I GO TO NEW YORK FOR A PURPOSE
I shall not here recount the events on the farm during the weeks which
followed Miss Stella's departure. They did not particularly interest me.
My whole psychological make-up had been violently shaken, the centres of
attention had been shifted, and I was constantly struggling for a
readjustment which did not come. The post-office appealed to me more
than the peas, and I laboured harder over my photographs of the sundial
beds than over the beds themselves. I sent for a ray filter and a
wide-angle lens, spending hours in experiment and covering a plank
in front of the south door with printing frames.
I had written to her the day after she had departed, but no reply
came for a week, and then only a brief little note, telling me it was
hot in town and conveying her regards to the roses. I, too, waited a
week--though it was hard--and then answered, sending some photographs,
one of them a snapshot of a bird on the edge of the bath, one of
them of Buster sitting on his hind legs. Again she answered briefly,
merrily, conveying her especial regards to Buster, but ending with a
plaintive little postscript about the heat.
I sat, the evening after this letter arrived, in my big, cool room, with
Buster beside me, and thought of her down there in the swelter of town.
I wanted to answer her letter, and wanted to answer it tenderly. I was
lonely in my great, cool room; I was unspeakably lonely.
Suddenly it occurred to me that this was the evening of Class Day.
The Yard was full of lanterns, of music, of shimmering dresses, of
pretty faces, of young men in mortar boards and gowns. I might have
been sitting in the deep window recess of my old room above the Yard,
drinking in the scene with the pleasant impersonal wistfulness of an
older man in the presence of happy youth. But I wasn't. I was sitting
here alone with Buster, thinking of a poor girl in a hot, lonely New York
lodging-house. I pulled my pad toward me and wrote her a letter. It read:
Dear, Nice Lady: I'm lying here on the rug, my tail quite
tired after a hard day's work, looking up in Mr. John's
face. His face is kind of glum and his eyes sort of faraway
looking. I don't know what's the matter with him. He's
been that way nights for two or three weeks now, which makes
me sad, too; only he goes to the post-office often, which
makes me glad, 'cause I love to walk or to run behind the
buggy, and there's a collie pup on the way who is very nice.
What do you suppose is the trouble? Sometimes he goes to
the brook and sits on a stone by a pool there, while I go
wading and get my stummick wet and drippy and cool. I wish
you'd come back. I didn't get to know you so awful well, but
I liked you, and a house with just one glum, stupid man in it
ain't--I mean isn't--very nice, 'specially as Peter's still
at school. Schools last awful late up here.
I am yours waggishly--
"Here, Buster," said I. The pup rose and snuggled his nose into my lap.
I picked him up, held his forepaw firmly and put some ink on it with the
end of a match. Then I held the paper below it, pressed the paw down,
and made a signature, wiping the paw afterward with a blotter. Buster
enjoyed the strange operation, and wagged his tail furiously. I sealed
and addressed the letter, and went to bed.
A few days later a box came addressed to Buster in my care. I opened
it in Buster's presence, indeed literally beneath his nose. On top
was a small package, tied with blue ribbon, and labelled "For Buster."
It proved to be a dog biscuit, which the recipient at once took to the
hearth and began upon. Beneath this was a note, which I opened with eager
fingers. It began:
DARLING BUSTER: Your waggish epistle received and contents
noted. While most of us at times agree with him who said that
the more he saw of men the better he liked dogs, nevertheless
the canine intelligence is in some ways limited. Pray do
not misunderstand me, dear Buster. In its limits lies its
loyalty! No man is a hero to his valet, but every man to his
dog. However, these same limits of the canine intelligence,
which logic compels me to assume that you also possess, are
probably responsible for your mistake in assigning the term
glumness to what you observe in Master John, when it is really
lack of occupation. You see, dear Buster, he has got Twin
Fires so far under way that he doesn't work at it all the
time, so he ought to be at his writing of stories, made up of
big dictionary words which I am defining or inventing for him
down here in a very hot, dirty, dusty, smelly town. He isn't
doing that, is he? Won't you please tell him to? Tell him
that's all the trouble. He has a reaction from his first
farming enthusiasm, and doesn't realize that the thing to do
is to go to work on the new line, _his_ line. For it _is_ his
line, you know, Buster.
Underneath this you'll find something to give him, with my
best wishes for sunshine on the dear garden. I'd kiss you,
Buster, only dogs are terribly germy.
Stella.
P.S. That _is_ a nice pool, isn't it?
I sat on the floor with the letter in my lap, smiling happily over it.
Then I took the last package out of the box. It was heavy, evidently
metal. Removing the papers, I held in my hand an old bronze sundial
plate, a round one to fit my column, and upon it, freshly engraved, the
ancient motto--
Horas Non Numero Nisi Serenas
My first thought was of its cost. She couldn't afford it, the silly,
generous girl! She'd bought it, doubtless, at one of those expensive New
York antique shops, and then taken it to an engraver's, for further
expense. I ought not accept it. Yet how could I refuse? I couldn't.
I hugged it to my heart, and fairly ran to the dial post, Buster at my
heels. It was already nearly noon, so I set it on the pedestal, got a
level and a pot of glue, which was the only means of securing it to the
post which I had, and watch in hand waited for the minute of twelve.
At the minute, I set the shadow between the noon lines, levelled it with
thin bits of match underneath, and glued it down. Then I stood off and
surveyed it, sitting there in the sun--_her_ dial! Then I ran for my
camera.
I developed the film at once, and made a print that afternoon. When it
was made, I went out into the vegetable garden, on a sudden impulse to
work off physical energy, took the wheel hoe away from Mike, and began
to cultivate.
Did you ever spend an afternoon with a wheel hoe, up and down, up and
down, between rows of beets and carrots and onions, between cauliflower
plants and tomato vines, between pepper plants and lettuce? It
requires a certain fixity of attention to keep the weeders or the
cultivator teeth close to the plants without also injuring them. But
there is a soothing monotony in the forward pushes of the machine,
and a profound satisfaction in seeing the weeds come up, the ground
grow clean and brown and broken on each side of the row behind you, and
to feel, too, how much you are accomplishing with the aid of this
comparatively simple tool.
My early peas were ready for market. Mike announced that he was going
to take the first lot over in the morning. They had been planted very
late, but fortune had favoured them, and now they were hardly more
than a week behind Bert's, which had been planted early in April. The
foot-high corn was waving in the breeze, the long rows of delicate
onion tops, of beets, carrots, radishes, and lettuce plants were as
characteristically different as the vegetables themselves. I fixed
their characteristics in my vision. I suddenly found myself taking a
renewed interest in the farm. As I paused to wipe my bronzed forehead
or relight my pipe, I would raise my head and look back over the rows,
or through the trellis aqueduct to the house, seeing the sundial telling
the hours on the lawn, and think of Stella, think of her down in the
hot city, where I knew at last that I should not let her stay.
Yes, I had no longer any doubts. I wanted her. I should always want
her. Twin Fires was incomplete, I was incomplete, life was incomplete,
without her. I pushed the hoe with redoubled zeal, long after Mike had
milked the cows and departed.
At six I stopped, amazed to find the plot of a story in my head.
Heaven knows how it got there, but there it was, almost as full-statured
as Minerva when she sprang from the head of Jove, though considerably
less glacial. I even had the opening sentence all ready framed--to
me always the most difficult point of story or essay, except the
closing sentence. Nor did this tale appear to be one I had incubated
in the past, and which now popped up above the "threshold" from my
subconsciousness. It was a brand-new plot, a perfect stranger to me. The
phenomenon interested me almost as much as the plot. The tale grew even
clearer as I took my bath, and haunted me during supper, so that I was
peremptory in my replies to poor Mrs. Pillig and refused to aid Peter
that evening with his geography.
"To-morrow," said I, vaguely, going into my study and locking the door.
I worked all that evening, got up at midnight to forage for a glass of
milk and a fresh supply of oil for my lamp, and returned to my desk to
work till four, when the sun astonished me. The story was done! Instead
of going to bed, I went down in the cool of the young morning, when only
the birds were astir, and took my bath in Stella's pool. Then I went
to the dew-drenched pea vines and began to pick peas.
Here Mike found me, with nearly half a bushel gathered, when he appeared
early to pick for market.
"It's the early bird gets the peas," said I.
"It is shurely," he laughed. "You might say you had a tiliphone call
to get up--only these ain't tiliphones."
"Mike!" I cried, "a pun before breakfast!"
"Shure, I've had me breakfast," said he.
Which reminded me that I hadn't. I went in the house to get it, reading
over and correcting my manuscript as I ate. After breakfast I put on
respectable clothes, tucked the manuscript in my pocket, and mounted the
seat of my farm wagon, beside Mike. Behind us were almost two bushels
of peas and several bunches of tall, juicy, red rhubarb stalks from the
old hills we found on the place. Mike had greatly enriched the soil, and
grown the plants in barrels.
"Well, I'm a real farmer now," said I.
"Ye are, shurely," Mike replied. "Them's good peas, if they was
planted late."
We drove past the golf links and the summer hotel, to the market, where
I was already known, I found, and greeted by name as I entered.
"I'll buy anything you'll sell me," said the proprietor, "and be
glad to get it. Funny thing about this town, the way folks won't take
the trouble to sell what they raise. Most of the big summer estates have
their own gardens, of course, but there's nearly a hundred families
that don't, and four boarding-houses, and the hotels. Why, the hotels
send to New York for vegetables--if you can beat that! Guess all our
farmers with any gumption have gone to the cities."
"Well," said I, "I'm not in farming for my health, which has always
been good. I've got more than a bushel of peas out there."
"Peas!" cried the market man. "Why, I have more demands for peas than
I can fill. The folks who could sell me peas won't plant 'em 'cause
it's too much trouble or expense to provide the brush. I'll give you
eight cents a quart for peas to-day."
"This is too easy," I whispered to Mike, as we went out to get the
baskets.
I sold my rhubarb also, and came away with a little book in which there
was entered to my credit $4.16 for peas and $1.66 for rhubarb. I put
the book proudly in my pocket, for it represented my first earnings from
the farm, and mounting the farm wagon again told Mike to drive me to the
hotel.
As we pulled up before the veranda, the line of old ladies in rockers
focussed their eyes upon us.
"Shure," whispered Mike, "they look like they was hung out to dry!"
I went up the steps and into the office, where the hotel proprietor
suavely greeted me, asked after my health, and inquired how my "estate"
was getting on.
"You mean my farm," said I.
He smiled politely, but not without a skepticism which annoyed me. I
hastened from him, and left my manuscript with the stenographer, who
had arrived for the summer.
"I'll call for the copy to-morrow noon," said I. Then I went to the
telegraph booth and sent a day letter to Stella. "Buster sending me to
thank you," it read. "Meet me Hotel Belmont six to-morrow. Sold over a
bushel of peas to-day. Prepare to celebrate."
"Mike," said I, returning to the cart, "drop me at the golf club. Tell
Mrs. Pillig not to expect me to lunch."
It was ten o'clock when we arrived at the entrance to the club. I jumped
out and Mike drove on. The professional took my name, and promised
to hand it to the proper authorities as a candidate. Then I paid the
fee for the day, borrowed some clubs from him, and we set out. I had not
touched a club since the winter set in. How good the driver felt in
my hand! How sweetly the ball flew from the club (as the golf ball
advertisements phrase it), on the first attempt! I sprang down the
course in pursuit, elated to see that I had driven even with the pro.
Alas! my second was not like unto it! His second spun neatly up on the
green and came to rest. Mine went off my mashie like a cannon ball, and
overshot into the road. My third went ten feet. But it was glorious.
Why shouldn't a farmer play golf? Why shouldn't a golfer run a farm?
Why shouldn't either write stories? Heavens, what a lot of pleasant
things there are to do in the world, I thought to myself, as I finally
reached the green and sank my putt. Poor Stella, sweltering over a
dictionary in New York! Soon she'd be here, too. She should learn to
play golf, she should dig flower beds, she should wade in a brook. I
flubbed my second drive.
"You're taking your eye off," said the pro.
"I'm taking my mind off," said I. "Give me a stroke a hole from here,
for double the price of the round, or quits?"
"You're on," said he.
I stung him, too! I felt so elated that I went back to the hotel for an
elaborate luncheon, and returned for eighteen holes more. The feats a man
can perform the first day after he has had no sleep are astonishing. The
second day it is different. In fact, I began to get groggy about the
tenth hole that afternoon, so that the pro. got back his losses, as in
a burst of bravado I had offered to double the morning bet. He came back
with an unholy 68 that afternoon, confound him! They always do when the
bet is big enough, which is really why they are called professionals.
That night I slept ten hours, worked over my manuscripts most of the
next morning, packed a load of them in my suitcase, and after an early
dinner got Peter to drive me to the train, for his school had now closed.
"Peter," said I at the station, "your job is to take care of your
mother, and keep the kindlings split, and drive to market for Mike when
he needs you. Also to water the lawn and flower beds with the spray
nozzle every morning. Mind, now, the spray nozzle! If I find you've
used the heavy stream, I'll--I'll--I'll sell Buster!"
That amiable creature tried to climb aboard the train with me, and Peter
had to haul him off by the tail. My last sight of Bentford was a yellow
dog squirming and barking in a small boy's arms.
The train was hot and stuffy. It grew hotter and stuffier as we came
out of the mountains into the Connecticut lowlands, and we were all
sweltering in the Pullman by the time New York was reached. As I stepped
out of the Grand Central station into Forty-second Street my ears were
assaulted by the unaccustomed din, my nose by the pungent odour of city
streets, my eyes smarted in a dust whirl. But my heart was pounding
with joy and expectation as I hurried across the street.
I climbed the broad steps to the lobby of the hotel, and scarcely had
my feet reached the top than I saw a familiar figure rise from a chair.
I ran toward her, waving off the boy who rushed to grab my bag. A second
later her hand was in mine, her eyes upon my eyes.
"It--it was nice of Buster to send you," she said.
"You look so white, so tired," I answered. "Where is all your tan?"
"Melted," she laughed. "Have you business in town? It's awfully hot
here, you poor man."
"Yes," said I, "I have business here, very important business. But
first some supper and a spree. I've got 'most two bushels of peas to
spend!"
We had a gay supper, and then took a cab, left my grip at my college
club, where I had long maintained a non-resident membership, and drove
thence to Broadway.
"How like Bentford Main Street!" I laughed, as we emerged from
Fourty-fourth Street into the blaze of grotesque electric signs which
have a kind of bizarre beauty, none the less. "Where shall we go?"
"There's a revival of 'Patience' at the Casino," she suggested,
"and there are the Ziegfeld Follies----"
"Not the Follies," I answered. "I'm neither a drummer nor a rural
Sunday-school superintendent. Gilbert and Sullivan sounds good, and I've
never heard 'Patience.'"
We found our places in the Casino just as the curtain was going up, and
I saw "Patience" for the first time. I was glad it was for the first
time, because she was with me, to share my delight. As incomparable
tune after tune floated out to us the absurdest of absurd words, her eyes
twinkled into mine, and our shoulders leaned together, and finally,
between the seats, I squeezed her fingers with unrestrainable delight.
"Nice Gilbert and Sullivan," she whispered.
"It's a masterpiece; it's a masterpiece!" I whispered back. "It's
as perfect in its way as--as your sundial! Oh, I'm so glad you are with
me!"
"Is it worth coming way to New York for?"
"Under the conditions, around the world for," said I.
She coloured rosy, and looked back at the stage.
After the performance she would not let me get a cab. "You've not
that many peas on the place," she said. So we walked downtown to her
lodgings, through the hot, dusty, half-deserted streets, into the older
section of the city below Fourteenth Street. I said little, save to
answer her volley of eager questions about the farm. At the steps of
an ancient house near Washington Square she paused.
"Here is where I live," she said. "I've had a lovely evening. Shall
I see you again before you go back?"
I smiled, took the latchkey from her hand, opened the door, and
stepped behind her, to her evident surprise, into the large, silent,
musty-smelling hall. She darted a quick look about, but I ignored
it, taking her hand and leading her quickly into the parlour, where,
by the faint light from the hall, I could see an array of mid-Victorian
plush. The house was silent. Still holding her hand, I drew her to me.
"I am not going back--alone," I whispered. "You are going with me.
Stella, I cannot live without you. Twin Fires is crying for its mistress.
You are going back, too, away from the heat and dust and the town, into a
house where the sweet air wanders, into the pines where the hermit sings
and the pool is thirsty for your feet."
I heard in the stillness a strange sob, and suddenly her head was on my
breast and her tears were flowing. My arms closed about her.
Presently she lifted her face, and our lips met. She put up her hands
and held my face within them. "So that was what the thrush said, after
all," she whispered, with a hint of a happy smile.
"To me, yes," said I. "I didn't dream it was to you. _Was_ it to
you?"
"That you'll never know," she answered, "and you'll always be too
stupid to guess."
"Stupid! You called me that once before about the painters. Why were
you angry about choosing the dining-room paint?"
She grew suddenly wistful. "I'll tell you that," she said. "It
was--it was because you let a third person into our little drama of
Twin Fires. I--I was a fool, maybe. But I was playing out a kind--a
kind of dream of home building. Two can play such a dream, if they
don't speak of it. But not three. Then it becomes--it becomes, well,
matter-of-facty, and people talk, and the bloom goes, and--you hurt me a
little, that's all."
I could not reply for a moment. What man can before the wistful sweetness
of a woman's secret moods? I could only kiss her hair. Finally words
came. "The dream shall be reality now," I said, "and you and I
together will make Twin Fires the loveliest spot in all the hills.
To-morrow we'll buy a stair carpet, and--lots of things--together."
"Still with the pea money?" she gurgled, her gayety coming back. "No,
sir; I've some money, too. Not much, but a little to take the place
of the wedding presents I've no relatives to give me. I want to help
furnish Twin Fires." She laid her fingers on my protesting lips. "I
shall, anyway," she added. "We are two lone orphans, you and I, but we
have each other, and all that is mine is yours, all--all--all!"
Suddenly she threw her arms about my neck, and I was silent in the
mystery of her passion.