I PICK PAINT AND A QUARREL
The next morning at breakfast a burned nose confronted me across the
table, and the possessor ruefully regarded her sore palms.
"No work for you to-day," said I. "You will just have to pick out
colours for me. The painters are coming."
I spoke as if we were old friends. I spoke as if it were the most natural
thing in the world for a young woman to accompany a young man to his
house and pick out paint for him. I spoke, also, as if I had never
cursed the prospect of petticoats that advise. So soon can one pair of
eyes undo our prejudices, and so easily are the conventions forgotten,
in the natural life of the country--at least by such persons as never
were much bothered by them, anyhow!
Evidently they had never greatly troubled Miss Goodwin, or she was not
disposed to let them trouble her now, for ten minutes later we went
down the road together, and found the painters already unloading their
wagon. The reliable Hard Cider, true to his word, had procured them
for me, which, as I afterward have discovered, was something of a feat in
Bentford, where promises are more common than fulfilment.
"It seems a pity to paint the outside of the house," said Miss Goodwin;
"it's such a lovely weathered gray now. What colour is it going to be?"
"No colour," said I. "White, with green blinds, of course. But the
inside will be done first."
We entered, with the boss painter, and went into the south room, which
had already become the natural centre of the house.
"Now," said I, "I'm not going to paper any rooms if I can help it. I
want the walls calcimined. They look pretty sound to me, barring some
places where you'll have to patch the plaster. Can it be done?"
The painter walked about the room carefully, then examined the hall, the
north room, and the dining-room, while the girl and I followed him.
"Sure," he said.
"All right; then I want this room done first, as I'm anxious to get
my books unpacked and my desk set up. Now, what colour shall it be?" I
turned toward Miss Goodwin as I spoke.
She shook her head. "I'm not going to say a word," she answered.
"This is your room."
"I suppose you want the woodwork white?" the painter suggested. "Those
old mantels, for instance."
"Cream white, not dead white," said I. "Wait a minute." I ran to
the shed and brought back two more of my pictures, an etching by Cameron
which our professor of fine arts had once given me, and an oil painting
acquired in a moment of rash expenditure several years before--the long
line of Beacon Street houses across the Charles with the church spires
rising here and there, and to the left Beacon Hill piling up to the
golden dome of the State House.
"Now," said I, "the walls have got to set off both these pictures, and
books besides. They've got to be neutral. I want a greenish, brownish,
yellowish olive, with the old beam in the centre of the ceiling in the
same key, only a bit darker."
The girl and the painter both laughed.
"You are so definite," said she.
"But I want an indefinite tint," I replied.
Again she laughed, though the painter looked puzzled.
"I'll get my colours," he said.
He mixed what he considered an olive tint, and laid a streak of it on
the plaster.
"Too green," said I.
He added something and tried again.
"Too gray," said Miss Goodwin, forgetful, and then quickly
supplemented, "isn't it?"
He added something else.
"Too brown," said I.
Once more he patiently mixed.
"Too muddy coloured," I corrected.
"It must be fun to be a painter," said the girl.
"Oh, we get used to it," said he.
"Try a little yellow," I suggested. "I want that tint warmed up a
trifle."
He did so, and something emerged which looked right to me.
"That's a queer olive, though," said the girl.
"Well, it's a greenish, brownish, yellowish olive, isn't it?" I
replied. "That's what I asked for! Do the walls in this colour, and
paint the woodwork, mantels, and the panels over them and the bookcase
and settles a creamy white, with a creamy white on the ceiling, and oil
up this old floor and stain the strip of new boards where the partition
was, and my room is ready!"
We went into the little hall, where the front door stood open, and we
could see Hard on a ladder mending the beautiful carved door cap outside.
"This hall the same colour," said I, "with the rails of the baluster
in the cream white of the trim."
We went into the northeast room and the dining-room behind it.
"Same colour here?" asked the painter.
I was about to answer yes, when Miss Goodwin spoke. "I should think
you'd want these rooms lighter in colour," she said, "as they face
the north."
"The lady's right," said the painter.
"They always are," I smiled. "You two fix up the colour for this room,
then. We can decide on the other rooms after these downstairs are done."
"No," cried the girl, "I won't do anything of the kind! You might
not like what I picked."
"Incredible!" said I. "I've really got to get to work outside now."
And I ran off, leaving her looking a little angrily, I thought, after me.
I was so impatient to see how my lawn was going to look that I went
to the shed to hunt up a dummy sundial post which I could set up and
mark off my beds around it, getting them manured for planting. At first
I could find nothing, except some old logs, but looking up presently
into a loft under the eaves, I saw the dusty end of what looked like a
Doric pillar poking out. I scrambled up and pulled forth, to my joy,
a wooden pillar about nine feet long, in excellent preservation. How it
got there, I had no idea. The dust had evidently accumulated on it for
years. It had once been painted white. I dragged the heavy column down,
and ran to get Hard Cider.
He grunted. "All yer side porch pillars wuz them kind when I wuz a
boy," he said. "Old man Noble's fust wife didn't like the
porch--thought it kept light out o' the kitchen, an' hed it took down.
His second wife hed it put back, but some o' the columns hed got lost,
or burnt up, I reckon, so's they put it back with them square posts
yer hev now. I reckon that column's nigh on a century old."
I sawed off the upper four feet carefully, and stowed the remainder
back in the loft. Then I made a square base of planking, a temporary
one till I could build a brick foundation, washed off the dust, and
took my pedestal around to the lawn. With a ball of twine tied to the
centre of the south room door I ran a line directly out to the rose
trellis, and midway between the trellis and where the edge of my pergola
was to be I placed the pillar. Then I took out my knife, and thrust the
blade lightly in at an angle, to simulate the dial marker, and turned
to call Miss Goodwin.
But she was already standing in the door.
"Oh!" she cried, running lightly down the plank and across the ground,
"a sundial already, and a real pedestal! Come away from it a little,
and see how it seems to focus all the sunlight."
We stood off near the house, and looked at the white column in
mid-lawn. It did indeed seem to draw in the sunlight to this level spot
before the dwelling, even though it rose from the brown earth instead
of rich greensward, and even though beyond it was but the unsightly,
half-finished, naked trellis. Even as we watched, a bird came swooping
across the lawn, alighted on my knife handle, and began to carol.
"Oh, the darling!" cried Miss Goodwin. "He understands!"
I was very well content. I had unexpectedly found a pedestal, and was
experiencing for the first time the real sensation of garden warmth and
intimacy and focussed light which a sundial, rightly placed, can bring.
I did not speak, and presently beside me I heard a voice saying, "But
I forgot that I am angry at you."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because you had no right to leave me to pick out the paint for your
dining-room," said she.
"Why not?" said I. "You picked out the name of my house and the style
of the rose trellis."
"That was different," she replied.
"I don't see why."
"Then you are extremely stupid," she answered.
"Doubtless," said I. "But that doesn't help me any to understand,
you know."
"Come," she replied, "and see if the paint suits you. Then I must go
home and write some letters."
The paint and calcimine tint suited me, of course. They were a warm,
golden cream and a very delicate buff, which made the rooms seem lighter.
I thanked her as heartily as I could, and watched her depart up the
road, pausing only long enough to press to her nose the first bud on
the great lilac tree at the corner.
The place seemed curiously deserted after she had gone. I went out into
the vegetable area to see if Mike and Joe were getting on all right, and
to watch them planting, that I might learn how it was done.
"Aren't we pretty late with all these seeds?" I asked.
Mike shook his head. "There's some things, like peas, ye can't get
in too soon," he said, "and some like termaters and cauliflowers that
ye got to start under glass; but up here in these mountains, with the
frosts comin' and the cold nights, ye don't know when, ye can wait
till the middle o' May and dump on the manure and get yer crop with
the next man."
"Well, I'm trusting you," said I. "But next year we'll start
earlier, just the same. I don't want to be with the next man. I want to
beat him. I don't see why that isn't what a farmer should do as well
as a merchant."
"Sure, it is," said Mike, "only the God almighty don't like it, and
sinds frosts down upon yer presoomin'."
"You talk like a Calvinist," I laughed.
"Sure, I dunno what that is," Mike replied. "How much of this last
plantin' of corn shall I put in? It's Stowell's Evergreen. Maybe it's
the frosts will get it all, come September."
"We'll take a chance," said I. "I'm a gambler. Put in all you've
got room for."
"Yes, sor," said he, "and it's pea brush we'll be needin' soon for
them early peas I planted late. Is it Joe I shall sind to cut some in
the pasture lot behind the barn?"
I hadn't thought of my ten-acre pasture across the road. In fact, I had
scarcely been in it. "What's there to cut?" I asked.
"Poverty birch," said Mike. "Sure, it's walkin' up from the brook
like it was a weed, which it are, and eatin' the good grass up. The
pasture will be better for it out."
"Cut away, then," said I. "But, mind you, no other trees!"
I went back to my sundial, between two rows of cauliflower plants Bert
had given to me, and which Mike had set out thus early for an experiment,
between threads of sprouting radishes, lines of onion sets, and other
succulent evidences of the season to come. As I started to mark out the
beds around the pedestal, I found myself wishing Miss Goodwin were
there to advise me. I made a few marks on the ground, surveyed the
pattern, didn't like it, could think of nothing better, and resolved
to await her return. I took a few steps toward the house. Then I stopped.
"No, you fool," I said to myself. "This is your house. You are going
to live in it. If you can't plan it yourself, you'd better go back to
teaching."
I returned to the dial and went to work again. She had suggested a
ring of low flowers, and some taller ones, irregularly set. I measured
off a six-foot circle about the pedestal, as the inner ring of the
beds, and left four breaks in it, to the four cardinal points of the
compass, where the turf or paths could come in to the dial. Then I
extended the sides of these four beds on the straight axes of the paths
for three feet, and made the rear sides not on the regular arc of the
inner edges, but full of irregularities, almost of bulges, where I
would set clumps of tall flowers. "She'll like that, I guess," I
reflected, and then caught myself at it, and grinned rather sheepishly.
I rose and went to the barn for a load of manure. The great pile which
had been there when I bought the place was already used up, but I
secured enough litter with a rake to cover the beds and brought it
back. By then the hour was nearly twelve, and consequently too late
to spade it under, so I went into the house to see if the painters
were getting the colour right. They were, or as nearly right as it
seems to be humanly possible for house painters to do, and I plodded up
the road to dinner. As I passed my potato field, I saw rows of green
shoots above the ground, and out under my lone pine I saw a figure,
sitting in the shadow on the stone wall.
I climbed through the brambles over the wall, and walked down the aisles
of potatoes toward her.
"It is time for dinner," I said meekly.
She looked up. "Is it? I have been listening to the old pine talk."
"What was he saying?" I asked.
"Things you wouldn't understand," said she.
"About words in 'hy'?"
She shook her head. "Not at all; nothing quite so stupid--but nearly
as saddening." She rose to her feet, and her eyes looked into mine,
enigmatically wistful.
"I missed you after you went away from Twin Fires," said I suddenly.
"I don't know whether I got the sundial beds right or not. Won't
you please come back to tell me? Or am I stupid again, and mustn't
you advise me about that?"
Her eyes twinkled a little. "You are still very stupid," she said,
"but perhaps I will consent to give my invaluable advice on this
important subject."
"Good!" I cried. "And we'll build some more trellis if your hands are
better."
"My hands are all right," she said, with the faintest emphasis on
the noun, which made a variety of perplexing interpretations possible
and kept me silent as I helped her over the wall into Bert's great
cauliflower field, and we tramped through the soft soil toward the house.