I
_There is compensation even for moving_
[Illustration]
On the 1st of October we moved. Ah, me! How easily one may dismiss in
words an epic thing like that. Yet it is better so. Moves, like
earthquakes, are all a good deal alike, except as to size and the extent
of destruction. Few care for the details. I still have an impression of
two or three nightmarish days that began with some attempt at real
packing and ended with a desperate dropping of anything into any
convenient box or barrel or bureau drawer, and of a final fevered
morning when two or more criminals in the guise of moving-men bumped and
scraped our choicest pieces down tortuous stairways and slammed them
into their cavernous vans, leaving on the pavement certain unsightly,
disreputable articles for every passer-by to scorn.
[Illustration]
It is true that this time we had a box-car--we had never before risen to
that dignity--and I recall a weird traveling to and fro with the vans,
and intervals of anguish when I watched certain precious, and none too
robust, examples of the antique fired almost bodily into its deeper
recesses. Oh, well, never mind; it came to an end. Our goods arrived at
the Brook Ridge station, and Westbury and his teams transported
them--not to the house, but to the barn, for among other things in Brook
Ridge we had unearthed an old cabinet-maker whom we had engaged for the
season to put us in order before we set our possessions in place. He
erected a bench in the barn, and there for a month he glued and scraped
and polished and tacked, and as each piece was finished we brought it in
and tried it in one place and another, discovering all over again how
handsome it was, restored and polished, and now at last in its proper
setting.
There was compensation even for moving in getting settled in that
progressive way, each evening marking a step toward completion. When our
low book shelves were ranged in the spaces about the walls, the books
wiped and put into them; when our comfortable chairs were drawn about
the fireplaces; when our tall clock with a shepherdess painted on the
dial had found its place between the windows and was ticking
comfortably--we felt that our dream of that first day was coming true,
and that the reality was going to be even better than the dream.
[Illustration: _Sometimes at the end of the day, as I sat by the waning
embers, and watched her moving to and fro between me and the fading
autumn fields_]
Of course the old living-room was the best of all. Its length and low
ceiling and the great fireplace would insure that. We had ranged a row
of blue plates, with some of the ancient things from the attic, along
the narrow mantel, and it somehow seemed as if they had been there from
the beginning. The low double windows were opposite the fireplace. We
had our large table there, and between meal-times the Joy liked to
spread her toys on it. She wore her hair cut in the Dutch fashion, and
sometimes at the end of the day, as I sat by the waning embers and
watched her moving to and fro between me and the fading autumn fields, I
had the most precious twilight illusion of having stepped backward at
least a hundred years.
We thought our color scheme good, and I suppose there is really no
better background for old mahogany than dull green. Golden brown is
handsome with it, and certain shades of blue, but there is something
about the green with antique furniture that seems literally to give it a
soul. Never had our possessions shown to such an advantage (no pun
intended, though they did shine) and never, we flattered ourselves, had
the old house been more fittingly appointed. With the pictures and
shades put up, the rugs put down, and the fires lit, it seemed to us
just about perfect. It was a jewel, we thought, and to-day, remembering
it, I think so still.