THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HEDGE
The civilized-looking hedge had been long since investigated. The plot
of land it enclosed--reached, for the Sturgises, through a breach in the
hedge--was very different from the wild country which surrounded it. The
place had once been a very beautiful garden, but years and neglect had
made of it a half-formal wilderness, fascinating in its over-grown
beauty and its hint of earlier glory. For Kirk, it was an enchanted land
of close-pressing leafy alleys, pungent with the smell of box; of
brick-paved paths chanced on unexpectedly--followed cautiously to the
rim of empty, stone-coped pools. He and Felicia, or he and Ken, went
there when cookery or carpentry left an elder free. For when they had
discovered that the tall old house, though by no means so neglected as
the garden, was as empty, they ventured often into the place. Kirk
invented endless tales of enchanted castles, and peopled the still
lawns and deserted alleys with every hero he had ever read or heard of.
Who could tell? They might indeed lurk in the silent tangle--invisible
to him only as all else was invisible. So he liked to think, and
wandered, rapt, up and down the grass-grown paths of this enchanting
play-ground.
It was not far to the hedge--over the rail fence, across the stubbly
meadow. Kirk had been privately amassing landmarks. He had enough, he
considered, to venture forth alone to the garden of mystery. Felicia was
in the kitchen--not eating bread and honey, but reading a cook-book and
making think-lines in her forehead. Ken was in Asquam. Kirk stepped off
the door-stone; sharp to the right, along the wall of the house, then a
stretch in the open to the well, over the fence--and then nothing but
certain queer stones and the bare feel of the faint path that had
already been worn in the meadow.
Kirk won the breach in the hedge and squeezed through. Then he was alone
in the warm, green-smelling stillness of the trees. He found his way
from the moss velvet under the pines to the paved path, and followed
it, unhesitating, to the terrace before the house. On the shallow,
sun-warmed steps he sat playing with fir-cones, fingering their scaly
curves and sniffing their dry, brown fragrance. He swept a handful of
them out of his lap and stood up, preparatory to questing further up the
stone steps, to the house itself. But suddenly he stood quite still, for
he knew that he was not alone in the garden. He knew, also, that it was
neither Ken nor Felicia who stood looking at him. Had one of the
fairy-tale heroes materialized, after all, and slipped out of magic
coverts to walk with him? Rather uncertainly, he said, "Is somebody
there?"
His voice sounded very small in the outdoor silence. Suppose no one were
there at all! How silly it would sound to be addressing a tree! There
was a moment of stillness, and then a rather old voice said:
"Considering that you are looking straight at me, that seems a somewhat
foolish question."
So there _was_ some one! Kirk said:
"I can't see you, because I can't see anything."
After a pause, the voice said, "Forgive me." But indeed, at first
glance, the grave shadowed beauty of Kirk's eyes did not betray their
blindness.
"Are you one of the enchanted things, or a person?" Kirk inquired.
"I might say, now, that I am enchanted," said the voice, drily.
"I don't think I quite know what you mean," Kirk said. "You sound like a
_Puck of Pook's Hill_ sort of person."
"Nothing so exciting. Though Oak and Ash and Thorn do grow in my
garden."
"_Do_ they? I haven't found them. I knew it was a different place, ever
so different from anything near--different from the other side of the
hedge."
"I am not so young as you," said the voice, "to stand about hatless on
an April afternoon. Let us come in and sit on either side of the
chimney-corner."
And a long, dry, firm hand took Kirk's, and Kirk followed unhesitatingly
where it led.
The smoothness of old polished floors, a sense of height, absolute
silence, a dry, aromatic smell--this was Kirk's impression as he crossed
the threshold, walking carefully and softly, that he might not break
the spellbound stillness of the house. Then came the familiar crackle of
an open fire, and Kirk was piloted into the delicious cozy depths of a
big chair beside the hearth. Creakings, as of another chair being pulled
up, then a contented sigh, indicated that his host had sat down opposite
him.
"May I now ask your name?" the voice inquired.
"I'm Kirkleigh Sturgis, at Applegate Farm," said Kirk.
"' ... I s'pose you know, Miss Jean,
That I'm Young Richard o' Taunton Dean....'"
murmured the old gentleman.
Kirk pricked up his ears instantly. "Phil sings that," he said
delightedly. "I'm glad you know it. But you would."
"Who'd have thought _you_ would know it?" said the voice. "I am fond of
_Young Richard_. Is Phil your brother?"
"She's my sister--but I have a brother. He's sixteen, and he's almost as
high as the doorways at Applegate Farm."
"I seem not to know where Applegate Farm is," the old gentleman mused.
"It's quite next door to you," said Kirk.
"They call it the Baldwin place, really. But Ken happened to think that
Baldwin's a kind of apple, and there _is_ an orchard and a gate, so we
called it that."
"The old farm-house across the meadow!" There was a shade of perplexity
in the voice. "You live _there_?"
"It's the most beautiful place in the world," said Kirk, with
conviction, "except your garden."
"Beautiful--to you! Why?"
"Oh, everything!" Kirk said, frowning, and trying to put into words what
was really joy in life and spring and the love of his brother and
sister. "Everything--the wind in the trees, and in the chimney at night,
and the little toads that sing,--do you ever hear them?--and the fire,
and, and--_everything_!"
"And youth," said the old gentleman to himself, "and an unconscious
courage to surmount all obstacles. But perhaps, after all, the unseen
part of Applegate Farm is the more beautiful." Aloud, he said: "Do you
like to look at odd things? That is--I mean--"
Kirk helped him out. "I do like to," he said. "I look at them with my
fingers--but it's all the same."
Such things to look at! They were deposited, one after the other, in
Kirk's eager hands,--the intricate carving of Japanese ivory,
entrancingly smooth--almost like something warm and living, after one
had held it for a few adoring moments in careful hands. And there was a
Burmese ebony elephant, with a ruby in his forehead.
"A ruby is red," Kirk murmured; "it is like the fire. And the elephant
is black. I see him very well."
"Once upon a time," said the old gentleman, "a rajah rode on him--a
rajah no bigger than your finger. And his turban was encrusted with the
most precious of jewels, and his robe was stiff with gold. The elephant
wore anklets of beaten silver, and they clinked as he walked."
Kirk's face was intent, listening. The little ebony elephant stood
motionless on his palm, dim in the firelight.
"I hear them clinking," he said, "and the people shouting--oh, so far
away!"
He put the treasure back into his host's hand, at last. "I'd like,
please, to look at _you_," he said. "It won't hurt," he added quickly,
instantly conscious of some unspoken hesitancy.
"I have no fear of that," said the voice, "but you will find little
worth the looking for."
Kirk, nevertheless, stood beside the old gentleman's chair, ready with a
quick, light hand to visualize his friend's features.
"My hair, if that will help you," the voice told him, "is quite white,
and my eyes are usually rather blue."
"Blue," murmured Kirk, his fingers flitting down the fine lines of the
old gentleman's profile; "that's cool and nice, like the sea and the
wind. Your face is like the ivory thing--smooth and--and carved. I think
you really must be something different and rather enchanted."
But the old man had caught both Kirk's hands and spread them out in his
own. There was a moment of silence, and then he said:
"Do you care for music, my child?"
"I love Phil's songs," Kirk answered, puzzled a little by a different
note in the voice he was beginning to know. "She sings and plays the
accompaniments on the piano."
"Do you ever sing?"
"Only when I'm all alone." The color rushed for an instant to Kirk's
cheeks, why, he could not have said.
"Without a word, the old gentleman, still holding Kirk's hands, pushed
him gently into the chair he had himself been sitting in. There was a
little time of stillness, filled only by the crack and rustle of the
fire. Then, into the silence, crept the first dew-clear notes of
Chopin's F Sharp Major Nocturne. The liquid beauty of the last bars had
scarcely died away, when the unseen piano gave forth, tragically
exultant, the glorious chords of the Twentieth Prelude--climbing higher
and higher in a mournful triumph of minor chords and sinking at last
into the final solemn splendor of the closing measures. The old
gentleman turned on the piano-stool to find Kirk weeping passionately
and silently into the cushions of the big chair.
"Have I done more than I meant?" he questioned himself, "or is it only
the proof?" His hands on Kirk's quivering shoulders, he asked, "What is
it?"
Kirk sat up, ashamed, and wondering why he had cried. "It was because
it was so much more wonderful than anything that ever happened," he said
unsteadily. "And I never can do it."
The musician almost shook him.
"But you can," he said; "you must! How can you _help_ yourself, with
those hands? Has no one guessed? How stupid all the world is!"
He pulled Kirk suddenly to the piano, swept him abruptly into the wiry
circle of his arm.
"See," he whispered; "oh, listen!"
He spread Kirk's fingers above the keyboard--brought them down on a fine
chord of the Chopin prelude, and for one instant Kirk felt coursing
through him a feeling inexplicable as it was exciting--as painful as it
was glad. The next moment the chord died; the old man was again the
gentle friend of the fireside.
"I am stupid," he said, "and ill-advised. Let's have tea."
The tea came, magically--delicious cambric tea and cinnamon toast. Kirk
and the old gentleman talked of the farm, and of Asquam, and other
every-day subjects, till the spring dusk gathered at the window, and the
musician started up. "Your folk will be anxious," he said. "We must be
off. But you will come to me again, will you not?"
Nothing could have kept Kirk away, and he said so.
"And what's _your_ name, please?" he asked. "I've told you mine." A
silence made him add, "Of course, if you mind telling me--"
Silence still, and Kirk, inspired, said:
"Phil was reading a book aloud to Mother, once, and it was partly about
a man who made wonderful music and they called him 'Maestro.' Would you
mind if I called you Maestro--just for something to call you, you know?"
He feared, in the stillness, that he had hurt his friend's feelings, but
the voice, when it next spoke, was kind and grave.
"I am unworthy," it said, "but I should like you to call me Maestro.
Come--it is falling dusk. I'll go with you to the end of the meadow."
And they went out together into the April twilight.
Ken and Felicia were just beginning to be really anxious, when Kirk
tumbled in at the living-room door, with a headlong tale of enchanted
hearthstones, ebony elephants, cinnamon toast, music that had made him
cry, and most of all, of the benevolent, mysterious presence who had
wrought all this. Phil and Ken shook their heads, suggested that some
supper would make Kirk feel better, and set a boundary limit of the
orchard and meadow fence on his peregrinations.
"But I promised him I'd come again," Kirk protested; "and I can find the
way. I _must_, because he says I can make music like that--and he's the
only person who could show me how."
Felicia extracted a more coherent story as she sat on the edge of Kirk's
bed later that evening. She came downstairs sober and strangely elated,
to electrify her brother by saying:
"Something queer has happened to Kirk. He's too excited, but he's simply
shining. And do you suppose it can possibly be true that he has music in
him? I mean _real_, extraordinary music, like--Beethoven or somebody."
But Ken roared so gleefully over the ridiculous idea of his small
brother's remotely resembling Beethoven, that Phil suddenly thought
herself very silly, and lapsed into somewhat humiliated silence.
* * * * *
It was some time before the cares of a household permitted the Sturgises
to do very much exploring. One of their first expeditions, however, had
been straight to the bay from the farm-house--a scramble through wild,
long-deserted pastures, an amazingly thick young alder grove, and
finally out on the stony, salty water's edge. Here all was silver to the
sea's rim, where the bay met wider waters; in the opposite direction it
narrowed till it was not more than a river, winding among salt flats and
sudden rocky points until it lost itself in a maze of blue among the
distant uplands. The other shore was just beginning to be tenderly
alight with April green, and Felicia caught her breath for very joy at
the faint pink of distant maple boughs and the smell of spring and the
sea. A song-sparrow dropped a sudden, clear throatful of notes, and
Kirk, too, caught the rapture of the spring and flung wide his arms in
impartial welcome.
Ken had been poking down the shore and came back now, evidently with
something to say.
"There's the queerest little inlet down there," he said, "with a tide
eddy that runs into it. And there's an old motor-boat hove way up on the
rocks in there among the bushes."
"What about it?" Felicia asked.
"I merely wished it were ours."
"Naturally it's some one else's."
"He takes mighty poor care of it, then. The engine's all rusted up, and
there's a hole stove in the bottom."
"Then _we_ shouldn't want it."
"It could be fixed," Ken murmured; "easily. I examined it."
He stared out at the misty bay's end, thinking, somehow, of the
_Celestine_, which he had not forgotten in his anxieties as a
householder.
But even the joy of April on the bayside was shadowed when the mail came
to Applegate Farm that day. The United States mail was represented, in
the environs of Asquam, by a preposterously small wagon,--more like a
longitudinal slice of a milk-cart than anything else,--drawn by two
thin, rangy horses that seemed all out of proportion to their load. Their
rhythmic and leisurely trot jangled a loud but not unmusical bell which
hung from some hidden part of the wagon's anatomy, and warned all
dwellers on Rural Route No. 1 that the United States mail, ably piloted
by Mr. Truman Hobart, was on its way.
The jangling stopped at Applegate Farm, and Mr. Hobart delved into a
soap-box in his cart and extracted the Sturgis mail, which he delivered
into Kirk's outstretched hand. Mr. Hobart waited, as usual, to watch,
admire, and marvel at Kirk's unhesitating progress to the house, and
then he clucked to the horses and tinkled on his way.
There was a penciled note from Mrs. Sturgis, forwarded, as always, from
Westover Street, where she, of course, thought her children were (they
sent all their letters for her to Mr. Dodge, that they might bear the
Bedford postmark--and very difficult letters those were to write!), a
bill from the City Transfer Company (carting: 1 table, etc., etc.), and
a letter from Mr. Dodge. It was this letter which shadowed Applegate
Farm and dug a new think-line in Ken's young forehead. For Rocky Head
Granite was, it seemed, by no means so firm as its name sounded. Mr.
Dodge's hopes for it were unfulfilled. It was very little indeed that
could now be wrung from it. The Fidelity was for Mother--with a margin,
scant enough, to eke out the young Sturgises' income. There was the bill
for carting, other bills, daily expenses. Felicia, reading over Ken's
shoulder, bit her lip.
"Come back to town, my dear boy," wrote Mr. Dodge, "and I will try to
get you something to do. You are all welcome to my house and help as
long as you may have need."
It had been dawning more and more on Ken that he had been an idiot not
to stay in town, where there _was_ work to do. He had hated to prick
Phil's ideal bubble and cancel the lease on the farm,--for it was really
she who had picked out the place,--but he was becoming aware that he
should have done so. This latest turn in the Sturgis fortunes made it
evident that something must be done to bring more money than the
invested capital yielded. There was no work here; unless perhaps he
might hire out as a farm-hand, at small wages indeed. And he knew
nothing of farm work. Nevertheless, he and Felicia shook their heads at
Mr. Dodge's proposal. They sat at the table within the mellow ring of
lamplight, after Kirk had gone to bed, and thrashed out their
problem,--pride fighting need and vanquishing judgment. It was a good
letter that Kenelm sent Mr. Dodge, and the attorney shook his own head
as he read it in his study, and said:
"I admire your principle, my boy--but oh, I pity your inexperience!"