WE SEAT THOREAU IN THE CHIMNEY NOOK, AND I WRITE A SONNET
After dinner she approved the sundial beds with a mock-judicial gravity,
and then she went at the trellis, working with a kind of impersonal
nervous intensity that troubled me, I didn't quite know why. She said,
with a brief laugh, it was because she had suggested the structure, and
she could never rest till any job she had undertaken was completed.
"You live too hard," said I. "That's the trouble with most of us
nowadays. We are over-civilized. We don't know how to take things
easy, because we have the vague idea of so many other things to be
done always crowding across the threshold of our consciousness."
"Perhaps," she answered. "The 'J' words, for instance, if they get
'I' done before my return. Thank heaven, 'J' hasn't contributed so
many words to science as 'Hy'!"
"Forget the dictionary!" I cried. "You are going to stay here a long
time--till these roses bloom, or at any rate till the sundial beds have
come to flower. Besides, there'll be a lot of things about my house
where your advice cannot be spared."
She darted a quick look at me, and turned back to the trellis, where
she was nailing on strips. She did not speak, and when I came over to
face her, with a post for the next arch, I saw that her eyes were moist.
She turned her face half away, blinking her eyelids hard, bit her lip,
then picked up the level and set it with a smack against the post. I
put my hand over hers--both our hands were dirty!--and said, "What is
the matter? Are you tired?"
"Please, please--level this post," she replied.
"Are you tired?"
"No, I'm not tired. I'm a fool. Come, we must finish the arch!"
"I guess we won't do any more arches to-day," I replied, "or you
won't, at any rate. You'll go home and rest."
She looked at me an instant with just the hint of her twinkle coming
back. "I'm so unused to taking orders," she said, "that I've lost
the art of obedience. Move the post a little to the right, please."
I did so, and we worked on in silence. We had built the wide central arch
by the time the sun began to drop down into our faces. There were only
five arches more to build.
"I shall write to-night and have the roses hurried along," said I.
We walked back toward the house and looked over the lawn, past the
sundial, and saw the farm through the trellis, and beyond the farm the
trees at the edge of my clearing, and then a distant roof or two, and
the far hills. The apple blossoms were fragrant in the orchard. The
persistent song sparrows were singing. The shadow of the dial post
stretched far out toward the east.
"It is pointing toward the brook," said I. "Shall we go and ask the
thrush to sing?"
She shook her head. "Not to-night," she said briefly, and I walked,
grieved and puzzling, up the road by her side.
The next day she pleaded a headache, and I went to the farm alone. The
south room was shining with its first coat of paint. Hard was, as he put
it "seein' daylight" in his work, and I realized that soon I should
be sending for Mrs. Pillig and son Peter and moving away from Bert's.
Somehow the idea made me perversely melancholy. The house seemed lonely
as I wandered through it, sniffing the strong odour of fresh paint.
I went out to find Mike, and learned that the small fruits had come--a
hundred red raspberries, fifty blackcaps, twenty-five of the yellow
variety, a hundred blackberries, not to mention currant bushes. We
walked about the garden to find the best site for them, and finally chose
for the berries the end of the slope between the vegetables and field
crops and the pines and tamaracks. Here was a long, narrow stretch where
the brook in times past had made the soil sandy, so that it drained well,
but where the swampy land was close enough to offer the least danger of
complete drying out. While Mike and Joe were ploughing the dressing
under and harrowing, I took my garden manual in hand and carefully
sorted out the varieties according to their bearing season. Then we
began planting them in rows.
There is no berry so fascinating nor so delicious to me as a raspberry,
especially at breakfast, half hidden under golden cream. There is
something soft and cool and wild about it; it is the feline of berries.
As we planted, I could almost smell the fruit. I could fancy the joy
of walking between these dewy rows in the fresh morning sun and picking
my breakfast. I could imagine the crates of ripe fruit sent to market.
In the pleasures of my fancy and the monotony of measured planting,
I lost track of time, nor did I think of Miss Goodwin. But thought of
her returned at noon, however, when Mrs. Bert told me her head had
felt better and she had gone off for a day's trolley trip to see the
country. After all, it was rather selfish of me not to show her the
country! Besides, I hadn't seen it myself. I had been too busy. Why
shouldn't I take a day off? But I couldn't do that till the berries
were all in, and that afternoon was not enough to finish them. It took
all of the next day as well, and most of the day following, for we
had the double rows of wire to mount as supports for the vines, and the
currant bushes to set in as a border to the garden six feet south of
the rose trellis. Most of this work I did alone, leaving Mike free for
other tasks, and Joe free to cut the pea brush. I saw Miss Goodwin
only at meals. After supper I had to drive myself to my manuscripts.
"It will be you who will need a rest soon," she said the second
morning, as she came down to breakfast and found me hard at work out
on the front porch.
"I'm going to take one--with you!" said I. "I want to see the
country, too."
She smiled a little, and picked a lilac bud, holding it to her nose.
She seemed quite far away now. The first few days of our rapid intimacy
had passed, and now she was as much a stranger to me as on that first
meeting in the pines. I said nothing about her coming to the farm; I
don't know why. Somehow, I was piqued. I wished her to make the first
move. In some way, it was all due to my asking her to choose the paint
for my dining-room, and that seemed to me ridiculous. I fear my manner
showed my pique a trifle, for I did not see her anywhere about when I
left after breakfast.
That evening I found the second coat of paint practically dry in the
south room, and there was no reason why I shouldn't install my desk at
last, order some kerosene for my student lamp, and do my work there, in
my own new home, by my twin fires. The wind was east as I walked back
to supper, and there was no sun to wake me in the morning, so that I
slept till half-past six. Outside the rain was pouring steadily down,
and I found Bert rejoicing, for it was badly needed. After breakfast I
waylaid Miss Goodwin.
"No work on the trellis to-day," said I, swallowing my pique; "so
I'm going to fix up the south room. I'm going to make twin fires out of
some of the nice, fragrant apple wood you haven't sawed for me, and hang
the Hiroshiges, and unpack the books, and have an elegant time--if you
don't make me do it alone."
The girl shot a look around Mrs. Bert's sitting-room, where a small
stuffed owl stood on the mantel under a glass case and a transparent pink
muslin sack filled with burst milkweed pods was draped over a crayon
portrait of Bert as a young man. I followed her glance and then our eyes
met.
"Just the same, they are dear, good souls," she smiled.
"Of course," I answered. "But to sit here on a cold, rainy day! You
may read by the fire while I work. Only please come!"
"May I read 'The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century,' Doctor
Upton?" she said.
"You may read the dictionary, if you wish," I replied.
She went to get her raincoat. It was cold out of doors, and the rain
drove in our faces as we splashed down the road. The painters had made
a fire in the kitchen range, and as we stepped in the warmth greeted us
in a curious, friendly way. I brought several logs of dead apple wood
into the big room, made a second trip for kindlings, brought my one pair
of andirons from the shed and improvised a pair with bricks for the
other fireplace, and soon had the twin hearths cheerful with dancing
flames. Then I went back to the shed, and brought the two cushions
which had been on my window-seats at college, to place them on the
settle. But as I came into the room, instead of finding the girl waiting
to sit by the fire, I saw her with sleeves rolled up washing the west
window. Her body was outlined against the light, her hair making an
aura about her head. As she turned a little, I caught the saucy grace
of her profile. She was so intent upon her task that she had not heard
me enter, and I paused a full moment watching her. Then I dropped the
cushions and cried, "Come, here's your seat! That is no task for a
Ph. D."
"I don't want a seat," she laughed. "I'm having a grand time,
and don't care to have my erudition thrown in my face. I love to wash
windows."
"But 'The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century?'" said I.
"The whole nineteenth century is on these windows," she replied.
"I've got to scrub here to get at its foundations."
"But you'll get tired again," I laughed, though with real solicitude.
"I didn't want you to come to work--only to be company."
"I don't know how to be company. Please get me some fresh hot water."
I took the pail and fetched obediently. Then, while she worked at the
windows, I began tugging things in from the shed, calling Joe from
the barn to help me with the desk and bookcases. The desk, obviously,
went by the west window, where the light would come from the left. My
five bookcases, which had been made for my college rooms, of uniform
size, were placed, four along the south wall, filling the spaces between
the central door and the two windows, and the two windows and the end
walls, with the fifth on the west wall between the window and the
south, where I could have my reference books close to my desk chair. My
piano, which had stood in the dining-room ever since the furniture had
arrived, we unboxed, wheeled in to fill the space between the small east
windows, and took the covers off.
I looked around. Already the place was assuming a homelike air, and the
long room had contracted into intimacy. The girl dropped her rag into the
pail, and stood looking about.
"Oh, the nice room!" she cried. "And oh, the dirty piano!"
I went out to begin on the books, and when I returned with the first
load (I used a wheelbarrow, and wheeled a big load covered with my
raincoat as far as the front door, and up into the hall on a plank),
Miss Goodwin was scrubbing the keys. As I began to wipe off the books
and set them into the cases, I could hear that peculiar dust-cloth
glissando which denotes domestic operations on the piano, and which
brings curiously home to a man memories of his mother. When I returned
with the next load, I brought the piano bench, as well. The girl was
busy with the east window, and I set the bench down in silence. She was
seated upon it, when I arrived with the third load, and through the
house were dancing the sounds of a Bach gavotte.
She stopped playing as I entered, and looked up with a little smile of
apology.
"Please go on!" I cried.
"But you play," she said, "and I just drum. It's too silly."
"I play with one finger only," said I, "the forefinger of the right
hand."
"Then why do you have the piano?"
"For you," I smiled. "Please play on. You can't guess how pleasant
it is, how--how--homelike."
She wheeled back and let her hands fall on the keys, rippling by a
natural suggestion into the old tune "Amaryllis." The logs were
crackling. The gay old measures flooded the room with sound. My head
nodded in time, as I stacked the books on the shelves.
Suddenly the music stopped, and with a rustle of skirts the girl was
beside me. "There! Now I must help you with the books!" she cried.
"What's this? Oh, you're not putting them up right at all! Here's
James's 'Pragmatism' hobnobbing with 'The Freedom of the Will.'
Oh, horrors, and 'Cranford' next to Guy de Maupassant! I'm sure that
isn't proper!"
"On the contrary," said I, "it ought to prove a fine thing for both of
them."
She began to inspect titles, pulling out books here, substituting others
there, carrying some to other cases. "You won't know where anything
is, anyhow, in these new surroundings," she said, "so you might as
well start right--separate cases for fiction, history, philosophy, and
so on. Please have the poetry over the settle by the fire."
"Surely," said I. "That goes without saying. Here, I'll lug the books
in, and you put 'em up. Only I insist on the reference books going over
by my desk."
"Yes, sir, you may have them," she laughed.
I wheeled in load after load. "Lord," I cried, "of the making of many
books, _et cetera!_ I'll never buy another one, or else I'll never move
again."
"You'll never move again, you mean," said she. "Look, all the nice
poetry by the west fireplace. Don't the green Globe editions look pretty
in the white cases? And Keats right by the chimney. Please, may I put
the garden books, and old Mr. Thoreau, by the east fire?"
"Give old Mr. Thoreau any seat he wants," said I, "only Mr. Emerson
must sit beside him."
"Where's Mr. Emerson? Oh, yes, here he is, in a blue suit. Here, we'll
plant the rose of beauty on the brow of chaos!"
She took the set of Emerson and placed it in the top shelf by the east
fireplace, above a tumbled heap of unassorted volumes, standing back to
survey it with her gurgling laugh. "What is so decorative as books?"
she cried. "They beat pictures or wall paper. Oh, the nice room, the
nice books, nice old Mr. Emerson, nice twin fires!"
"And nice librarian," I added.
She darted a look at me, laughed with heightened colour, and herself
added, with a glance at her wrist watch, "And nice dinner!"
I brought back some of my manuscripts after dinner, in case the room
should be completed before supper time. We attacked it again with
enthusiasm, hers being no less, apparently, than mine, for it was
indeed wonderful to see the place emerge from bareness into the most
alluring charm as the books filled the shelves, as my two Morris chairs
were placed before the fires, as my three or four treasured rugs were
unrolled on the rather uneven but charmingly old floor which just
fitted the old, rugged hearthstones, and finally as the two bright
Hiroshiges were placed in the centre of the two white wood panels over
the fireplaces, and the other pictures hung over the bookcases.
"Wait," cried the girl suddenly. "Have you any vases?"
"A couple of glass ones," I said. "Why?"
"Get them, and never mind."
I found the barrel which contained breakables in the shed, unpacked
it, and brought in the contents--a few vases, my college tea set, a
little Tanagra dancing-girl. I placed the dancing figure on top of the
shelf between the settles, and Miss Goodwin set the tea things on my
one table by the south door. Then she got an umbrella and vanished.
A few minutes later she returned with two clumps of sweet flag blades
from the brookside, placed one in each of the small vases, and stood
them on the twin mantels, beneath the Japanese prints.
"There!" she cried, clapping her hands. "Now what do you think of your
room?"
I looked at the young green spears, at the bookcases with their patterns
of colour, at the warm rugs on the floor, at my desk ready for me by
the window, at the student lamp upon it, at the crimson cushions on
the twin settles, at the leaping flames on the hearths, and then at the
bright, flushed, eager face of the girl, raindrops glistening in her hair.
[Illustration: She was sitting with a closed book on her knee, gazing
into the fire]
"I think it is wonderful," said I. "I have my home at last! And how
you have helped me!"
"Yes, you have your home," said she. "Oh, it is such a nice one!"
She turned away, and went over to the east fire, poking it with her toe.
I lit my pipe, sat down at my old, familiar desk, heaved a great sigh
of comfort, and opened a manuscript.
"It's only four o'clock," said I. "I can get in that hour I wasted
in sleep this morning. Can you find something to read?"
"I ought to," she smiled.
I plunged into the manuscript--a silly novel. I heard Miss Goodwin on
the other side of the settle, taking down a book. I read on. The room
was very still. Presently the stillness roused me from my work, and I
looked up. I could not see the girl, so I rose from my chair and tiptoed
around the settle. She was sitting with a closed book on her knee, gazing
into the fire. I sat down, too, and touched her arm.
"What is there?" I asked, pointing to the flames.
She looked around, with a half-wistful little smile. "You are not making
up that lost hour," she answered.
"But the room was so still," said I, "that I wondered where you were."
"Perhaps I was many miles away," she replied. "Do you want me to make
a noise?"
"You might sing for me."
"I should hate to make the thrush jealous. No, my accomplishments cease
with philology. I'm very happy here, really. You must go back to your
work."
I went back, and read a few more pages of the silly novel.
"This story is so silly I really think it would be a success," I called
out.
A head peeped up at me over the settle. "You aren't working," she
reproached. "I'm going away, so you won't have me to talk to."
"Very well, I'll go with you," I cried, slamming the manuscript into a
drawer. "I'll come down here and work after supper."
"No, you'll work till five o'clock."
"Not unless you'll stay!"
The eyes looked at me over the settle, and I looked steadily back. We
each smiled a little, silently.
"Very well," said she, as the head disappeared.
I read on, vaguely aware that the west was breaking, and the room growing
warm. Presently I heard a window opened and felt the cooler rush of
rain-freshened air from the fragrant orchard. Then I heard the painters
come downstairs, talking, and tramp out through the kitchen. It was
five o'clock. But I still read on, to finish a chapter. The painters had
departed. The entire house was still.
Suddenly there stole through the room the soft andante theme of a Mozart
sonata, and the low sun at almost the same instant dropped into the clear
blue hole in the west and flooded the room. I let the manuscript fall,
and sat listening peacefully for a full minute. Then I moved across the
floor and stood behind the player. How cheerful the room looked, how
booky and old-fashioned! It seemed as if I had always dwelt there.
It seemed as if this figure at the piano had always dwelt there. How
easy it would be to put out my hands and rest them on her shoulders, and
lay my cheek to her hair! The impulse was ridiculously strong to do so,
and I tingled to my finger tips with a strange excitement.
"Come," I said, "it is after five, and the sun is out. We will go to
hear the thrush."
The girl faced around on the bench, raising her face to mine, "Yes, let
us," she answered. "How lovely the room looks now. Oh, the nice new
old room!"
She lingered in the doorway a second, and then we stepped out of the
front entrance, where we stood entranced by the freshness of the
rain-washed world in the low light of afternoon, and the heavy fragrance
of wet lilac buds enveloped us. Then the girl gathered her skirts up
and we went down through the orchard, where the ground was strewn with
the fallen petals, through the maples where the song sparrow was
singing, and in among the dripping pines. The brook was whispering
secret things, and the drip from the trees made a soft tinkle, just
detectable, on its pools.
We waited one minute, two minutes, three minutes in silence, and then the
fairy clarion sounded, the "cool bars of melody from the everlasting
evening." It sounded with a thrilling nearness, so lovely that it
almost hurt, and instinctively I put out my hand and felt for hers.
She yielded it, and so we stood, hand in hand, while the thrush sang
once, twice, three times, now near, now farther away, and then it seemed
from the very edge of my clearing. I still held her hand, as we waited
for another burst of melody. But he evidently did not intend to sing
again. My fingers closed tighter over hers as I felt her face turn
toward mine, and she answered their pressure while her eyes glistened, I
thought, with tears. Then her hand slipped away.
"Don't speak," she said, leading the way out of the grove.
We went into the house again to make sure that the fires had burned
down. The room was darker now, filled with twilight shadows. The last
of the logs were glowing red on the hearths, and the air was hot and
heavy after the fresh outdoors. But how cheerful, how friendly, how
like a human thing, with human feelings of warmth and welcome, the room
seemed to me!
"It has been a wonderful day," said I, as we turned from the fires to
pass out. "I wonder if I shall ever have so much joy again in my house?"
The girl at my side did not answer. I looked at her, and saw that she was
struggling with tears.
I did instinctively the only thing my clumsy ignorance could suggest--put
my hand upon hers. She withdrew it quickly.
"No, no!" she cried under her breath. "Oh, I am such a fool!
Fool--Middle English _fool_, _fole_, _fol_; Icelandic, _fol_; old
French _fol_--always the same word!"
She broke into a plaintive little laugh, ran through the hall and lifted
the stove lid to see if the fire there was out, and hastened to the road,
where I had difficulty to keep pace with her as we walked up the slope
to supper.
"You need a rest more than you think, I guess," I tried to say, but
she only answered, "I need it less!" and made off at once to her room.
That night I didn't go back to my house to work. I didn't work at
all. I looked out of my window at a young moon for a long while, and
then--yes, I confess it, though I was thirty years old, I wrote a sonnet!