WE CLIMB A HILL TOGETHER
The next morning I did not urge Miss Goodwin to come to the farm. In
fact, I urged her to sit in the sun and rest. It was a glorious day, a
real June day, though June was not due till the following Wednesday. It
was Sunday, the Sunday preceding Memorial Day. But, as my farm was so far
from the centre of the village, and my lawn was so screened from the
roads by the house on one side and the pines and maples on the other,
I resolved to hazard my reputation and go at my lawn, which the rain at
last had settled. I hitched the horse to my improvised drag and smoothed
it again, several times, in default of a roller. Then I led the horse
back to the barn.
As I came to the barn door again, a carryall was passing, with a woman
and a stout girl on the back seat, and another stout girl and a man on
the front seat. The women were dressed in their starched best, the
man, an elderly farmer with a white beard, in the blue uniform and
slouch hat of the G. A. R. They were going to Memorial service. I
instinctively saluted as the old fellow nodded to me in his friendly,
country way, and he dropped the reins with a pleased smile and brought
his own hand snap up to his hat brim. I watched the carryall disappear,
hearing it rattle over the bridge across my brook, and for the first
time felt myself a stranger in this community. I suddenly wanted to go
with them to church, to hear the drone of the organ and the soft wind
rushing by the open windows, bringing in the scent of lilacs, to see
the faces of my neighbours about me, to chat with them on the church
steps when the service was over. I realized how absorbed I had been
in my own little farm, and resolved to begin getting acquainted with
the town as soon as possible. Then I picked up a rake, and went back to
the lawn.
As soon as I had eliminated the horse's hoofprints, I got a bag of
lawn seed and scattered it, probably using a good deal more than was
necessary. Mike had assured me it was too late to sow grass, but I hoped
for fool's luck. I sowed it carefully about the sundial beds, so that
none should fall on them, but over the rest of the lawn I let it fall
from on high, delighting in the way it drifted with the gentle wind
on its drop to earth. I had not sown long before the birds began to come,
by ones, then by twos and threes and fours, till it seemed as if fifty
of them were hopping about. I shooed them away, but back they came.
"Well," thought I, "lawn seed is not so terribly expensive, and they
can't pick it all up!" I scattered it thicker than ever, and then
harrowed it under a little with a rake, working till one o'clock, for
Sunday dinner was at one-thirty. Then I went back to Bert's, with only
a peep into my big south room to see how cheerful it looked. I found Miss
Goodwin still sitting where I had left her, under the sycamore before the
house.
"You see, I've obeyed," she smiled. "I've not read, nor even
thought. I've 'jest set.' But I'm beginning to get restless."
"Good," said I. "Shall we celebrate the Sabbath by taking a walk? I'd
like to have you show me Bentford."
She assented, and right after dinner we set out, I having donned my
knickerbockers and a collar for the first time since my arrival, and
feeling no little discomfort from the starched band around my throat.
"The size of it is," I groaned, "all my clothes are now too small
for me. If you stay here till July, you'll probably have to send for an
entire new wardrobe."
"That's the fear which haunts me," she smiled, as we crossed my brook
and turned up the hill toward the first of the big estates. In front of
this estate we paused and peeped through the hedge. The family had
evidently arrived, for the unmistakable sounds of a pianola were issuing
from the house. The great formal garden, still gay with Darwin tulips
and beginning to show banks of iris flowers against lilac shrubbery,
looked extremely expensive. The residence itself, of brown stucco,
closely resembled a sublimated $100,000 ice-house. An expensive motor
stood before the door.
"How rich and ugly it is," said Miss Goodwin, turning away. "Let's
not look at houses. Let's find some woods to walk in."
We looked about us toward the high hills which ring the Bentford valley,
and struck off toward what seemed the nearest. The side road we were
on soon brought us to the main highway up the valley to the next town,
and a motor whizzed past us, leaving a cloud of dust, then a second,
and a third. We got off the highway as speedily as possible, crossing
a farm pasture and entering the timber on the first slope of the big
hill. Here a wood road led up, and we loitered along it, finding late
violets and great clumps of red trilliums here and there.
The girl sprang upon the first violets with a little cry of joy, picking
them eagerly and pressing them to her nose. "Smell!" she laughed,
holding them up to mine. She soon had her hands full, and was forced to
pass by the next bed--as I told her, with the regret of a child who
has eaten all the cake he can at a church supper.
"No child ever ate all the cake he could," she laughed. "Oh, please
dig up some trilliums and plant them in your garden, or rather in your
woods!"
"How are we going to get them home?" said I. "We'll have to dig up
some of the earth, too, with the roots."
"I know," she answered. "Even if I am a highbrow, I've not quite
forgotten my childhood lessons in manual work--which I always hated till
now. I'll weave a basket."
Looking about, I saw a wild grape vine, and I pulled it down from the
tree to which it was clinging. "I feel like a suffragette," said I,
"destroying the clinging vine."
"Cut it into two-foot lengths," she retorted, "and don't make poor
puns." She sat on the brown needles at the foot of a pine, and began
twisting the pieces of vine into a rough basket. I sat beside her and
watched her work. Out beyond us was a sun-soaked clearing, a tiny swamp
on the hillside, and the sunlight dappled in across her skirt. As she
worked, a wood thrush called far off, his last long-drawn note ringing
like a sweet, wistful fairy horn. The white fingers paused in their
weaving, and our eyes met. She did not speak, but looked smiling into
my face as the call was repeated, while her throat fluttered. Then,
without speaking, she turned back to her work. I, too, was silent. What
need was there of words?
"Was that a hermit, too?" she asked presently. "It sounded different."
"No, a wood thrush," said I. "He's not so Mozartian."
She finished the basket and held it out proudly. "There!" she cried.
"It isn't pretty, and it isn't art, but it will hold trilliums."
She dusted off her skirt, and I helped her to her feet. We continued up
the road, looking for trilliums, and when the first large clump appeared
pushing up their dark red blooms from the leafy mould, we were both
on our knees beside it, prying it up, earth and all. We soon had the
basket filled, and then pressed on straight up the hillside, leaving the
wood road. It was a steep scramble, over rocks where the thin, mossy
soil slipped from under foot, and through tangles of mountain laurel
bushes. I had frequently to help her, for she was not used to climbing,
and she was breathing hard.
"Let's stop," said I. "This is too hard work for you."
She grasped a dead stick, like a banner staff, struck an attitude, and
cried, "Excelsior!"
"No, sir," she added, "I'm going to reach the top of this hill and
look down the other side if I die on the summit. I know now for the
first time why Annie Peck and Hudson Stuck risked their lives on Mount
Something-or-other in the Andes and Mount McKinley in Alaska. It's a
grand sensation. I feel the primal urge!"
"Didn't you ever climb a mountain?" I queried, incredulous.
"Never," she answered. "Never even a baby mountain like this. My
altitude record is the top step of the Columbia University library."
"You poor child!" I cried. "Why, I'll _carry_ you to the top! I never
realized that you were such a hopeless urbanite."
We went on more slowly, for the way was very steep now, and between
helping her and holding the trilliums level I had my hands full. Laughing
when we had the breath, we scrambled through the last of the shrubbery,
and suddenly stood on a flat rock at the summit, with the world spread
out below us like a map. I set down the basket, wiped my face, and
ruefully felt of my wilted collar. The girl sank, panting, on the rock,
fanned herself with her wisp of a handkerchief, and gazed out over the
green Bentford valley below to the far hills in the south. The sky above
us was very blue and lazy afternoon clouds were floating in it. Far up
here only a few birds peeped in the scrub. We seemed strangely alone in
that privacy of the peak.
"'Silent upon a peak in Darien!'" I heard her say, as if to herself.
Then she turned her eager face to mine. "Isn't it wonderful!" she
cried. "Look, all the world like a map below you, and all this sky to
see at once, and the cooling breeze and the feeling that you are above
everybody! Oh, I love it! Quick, now let me see the other side!"
She ran across the rock, and I after her. From this side we looked
between the trees into the valley to the north, the next valley to
Bentford, and saw a blue lake, like a piece of the sky dropped down,
and several large estates, and the green and brown checkerboards of
farms, and far off a white steeple above the trees, and then once more
on the horizon the eternal ring of blue mountains. Even as we gazed,
from somewhere below us drifted up, faint and sweet, the sound of a
church bell.
"Oh, it is nice on the roof of the world!" she cried. "Think of
that--here am I, a Ph. D. in philology, and the only adjective I can
find is 'nice'!"
"It's all in how you say it," I smiled. "I think I understand. I
called you 'poor child' a few moments ago because you'd never been on
a high hilltop. Now I take it back. Think of getting those first virgin
impressions when you are old enough to appreciate them! I envy you. I
was only five when they took me up Mount Washington."
"I should think you'd have insisted on the Matterhorn by the time you
were ten," she laughed. "I should."
We hunted out some soft moss in the shade, and sat down to get cool in
the summit breeze before the descent. The girl spoke little, her eyes
wandering constantly off over the view with the light of discovery in
them. In my own staid way, I had always fancied I enjoyed the quieter
pleasures of the outdoors as much as any one, but before this rapture I
was almost abashed. If I did not speak, it was chiefly because I feared
to drop clumsy words into her mood.
But presently I did suggest that we must be starting down. As there
was no path visible--later I have found that since the advent of
motors there are never any paths where the walking is in the least
strenuous!--we took the way we had come, and began the descent.
Naturally I went ahead, and helped her all I could. To one unaccustomed
to hard walking, a steep descent is more tiresome than a climb, and I
began to fear that I had led her into an excess. But she came bravely
tumbling along behind. In some places I had to put up my arms and lift
her down. In others she had to slide one foot far ahead for a secure
resting-place, with a reckless show of stocking. But she laughed it
all off gayly. We missed, somehow, the way we had taken up, and
presently found ourselves on a ledge with a clean drop of eight feet. I
prospected to right and left, found a place where the drop was only six,
and jumped. Then she lowered the basket to me, sat on the edge herself,
leaned out and put her arms about my neck, and I swung her off. As I
set her on the ground again our faces were close together for an
instant, and I could feel rather than see her eyes laughing into mine.
"This is a very pleasant hill," said I.
"But we are almost to the wood road now," she darted back, jumping into
the lead.
A moment more, and we stood in the wood road, and presently we came
upon a spring under a rock, and plunged our faces into it and drank.
She looked up with the water dripping from her saucy nose, and quoted:
"'As rivers of water in a dry place.' I'm learning lots to-day. Now
it's the elemental force of the Bible similes."
"All the wisdom isn't in New York--and dictionaries," said I.
"There, now you've mentioned the Dictionary! How could you!" she
cried, and suddenly, like a child, snapped water into my face.
"You've ruined my collar," said I solemnly.
"Your collar looks like a fat man's at a dance in July," said she.
"Let's give the poor trilliums a drink."
She put the basket by the spring, dipped her hands in the water, and then
let palmsful drop on the wilted flowers. "How woodsy they smell!" she
cried, leaning over them. "Now I'm going to wash my face again."
She was like a child. She buried her face in the water, and when she
emerged the little curly hairs on her temples were dripping. "I'd like
to wade in it!" she exclaimed. "I wonder if I dare!"
"Go ahead," said I. "I'll go down the road and wait."
"That wouldn't be daring," she twinkled.
"Well, I'll sit here and wait."
She looked at me saucily, and laughed, shaking her head.
"Coward," said I.
But she only laughed again, sprang up, and started rapidly away.
I caught her by the arm. "Easy, easy," I cautioned. "You're a
broken-down, nervous wreck, remember. You mustn't overdo things."
Her moods were many that afternoon. Again she looked at me, but didn't
laugh. Her eyes, instead, held a sort of startled gratitude, like those
of a person, unused to kindness, suddenly befriended. She was no longer
the child let loose in the woods. She walked slowly at my side, and
so we came down to the high-road again. At the road we looked back to
the hilltop where we had been.
"How much easier the climb looks than it is," said she.
"That's the way of hills--and other things," said I sententiously.
"I knew about the other things," she answered. "Now I've learned it
about the hills. It seems as if I were learning all the old similes wrong
end foremost, doesn't it?--springs and--and all?"
Her tone was wistful, and it was with difficulty that I refrained from
touching her hand. "Oh, there's something to be said for that method,"
I answered cheerfully. "Think of all the pleasant things you have to
learn. The other way around you get the grim realism last."
But a thought plagued her as we turned down the side road to my house.
However, her face cleared as we drew near, and as the house itself
appeared she clapped her hands, crying, "Now, where are we going to put
the trilliums?"
"At the edge of the pines," I suggested, "where they can talk with
the brook?"
"Yes, that's the place." Suddenly she paused, looked back up the
slope, and cried, "Do you suppose this brook is that spring?"
I hastily ran over the contour of the country we had passed through, and
saw that indeed the spring must be its headwaters.
"I'm so glad!" she cried.
"Why?" I asked.
She darted a look at me, with twinkling eyes. "I shan't tell you,"
she said.
I got a trowel, and we planted the withered trilliums in partial shade
between the maples and the pines, and gave them water. Then I showed her
the newly sown lawn, and we peeped in to see the Hiroshiges over the twin
fires.
"Now, home and to bed for you," I cried. "I know you've done too
much."
"I know I've had a wonderful time," she answered soberly.
"I've--I've--it's hard to explain--but I've somehow connected up
this house with the wild country about it. Do you understand? If I had
a house in the country, I should want it where I could get out, this
way, on a Sunday afternoon into the woods and bring home trilliums. It
wouldn't seem right, complete, if I couldn't. I'd want my own dear
garden, and then a great big, God's garden over the fence somewhere."
"That is how I feel, too," said I. "Only I want, also, to connect up
my place with my neighbours; I want myself to be a part of the human
environment. I thought of that this morning, as I saw the folks going by
to church. If I ever get Twin Fires done, I'm going to join the Grange!"
"But Twin Fires comes first, doesn't it? I fear I've been selfish to
drag you off to-day."
"Drag me off is good!" I laughed. "You poor little city-bred, you,
as if your enjoyment hadn't given me the happiest day of my life! Only
I'm afraid you did too much."
"I _am_ pretty tired," she admitted, with a happy smile. "But I
wouldn't have missed it for the world."
I was pretty tired myself, but I did a remarkably good evening's work,
nevertheless, only pausing before the start to wonder why it was she
wept one night when she wasn't tired, and smiled the next when she had
tramped ten miles. But a man cannot afford to ponder such problems in
feminine psychology too closely if he has anything else to do!