NEW JOY IN AN OLD ORCHARD
The following morning was a balmy and exquisite first of May, but realism
again compels me to confess that, having been an English instructor
for seven years, and having read manuscripts the night before till 2
A.M., I did not leap lightly from my couch at the breakfast call, nor did
I sing ecstatically, as I looked from my window:
_"Im wunderschoenen Monat Mai."_
What I actually did was to curse to myself at having to clean my teeth
in bitterly cold water, something I have always loathed. Nor was I
greatly cheered by Mrs. Temple's coffee. The New England farmer's wife
can cook everything but coffee. But there seems to be something in
that simple art which completely baffles her. Perhaps the coffee has
something to do with it!
Her cheery face, however, was not long to be resisted, and Bert hustled
me off immediately after the meal to meet Hard Cider Howard, whom, by
some rural wireless, he had already summoned.
As we walked down the road, I glanced toward my lone pine, and saw my
horse and Mike's hitched to the plough, with Joe driving and Mike
holding the handles. Across the green pasture, between the road and
the hayfield, already four rich brown furrows were shining up to the sun.
"Well, Mike didn't wait long!" I exclaimed. "I wonder why he started
in there?"
"I told him to," said Bert. "That's goin' ter be yer pertater crop
this year."
"Is it?" said I. "Why?" I felt a little peeved. After all, this was
_my_ farm.
"Cuz it's pasture land thet's good fer pertaters, an' yer don't need
it fer the cows, an' it kin be worked ter give yer a crop right off,
even though 'twant ploughed under in the fall," Bert answered. "You
trust yer Uncle Hiram fer a bit, sonny."
I blushed at my own peevishness, and thanked him humbly. At the house we
found awaiting a strange-looking man, small, wrinkled, unkempt, with a
discouraged moustache and a nose of a decidedly brighter hue than the
rest of his countenance. He was tapping at the sills of the house.
"How about it, Hard? Cement?" said Bert.
Hard Cider nodded to me, with a keen glance from his little, bloodshot
eyes.
"Yep," he said. "Stucco over it. Brick underpinnin's be ez good ez
noo. Go inside."
We stepped upon the side porch, Bert handing me the key and I opening the
door of my new dwelling with a secret thrill. Hard Cider at once began
on the kitchen floor, ripping up a plank to examine the timbers beneath.
There was no cellar under the kitchen, but the timbers were, like those
of the barn, huge beams of hand-hewn oak, and were sound.
"Plane them planks down and lay a maple floor over 'em," said Hard,
with an air of finality.
"Very well," said I meekly. "But my woodwork has got to be cypress
in the living-room. I insist on cypress."
"New step," he added, as we came to the door up into the main house.
"Hold on!" said I. "This door leads into the front hall. I don't want
that. I want this door closed up and put into the north room, which I'm
going to use for a dining-room."
"Ain't goin' ter eat in the kitchen, eh? Very well," said Hard.
He examined the old door frame carefully, and jotted something in a
dirty notebook, which he drew from his pocket, first wetting his flat
carpenter's pencil on his tongue.
We found that the north room had apparently been used only as a kind of
storage closet, doubtless because there was no heater in the house. It
had never been papered, and the walls, with a little touching up, were
ready for kalsomining. Hard examined the plaster with the loving eye of
a connoisseur.
"Built ter last in them days," I heard him mutter.
The room extended half the depth of the house, which, to be sure, was
not great. Beyond it was a second room, on the northeast corner, of the
same size.
We now crossed the hall to the south side, where there were two
corresponding rooms. Here, as on the other side, the chimney and
fireplaces were on the inside walls, and the mantels were of a simple
but very good colonial pattern, though they had been browned by smoke
and time to dirt colour.
"Now I want these two rooms made into one," said I. "I want one of the
doors into the hall closed up, and a glass door cut out of the south side
to a pergola veranda. Can you do it?"
Hard examined the partition. He climbed on a box which we dragged in,
and ripped away plaster and woodwork ruthlessly, both at the top and at
places on the sides, all without speaking a word.
"Yep," he said finally, "ef yer don't mind a big crossbeam showin'.
She's solid oak. Yer door, though, 'll have to be double, with a beam
in the middle."
"Fine!" I cried. "One to go in by, one to go out. Guests please keep
to the right!"
"Hev ter alter yer chimney," he added, "or yer'll hev two
fireplaces."
"Fine again!" cried I. "A long room with two fireplaces, and a
double-faced bookcase coming out at right angles between them, with
two settles below it, one for each fireplace! Better than I'd dreamed!"
"Suit yerself," said Hard.
We next arranged tentatively for a brick veranda with a pergola top on
the southern end of the house, and then went upstairs. Here the four
small chambers needed little but minor repairs and plaster work, save
that over the dining-room, which was to be converted into the bathroom.
The great space over the kitchen was to be cut into two servants'
bedrooms, with dormer windows. It already had the two windows, one
to the north and one to the south, and had evidently been used as a
drying-room for apples and the like. Hard figured here for some time,
and then led us silently downstairs again, and through the front door.
My front doorway had once been a thing of beauty, with two little panel
windows at the sides, and above all, on the outside, a heavy, hand-carved
broken pediment, like the top of a Governor Winthrop highboy. Hard
looked at it with admiration gleaming in his eyes. "I'd ruther restore
this than all the rest o' the job," he said, and his ugly, rumsoaked
little face positively shone with enthusiasm.
"Go ahead," said I; "only I want the new steps of brick, widely
spaced, with a lot of cement showing between. I'm going to terrace it
here in front, too--a grass terrace for ten feet out."
"Thet's right, thet's right!" he exclaimed. "Now I'll go order the
lumber, an' bring yer the estimate termorrer."
"Seems to me the usual proceeding would be the other way around!" I
gasped.
"Well, yer want me ter do the job, don't yer? Or don't yer?" he said
brusquely.
"Of course, of course!" I amended hastily. "Go ahead!"
Hard climbed into a broken-down wagon, and disappeared. "Don't you
worry," said Bert. "I'll see he treats yer right."
"It isn't that," I said sadly. "It's that I've just remembered I
forgot to include any painters' bills in my own estimate."
Bert looked at me in a kind of speechless pity for a moment. Then he said
slowly: "Wal, I'll be swizzled! Wait till I tell maw! An' her always
stickin' up fer a college education!"
"Just for that, I'll show you!" cried I. "I never trimmed an apple
tree in my life, but I'm going to work on this orchard, and I'm going
to save it, all myself. It will be better than yours in three years."
"Go to it," laughed Bert. "Come back fer dinner, though. Neow I'll
drive over ter the depot an' git yer freight. They telephoned this
mornin' it had come."
"Good!" I cried. "You might bring me a bag of cement, too, and a
gallon of carbolic acid."
"Ye ain't tired o' life so soon, be yer?"
"No," said I, "but I'm going to show you rubes how to treat an
orchard."
Bert went off laughing, and presently I saw him driving toward town with
his heavy wagon. I walked up to the plateau field to greet Mike. As I
crested the ridge the field lay before me, the great, lone pine standing
sentinel at the farther side; and half of it was frail, young green, and
half rich, shining brown.
"She ploughs tough, sor," said Mike, as the panting horses paused for
breath, "but she'll harrer down good. Be the seed pertaters come yit?"
"Bert has gone for them," said I. "Let me hold the plough once."
Mike, I fancied, winked at his son Joe, who was a strong lad of twenty,
with an amiable Irish grin. So everybody was regarding me as a joke!
Well, I was, even then, as strong as Mike, and I'd held a sweep, if
not a plough! I picked up the handles and lifted the plough around,
setting the point to the new furrow. Joe started the horses. The blade
wabbled, took a mad skid for the surface, and the handles hit me a blow
in the ribs which knocked my breath out. Mike grinned. I set my teeth
and the ploughshare, and again Joe started the horses. Putting forth
all my strength I held the plough under the sod this time, but the furrow
I ploughed started merrily away from the straight line, in spite of
all my efforts, and began to run out into the unbroken ground to the
left. I pulled the plough back again to the starting-point, and tried
once more. This trip, when I reached the point where my first furrow had
departed from the straight and narrow way, the cross strip of sod came
over the point like a comber over a boat's bow, and the horses stopped
with a jerk, while the point went down and again the handles smote me in
the ribs.
"It ain't so azy as it looks," said Mike.
"I'll do it if I haven't a rib left," said I grimly.
And I did it. My first full furrow looked like the track of a snake
under the influence of liquor, but I reversed the plough and came back
fairly straight. I was beginning to get the hang of it. My next furrow
was respectable, but not deep. But on the second return trip I ploughed
her straight, and I ploughed her deep, and that without exerting nearly
so much beef as on the first try. Most things are easy when you once know
how.
On this return trip the sweat was starting from my forehead, and the
smell of the horses and of the warm, fresh-turned earth was strong in my
nostrils. I didn't look at my pine, nor think of book plates. I was
proud at what I had done, and my muscles gloried in the toil. Again I
swung the plough around, and drove it across the field, feeling the
reluctant grass roots fighting every muscle of my arms.
"There," said I, triumphantly, "you plough all the rest as deep as
that!"
"Begobs, ye'z all right!" cried Mike.
I went back again down the slope with all the joy of a small boy who has
suddenly made an older boy recognize his importance. I went at once to
the shed, found a rusty saw (for my pruning saws, of course, had not
yet come), and descended upon the orchard. I had a couple of bulletins
on pruning in my pocket, with pictures of old trees remorselessly headed
down. I took a fresh look at the pictures, reread some of the text where
I had marked it, and tackled the first tree, carefully repeating to
myself: "Remove only a third the first year, remove only a third the
first year."
This, I decided, quite naturally did not refer to dead wood. By the
time I had the dead wood cut out of that first old tree, and all the
water spouts removed (as I recalled my grandfather used to call them),
which didn't seem necessary for new bearing wood, the poor thing began
to look naked. On one side an old water spout or sucker had achieved
the dignity of a limb and shot far into the air. I was up in the tree
carefully heading this back and out when Bert came driving by with his
wagon heaped to overflowing.
"Hi!" he called, "yer tryin' ter kill them trees entire!"
I got down and came out to the road. "You're a fine man and a true
friend, Mr. Temple," said I, "but I'm going to be the doctor for this
orchard. A chap's got to have _some_ say for himself, you know."
"Well, they ain't much good, anyhow, them trees," said Bert cheerfully.
We now fell to unloading the wagon. We opened up the woodsheds and
storehouse behind the kitchen, stowed in the barrels of seed potatoes,
the fertilizers, the various other seeds, the farm implements, sprayers,
and so on. The hotbed frames and sashes were put away for future use,
as it was too late to need them now. The horse hoe Bert had not been
able to bring on this trip. Next we got my books and furniture into
the house or shed, and tired, hot, and dirty, we drove on up the road
for dinner. As we passed the upper field, I saw that the ploughing
was nearly done. The brown furrows had already lost their gloss, as my
hands had already lost their whiteness.
"Well, I'm a farmer now!" said I, surveying my soil-caked boots and
grimy clothes.
"Yer on the way, anyhow," said Bert. "But yer'll have ter cultivate
thet field hard, seein's how it oughter hev been ploughed last fall."
That afternoon I went back to my orchard, got out my shiny and sharp new
double-edged pruning saw, and sawed till both arms ached. I sawed
under limbs and over limbs, right-handed and left-handed, standing on my
feet and on my head. I obeyed the first rule, to saw close to the
trunk, so the bark can cover the scar. I obeyed the rule to let light
into the tops. I didn't head my trees down as much as the pictures
indicated, for I wanted my orchard before the house as a decoration
quite as much as a source of fruit supply. One old tree, split by a
winter storm, I decided to chop down entirely. About half-past three,
as I supposed it to be, I went for an axe, and heard Mike putting the
horse into the barn and calling the cows. I looked at my watch. It was
five o'clock! I didn't get the axe, but walked back and surveyed the
havoc I had wrought--dead limbs strewing the ground, bright-barked water
spouts lying among them, tangles of top branches heaped high, and above
this litter three old trees rising, apparently half denuded, with great
white scars all over them where the limbs had been removed. I had gone
that first day across half the top row of the orchard, and I suddenly
realized that during the entire time I had been at work not a thought
had crossed my mind except of apple trees and their culture. I had
been utterly absorbed, joyfully absorbed, in the process of sawing
off limbs! Where, said I to myself, are those poetic reflections,
those delicious day dreams which come, in books, to the workers in
gardens? Can it be that, in reality, the good gardener thinks of his
job? Or am I simply a bad gardener?
I decided to go to the barn and ask Mike. I found him washing his
hands, preparatory to milking, and looking extremely bored. He used
an antiseptic solution which Bert had provided, for Bert was still
buying my milk.
"Sure, it's silly rules they be makin' now about a little thing like
milkin'," he said.
I wasn't ready to argue with him then, but I secretly resolved that I'd
make him wear a milking coat, also. I asked abruptly: "Mike, what do
you think about when you are working in the garden?"
Mike reflected quite seriously for a full moment, while the alternate
ring of the milk streams sang a tune on the bottom of the pail.
"Begobs, Oi niver thought o' that before," he said. "Sure, it's
interestin' to think what ye think about. Oi guess Oi thinks mostly
o' me gardenin'. It ain't till Oi straightens the kink out o' me
back and gits me lunch pail in the shade that Oi begins to wonder if the
Dimicrats 'll carry the country or why we can't go sivin days without a
drink, like the camels."
"You sort of have to keep your mind on your job, to do it right, eh?"
"Sure, if ye've got one to keep," Mike laughed.
The milk streams had ceased to ring. They were sizzling now, for the
bottom of the pail was covered. There was a warm smell of milk in the
stable, and of hay and cattle. Through the little door at the end I saw
framed a pretty landscape of my pasture, then woods rising up a hill,
and then the blue mountains, purpling now with sunset. My arms ached.
My ribs, where the plough handles had hit, were sore. I was sleepily,
deliciously, tired. I had done a real day's work. I was rather proud
of it, too, proud that I could stand so much physical toil. After all, it
is human to glory in your muscles.
"Good night," I called to Mike, as I started for home.
"Good night, sor," he sang cheerily back.
Upon the plateau I saw my rusty old disk harrow--a legacy from
Milt--standing on the brown earth. The furrows had disappeared. The field
was almost ready for planting. I took a bath, rubbing my ribs and
aching shoulders very tenderly, ate my supper hungrily, and settled down
to my manuscripts. In ten minutes I was nodding.
"Good heavens!" said I, "this will never do! I'll have to get up in
the morning and work."
So I bade Mrs. Temple wake me when she got up at five.
"Well," I reflected, as I tumbled into bed, "you can't have
everything and a country estate, too. Fancy _me_ getting up at five
o'clock!"