THE GHOST OF ROME IN ROSES
"Stella Goodwin." "It's rather a pretty name," I thought, as I read
it on the flyleaf of a volume she had left in Mrs. Bert's sitting-room.
The volume itself amused me--Chamberlain's "Foundations of the
Nineteenth Century." Fancy coming to the country for a rest, and
reading Chamberlain, most restless because most provocative of books!
I was waiting for breakfast, impatiently, having been at work on my
manuscripts since five. Mrs. Bert was in the kitchen; Bert was at the
barn. The hour was seven-thirty. I was idly turning the leaves of
Chamberlain when there was a rustle on the stairs, and Miss Stella
Goodwin entered with a cheerful "Good morning."
"See here," said I, "what are you doing with this book, if you are off
for a rest? This is no book for a nervous wreck to be reading."
"Who said I was a nervous wreck?" she answered. "I'm just tired,
that's all. I guess it's really spring fever. I saw a spear of real
grass in Central Park, and ran away."
"From what?" I asked.
"From the dictionary," she replied.
"The _which?_" said I.
"The dictionary. Would you like me to sing you a song of the things that
begin with 'hy'?"
She laughed again, and began to chant in burlesque Gregorian,
"Hyopotamus, hyoscapular, hyoscine, Hyoscyameae, hyoscyamine,
Hyoscyamus-----"
"Stop!" I cried. "You will have me hypnotized. See, I'm on the
'hy's' myself! Please explain--not sing."
"Well," she laughed, "you see it's this way. I have to eat, drink,
and try to be merry, or to-morrow I die, so to postpone to-morrow I am
working on a new dictionary. _Somebody_ has to work on dictionaries, you
know, and justify the pronunciation of America to man. I'm sort of
learned, in a mild, harmless, anti-militant way. It isn't fair to
keep the truth from you--_I have a degree in philology!_ My doctor's
thesis was published by the press of my kind University, at $1.50
per copy, of which as many as seventeen were sold, and I'm still
paying up the money I borrowed while preparing it. I stood the dictionary
pretty well down to the 'hy's,' and then one day something snapped
inside of me, and I began to cry. That wouldn't have been so bad, if I
hadn't made the mistake of crying on a sheet of manuscript by a
learned professor, about Hyoscyamus (which is a genus of dicotyledonous
gamopetalous plants), and the ink ran. Then I knew I should have to
take a rest in the cause of English, pure and well defined. So here I
am. The doctor tells me I must live out of doors and saw wood."
"Madam," I cried, "God has sent you! I shall get my orchard cleaned
up at last!"
"Breakfast!" called Mrs. Bert.
"Miss Goodwin," I announced at that meal, "is going to saw up the dead
wood in my orchard this morning."
"No, she ain't. The idee!" cried Mrs. Bert. "She's jest goin' ter
rest up for the next four weeks, an' grow fat."
"You are both wrong," laughed the young lady. "I'm not going to begin
on Mr. Upton's wood pile this morning, but I expect to finish it before
I go away."
"If thet's how you feel, _I_ got a wood pile," said Bert.
She refused to come down to Twin Fires with me that morning, so I toiled
alone, getting out more of the brush from the orchard--all of the small
stuff, in fact, which wasn't fit to save for fuel. In the afternoon
she consented to come. As I looked at her hands and then at mine, I
realized how pale she was.
"It's wrong for anybody to be so pale as that," I thought, "to _have_
to be so pale as that!"
I was beginning to pity her.
When we reached the farm, I took her around under the kitchen window and
showed her my seed beds, where the asters were already growing madly,
some other varieties were up, and the weeds were busy, too; but in the
present uncertainty of my horticultural knowledge I didn't dare pull up
anything. I hadn't realized till that moment that half the fun of having
a new place is showing it to somebody else and telling how grand it is
going to be.
"And where are you going to put these babies when you set them out?"
she asked.
"That's just the point," I cried. "I don't know. I want you to help
me."
"After Mrs. Bert's warning, I shouldn't dare advise you," she smiled.
"Well, let's ask Hiroshige," said I. "Come on."
"Is he your gardener? The name sounds quite un-Hibernian."
I scorned a reply, and we went around to the shed where all my
belongings were stored, still unpacked. I got a hammer and opened the
box containing pictures, drawing forth my two precious Japanese
prints. Then I led Miss Goodwin through the kitchen in spite of her
protests of propriety, through the fragrance of new flooring, into
the big south room, where Hard had nearly completed his main work and was
getting in the new door frames while his assistants were patching up
the floor. She sat down on the new settle, while I climbed on a box
and hung the pictures, one over each mantel. Instantly the room assumed
to my imagination something of its coming charm. Those two spots of
colour against the dingy wood panels dressed up the desolation
wonderfully. I hastily kicked some shavings and chips into the
fireplaces and applied a match.
"The first fires on the twin hearths!" I cried. "In your honour!"
The girl smiled into my face, and did not joke. "That is very nice,"
she said. Then she rose and put out her hand. "Let me wish Twin Fires
always plenty of wood and the happiness which goes with it."
We shook hands, while the fire crackled, and already the spot seemed
to me like home. Then she looked up at the prints. "Now," she cried,
"how is honourable Hiroshige going to advise you? Here is a blue canal
and a lavender sky in the west, and bright scarlet temple doors--and all
the rest snow. Lavender and bright scarlet is rather a daring colour
scheme, isn't it?"
"Not if it's the right scarlet," I replied. "But it's not the colour
I'm going to copy. Neither is it the moon bridges in this other temple
garden. It's the simplicity. Out here south of this room is my lawn
and garden. Now I want it to be a real garden, but I don't want it
to dwarf the landscape. I don't want it to look as if I'd bought a
half acre of Italy and deposited it in the middle of Massachusetts,
either. I've never seen a picture of a real Japanese garden yet that
didn't look as much like a natural Japanese landscape as a garden. I
want my garden to be an extension of my south room which will somehow
frame the real landscape beyond."
We went through the glass door, and I showed her where the grape arbour
was to be, at the western side of the lawn, and how a lane of hollyhocks
would lead to it from the pergola end, screening the kitchen windows and
the yet-to-be-built hotbeds.
"Now," said I, "I'm going to build a rambler rose trellis along the
south; there's your red against the lavender of the far hills at sunset!
But how shall the trellis be designed, and where shall the sundial be,
and where the flower beds?"
The girl clapped her hands. "Oh, the fun of planning it all out from
the beginning!" she cried. "My, but I envy you."
"Please don't envy; advise," said I.
"Oh, I can't. I don't know anything about gardens."
"But you know what you like! People always say that when they are
ignorant, don't they?"
"Don't be nasty," she replied, running down the plank from the terrace
to the lawn, and walking out to the centre. "I'd have the sundial
right in the middle, where it gets all the sun," she said, "because
it seems to me a dial ought to be in the natural focus point of the
light. Then I'd ring it with flowers, some low, a few fairly tall, all
bright colours, or maybe white, and the beds not too regular. Then,
right in line with the door, I'd have an arch in the trellis so you
could see through into the farm. Oh, I know! I'd have the trellis all
arches, with a bigger one in the centre, and it would look like a Roman
aqueduct of roses!"
"A Roman aqueduct of roses," I repeated, my imagination fired by the
picture, "walking across the end of my green lawn, with the farm and the
far hills glimpsed beneath! 'Rome's ghost since her decease.' Miss
Goodwin, you are a wonder! But can you build it?"
"No," she sighed, "I can only give you the derivation of 'aqueduct'
and 'rose'."
"Come," said I, "we will consult Hard Cider."
"Heavens!" she laughed. "Is that anything like Dutch courage?"
Hard grunted, and came with us to the line of stakes where the rose
trellis was to be. I sketched roughly the idea I wanted--a reproduction
in simple trellis work, as it were, of High Bridge, New York.
Hard pondered a moment, and then departed for the shed. He returned
with several pieces of trellis lumber, a spade, some tools, a small
roll of chicken wire, and a step-ladder, all on a wheelbarrow. At his
direction, I dug a post-hole at the extreme east end of the lawn, another
two feet away, a third four feet beyond that, and a fourth again two
feet to the west. Hard then mounted the 3 x 3 chestnut joists, levelled
them as I set them, and connected the tops, leaving a space for the
next connection on the final post to the west.
"But where is the arch?" I cried.
Hard climbed down from the wheelbarrow in silence, cut off something
over four feet from the three-foot wide chicken wire, and then cut a
circumference into this wire which, in the centre, came within a foot of
the top. He twisted the loose ends back and tacked the flat arch thus
made to the top and inner posts of the trellis. Then he connected the
two posts on each side with stripping. Thus I had the first arch of my
aqueduct, nine feet high, with two-foot piers of trellis work and a
four-foot arch with eight feet clear space under the centre.
[Illustration:]
"It ain't pretty," said Hard, "but when it's painted green and
covered with vines it won't show. Guess most of your roses will bloom
on the south side of it, though, away from the house."
My face fell. "Golly, I hadn't thought of that!" said I.
"Oh, they'll peep over and all around it," said Miss Goodwin
cheerfully.
"What could I have done else?" said I.
"Nothin', 'cept turned your house around," Hard replied. "You can
buy wire arches so's you could plant your roses east and west, but
that wouldn't give you no level top like a bridge. You could set those
boughten arches on the south side of this trellis, though, so's you'd
get the effect of something solid, lookin' through, without losin'
your top."
"Guess I'll get you paid first," I laughed, as Hard went back to his
work.
"And now," I added to the girl at my side, "shall we see if _we_ can
build the next arch?"
Again she clapped her hands delightedly, and ran with me around the house
for the tools and lumber.
I let her dig the first post-hole, though it was evident that the effort
tired her, and then I took the spade away, while she marked off the
trellis strips into the proper lengths, and sawed them up, placing each
strip across the wheelbarrow and holding it in place first with a hand
which looked quite inadequate even for that small task, and, when the
hand failed, with her foot.
She laughed as she put her foot on the wheelbarrow, hitching her skirt up
where it bound her knee. "The new skirts weren't made for carpenters,"
she said, as she jabbed away with the saw. I darted a glance at the
display of trim ankles, and resumed my digging in the post-holes. This
was a new and disturbing distraction in agricultural toil!
The post-holes were soon dug, and while I held the posts, she adjusted
the level against them, our hands and faces close together, and we
both kicked the dirt in with our feet. Then I climbed on the step-ladder
and levelled the top piece, which I nailed down. Then, while I was
cutting a semicircle out of the wire, for the arch, she nailed the
trellis strips across the piers, grasping the hammer halfway up to the
head, and frowning earnestly as she tapped with little, short, jablike
blows. She was so intent on this task that I laughed aloud.
"What are you laughing at?" said she.
"You," said I. "You drive a nail as if it were an abstruse problem
in differential calculus."
"It is, for me," she answered, quite soberly. "I don't suppose
I've driven a dozen nails in my life--only tacks in the plaster to hang
pictures on. And it's very important to drive them right, because this
is a rose trellis."
"When I first came here," said I, "I was pretty clumsy with my hands,
too. I'd lost my technique, as you might say. I remember one afternoon
when I was trimming the orchard that I didn't think a single thought
beyond the immediate problem each branch presented. And yet it was
immensely stimulating. Personally, I believe that the educational value
of manual dexterity has only begun to be appreciated."
Miss Goodwin marked off the place for the next strip, and started
nailing. At the last blow she relaxed her frown.
"Maybe," she said. "No, probably. But the manual work, it seems
to me, has got to be connected up in some way with--well, with higher
things. I can't think of a word to fit, because my head is so full of
the 'hy' group. You, for instance, were sawing your _own_ orchard,
and you were working for better fruit, and more beautiful trees, and a
lovely home. You saw the work in its higher relations, its relations
to the beauty of living."
"And your nails?" I asked.
"I see the aqueduct of roses," she smiled.
"You will see them, I trust," said I. "You _shall_ see them. You must
stay till they bloom."
Her brow suddenly clouded, and she shook her head. "I--I shall have to
go back to the 'I's,'" she said. "But I shall know the roses are
here. You must send me a picture of them."
Somehow I was less enthusiastic over the next arch, but her spirits
soon came back, and she sawed the next batch of stripping with greater
precision and skill in the use of the saw--and a more reckless show
of stocking. "See!" she cried, "how much I'm improving! I didn't
splinter any of the ends this time!"
"Fine," said I. "You can tackle the firewood in the orchard soon!"
We got up two more arches, working close together, intent upon our task.
As each arch, with its piers, took up eight feet, and the central arch
would take up twelve, we should need exactly a dozen arches to complete
the trellis. Here were four of them done!
"Hooray!" cried the girl, as the fourth was finished. "How we are
getting on!"
"I could never have done it alone," said I. "You have really been a
great help."
"Oh, I hope so!" she exclaimed. "I haven't had so much fun in years."
We looked into the vegetable garden, and saw that Mike had gone, and Joe,
too. My watch and the lengthening shadows warned me it was approaching
six. Hot and pleasantly tired, we packed up the tools on the barrow,
and wheeled them to the shed.
"Now shall we go and hear the hermit?" I asked.
She nodded, and we went down through the orchard, past the pool where the
iris buds were already showing a spike of greenish white, through the
maples, and into the pines. There we stood, side by side, in the quiet
hush of coming sunset, and waited for the fairy horn. A song sparrow
was singing out by the road, and the thin, sweet flutings of a Peabody
came from the pasture. But the thrush was silent.
"Please sing, Mr. Thrush!" she pleaded, looking at me after she spoke,
with a wistful little smile of apology for her foolishness. "I want so
to hear him again," she said. "We don't hear thrushes in New York,
nor smell pine trees, nor feel this sweet, cool silence. Oh, the good
pines!"
"He will sing to-morrow," said I. "There is no opera on Thursdays."
Her eyes twinkled once more. "Perhaps he has that terrible disease,
'sudden indisposition'," she laughed. "Come, we must go home to
supper. It will take me hours to get clean."
Out in the open, she looked at her hands. "See, I've begun to get
callouses, too!" she exclaimed, holding out her palms proudly.
"You've got blisters," said I. "No work for you to-morrow! Let me
see."
I touched her hand, as we paused beneath a blossoming apple tree, with
the fragrance shedding about us. Our eyes met, too, as I did so. She
drew her hand back gently, as the colour came to her cheeks. We walked
on in silence, as far as the pump. Mike had finished milking, and had
gone home. The stable was closed. Inside, we could hear the animals
stamp. Suddenly I put my head under the pump spout, and asked her to
work the handle. Laughing, she did so, and as I raised my dripping head,
I saw her standing with the low western sun full upon her, her eyes
laughing into mine, her nose and lips provocative, her plain blouse
waist open at the throat so that I could see the gurgle of laughter rise.
"Why did you do that?" she asked, arrested, perhaps, by something in my
gaze.
"Because," I answered, "there's a ghost lives in this well, and maybe
with your aid I shall pump it out."
"Don't you like the ghost?" she said.
"Very much," said I, as we climbed the slope to Bert's.
That evening Mrs. Bert sent her off to bed, and I toiled cheerfully at
my manuscripts till the unholy hour of eleven.