WE BUILD A POOL
It was the strangest, sweetest sensation I had ever known to wake in
the morning and hear soft singing in the room where a fresh breeze was
wandering. I saw Stella standing at the window, her hair about her
shoulders, looking out. She turned when I stirred, came over to kiss
me, while her hair fell about my face, and then cried, "Hurry! Hurry! I
must get out into the garden!"
Presently, hand in hand, we went over the new lawn to the sundial which
stood amid a ring of brilliant blooms--which, however, had become
unbelievably choked with weeds in the ten days of my absence. The
gnomon was throwing a long shadow westward across the VII. We filled the
bird bath, which Peter had neglected. We hurried through the orchard
to the brook, to see the flowers blooming there, and there, alas! we
found the volume of the stream shrunk to less than half its former size.
We ran to the rows of berry vines to see how many had survived, and
found the greater part of them sprouting nicely; we went up the slope
into the rows of vegetables and inspected them; we rushed to see if all
the roses were alive; we went to the barn where Mike had just begun
to milk, and sniffed the warm, sweet odour.
"Yes, it's better for any man to be married," I heard Mike saying to
her, as I moved back toward the door. Then he added something I could
not hear, and she came to me with rosy face. "The horrid old man!" She
was half laughing to herself.
The goods we had ordered began to arrive after breakfast, Bert bringing
them from the freight house in his large wagon. I took the day off, and
devoted the morning to laying a stair carpet, probably the hottest job I
ever tackled. Thank goodness, the stairs went straight up, without
curve or angle! As I worked, small feet pattered by me, up and down,
and garments from a big trunk in the lower hall brushed my face as they
were being carried past--brushed their faint feminine perfume into my
nostrils and made my hammer pause in mid-air. After the carpet was
laid, there were a thousand and one other things to do. There were
pictures of Stella's to be hung, and them we put in the hitherto vacant
room at the front of the house, next to the dining-room, where Stella's
wall desk was also placed, and a case of her books, and some chairs.
"Now I can work here when you want to create literature in your room,
or I can receive my distinguished visitors here when you are busy," she
laughed, setting some ornaments on the mantel. "My, but I've got a lot
of curtains to make! I never did so much sewing in my life."
Bureaus were carried upstairs with Mike's assistance, and the ivory
backs of a woman's toilet articles appeared upon them; open closets
showed me rows of women's garments; glass candlesticks were unpacked
and set upon the dining-table, and the new dining-chairs "dressed up"
the room remarkably. Everywhere we went Mrs. Pillig followed with dust
pan and broom, slicking up behind us. When night came it was still an
incomplete house--"Oh, a million things yet to get," cried Stella,
"just one by one, as we can afford it, which will be fun!"--but a house
that spoke everywhere of a dainty mistress. Outside, by the woodshed,
was a pile of packing-boxes and opened crates and excelsior.
"There's _your_ work, Peter," I said, pointing.
Peter looked rueful, but said nothing.
That evening I tried to work, but found it difficult, for watching my
wife sew.
"You've no technique," I laughed.
She made a little _moue_ at me, and went on hemming the curtains,
getting up now and then to measure them. "Why should I have?" she
said presently. "You knew I was a Ph. D. when you married me. These
curtains be on your own head! I'm doing the best I can."
There was suddenly the suspicion of moisture in her eyes, and I ran to
comfort her.
"I--I so want to make Twin Fires lovely," she added, pricking her
finger. "Oh, tell me I can, if I am only a highbrow!"
Of course the finger had to be kissed, and she had to be kissed, and the
hem had to be inspected and praised, and now, long, long afterward, I
smile to think how alike we all of us are on a honeymoon.
It was the next morning that we resolved to begin the pool. "I don't
expect to be married again for several years," said I, "and so I'm
going to take a holiday this week. We'll carry the vegetables to market
and bring back the cement, and begin on our water garden."
Mike loaded the wagon with peas, the last of the rhubarb, and ten quarts
of currants picked by Peter, and off we started.
"What is this horse's name?" asked Stella, taking the reins to learn
to drive.
"He has none, I guess. Mike calls him 'Giddup.'"
"No, it's Dobbin. He looks just like a Dobbin. He has a kind of
conventional, discouraged tail, like a Dobbin. Giddup, Dobbin!"
The horse started to trot. "There, you see, it _is_ his name!" she
laughed.
On Bentford Main Street we passed several motors and a trap drawn by a
prancing span, and all the occupants stared at us, or rather at Stella,
who was beaming from her humble seat on the farm wagon more like an
eighteenth century shepherdess than a New England farmer's wife. We
added over $3 more in the account book with the market, and read with
delight the grand total of $40.80 already in two weeks.
"Next year," said I, "I'll double it!"
Then I spent the $3, and some more, for Portland cement.
We got into our oldest clothes when we reached home, I put on rubber
boots, and we tackled the pool. Even with the brook as low as it was,
the engineering feat was not easy for our unskilful hands. Peter soon
joined us, and lent at least unlimited enthusiasm.
"Peter," said I, "you never worked this hard splitting kindlings."
Peter grinned. "Ho, I like to make dams," he said.
The first thing we did was to divert the brook by digging a new channel
above the spot where we were to build the dam, and letting the water flow
around to the left, close to one of the flower beds. Then, when the old
channel had dried out a little, I spaded a trench across it and two feet
into the banks on each side, and with Peter helping, filled the trench
nearly full of the largest, flattest stones we could find, which we all
then tramped upon to firm down. Then, a foot apart, we stood two boards
on edge across the space, to make a mould for the concrete above the
stones. I sent Peter with a wheelbarrow to pick up a load of small
pebbles in the road, of the most irregular shape he could find, and I
myself dug deeper in the hole where I had got the sand when we built
the bird bath, and brought loads of it to the brookside. We dumped
sand, pebbles, and cement into a big box, one pail of cement to one pail
of pebbles and three of sand, and Peter and Stella fought for the hoe to
mix them, while I poured in the water from a watering-pot, for I had
read and seen the reason for the fact that the success of the cement
depends upon every particle being thoroughly mixed. As fast as we had a
box full of mixture prepared, we dumped it into the mould between the
boards. It took an astonishing quantity of cement--quite all we had,
in fact--and to finish off the top smooth and level I had to get the
quarter bag left from my orchard work and the bird bath. It was evening
when we had it done, and Peter, who had deserted us soon after dinner
to play ball, returned to beg us to take the boards away, and grew
quite unreasonable when we refused.
That night there was a shower, and the brook rose a trifle. When we
hastened down through the orchard after breakfast the new channel had
curved itself still farther, as streams do when once they get started
off the straight line, and had washed the southeast flower bed half
away. Stella, with a cry of grief, ran down the brook into the pines,
and came back with sadly bedraggled _Phlox Drummondi_ plants in her
hands, their trailing roots washed white, their blooms broken. "Horrid
brook," she said. "Let's put it right back into its proper place. I
don't like it any more."
"A sudden change of habit is always dangerous," said I. "Put the
plants in the mud somewhere till we can set 'em in again."
We now took away the boards from the new dam, which had begun to harden
nicely. The next thing to do was to stake out the pool above it. As
the dam was 10 feet below the line between the proposed bench and the
front door of the house, the other end of the pool was marked off 20
feet upstream, and between the two extremes we dug out the soil into an
oval basin. This was easily accomplished by chopping out the turf with
a grub hoe, and then hitching Dobbin to the drag scraper. The soil was a
black, loamy sand, which came up easily, and was hauled over and dumped
for dressing on the site of our little lawn beyond the pool. When we had
the basin excavated to a depth of about a foot, all three of us (for
Peter was once more on the job) scattered to find stones to hold the
banks.
New England farms are traditionally stony--till you want stones. We
ended by taking some here and there from the stone walls after we had
scoured the pasture behind the barn for half a barrow load. When once the
circumference of the pool had been ringed with stones, stood up on
edge, we raked the bottom smooth, sprinkled clean sand upon it, and
were ready to let the water against the dam as soon as the concrete
hardened. We gave it one more day, and then shovelled away the temporary
dam, filled up the new channel where it turned out of the old, and stood
beside the dam while the current, with a first muddy rush, swirled
against it, eddied back, and began very slowly to rise.
"She holds, she holds!" I cried. "But we've forgotten to put stones
for the water to fall over upon. It will undermine the structure if we
don't."
"'Structure' is good," laughed Stella, regarding our little six-foot
long and eighteen-inch high piece of engineering.
We shouted for Peter, and ran to the nearest stone wall, tugging back
some flat stones which we placed directly below the dam for the overflow
to fall on. Then, while Stella sat on the bank and watched the water
rise, I shovelled some of the earth removed from the basin into the now
abandoned temporary channel, and packed it down.
"Say, we can have fish in here," cried Peter, who was also watching
the water rise.
"You can have a four-legged fish," laughed Stella, as Buster came down
the bank with a gleeful bark and went splash into the pool, emerging to
shake himself and spray us all.
I had scarce finished filling in the temporary trench, and was setting
the poor uprooted plants back into the bed, with my back turned, when
I heard a simultaneous shout from Peter and Stella.
"One, two, three--and over she goes!" cried Stella.
I faced around just in time to see the first line of the water crawling
over the top of the dam, and a second later it splashed on the stones
below; behind it came the waterfall.
Stella was dancing up and down. "Oh, it's a real waterfall!" she
cried. "I've got a real waterfall all my own! Come on downstream and
look back at it!"
From the grove below it certainly did look pretty, flashing in the
morning sun. "And when there are iris blossoms, great Japanese iris,
nodding over it!" I exclaimed.
"Oh, can't we plant those right away?" she asked.
"No," said I. "Gardens are like Rome, I'm afraid."
We went back and surveyed our pool at close range. It was clearing now.
But the second pile of earth remained to be removed from the west side.
Peter and I carted that off in wheelbarrows at once, dumping part of
it into the hole where we had dug the sand, and the rest into a heap
behind some bushes upstream for future compost. Then we climbed the
orchard slope for dinner. Midway we looked back. There glistened our
pool, a twenty-foot brown crystal mirror, with the four flower beds
all askew about it, the ragged weeds and bushes pressing them close,
and beyond it only the rough ground I had cleared with a brush scythe,
and the scraggly trees by the wall.
"Alas" said I, "now we've built the pool, we've got to build a whole
garden to go with it!"
"But it tinkles! Hear it tinkle!" cried Stella.
We listened, hand in hand. The tiny waterfall was certainly tinkling, a
cool, delicate, plashy sound, which mingled with the sound of the breeze
in the trees above our heads, and the sweet twitterings of birds.
"Oh, John, it's a very nice dam, and a very nice world!" she
whispered, as we went through the door. "And, after all, it seems to me
the greatest fun of gardening is all the nice other things it makes you
want to do after you've done the first one."
"That," said I sententiously, "is perhaps the secret of all successful
living."