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THE IDYL OF TWIN FIRES
[Illustration: "So that is why you wanted my brook to come from the
spring!"]
THE IDYL OF TWIN FIRES
BY
WALTER PRICHARD EATON
Illustrated by Thomas Fogarty
GROSSET & DUNLAP
Publishers : : New York
Copyright, 1914, 1915, by Doubleday, Page & Company
All rights reserved, including that of translation
into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian
CONTENTS
I. I Buy a Farm on Sight 3
II. My Money Goes and My Farmer Comes 19
III. New Joy in an Old Orchard 34
IV. I Pump up a Ghost 47
V. I Am Humbled by a Drag Scraper 66
VI. The Hermit Sings at Twilight 77
VII. The Ghost of Rome in Roses 88
VIII. I Pick Paint and a Quarrel 102
IX. We Seat Thoreau in the Chimney Nook, and I
Write a Sonnet 113
X. We Climb a Hill Together 130
XI. Actaeon and Diana 143
XII. Shopping as a Dissipation 155
XIII. The Advent of the Pilligs 164
XIV. The First Lemon Pie 177
XV. A Pagan Thrush 192
XVI. I Go to New York for a Purpose 204
XVII. I Do Not Return Alone 220
XVIII. We Build a Pool 227
XIX. The Nice Other Things 237
XX. Callers 245
XXI. Autumn in the Garden 252
XXII. In Praise of Country Winter 264
XXIII. Spring in the Garden 275
XXIV. Some Rural Problems 282
XXV. _Horas Non Numero Nisi Serenas_ 297
ILLUSTRATIONS
"So that is why you wanted my brook to come from
the spring!" _Frontispiece_
She was sitting with a closed book on her knee,
gazing into the fire 124
"Well, well, you've got yourself a bookay,"
she said 174
"We are your neighbours ... you are very
fortunate to have us for neighbours" 246
THE IDYL OF TWIN FIRES
Chapter I
I BUY A FARM ON SIGHT
I was sitting at a late hour in my room above the college Yard,
correcting daily themes. I had sat at a late hour in my room above
the college Yard, correcting daily themes, for it seemed an interminable
number of years--was it six or seven? I had no great love for it,
certainly. Some men who go into teaching, and of course all men who
become great teachers, do have a genuine love for their work. But I am
afraid I was one of those unfortunates who take up teaching as a
stop-gap, a means of livelihood while awaiting "wider opportunities."
These opportunities in my case were to be the authorship of an
epoch-making novel, or a great drama, or some similar masterpiece. I
had been accredited with "brilliant promise" in my undergraduate days,
and the college had taken me into the English department upon graduation.
Well, that was seven years ago. I was still correcting daily themes.
It was a warm night in early April. I had a touch of spring fever, and
wrote vicious, sarcastic comments on the poor undergraduate pages of
unexpressiveness before me, as through my open windows drifted up from
the Yard a snatch of song from some returning theatre party. Most of
these themes were hopeless. Your average man has no sense of literature.
Moreover, by the time he reaches college it is too late to teach him
even common, idiomatic expressiveness. That ought to be done in the
secondary schools--and isn't. I toiled on. Near the bottom of the
pile came the signature, James Robinson. I opened the sheet with relief.
He was one of the few in the class with the real literary instinct--a
lad from some nearby New England village who went home over Sunday and
brought back unconscious records of his changing life there. I enjoyed
the little drama, for I, too, had come from a suburban village, and knew
the first bitter awakening to its narrowness.
I opened the theme, and this is what I read:
"The April sun has come at last, and the first warmth of it
lays a benediction on the spirit, even as it tints the earth
with green. Our barn door, standing open, framed a picture
this morning between walls of golden hay--the soft rolling
fields, the fringe of woodland beyond veiled with a haze of
budding life, and then the far line of the hills. A horse
stamped in the shadows; a hen strolled out upon the floor,
cooting softly; there was a warm, earthy smell in the air, the
distant church bell sounded pleasantly over the fields, and
up the road I heard the rattle of Uncle Amos's carryall,
bearing the family to meeting. The strife of learning, the
pride of the intellect, the academic urge--where were they? I
found myself wandering out from the barnyard into the fields,
filled with a great longing to hold a plow in the furrow till
tired out, and then to lie on my back in the sun and watch
the lazy clouds."
So Robinson had spring fever, too! How it makes us turn back home! I
made some flattering comment or other on the paper (especially, I recall,
starring the verb _coot_ as good hen lore), and put it with the rest.
Then I fell to dreaming. Home! I, John Upton, academic bachelor, had
no home, no parents, no kith nor kin. I had my study lined with books,
my little monastic bedroom behind it, my college position, and a shabby
remnant of my old ambitions. The soft "coot, coot" of a hen picking up
grain on the old barn floor! I closed my eyes in delicious memory--memory
of my grandfather's farm down in Essex County. The sweet call of the
village church bell came back to me, the drone of the preacher, the
smell of lilacs outside, the stamp of an impatient horse in the horse
sheds where liniment for man and beast was advertised on tin posters!
"Why don't I go back to it, and give up this grind?" I thought. Then,
being an English instructor, I added learnedly, "and be a disciple of
Rousseau!"
It was a warm April night, and I was foolish with spring fever. I began
to play with the idea. I got up and opened my tin box, to investigate
the visible paper tokens of my little fortune. There was, in all, about
$30,000, the result of my legacy from my parents and my slender savings
from my slender salary, for I had never had any extravagances except
books and golf balls. I had heard of farms being bought for $1,500. That
would still leave me more than $1,200 a year. Perhaps, with the freedom
from this college grind, I could write some of those masterpieces at
last--even a best seller! I grew as rosy with hope as an undergraduate.
I looked at myself in the glass--not yet bald, face smooth, rather
academic, shoulders good, thanks to daily rowing. Hands hard, too! I
sought for a copy of the _Transcript_, and ran over the real estate
ads. Here was a gentleman's estate, with two butler's pantries and a
concrete garage--_that_ would hardly do! No, I should have to consult
somebody. Besides $1,200 a year would hardly be enough to run even a
$1,500 farm on, not for a year or two, because I should have to hire
help. I must find something practical to do to support myself. What? What
_could_ I do, except put sarcastic comments on the daily themes of
helpless undergraduates? I went to bed with a very poor opinion of
English instructors.
But God, as the hymn remarks, works in a mysterious way His wonders to
perform. Waking with my flicker of resolution quite gone out, I met
my chief in the English department who quite floored me by asking me if
I could find the extra time--"without interfering with my academic
duties"--to be a reader for a certain publishing house which had just
consulted him about filling a vacancy. I told him frankly that if I
got the job I might give up my present post and buy a farm, but as he
didn't think anybody could live on a manuscript reader's salary, he
laughed and didn't believe me, and two days later I had the job. It
would be a secret to disclose my salary, but to a man who had been an
English instructor in an American college for seven years, it looked good
enough. Then came the Easter vacation.
Professor Farnsworth, of the economics department, had invited me on a
motor trip for the holidays. (The professor married a rich widow.)
"As the Cheshire cat said to Alice," he explained, "it doesn't matter
which way you go, if you don't much care where you are going to; and
we don't, do we?"
"Yes," I said, "I want to look at farms."
But he only laughed, too. "Anyhow, we won't look at a single
undergraduate," he said.
In the course of our motor flight from the Eternal Undergraduate, we
reached one night a certain elm-hung New England village noted for its
views and its palatial summer estates, and put up at the hotel there.
The professor, whose hobby is real estate values, fell into a discussion
with the suave landlord on the subject, considered locally. (Being a
state congressman, he was unable to consider anything except locally!)
The landlord, to our astonishment, informed us that building-sites on
the village street and the nearby hills sold as high as $5,000 per acre.
"What does farm land cost?" I inquired sadly.
"As much as the farmer can induce you to pay," he laughed. "But if you
were a farmer, you might get it for $100 an acre."
"I _am_ a farmer," said I. "Where is there a farm for sale?"
The landlord looked at me dubiously. But he volunteered this information:
"When you leave in the morning, take the back road, up the hollow,
toward what we call Slab City. You'll pass a couple of big estates.
About half a mile beyond the second estate, you'll come to a crossroad.
Turn up that a hundred yards or so and ask for Milt Noble at the first
house you come to. Maybe he'll sell."
It was a glorious April morning when we awoke. The roads were dry. Spring
was in the air. The grass had begun to show green on the beautiful lawns
of Bentford Main Street. The great elms drooped their slender, bare
limbs like cathedral arches. We purred softly up the Slab City road,
pleased by the name of it, passed the two estates on the hill outside of
the village, and then dipped into a hollow. As this hollow held no
extended prospect, the summer estates had ceased on its brim. The road
became the narrow dirt track of tradition, bramble-lined. Presently we
reached the crossroad. A groggy sign-board stood in the little delta
of grass and weeds so characteristic of old New England crossroads, and
on it a clumsy hand pointed to "Albany." As Albany was half a day's
run in a motor car, and no intervening towns were mentioned, there was a
fine, roving spirit about this groggy old sign which tickled me.
We ran up the road a hundred yards of the fifty miles to Albany, crossed
a little brook, and stopped the motor at what I instantly knew for my
abode.
I cannot tell you how I knew it. One doesn't reason about such things
any more than one reasons about falling in love. At least, I'm sure
I didn't, nor could I set out in cold blood to seek a residence,
calculating water supply, quality of neighbours, fashionableness of
site, nearness to railroad, number of closets, and all the rest. I
saw the place, and knew it for mine--that's all.
As the motor stopped, I took a long look to left and right, sighed, and
said to the professor: "I hereby resign my position as instructor in
English, to take effect immediately."
The professor laughed. He didn't yet believe I meant it.
My grandfather was an Essex County farmer, and lived in a rectangular,
simple, lovely old house, with woodsheds rambling indefinitely out
behind and a big barn across the road, with a hollow-log watering
trough by a pump in front and a picture of green fields framed by the
little door at the far end. Grandfather's house and grandfather's barn,
visited every summer, were the sweetest recollections of my childhood.
And here they were again--somewhat dilapidated, to be sure, with a
mountain in the barn-door vista instead of the pleasant fields of
Essex--but still true to the old Yankee type, with the same old wooden
pump by the hollow-log trough, green with moss.
I jumped from the motor and started toward the house on the run.
"Whoa!" cried the professor, laughing, "you poor young idiot!" Then,
in a lower tone, he cautioned: "If our friend Milt sees you want this
place so badly, he'll run up the price. Where's your Yankee blood?"
I sobered down to a walk, and together we slipped behind a century-old
lilac bush at the corner of the house, and sought the front of the
dwelling unobserved. The house was set with its side to the road, about
one hundred feet into the lot. A long ell ran out behind, evidently
containing the kitchen and then the sheds and outhouses. The side
door, on a grape-shadowed porch, was in this ell, facing the barn across
the way. The main body of the dwelling was the traditional, simple
block, with a fine old doorway, composed of simple Doric pilasters
supporting a hand-hewn broken pediment--now, alas! broken in more
than an architectural sense. It was a typical house of the splendid
carpenter-and-builder period of a century ago.
This front door faced into an aged and now sadly dilapidated orchard.
Once there had been a path to the road, but this was now overgrown,
and the doorsteps had rotted away. The orchard ran down a slope of
perhaps half an acre to the ferny tangle of the brook bed. Beyond that
was a bordering line of ash-leaf maples, evidently marking the other
road out of which we had turned. The winters had racked the poor old
orchard, and great limbs lay on the ground. What remained were bristling
with suckers. The sills of the house were still hidden under banks
of leaves, held in place by boards, to keep out the winter cold. There
were no curtains in the windows, nor much sign of furniture within.
From this view the old house looked abandoned. It had evidently not
been painted for twenty years.
But, as I stood before the battered doorway and looked down through the
storm-racked orchard to the brook, I had a sudden vision of pink trees
abloom above a lawn, and through them the shimmer of a garden pool and
the gleam of a marble bench or, maybe, a wooden bench painted white. On
the whole, that would be more in keeping. This Thing called gardening
had got hold of me already! I was planning for next year!
"You could make a terrace out here, instead of a veranda," I was saying
to the professor. "White wicker furniture on the grass before this
Colonial doorway! It's ideal!"
He smiled. "How about the plumbing?" he inquired.
I waved away such matters, and we returned around the giant lilac tree
to the side door, searching for Milton Noble. A bent old lady peered
over her spectacles at us, and allowed Milt wuz out tew the barn. He
was, standing in the door contemplating our car.
"Good morning," said I.
"Mornin'," said he, peering sharply at me with gray eyes that twinkled
palely above a great tangle of white whisker.
"A fine old house you have," I continued.
"Hed first-growth timber when 'twas built. Why wouldn't it be?" He
spat lazily, and wiped the back of his hand across his whiskers.
"We hear you want to sell it, though?" My sentence was a question.
"Dunno whar you heerd thet," he replied. "I hain't said I did."
We mentioned the innkeeper's name.
"Humph," said Milt, "Tom knows more about folks sometimes then they
do."
"Don't you want to sell?" said I.
"Wanter buy?" said he.
"I might," said I.
"I might," he answered.
There was not the slightest expression of mirth on his face. The
professor did not know whether to laugh or not. But I laughed. I was born
of Yankee stock.
"How about water?" I asked, becoming very practical.
"Well," he said, "thet never dried up. Town main comes down the ro'd
yander, from the Slab City reservoar. You kin tap thet if well water
hain't good enough fer ye."
"Bathrooms?" I suggested.
The old man spat again. "Brook makes a pool sometimes down yander," he
replied, jerking his thumb.
"Suppose we take a look into the house?" suggested the professor.
The old man moved languidly from the door. As he stepped, his old black
trouser leg pulled up over his shoe top, and we saw that he wore no
stockings. He paused in front of the motor car. "How much did thet
benzine buggy cost?" he asked.
"Four thousand dollars," said the owner.
The gray eyes darted a look into the professor's face; then they became
enigmatic. "Powerful lot o' money," he mused, moving on. "Whar's
yourn?" he added to me.
"If I had one of those, I couldn't have your farm," said I.
He squinted shrewdly. "Dunno's yer kin, anyway, do ye?" was his reply.
He now led us into the kitchen. We saw the face of the old lady peering
at us from the "butt'ry." A modern range was backed up against a
huge, old-fashioned brick oven, no longer used. A copper pump, with a
brass knob on the curved handle, stood at one end of the sink--"Goes
ter the well," said Milt. The floor was of ancient, hardwood planking,
now worn into polished ridges. A door led up a low step into the main
house, which consisted, downstairs, of two rooms, dusty and disused, to
the left, and two similar rooms, used as bedrooms, to the south (all
four containing fireplaces), and a hall, where a staircase with carved
rail led to the hall above, flanked by four chambers, each with its
fireplace, too. Over the kitchen was a long, unfinished room easily
converted into a servant's quarters. Secretly pleased beyond measure at
the excellent preservation of the interior, I kept a discreet silence,
and with an air of great wisdom began my inspection of the farm.
Twenty acres of the total thirty were on the side of the road with the
house, and the lot was almost square--about three hundred yards to a
side. Down along the brook the land had been considered worthless. South
of the orchard it had grown to sugar maple for a brief space, then to
young pine, evidently seedlings of some big trees now cut down, with a
little tamarack swamp in the far corner. The pines again ran up the
southern boundary from this swamp. The brook flowed cheerily below the
orchard, wound amid the open grove of maples, and went with a little
drop over green stones into the dusk of the pines. The rest of the land,
which lay up a slope to a point a little west of the house and then
extended along a level plateau, was either pasture or good average
tillage, fairly heavy, with subsoil enough to hold the dressing. It had,
however, I fancied, been neglected for many years, like the tumbling
stone walls which bounded it, and which also enclosed a four or five
acre hayfield occupying the entire southwestern corner of the lot, on
the plateau. The professor, who married a summer estate as well as a
motor car, confirmed me in this. Behind the barn, on the other side of
the road, the rectangular ten-acre lot was rough second-growth timber
by the brook, and cow pasture all up the slope and over the plateau.
Returning to the house, we took a sample of the water from the well for
analysis. When I asked the old lady (I made the mistake of calling her
Mrs. Noble) to boil the bottle and the cork first, I think they both
decided I was mad.
"Now," said I, as I put the sample in my pocket, "if this water gets
a clean bill of health, what do you want for the place?"
"What'll you give me?" said Milt.
"Look here," said I, "I'm a Yankee, too, and I can answer one
question with another just as long as you can. What do you expect me to
give you?"
The old man spat meditatively, and wiped his whiskers with the back of
his hand.
"Pitt Perkins got $500 an acre for his place," said he.
"They get $500 a square foot on Wall Street in New York," I replied.
"And 'twon't grow corn, neither," said Milt, with his nearest
approximation to a grin.
"It pastures lambs," put in the professor.
But Milt didn't look at him. He gazed meditatively at the motor. "So
thet contraption cost $4,000, did it?" he mused, as if to himself, "and
'twon't drop a calf, neither. How'd $8,000 strike you?"
I took the bottle of well water from my pocket, and extended it toward
him. "Here," I said, "there's no need for me to have this analyzed."
"Seven?" said he.
"Four!" said I.
"Six?" said he.
"Not a cent over four," said I.
"All right," said he, "didn't much want ter sell anyhow." And he
pocketed the bottle.
I climbed into the car, and the professor walked in front and cranked it.
(It had a self-starter, which was, as they usually appear to be, out of
commission.) The engine began to throb. The professor put on his gloves.
"Five," said Milt, "with the hoss an' two Jerseys an' all the wood
in the shed."
He was standing in the road beside the modern motor car, a pathetic old
figure to me, so like my grandfather in many ways, the last of an ancient
order. Poverty, decay, was written on him, as on his farmstead.
"It's yours!" I cried.
I got out of the car again, and we made arrangements to meet in the
village and put the deal through. Then I asked him the question which
had been pressing from the first. "Why do you sell?"
He pointed toward a distant estate, with great chimneys and gables,
crowning a hill. "This hain't my country no more," he said, with a
kind of mournful dignity. "It's theirs, and theirs, and theirs. I'm
too old ter l'arn ter lick boots an' run a farm fer another feller. I
wuz brought up on corn bread, not shoe polish. I got a daughter out
in York State, an' she'll take me in if I pay my board. I guess $5,000
'll last me 'bout as long as my breath will. Yer got a good farm
here--if yer can afford ter put some money back inter the soil."
He looked out over his fields and we looked mercifully into the motor.
The professor backed the car around, and we said good-bye.
"Hope the bilin' kills all them bugs in the bottle," was the old
man's final parting.
"Well!" I cried, as we spun down over the bridge at my brook, "I've
got a country estate of my own! I've got a home! I've got freedom!"
"You've got stuck," said the professor. "He'd have taken $4,000."
"What's a thousand dollars, more or less?" said I. "Besides, the poor
old fellow needs it worse than I do."
"It's a thousand dollars," replied my companion.
"Yes, to you," I answered. "You are a professor of economics. But to
me it's nothing, for I'm an instructor in English."
"And the point is?"
"That I'm going back home!" I cried. And I took off my hat and let the
April wind rush through my hair.