Cow and man at gate
Cow and man at gate
BLESSED BE THE COW
I lay at full length on a shaded piazza and pretended to read my excellent farm paper. The midsummer heat made this form of agriculture the only agreeable one.
“What,” asked my eldest, “is a bovine ruminant in three letters?”
“A bovine ruminant,” I responded, “is what the editor of this journal calls a cow. The young gentlemen who edit a certain literary weekly with which I was once familiar would call a cow a bovine ruminant. That is why I no longer take in the literary weekly and continue to read the farm journal.”
“Thanks,” she said, “It fits nicely.”
“You are fortunate to find anything that fits in this crazy world,” I answered, and leaped to my feet.
I was in bad humor. Things were at sixes and sevens, and besides, I had lost my pipe. This was not an unusual event, in fact, it is lost about half the time. But for this happy circumstance I know I should smoke too much.
I have an efficient friend, whose wife keeps her kitchen spoons arranged on revolving wooden cones, who suggested once that a simple solution of my difficulty would be to have two pipes. That is exactly what an efficient man would suggest, never stopping to consider the inconvenience of having to hunt for two lost pipes. One is bad enough.
I slouched into the garden and sat down on a bench. It had been exposed to the sun for some hours and was hot. I succeeded, however, in locating my pipe in an entirely improper and unorthodox pocket. I was rather sorry I found it, for my tobacco was moist and would not burn properly.
It soon became obvious that I could not remain where I was. I rose and started on an aimless round of my small estate. Never had it looked worse; never was there plainer evidence of a hundred sins of omission and commission. I bit my pipestem savagely as I passed the lilacs. Cerberus lay in a cool hollow in the shade. He glanced up at me and decided to remain where he was. That hurt me, but I would not call him, and I went on alone. The paddock was empty. That was good—no place for a horse in the boiling sun. I looked into the stable. Everything was wrong, too many stall windows closed; but I won’t open them. On through the gate—open, of course, in the face of definite orders to keep it closed. I won’t close it, but I will see about that later. I looked into the henhouse; nothing but drooping birds in utter dejection, save Mrs. Cuttle, who was rolling in drunken ecstasy in a dust hole in the yard.
I decided it was cooler in the house. Perhaps if I laid some tobacco on a newspaperin the sun for a time things would be better. I determined to try it.
As I approached I heard voices. There were white-clad figures in the garden—the dresses looked thin and cool. I caught the sound of laughter, gentle and well-bred, and the clink of ice in glass. For one moment I stood irresolute, and then I fled. Down past the strawberries I hurried. I crouched behind the rose trellis, and made the open. I did not want to run,—I might be observed,—so I assumed an air of importance and walked as rapidly as possible over the rough ground. I climbed the stone wall; a loose stone fell and scraped my ankle. I said something and hurried on. A great elm tree shades the corner of this pasture; I sank to the ground in sheer exhaustion beneath its extended branches. Now I was safe.
I took off my coat and tried to put it between my back and the tree. What a lot of nonsense, I thought, is talked about Mother Nature. I never lay on the ground comfortably in my life; something alwayspricks or tickles or crawls, and it is hard. Now a low chair in a shaded garden with a cool drink in a tall glass, that might—but no, I would rather lie here until numb with stiffness than go back now.
Why people you don’t care about insist on breaking into the privacy of people they don’t care about is a mystery to me. This whole fabric of social life is a tissue of pretense, an empty trading in social coin: a dinner for a dinner, a luncheon for a luncheon, a call for a call, with a sweeping clearance-sale once a year in the form of a crowded miscellaneous affair called a tea.
Those people there in the garden. I do not know who they are, but I can guess. I am well out of it; I am sure I am not interested in the domestic details of their lives, and they are all talking at once about their servants or their children. Unpleasant as my present situation is, I am quite content to stay here until they go and life returns to the pleasant channels of normal privacy.
I tried sitting up straight; I even tried to cross my legs, tailor-fashion—this provedan anatomical impossibility. I remembered the tobacco, rose, and laid some out on a stone near at hand. As I did so I heard the swish of grass, and the family cow moved placidly into the area of shade. With delicate deliberation she lay down, and we found ourselves face to face. If she was surprised she did not betray it. She looked at me with great liquid eyes as tranquil as a forest pool. I noticed her nose. How flat and big and wet and cool it looked! I decided she was a good-looking cow. I hope she is as good as she looks, for she constitutes the entire herd.
I have a friend, a most engaging person, who combines profound knowledge of a dozen sciences with an encyclopædic erudition in regard to cows. He asked me once if she was a grade cow. I said I did not know, but she had a curious metal tag in one ear. He explained the significance of the tag, and smiled. I like his smile—he has wonderful teeth—poor fellow, he does not smoke enough to ruin them.
There being nothing else to look at, Ilooked at Dolly. She was chewing her cud. The slow rhythmic precision of her technique fascinated me. I particularly admired the sideways movement of the lower jaw. She stopped; a gentle genuflection of the neck was noticeable; and she resumed. I had never had such a chance to observe a cow before and I made the most of it. I felt that I was seeing for the first time the noble dignity of her head, her broad fine brow, and above all the eyes, serene and beautiful.
She was tormented by flies, but she ignored them except for a lazy swish of her tail. A distant train whistled; a car screeched on the highway; she did not move, but chewed serenely on.
I found it growing cooler; the tobacco experiment was a success. I discovered an agreeable hollow in the ground and fitted myself comfortably into it.
I recalled those far-off bitter days when I did not own a cow, when her only substitute was the rattle of bottles in an alley at some grim hour before dawn. What fiendish delight the purveyor of those bottlestook in banging area gates! I have never known any early-morning milkmen intimately, but I have often wondered what their private lives might be. I suppose they enjoy the rights of citizenship—they may have homes—I wonder.
Then I looked at Dolly’s eyes again. I could not resist them. I recalled the age-old story of the maiden changed to a heifer by a jealous god. I noticed for the first time a look of imprisoned sadness in her eyes. There was a gadfly in that story too, I remembered, and it drove her into the sea. Unlike mortals, Dolly has evidently developed an immunity to gadflies.
What wonderful old stories those are! How young the world was, and how it has changed! All but Dolly; she is as she was, grazing on the slopes of Olympus. It is man who has hurried and worried himself from change to change until he can no longer see the beauty of the simple, lovely, unchanged thing.
How cool the breeze, how sweet the odor of the grass! The restless spring has passed.The year has grown; and now the full accomplishment of summer meets the eye. The season pauses, and for a few matchless weeks we see no change. Nature rests; her work is well-nigh done, and you are free to see it all if you will only look.
Dolly rose to her feet and turned slowly toward the bars. No need to clang the hour in jangling notes from tawdry towers; Dolly has met the tryst at the meadow gate ever since Pan piped the shepherd’s flocks to madness. I rose too, and we went together to the gate. I let down the bars and we stepped through. She stopped to crop a tuft of grass. I slid my arm over her neck, and through the meadow where I fled in haste we walked side by side with measured tread toward the sweet-smelling barn.
The demands of my small estate are modest, but I employ the services of one associate and fellow worker. He must be a man of varied talents and tireless industry and above all, for my entire satisfaction, he must be gifted with a sense of values, a feeling for the fitness of things. This is hard to find.
I hate to make a change, but occasionally it has to be done, and that involves the ordeal of interviewing applicants, a duty I loathe and perform badly. The interview always changes from an inquiry into the applicant’s fitness for the place into a lengthy apology on my part for the duties imposed. I have the courage, however, to make my decision hang on his answers to two questions. When last struggling with this problem I was called upon by a brisk young man who impressed me tremendously. He seemed the sort of person who would romp through his day’s work by noon and have the rest of the time to devote to the small details never attended to properly with me. I had made up my mind to entrust myself to his masterful direction. I paused before applying the final test; I eyed him narrowly.
“Do you milk?” I asked.
A deprecatory smile flittered across his face; that was all. The question was too absurd to require a verbal answer.
“Do you milk—reverently?” I asked.
“In my last place,” he answered, “we milked by electricity.”
I dismissed him. What a preposterous idea! I would as soon cultivate my roses with a caterpillar tractor.
The next applicant was an inefficient-looking elderly man with kind eyes. He had nice wrinkles. I count a great deal on wrinkles.
I asked him the crucial question. For one moment he searched my very soul with twinkling eyes.
“I try to,” he said.
And so the Incomparable One came.
As Dolly and I pass the rose trellis behind which I had skulked an hour before, I square my shoulders and walk upright like a man. Here Cerberus joins us. He rubs a cool, moist nose in the palm of my hand and trots quietly beside me.
Two khaki-clad little figures appear from the house, carrying between them a glittering pail. The Incomparable One springs from the earth somewhere, and we all meet on the gravel path before the door.
The Incomparable One, with a broken riding-crop as his badge and insignia of rank, takes my place and gently directs Dolly’s progress. We fall behind and wait outside till Dolly has drunk her fill and is standing in her accustomed place. Once, pail in hand, I had preceded her, but my error had been made plain to me, and I never transgressed again.
Dolly now in place, the Incomparable One returns. With hands and arms glistening from recent soapy ablutions, he takes the pail and holds it to the sun. He examines every inch of it critically and with deliberate care. The process is always observed by an Hibernian lady from a kitchen window with whole-hearted disapproval. This daily episode is the only incident in a busy life in which my perfect servitor is not the very flower of tact and discretion.
His examination complete, we go where Dolly waits. He takes his place on gently tilted stool; we stand one side. He pulls his rolled-back sleeves an inch higher, his great firm hands are rubbed together, andthen the fingers flex in smooth preparatory exercises. He leans forward and gently touches each teat in turn. From each he pulls a tiny lactic stream and lets it fall upon the clean rye straw beneath his feet. This is not done because—as held by some—the first milk contains more impurities than the rest; it is a libation, a propitiatory offering to whatever god there be who presides over the destinies of cattle and impecunious rural sentimentalists.
And now an upward glance. A little figure, each in daily turn, takes its place, and Dolly’s swinging tail is gently held at rest. The pail is raised to its position between extended knees, and all is ready. I notice that the milker adheres to the proper school. I do not hold, myself, for a position with the forehead of the milker pressed against the bovine flank; rather, I like to see the left knee gently touching the off hind leg. It is a satisfaction to see things done with a nice attention to detail.
And now we hear the first streams strike the bottom of the empty pail. The shrillstaccato of their impact is the overture, soon muffled by the increasing flood. The cadence slows; we are in the full orchestral swing by now. The milker’s bowed head is slowly raised, and, as the white foam nears the top, he looks aloft. He sways a bit on his tilted stool; his head moves gently back and forth like some inspired conductor carrying his musicians through the difficult passages of a mighty symphony. And now the beat quickens, the little streams leap into the rising tide of foam with soft lisping sounds. A final volley; then a few soft notes, long-drawn, and it is done.
The milker rises, flushed, triumphant. He casts a quick appraising glance at the pail.
“Half quart off to-night—the grass is getting dry,” he says.
Our messengers wait, and with the heavy pail between, carry our precious spoil kitchenward. Once, when the going was slippery, an accident occurred. But that is not spoken of now.
I glance about the tidy stable. How well he keeps it! Windows closed against thenoonday heat now open to cooling breezes of late afternoon. The little gate to the back land, swung hospitably open, invites me to explore its familiar mysteries. I visit the pigs and have a cheerful moment as I note that even here are care and cleanliness. The henhouse, freshly whitewashed, smells of lime, and sleek fat fowl are busy with fresh litter on a dry, clean floor. Cerberus is at my side; my pipe draws cool and sweet.
I remember the garden and the white-clad guests. I shake what dust I may from coat and trousers—I find the guests have lingered. The garden lies half shadowed; sweet flowering things in gay profusion line the soft green turf; a bluebird glides from treetop to tiny pool to drink and bathe.
Gracious ladies sit in gentle talk beneath the trees. I join them. I note with satisfaction that the group contains none save the choice elect. They know the easy give-and-take of talk. They have a feeling for silence, the one true test of gentle breeding. Their clothes, a mystery beyond my ken,are those I like—sheer, simple things with graceful lines; their hands, the firm, strong hands of ripened womanhood, with scant adornment. Tiny feet, well shod, are—like their hands—at rest. These four who so adorn the scene are the only ones I know who can sit still.
We talk, each as we choose: the homely task, the book, the play, the careless unthought talk of friends. I feel an utter thankfulness: my lines in very truth have fallen in the pleasantest of places. And well may I be thankful, for many moons may wax and wane before this group, by happy accident, shall meet again in perfect mood and perfect weather. And to think I almost missed it! What brought me back? What happened over yonder, ’neath the tree where Dolly grazed?
The shadows lengthen. One by one, with laughing eyes, the guests betake themselves to homes made blessed by their presence. And now we sit in silence. Back from duties well performed, the children come. Tired little bodies seek the softness of theclose-cropped grass. Cerberus sees that all is well, and sinks to slumber by my chair.
Peace, perfect peace, comes with the setting sun.
The evening meal is ready. Grudgingly we leave the glamour of the hour. As we cross the grass, a voice says, “I am glad you joined us. It was pleasant.”
And as I stop to fondle Cerberus at the door I think I hear—I am not sure—the same voice saying, in a soft aside, “So, blessed be the cow.”
Kids carrying pail