood; were warmed and fed by its great open hearth with the Colonial oven, that took up nearly all one side of the place; and peeped through its one window at the great spread of sea down there beyond the garden, and at the snow-peaks over the sea. The brood all flourished; and by and by had grown so much, both in size and numbers, that the roof which sheltered them must needs grow too; the wharé had now to delegate some of its functions, part with some of its importance, and, instead of providing a whole home by itself, become one room, merely, among others.
But it was still the chief room, kitchen, dining-room, parlour, and family living-room. Within this little square of space that had so faithfully nursed their infant spring and outgush, the flowing, growing currents of affairs circled more vigorously than ever; until at last they overflowed it. A new kitchen was then built at the other end of the house, and the old one, separated from it by a whole chain of bedrooms, became a sitting-room. Nobody in that house, however, had much leisure to sit; and the stream of activity, though running now more briskly than ever, was quite diverted in its course from the old kitchen, and visited it only at rare intervals, and then but meagrely. The old room, often for weeks together, was left to its silent survey of sea and garden, and its memories of past days.
By and by, as the years went on, the young couple ​grew old, and the children grew up, and, one by one, grew out of the old home, for all its additions. Then the father and mother died; and one of the daughters, already a middle-aged woman, came to live at the farm with her husband. But she had no children, and did not use half the house. A room more conveniently close to the modern kitchen was made into her sitting-room, and the old kitchen, at the other end of the house, was shut up. It was as if Life had now quite done with it.
The farm, high as it stands, and bare to the air and light—for the sea stretches wide below it upon three sides, and from it you can see the sun rise out of the water of a morning, and all but sink in it at night—dwells yet in a kind of retirement of its own. There is no made road leading to it, for one thing—only a rough track across the tussock and nodding blue-bells of the cliff; and the configuration of the slope on which it stands, swelling suddenly out into a crest of grey rock on the inland side, hides it from the coach-road, and has really the effect, in fact, as well as in appearance, of separating it from the rest of the settlement. The itinerant drapers and clockmenders, the book-agents and tea-travellers, even the old Syrian pedlar, with his trays of glittering gewgaws, were all apt to leave it unvisited on their rounds. Neighbours found it more natural to invite and welcome Mrs. Callender to their own homes than to set out towards hers, there upon the road to nowhere.
It was with the more surprise, therefore, that Mrs. Callender, one wet June morning, found herself confronted on her doorstep, among the winter violets, by a stranger, a lady; come, of all extra-​ordinary errands, to inquire whether Mrs. Callender would not take her in to board! She was all alone, and wished for a quiet lodging. It was her intention to give music-lessons in the district.
Music! It is doubtful whether any other key would at that time have opened Mrs. Callender’s independent door to a boarder; but that one did, and instantaneously. The stranger, a tall, gaunt, short-spoken woman, with hair already grey, and a stern, sad face, did not look as though she would prove, or would even attempt to prove, an otherwise congenial companion, but—if she played! If she would only play! Mrs. Callender had a passion for music, quite untrained, but genuine and deep; melody was as thoroughly a need of her nature as warmth was, or food, or air, and it was one that, away back here in the country, she had never been able to appease. So she came to terms at once; there was some throwing open of long-closed windows and doors, a little sweeping and dusting, rubbing and rearranging; and presently, a day or two after, the bullock-sledge came lumbering over the tussock with a few battered boxes and one great wooden case; and the old kitchen, with its brown walls, its great hearth, and its outlook on the far horizon, passed into the possession of Miss Kirkcaldie and her piano.
Who Miss Kirkcaldie was; where she had come from and, why; how she had happened to drift into this out-of-the-way corner of the world—these were questions that every one in Kiteroa asked, but nobody could answer. Miss Kirkcaldie herself was Scotch, so much was easily certain; and, being Scotch, she knew how to hold her tongue; in fact, ​she might be said never to let go of it. She possessed, in addition, the much rarer power of disposing other people to hold theirs, at least while in her company; in general she was chilly, dignified, austere, and, upon occasion, had no difficulty in being deaf as well as dumb.
But she was “no trouble” to Mrs. Callender; her modest dues were discharged with the utmost punctuality; and, whatever uncertainty might otherwise hang mistily about her, her musical ability at least was positive as daylight itself. The fame of it spread quickly abroad through that district of scattered farms, in which pianos, acquired sometimes as a proof of “getting on,” sometimes in the hope of it, were far more plentiful than players; and she had soon no lack of pupils. Many of them would gladly have come to her, but she drily discouraged all such suggested inroads on her seclusion, and chose instead, mounted upon a staid and serviceable old grey horse, to plod her way, all day long and every day, between farm and farm, from pupil to pupil.
A singular choice of life for an elderly woman, and scarcely, one would think, congenial; for nearly all the learners were the most absolute beginners, and their fingers, already past the first suppleness, were coarsened, moreover, with housework; besides which, not one of them, so far as I could discover, ever entertained any musical ambition beyond that of being able to play waltzes and lancers at the monthly socials. Whether this was altogether the fault of the pupils, though, who is to say? By all accounts, Miss Kirkcaldie would not seem to have troubled to bring with her into ​those farmhouse parlours much inspiration or enthusiasm for her art.
She kept all that for the old kitchen. At dusk, after she had come in from her rounds, had asked, curtly, for her tea, eaten it, and returned the tray, she would put out her lamp and open her piano—and Mrs. Callender, eagerly on the watch, would simultaneously open all the doors between the old kitchen and the new: surreptitiously, however! For once, when the passage-door had been thrown open a little carelessly and loudly, Miss Kirkcaldie had instantly arisen, had closed it, with meaning, and had played no more that night.
With that single exception, however, the old kitchen, deserted still by day, now awoke each evening, in the mellow flush and flicker of its own firelight (even in the summer these Southern hills grow cold at sundown, and Miss Kirkcaldie was a chilly soul in more senses than one), to a new and magical existence. Its little humble sphere, heretofore the scene exclusively of practical and actual life, now enclosed experiences neither actual nor practical at all, that were yet exceedingly real. Immortal passions now possessed it, and it sheltered mighty sorrows and consummate joys. Within its homely boundary, vast forces impalpably contended; worlds invisible were born; the secrets of the soul declared themselves, and bodiless longings, formless consolations, pulsed and thrilled. Plaintively, imperatively or with despair, the old kitchen re-echoed now the everlasting questions to which there comes never any answer; and all the while was glorious as a chosen home of the undeniable, divine fact—Beauty!
​The tears come still into Mrs. Callender’s eyes when she speaks of Miss Kirkcaldie’s music. “Never,” she says, “did I hear anything like it. Right through you it went, deep down into your very marrow. Many’s the time I’ve gone an’ crept outside that door, an’ stayed there shiverin’ with the cold—Roger’d be safe in bed—and filled me with the listening till my heart’s been fit to break for the grief or glory, or soldierin’ or softness, whichever it might be. There! stood there like a silly I have, with the tears a-runnin’ down, an’ yet all the while as happy! Well, there! Someway I used to seem to kind o’ wake up, if you understand, when Miss Kirkcaldie made her music. Sour old lemon that she was, too, otherwise!”
It is good to think of Mrs. Callender, whose days were else little beyond butter-making, poultry-feeding, and housework, coming into her rightful kingdom of consciousness, as she sobbed and shivered out there in the passage. And it is good, too, to think of that music, like an angel entertained in secret and guarded with jealous pains from bestowing the blessing of its presence upon uninvited guests, yet, true to its heavenly nature, winging thus freely forth and ministering to this refreshed and thankful recipient. But what of the music-maker—the exclusive, haughty host? Nay, poor, proud, solitary soul, why should we give you grudge for grudge, or bitterly estimate your bitterness? Is it so beautiful a thing to condemn where we do not understand? Who knows what stress—of grief, or guilt it may be, of love denied, ambition thwarted, loss sustained (pain of some sort certainly it must have been, to teach your soul such passionate expression)—had ​driven you to exile and the old kitchen? Who can tell from what sad seed, and planted by what tragic agency, may have sprung that thicket of impenetrable pride that walled you from your fellows as the pine-trees wall the farm?
Nobody, at least in Kiteroa; and perhaps it is as well. It is good at times that curiosity should go ungratified. Miss Kirkcaldie succeeded in remaining a problem to the end. Three years to the very day, after she had drifted into the farm, she drifted away from it again, as suddenly and unexplainingly as she had come. Nobody ever heard where she went to, or anything more about her. The patient bullocks took the boxes and piano-case down the hill again, the cold ashes were swept up from the unrequired hearth, the music was gone, and the old kitchen was shut up once more.
Not for very long this time, however. One scorching day, the summer following Miss Kirkcaldie’s departure, it so happened that a couple of young men went strolling out upon the promontory, to get a view of the great Point opposite. The heat gave way suddenly to a violent storm, and they ran for shelter to the farm, which received them hospitably—so hospitably, indeed, that they stayed on there for a week, delighted with their luck. The Callenders, too, were delighted in their turn. Their guests, it appeared, were art-students from town, spending their holiday in a sketching-trip along the coast; and very lively, companionable fellows they proved themselves. It was long since the Callenders had laughed so much—probably, indeed, they had never before found life half so ​entertaining as it was made that week, by the gay, good-humoured nonsense and sprightly pranks of their guests.
Mrs. Callender often referred to them regretfully after they were gone; and it was with the liveliest expressions of delight that one day next spring she read aloud to Roger, who was as pleased as she, a letter from one of them, Mr. Martin Mills, imploring her, as the greatest of all possible favours, to put him up during the coming summer, which he proposed to devote to the painting of a great coast scene. He came, accordingly, and was more debonair and delightful than ever. The headland itself was mainly to serve him as a studio, and, unlike Miss Kirkcaldie, he took his meals sociably with his hosts; but the old kitchen was also placed at his disposal, and soon became a sort of miniature salon, its brown walls all brilliant with what looked like random bits of sea and sky blown in through the window. And the window itself, too, framed another picture, a live one, the garden in its summer glory—masses of pelargonium, rosy freaked with jet: of snapdragon, soft yellow, crimson and white: azure lupin and larkspur, golden “glory-cups” (eschscholtzia), and great damask and pink roses: all sprung up bright above their low, cool greenery, and heaped, yet without any crowding or garishness, upon the sapphire canvas of sea and sky. Colour both lapped and lined the little brown room, and it was gay, too, with more than colour. It had company in it now every day, blithe, numerous company, that bubbled over with vivacious chatter, and with airy projects for sports and picnics and all kinds of holiday outings. All the young folk ​of the neighbourhood seemed with one accord to make for the farm upon the promontory that summer, and many of their elders, too. The Callenders had never been so popular, or had so many visitors; all of whom must pay a visit to the old kitchen, of course, if only to inspect Martin’s sketches in the inspiriting company of the painter.
It is doubtful, to be sure, whether the sketches themselves were so very highly thought of. The visitors privately agreed that the young man had a puzzlingly free hand with the facts. That picture of Dicky Jell’s house, now—he gave it a gable which it had not got, yet left out altogether the tastiest thing about the whole place; that new verandah-roof painted in stripes of yellow and red, that the Jells were so proud of, and no wonder—it was the latest thing out. But it might still have been in, for all Mr. Mills made of it; and though no one, to be sure, could more handsomely have admitted the oversight when it was pointed out to him, still, nobody, either, could have taken less haste to put it right. All the time the picture hung in the old kitchen it was never altered; and Mrs. Jell had reason to suspect that it went forth into the world still thus deficient—and could never feel again quite so cordial to the painter in consequence. Mrs. Lyon’s place, too;—was there really that pool of water before the blue-gums? Of course not! never had been, either. Mrs. Lyon herself only wished there was: it would have been so handy for the cows, though perhaps a little rheumaticky, so close to the house, in winter. And there Mr. Mills had not only put it in, but actually put her in, too, coming down from the door to fetch water! ​It was almost making the poor old lady act a lie—and, in fact, the chief effect of Martin’s art upon his neighbours was to make them realise the far higher veracity of photographs; which came so much cheaper, too.
But whatever might be thought of the paintings, with the painter himself nobody had any fault to find. Before long, Martin was easily the most popular person in Kiteroa, and quite naturally so. To begin with, he was a pleasure merely to look at, with his tall, muscular figure, all ease and buoyancy, his ready, irresistible smile, and happy, kind blue eyes. Then, in addition to good-nature, good humour, good spirits, and a power of enjoyment that was infectious, he possessed an indefinable charm of temperament, “fluid and attaching,” that coaxed criticism into indulgence and persuaded suspicion to a smile. He was a delightful person; more, he was a delightful person to be with, and that in reality was his chief attraction. Wherever Martin came, a certain sparkle, a peculiarly grateful liveliness, awoke in the company—emanating from him in the first place, certainly, but by no means confined to him. People in his society began to be enchanted with their own, discovering, with a pleasure which in turn naturally helped things on, how bright, how quick, how brilliant they could really be. Martin, in short, was a human effervescent. He was like a spoonful of sherbet, which you have but to slip into a glass of water, and—Presto! how that quiet water does begin to dance! Or, to vary the simile, he was a human sunbeam, not only bringing its own brightness with it, but evoking also a shining answer out of shady places thought ​hitherto to be all shade. Yes, he certainly was a charming fellow, Martin; and as far removed from his dim, gaunt, dreary predecessor in the old kitchen as the tropics from the pole.
What with the various merrymakings and frolics to which this popularity committed him, the great picture, to be sure, made scant advance beyond the sketches and studies already referred to. But there was plenty of time; for, when autumn came, it appeared that there was an opening for one drawing-class in the little town of Appleby, seven miles away, and another at Hakawai, five miles off in the opposite direction. Kiteroa would make capital headquarters—the roads were good; he would be able easily to ride to and fro—and, to Mrs. Callender’s great delight (she had already begun to love him like a son), he decided to stay on through the winter.
That was the winter they had the Dramatic Society at Kiteroa. It was in the old kitchen that a merry company of lads, gathered about the great hearth one frosty evening, with Martin as their host, hit upon the captivating idea; it was there that before the eyes of many hilarious and suggesting critics he dashed off those famous flaming sheets of stage scenery; there, too, that he devised costumes, coached the actors in their parts, and conducted rehearsals. The responsible old family wharé that had taken part in so much life, played at life in those days. At the transmuting touch of Martin, that universal elixir, it became, now a dungeon (with the hanging lamp turned low): now (with the help of Mrs. Callender’s rocker and two chair-backs) a London drawing-room: now, by mere force of imagination, a ship or a forest, a castle or a street. It is a wonder ​that its timbers stood the strain. In the course of all this dramatic business, by the way, Martin came to know Avis le Beau.
What with painting, teaching, and the drama, not to mention a whole host of lesser activities, Martin had quite a strenuous life of it at Kiteroa; but all work seemed to come light as a holiday to his buoyant nature. About mid-winter, indeed, he did “take a week off,” running up (the expression seemed just to fit such an agile temperament) to see his friends in town. But Mrs. Callender exclaimed with concern at the white and haggard face with which he returned. He laughed it off, of course: country air and cookery always suited him best, he explained, Kiteroa air for choice and Callender cookery; and he soon picked up again. Mrs. Callender feared, however, that there was some hidden delicacy, perhaps of the lungs, about him, and was more than ever fearful of it after he had taken another trip in spring, with the like result; and very glad indeed that he made no plans for leaving Kiteroa, and her unobtrusive cosseting; although it was just then that, for the first time, he fell behind in his payments, which seemed the more singular, since he had taken the sketch with the Jells’ house in it, and other pictures, up to town to sell.
And then, alas! soon after his return, a terrible calamity occurred, and a great grief overwhelmed good Mrs. Callender. One night Martin did not return from his class at Appleby. He did not come back the next day, either; it was not until the third afternoon that Dicky Jell drove him home in his gig, very dirty and dilapidated, very morose and ​sick, the saddest possible contrast to the airy, engaging master of the Kiteroa revels. Dicky, it appeared, had found him at the hotel in Appleby, with his credit exhausted, and had brought him away by main force. Alas for merry Martin! The real superiority of Kiteroa air for him over that of town depended, it was obvious, upon its greater distance from a bar.
Poor Martin! And the poor Callenders! They nursed and tended him unreproachfully till he was fully himself again, and then Roger talked to him like a man, and Mrs. Callender like a mother. And Martin, true to his lightly hung, easily moved nature, responded to this generous treatment with the utmost readiness. The vituperations that they spared him he heaped on his own head. He swore that he should never forgive himself for having so disgraced, so hurt, such friends. He confessed, with a shame-faced sincerity, that took half the ugliness out of the confession, and disposed its hearers rather to sympathy than blame, that he could not honestly say this was the first time he had so fallen; but he could, and he did, most vehemently vow that it should be the last. It was not, however—neither was the next time, nor the next. Poor Mrs. Callender was a woman much to be pitied in those dark days. She was at her wits’ end, when Avis le Beau came to the rescue. She married him.
Avis was a practical, capable, resolute girl, her own mistress since the death of her father, and in possession of her own farm. If, as was whispered round Kiteroa, it was really she who proposed the match, that only showed that she had enough sense to see what Martin needed, and enough love ​and courage to act on what she saw. The neighbourhood, no slower than the average community to throw down its idol from his pedestal, once the feet of clay stood revealed, expressed itself as more than a little aghast at Avis’s own prospects. But that was of no moment whatever to Avis; once her mind was made up, she was of the kind that would “stand to be shot.” So she made Martin marry her with the least possible delay; and, contrary to all precedent in such cases, she saved him. The fact was, that there was as yet no actual vicious craving in the lad; nothing worse than weakness and a strain of lavish self-indulgence, which is bad enough, Heaven knows, but yet is shared by many a man who never actually “goes wrong.” In Martin’s case, it was that very characteristic and charming bonhomie of his that had unhappily played the part of traitor in the garrison; and Avis took him just in time, before tendency had slidden easily and fatally over the brink into habit.
She made him an admirable wife. The firmness of her nature was a staff to his; her courage shamed him, her generosity set his eagerly afire. His responsiveness helped him well with Avis; his ardour and facile-heartedness could be exercised in ever-fresh worship of the wife who had saved him, and his imaginativeness was able to invest her with the glamorous quality she lacked. For Avis, from the crown of her head to the sole of her foot, was purely matter-of-fact; she cared little for beauty, nothing at all for Art. Paint, especially, she considered to be much more usefully and properly bestowed upon gates and weather-boarding ​than on canvas; it was also contrary to her excellent judgment that any wife should keep her husband. Accordingly, she sold out, and took a farm in quite another neighbourhood, a Prohibition one; and there Martin, who had been brought up in the country, took to farming, made, with her help, quite a success of it, and entirely lived down whatever was amiss in his Kiteroa reputation.
He became, of course, extremely popular in the new neighbourhood, for that he would be bound to do wherever he went; but whisky never got the upper hand of him again, save once, and that was during the horror of despair—when the first baby came and Avis was pronounced dying. They say it was to a whisper of his condition that she really owed her marvellous recovery; she was so resolved he should be kept straight. Certainly, by her understanding of the needs of Martin the man, she made of him a clear gain for humanity: although whether, at the same time, by her lack of sympathy with Martin the artist, she did not also inflict a certain loss upon it, who shall say? Decidedly, his sketches (there are several of them in the old kitchen still) possessed plenty of breadth and spirit. Martin is happy enough, by all accounts, and at all events his neighbourhood is saved from at least one pied verandah; but I always feel a little rueful and regretful about beauty-loving, beauty-bringing Martin. Avis saved so much, one wishes she could have saved more.
And so the old kitchen lost its transitory brightness, and lapsed into solitude and silence once more. It was scarcely less silent for its next occupant. A certain “Mr. Miller,” a foreigner, had, ​it appears, in years long since gone by, performed some great service for Mrs. Callender’s father and mother—that identical young couple who had begun their housekeeping in the old kitchen. Precisely the nature of it, Mrs. Callender had never clearly understood; but it had been of the very first importance, and had decisively influenced a supreme crisis in the family fortunes, which had gone on steadily, if modestly, improving ever since. The benefactor’s own fortunes, unhappily, had just as steadily pursued the opposite direction; until now, in his friendless old age, he was reduced to a most forlorn “bachelorising” existence in a one-roomed hut near Hakawai. It was in vain that, time after time, Mrs. Callender had entreated him to take up his quarters on the farm, and let her, in tardy return for that essential succour long ago, make his declining days as comfortable as she could. No! he always refused, gratefully, but with decision; he had work to do, he said, for which absolute solitude was a necessity.
But when, at length, he and his wharé grew infirm together; when sinister mention began to be made of the Old Men’s Refuge; then, Mrs. Callender could stand on ceremony no longer. If Mr. Miller himself did not know what was due to the saviour of her father and mother, she did; and accordingly, one fresh and beautiful October morning, when the headland was all soft greens and purples with springing grass and sailing cloud-shadows, she harnessed steady Twinkle into the buggy, and drove off; returning, that same afternoon, with a small, spare, bespectacled man upon the seat beside her, and a quantity of well-packed butter-boxes and ​flour-bags in the rear. Poor Twinkle seemed to have found his load no light one; and this was not surprising, for the butter-boxes proved to be full of weighty books, and the sacks, all but one, whose leanness hid a few old clothes, were crammed with papers.
Roger, humorously growling, brought them all round by degrees into the old kitchen, now homelike and hospitable once more with a good fire of black-pine, for the sweet spring breeze was keen. But it was not upon the fire that the newcomer’s deep-set old eyes fastened themselves with eagerness and brightened as they gazed; it was upon a certain innovation in the room, introduced no later than that very day—some shelves, namely, of plain wood, running along a couple of the walls. He rubbed his veiny, knotted hands together as he looked at them, and before he would so much as glance at the good hot meal Mrs. Callender made haste to bring in, he insisted upon unpacking and bestowing on these shelves his beloved books—his “family,” as he called them with a whimsical smile.
It was a family extremely unlike that other which the old kitchen had known, with fresh, rosy faces and quick limbs; considered, too, as decoration, it could hardly vie with Martin’s pictures; for a sorrier, a more blighted collection of volumes can seldom surely have been seen. The backs of many were broken, others could boast of no richer wrapping than was afforded by a bit of brown paper; and the very handsomest members of all faced the world, or rather the old kitchen, in mouldy coats of dull brown leather, sorely scratched and ​worn. It was possible, of course, that the very sprightliest elegances, the nimblest and most lively creations of wit and fancy, might dwell behind these dingy exteriors and be gloomily concealed by them, like comedy behind the curtain; but, if so, the concealment was perfect—the entire library looked to promise nothing lighter than a sermon. There could never be anything in the least fantastic, or light-minded, or gay about the aspect of the old kitchen while it should retain these tenants; but, rather, an air of equable responsibility, an atmosphere of grave and even twilight, sobered and somewhat scented, too, by the company of so much unspecious brown leather; and premising, in whatever form of activity should there be pursued, a kind of passionless neutrality, a judicial stability and calm.
As for the human occupant, the father, so to speak, of this unglittering tribe, he was a gentle and tranquil old man of long past seventy, with a high, shining forehead, and a lofty dome-shaped head, white as a snow-peak in July. He had a mild, absorbed expression; he rarely spoke and even more rarely heard. Mrs. Callender had always understood that he was a doctor—Dr. Miller, her father had always called him—and, the morning after his arrival, before she knew his habits, she coaxed him into the stable to see a poor cow that was down with milk-fever. The old man accompanied her with the most perfect complaisance, gazed at the suffering creature with an air of profound consideration, and lent, or appeared to lend, the most desirable attention to Mrs. Callender’s painstaking enumeration of its symptoms. But when, at the ​end, she asked for his opinion, she got a shock; for, slowly shaking that great white head of his, he answered, with a gentle smile, that he had hitherto made it the habit of his life seldom to formulate an opinion, and never to express one—a habit which appeared to Mrs. Callender most peculiar in any one, and in a doctor, actively inhuman.
All of a sudden, however, a new idea flashed into her mind—were there not other doctors, as well as doctors of medicine? Of course! and, swiftly seized with a wild and palpitating hope, “Oh, Dr. Miller,” she cried, “do you—oh, are you a musicianer?” at the same time revolving, with the customary quickness of her woman’s mind, all sorts of plans for giving a commission to the very next piano agent who should call. But his answer not only crushed that infant hope past remedy, it also raised a fear; for, “God forbid!” he said, with an earnestness so devout that Mrs. Callender felt her heart almost stop its beating. Could he—oh—could he possibly be a Doctor of—Divinity? Of the habits of such folk she had no experience, it is true, but awful visions beset her—of gentle but persistent admonishings, of sermons on weekdays as well as Sundays. Worst of all, of Roger, at no time an admirer of “parsons,” and already good-naturedly contemptuous of this poor man who had “made such a mess of his life,” waxing “rampageous,” and kicking against the bodily presence of so spiritually minded a guest. The idea was, indeed, so alarming, that she dared not put it to the proof. The old man had concealed the fact, if fact it were, for so many years, that perhaps, if he were not goaded into declaring ​it now by ill-judged questions, it might be kept dark still; and she therefore pursued her inquiries no further. She loyally called him “Doctor,” to the end, however. Failure that he had been, puzzle that he was, mine of danger that he might eventually prove to be, the former bulwark of her father’s fortunes should lack nothing she could give him, least of all a title of respect.
Old Mr. Miller was very happy at the farm. His original scruples once routed by Mrs. Callender’s abduction of his person, he never recurred to them—indeed he probably forgot all about them—and accepted her ministrations as naturally, and with as little question as a child. The seclusion of the place suited him well; and in the old kitchen he could enjoy his stipulated solitude without stint. As in its earliest days of all, the old room was now again both bed-chamber and living-room. Once more it enclosed and guarded all the material activities of an entire human life, and provided, with what seemed a peculiar fitness, for the helplessness of him by whose help it had been conserved to the use of its original inmates. The old man became very fond of it; he quitted it, indeed, only for the garden; for he was very shy. The farm itself he never went outside from the day he came to it, and he could never be induced to face any of Mrs. Callender’s once more infrequent visitors. People, he once explained to her, were like noises, and “broke his thoughts.”
Of another kind of society, however, presumably less destructive, he was extremely fond—the society, namely, of all the lesser creation, feathered or four-legged, provided only that it was not too big and ​strong. Perhaps this trait was a mark of that same mercifulness of nature that had sent him to the prompt rescue of the struggling young couple; perhaps it was his portion of the almost universal craving for companionship; or again, perhaps it was what Roger called it, just childishness. Whatever its reason, certainly he treated the smaller and gentler of the creatures about the farm (cows and horses were too big for him, puppies he found too boisterous) after a fashion that their master considered “clean ridic’lous,” and even loyal Mrs. Callender in secret thought most trying. For, like the majority of farm folk, these two looked upon animals as nothing at all but bodies, and bodies designed, moreover, for nothing else than to be of use to human owners; while the old doctor went to the other extreme, and gravely regarded them as real personalities, with lives and claims and interests of their own. Understanding, at any rate of the heart, they did undoubtedly possess, he pointed out to Mrs. Callender, when Lady, the cattle-dog, deposited one day a still-blind pup between his trusted feet; and he scandalised her severely, on another occasion, by asserting that, in his opinion, the claim of Mab the cat to a soul was as undeniable as her own. Mrs. Callender never feared that he was a Doctor of Divinity after that!
But in return, the animals adored their champion; it certainly seemed that there was some real bond between him and them. Mab, before long, had quite deserted the new kitchen of an evening for the old, and Lady, when off duty, would sit quiet by the hour with her nose against the old man’s knee, and shared his meals with a regularity that was a further ​discipline to poor Mrs. Callender, who considered, and not perhaps without reason, that her providing was much too good for a dog. The ducks and turkeys, too, would come boldly round the doorstep to eat from his hand; and as for the little fan-tails in the garden, it was really pretty to see them with the old doctor. They would come flickering and flirting about his great white head without the smallest fear, and settle on his knee or his finger; cocking their little heads questioningly on one side, and looking up at him out of their bright black eyes with the most knowing expression. When autumn came, they fairly took up their quarters for a time in the old kitchen, creating with their mid-air antics a perfect whirlpool of movement within its quiet atmosphere, breaking the solemn silence with brisk monosyllables of bird chat, and making no scruple whatever, if they wanted a perch, of alighting upon the very most portentous of all the brown leather tomes.
“The lesser brethren,” the old man used to call them; and when Mrs. Callender once, humouring him as she would have done a child, asked him what they talked so much to him about, “Oh, we share a secret,” he answered, with a smile and laying a mysterious finger to his lip. “Consciousness, men call it, but they know only one word of it. Perhaps the little birds know another.” And good Mrs. Callender went sadly away, feeling that Roger was quite right—the poor old dear was getting very childish.
As regards his daily life, it was his custom to rise late, and of a bright morning to sit with a closed book on his knee—either out on the clean, ​flagged garden-path between the flower-borders, or else in the streak of sunshine beside his open window. The bees would be humming, the thrushes melodiously busy, and with the fragrance of his morning-pipe (he was a tremendous smoker) would be mingled the freshness of the sea-air and the sweet garden-breath. Suppose the day were chill or wet, he would then seat himself beside the hearth, which Mrs. Callender was careful to keep well-supplied with logs; still with a book, and still with that book unopened. It was as though the mere presence of the printed page sufficed him, just as the day’s work often goes the better for the mere knowledge that So-and-So is about; or perhaps the contents lived in his memory, and needed no reviving; or, again, perhaps he had another unprinted library in his brain, that it took him all his time to decipher, and the holding of a book in his hand was but a habit, or acted as a suggestion. At all events, he seldom seemed to read.
If the afternoon were fine he would spend some time in pacing up and down among the pines that surrounded it on three sides; by and by he had worn quite a track among them, as Wordsworth’s sailor-brother did, home from the quarter-deck. And, after that, he would return to his room, and there sit with his white head sunk on his breast, and his beloved pipe out at last, apparently asleep. Finally, when it was quite dusk, and Mrs. Callender had brought in and lit his lamp, “Doctor Morepork,” as Roger called him to tease his wife, would sit down to the table in the company of pens, papers, and ink, and begin, at length, his day’s work. What that work was, constituted yet another puzzle. It was ​writing, certainly, that was plain enough; but of what kind? what about? Mrs. Callender never could discover. Once, in the hope of having wherewithal to glorify him in the eye of Kiteroa, and, if possible, render him a little respectable in Roger’s, she ventured to inquire whether he wrote for the papers? “For the papers!” He repeated the words after her with a scorn, gentle, yet absolute, which, however incomprehensible, proved, at any rate, that he did not!
Whatever his mysterious task, however, he worked hard at it. His consumption of kerosene was enormous—although, as Mrs. Callender said, she never should be the one to grudge him that, seeing that except for tobacco, which he found himself in, kerosene was about the only thing he did consume; and the sight of his cheerfully streaming window must have heartened many a midnight helmsman off that unlit coast. The old wharé, that had once presided through the darkness over dreamless slumbers, now kept vigil many a night with this old scholar. Once, in fact, during the summer, Mrs. Callender and the sunrise together surprised him in the middle of a sentence—which Mrs. Callender stole a look at, by the way, over his shoulder; but, so far from its enlightening her as to the real meaning of all this midnight toil, not one word of it could she so much as decipher. It was all written in some incomprehensible character.
One night, during the winter that followed, she was suddenly awakened—by some kind of cry, she thought, but could not be sure. For a minute or two she lay listening; then, an irresistible impulse drove her to the old kitchen. She found the ​doctor still sitting at his table, although the clock upon the wall had just struck three; but, for once, he was not writing. All his papers were packed up into one great pile, and this he was holding in his hands, which quivered and trembled about it, and fondled it as though it were one of the little live creatures so dear to him. “It is done! it is done!” he was exclaiming, almost chanting, as Mrs. Callender entered; and she recognised the sound as that which had awaked her.
“What is done?” she asked him; but he did not answer. She could not even be certain that he was aware of her presence, for he had a singular expression, “as if he was glorying,” and, unwilling to disturb him, she made up the fire softly, and went away. She could not sleep, however; a queer restlessness, a vague feeling of uneasiness, had taken possession of her; and she got up again after awhile, and stole back to the old kitchen. The lamp seemed to have burned low; she turned it up. There sat the old doctor still, and still he clasped his papers. But they were now made up into a parcel, and his head had fallen forward on them. He was dead.
Whether it was legal or not, Mrs. Callender never knew, neither did she care; but when she found that the manuscript whose existence had been so vitally bound up with the old doctor’s, was directed to some queer address in far-off Germany, she insisted on Roger’s sending it there at once, before the constable came to take over the dead man’s affairs. He might refuse to forward it—one never knew; and forwarded at all costs it had got to be, since that was evidently the doctor’s last wish. Forwarded accordingly it was, though the postage ​made Roger whistle and slyly lament to his wife that moreporks were expensive pets. Then Hennessey, the constable, came and cleared away the old brown books, and all the rest of the manuscripts. And, once again, the old kitchen was empty.
No longer ago than last November, I was down myself at the farm on the promontory-tip; and I found Mrs. Callender all in a flutter still at the extraordinary event of the week before. Two men had arrived at the farm, two strangers, two foreigners—come all the way from Germany, it appeared, to visit the place where the celebrated Dr. Müller (it really was a ü in the middle of his name—did I know?) had lived and died and written his so-famous volume upon . . . what, Mrs. Callender could not for the life of her make out—that had revolutionised . . . something, concerning which she had been able to gather no idea; except the joyful one that it was so exceedingly important that her father’s friend had now become a greatly revered man in his own country. She was very triumphant over Roger about it; but Roger, good, substantial man, stuck sturdily to his guns. Where was the good of a dinner after you were dead? If the poor old duffer couldn’t succeed in getting famous in time enough to know it, didn’t that show he was a failure, right enough? And, anyway, what the dickens did anybody care for what they thought in Germany about anything?
I went for a minute or two into the old kitchen. It was cool, and still, and shady, although, outside, the garden was blazing-bright already with its early summer bloom; and a great group of Christmas​lilies held up before the window their tall wands of blossomed silver, delicately detached upon the background of immense blue sea. Two or three brown volumes that had been overlooked by the constable—there had been a couple more, but those Mrs. Callender had bestowed in gratitude upon the appreciative strangers—stood yet upon the shelves; a study of the Point done in Martin’s most dashing manner, hung over the capacious old hearth; and the tingling silence, as, standing still, I held my own breath in the little breathless space—it was a calm day, and there was no murmur from either pines or sea—felt as though it were holding back some lovely secret of its own, which must presently break forth and tell itself in noble harmonies.
What various lives had been lived in the old kitchen! The young husband and wife and the babies, first, normal as could be; after them, Miss Kirkcaldie the musician, mysterious, aloof, as yonder far horizon; next, Martin the painter, as radiant, as endearing, as evanescent as the summer flowers; and, last of all, the old philosopher with his august white head, sublimely illumined by the flush of posthumous fame as yonder snow-peaks would be soon by the afterglow.
It was strange how the old kitchen seemed to have been chosen from among its compeers in humility, here among the paddocks and the sheep, as a sanctuary for the life that springs, certainly, from the good sound soil of material existence, but wings its way above it; the life that leaves unconcernedly on one side all that is actual, practical, and personal; the detached life of the intellect and of Art.