ACTAEON AND DIANA
Memorial Day dawned fair and warm. Bert and his wife and all their
"help" went off to the village after breakfast. There were no painters
in my house, and Mike had milked the cows and gone home before I arrived.
Miss Goodwin and I seemed to have that little section of Bentford quite
to ourselves, after the last of the carryalls had rattled past, taking
the veterans from Slab City to the town. Having no flag yet of my own, I
borrowed one from Bert, and we hung it from a second-story window,
facing the road, as our tiny contribution to the sentiment of the day.
Then we tackled the rose trellis, speedily completing it, for only two
arches remained to be built, one of the carpenters having built three
for me the day before, while waiting for some shingles to come for
the barn. Indeed, we had it done by ten o'clock.
"Now what?" said she.
I looked about the garden. The roses had not yet come, so we couldn't
very well plant them. I judged that the morning of a warm, sunny day was
no time to transplant seedlings. The painting was not yet completed
inside, so I could fix up no more of my rooms. The vegetable garden
didn't appear to need cultivation. We couldn't paint the trellis, as
there was no green paint.
"Good gracious!" I exclaimed, "this is the first time I've been at a
loss for something to do. It's a terrible sensation."
"Couldn't we build a bird bath?" she suggested.
"Madam," said I, "you are a genius!"
"At the brook?" she added.
"No, not the brook. I've a better idea. Up in Stephen Parrish's
lovely garden in Cornish I once saw a bird bath which we'll try to
duplicate, here on the lawn, so the birds will have the water handy to
wash down the grass seed they are eating so fast. Let's see; we'll
need bricks, sand, cement, a mason's trowel, a spade, a hoe, a level, a
box to mix in, and a box for a frame."
I had nearly a whole bag of cement left over from my dab at orchard
renovation, and there were plenty of packing-boxes. I selected one
which was exactly square, about two feet on each side, and carefully
knocked the bottom out. A shallower one did for a mixing-box. Down
cellar, where my heater had been installed, was a barrow load of extra
bricks which the plumber had left behind--inefficient business but very
convenient for me. Sand was easily procured by digging a hole near the
brook.
"Now," said I, "my plan is to put the bird bath on the east edge of
the lawn, halfway between the house and the rose aqueduct, corresponding
to the sundial in the centre, and to a white bench which will be placed
at the west side when the grape arbour is built."
"Approved," laughed Miss Goodwin.
We measured off the spot, and I trundled the barrow to a pile of coal
ashes behind the barn--where the previous owner had deposited them--and
brought back enough to make a frost-proof foundation. After we had
packed these into the ground and levelled them off, I mixed a lot of
cement, laid it over thick, set the bottomless box frame down upon
it, levelled that, and working from the inside, of course, laid the
bricks up against the box, with a great deal of cement between them,
and built up the four sides. As the girl had no gloves, I would not
allow her to handle the cement (for nothing cracks the skin so badly,
as I had discovered in my orchard work). But she kept busy mixing with
the hoe, and handing me bricks. Some I broke and put in endwise, and
I was careful to give all as irregular a setting as possible, till
the top was reached. Then, of course, I laid an even line of the best
bricks all the way around, and levelled them carefully. We had scarcely
got the last brick on when we heard Bert's carryall rattle over the
bridge and Bert's voice yelling "Dinner!"
"Oh, dear! That cement in the box will harden!" I cried. "Dump it all
in."
We tipped up the box, dumped the contents down into the hollow centre
of the brick work, and hurried home to a cold dinner, for Mrs. Bert,
too, had taken a holiday that morning. But we were so impatient to be
back at our work that we didn't care. On our return we filled the rest
of the hollow up with cement and stones to within three inches of the
top. Then, mixing more cement, with only two parts of fine sand to one
of cement, I laid over an even surface of the mixture and filled all
the corners and cracks between the top row of bricks, making a square
bowl, as it were, two inches deep, on the top of the little brick pile.
We let it settle a few moments, and then carefully broke away the box.
There stood the bird bath, needing only some cleaning away of cement
which had squeezed out between bricks, and some filling in of hollows
caused in removing the frame. It really looked quite neat and attractive,
and not too formally bricky, as so much cement showed.
"Can we put water in it yet?" the girl asked.
"Surely," said I. "Cement will harden under water. And we'll plant
climbing nasturtiums around it, too."
I spaded up the ground at the base a little, and we went to the seed
bed and dug up half a dozen climbing nasturtiums, which were already
six or seven inches high. We set them in, got a pail of water from the
brook and watered them, and carefully filled the bath level with the
brim. Then we removed all the tools and boxes to the shed again, and
came back to the south door to survey our work.
We passed through the house. The kitchen, dining-room, and hall were
finished and the paint drying. They looked very fresh and bright. The
south room, as we stepped into it, was flooded with sunlight and cheerful
with rugs and books. Flinging wide the glass door, we stepped out upon
the terrace of the pergola-to-be, and looked toward the new bird bath.
Upon its rim sat a song sparrow! Even as we watched, another came and
fluttered his feet and breast daintily through the trembling little
mirror of water. Then came a robin and drove them both away.
"The pig!" laughed Miss Goodwin. "Do you know, I've got a poorer
opinion of robins since I came here. We city dwellers think of robins as
harbingers of spring, and all that, and they epitomize the bird world.
But when you really are in that world, you find they are rather large
and vulgar and--and sort of upper West Side-y. They aren't half so nice
as the song sparrows, or the Peabodies, and, of course, compared with the
thrushes--well, it's like comparing Owen Meredith with Keats, isn't
it?"
"Don't be too hard on the robins," I smiled.
We looked our fill at the new bird bath, which was already functioning,
as she said her boss on the dictionary would put it, and at the white
sundial pillar, and at our prospective aqueduct of roses, and at the farm
and the far hills beyond--and then she suddenly announced with great
energy that she was going to saw wood.
"You may saw just one piece," said I, "and then you are going to take
a book and rest. I'm going to work, myself. Twin Fires is getting in
shape fast enough now so I can give up part of the daytime to the purely
mundane task of paying the bills."
I wheeled up a big dead apple branch from the orchard to the wood shed,
put it on the buck, gave her the buck-saw, and watched her first efforts,
grinning.
"Go away," she laughed. "You bother me."
So I went, opened the west window by my desk to the wandering summer
breeze, and went at my toil. Presently I heard her tiptoeing into the
room.
"Done?" said I.
She nodded. "Now I want--let's see what I want--well, I guess 'Marius
the Epicurean' and 'Alice in Wonderland' will do. I'm going to sit
in the orchard. You work here till five or your salary will be docked.
Good-bye."
I heard her go out by the front door, and then silence settled over the
sun-filled, cheerful room, while I plugged away at my tasks. I don't
know how long I worked, but finally my attention began to wander. I
wondered if she were still in the orchard. I looked out upon the sweet
stretches of my farm, with the golden light of afternoon upon it, and
work became a burden. "Shall I ever be able to work, except at night, or
on rainy days!" I wondered with a smile, as I tossed the manuscript I
was reading into a drawer, and went out through the front entrance.
The girl was nowhere to be seen. "She's probably in her beloved
pines," I reflected. "It would be a good time to clear out a path in
the pines." I turned back to get a hatchet, and then went down toward
the brook.
I trod as noiselessly as I could through the maples, thinking to surprise
her at her reading, and took care in the pines not to step on any dead
twigs. She was nowhere to be seen near the upper end of the grove, but as
I advanced I heard a splashing louder than the soft ripple of the brook,
and suddenly around a thick tree at a bend in the stream, where the
brook ran out toward the tamarack swamp in the corner of my farm, I came
upon her. She had her shoes and stockings off, and with her skirts held
high she was wading with solemn, quiet delight in a little pool. Her
back was toward me. I could have discreetly retreated, and she been
none the wiser. But, alas! Actaeon was neither the first nor the last
of his sex. The water rippled so coolly around her white ankles! The
sunlight dappled down so charmingly upon her chestnut hair! And I said,
with a laugh, "So that is why you wanted my brook to come from the
spring!"
She turned with a little exclamation, the colour flaming to her cheeks.
Then she, too, laughed, as she stood in the brook, holding her skirts
above the water.
"Consider yourself turned to a stag," she said.
"All right," I answered, "but don't stay in that cold water too
long."
"If I do it will be your fault," she smiled, with a sidelong glance.
Then she turned and began wading tentatively downstream. But the brook
deepened suddenly, and she sank almost to her knees, catching her skirts
up just in time. I withdrew hastily, and called back to her to come
out. When I heard her on the bank, I brought her a big handkerchief for a
towel, and withdrew once more, telling her to hurry and help me plan
the path through the pines. In a moment or two she was by my side. We
looked at each other. Her face was still flushed, but her eyes were
merry. We were standing on almost the exact spot where we had first
met. But now there seemed in some subtle wise a new bond of intimacy
between us, a bond that had not existed before this hour. I could not
analyze it, but I felt it, and I knew she felt it. But what she said was:
"I told you to work till five o'clock."
"It's half-past four," I answered. "Besides, you must have sent for
me. Something suddenly prompted me to come out and hunt you up, at any
rate."
"To say I sent for you is rather--rather _forward_, under the
circumstances, don't you think?"
"It might be--and it might not be," I answered. "Did you have a good
time?"
"The best I ever had--till you spoiled it," she exclaimed. "Oh, the
nice, cold brook! Now, let's build the path you spoke about once."
We went back to the maples, where the ground was open, and selected a
spot on the edge of the pines where the path would most naturally enter.
Then we let it wind along by the brook, lopping off dead branches which
were in the way, and removing one or two small trees. Once we took it
across the brook, laying a line of stepping-stones, and out almost to
the stone wall, where one could get a momentary glimpse of the road and
over the road the blue mountains. Then we bent it in again, crossed
the brook once more just above the point where she had waded, and there
I rolled a large stone to the edge of the pool--"for you to sit on next
time," I explained. Finally we skirted the tamarack swamp, took the
path up through the fringe of pines at the southern end of the field
crops, and let it come back to the house beside the hayfield wall. When
we reached this wall, it was nearly six o'clock.
"Now, let's just walk back through it!" she cried. "To-morrow we can
bring the wheelbarrow, can't we, and pick up the litter we've made?"
"I can, at any rate, while you wade," said I.
She shot a little look up into my face. "I guess I'll help," she
smiled.
In the low afternoon light we turned about and retraced our steps.
There was but a fringe of pines along the southern wall, and as they
were forty-year-old trees here the view both back to the house and
over the wall into the next pasture was airy and open. Then the path led
through a corner of the tamarack swamp where in wet weather I should
have to put down some planks, and where the cattails grew breast high on
either side. Then it entered the thick pine grove where a great many
of the trees were evidently not more than fifteen or twenty years old
and grew very close. The sunlight was shut out, save for daggers of
blue between the trunks toward the west. The air seemed hushed, as if
twilight were already brooding here. The little brook rippled softly.
As we came to the first crossing, I pointed to the pool, already dark
with shadow, and said, "It was wrong of me to play Actaeon to your Diana,
but I am not ashamed nor sorry. You were very charming in the dappled
light, and you were doing a natural thing, and in among these little
pines, perhaps, two friends may be two friends, though they are man and
woman."
She did not reply at once, but stood beside me looking at the dark pool
and apparently listening to the whisper of the running water against the
stepping-stones. Finally she said with a little laugh, "I have always
thought that perhaps Diana was unduly severe. Come, we must be moving
on."
As the path swung out by the road, we heard a carriage, and stopped,
keeping very still, to watch it drive past within twenty feet of us.
The occupants were quite unaware of our existence behind the thin screen
of roadside alders.
"How exciting!" she half whispered when the carriage had gone by.
Once more we entered the pines, following the new path over the brook
again to the spot where we first had met. There I touched her hand. "Let
us wait for the thrush here," I whispered.
I could see her glimmering face lifted to mine. "Why here?" she asked.
"Because it was here we first heard him."
"Oh, forgive me," she answered. "I didn't realize! The path has made
it look different, I guess. Forgive me."
She spoke very low, and her voice was grieving. Did it mean so much to
her? A sudden pang went through my heart--and then a sudden hot wave of
joy--and then sudden doubts. I was silent. So was the thrush. Presently
I touched her hand again, gently.
"Come," said I, "we have scared him with our chopping. He will come
back, though, and then we will walk down the clean path, making no noise,
and hear him sing."
"Nice path," she said, "to come out of your door, through your
orchard, and wander up a path by a brook, through your own pines! Oh,
fortunate mortal!"
"And find Diana wading in a pool," I added.
Again she shot an odd, questioning look at me, and shook her head. Then
she ran into the south room and put the books back on the shelves.
"Which one did you read, Marius or Alice?" I asked.
"Neither," she smiled, as I locked the house behind us.