"Jonathan, let's not have a garden."
"What'll we live on if we don't?"
"Oh, of course, I don't mean that kind of a garden,—peas and potatoes and things,— I mean flowers. Let's not have a flower garden."
"That seems easy enough to manage," he ruminated; "the hard thing would be to have one."
"I know. And what's the use? There are always flowers enough, all around us, from May till October. Let's just enjoy them."
"I always have."
I looked at him to detect a possible sarcasm in the words, but his face was innocent.
"Well, of course, so have I. But what I mean is—people when they have a country place seem to spend such a lot of energy doing things for themselves that nature is doing for them just over the fence. There was ChristabelVincent last summer, grubbing over yellow lilies, or something, and I went over into the meadow and got a lovely armful of lilies and brought them in, and no grubbing at all."
"Perhaps grubbing was what she was after," said Jonathan.
"Well, anyway, she talked as if it was lilies."
"I don't know that that matters," he said.
Jonathan is sometimes so acute about my friends that it is almost annoying.
This conversation was one of many that occurred the winter before we took up the farm. We went up in April that year, and we planted our corn and our potatoes and all the rest, but no flowers. That part we left to nature, and she responded most generously. From earliest spring until October—nay, November—we were never without flowers: brave little white saxifrage and hepaticas, first of all, then bloodroot and arbutus, adder's-tongue and columbine, shad-blow and dogwood, and all the beloved throng of them, at our feet and overhead. In May the pink azalea and the buttercups, in June thelaurel and the daisies and—almost best of all—the dear clover. In summer the deep woods gave us orchids, and the open meadows lilies and black-eyed Susans. In September the river-banks and the brooks glowed for us with cardinal-flower and the blue lobelia, and then, until the frosts settled into winter, there were the fringed gentians and the asters and the goldenrod. And still the half has not been told. If I tried to name all that gay company, my tale would be longer than Homer's catalogue of the ships.
In early July a friend brought me in a big bunch of sweet peas. I buried my face in their sweetness; then, as I held them off, I sighed.
"Oh, dear!" I said.
"What's 'oh, dear'?" said Jonathan, as he took off his ankle-clips. He had just come up from the station on his bicycle.
"Nothing. Only why do people have magenta sweet peas with red ones and pink ones—that special pink? It's just the color of pink tooth-powder."
"You might throw away the ones you don't like."
"No, I can't do that. But why does anybodygrow them? If I had sweet peas, I'd have white ones, and pale lavender ones, and those lovely salmon-pink ones, and maybe some pale yellow ones—"
"Sweet peas have to be planted in March," said Jonathan, as he trundled his wheel off toward the barn.
"Of course," I called after him, "I'm notgoingto plant any. I was only sayingif."
Perhaps the sweet peas began it, but I really think the whole thing began with the phlox.
One afternoon in August I walked down the road through the woods to meet Jonathan. As he came up to me and dismounted I held out to him a spray of white phlox.
"Where do you suppose I found it?" I asked.
"Down by the old Talcott place," he hazarded.
"No. There is some there, but this was growing under our crab-apple trees, right beside the house."
"Well, now, it must have been some of Aunt Deborah's. I remember hearing Uncle Ben say she used to have her garden there;that must have been before he started the crab orchard. Why, that phlox can't be less than forty years old, anyway."
"Dear me!" I took back the delicate spray; "it doesn't look it."
"No. Don't you wish you could look like that when you're forty?" he philosophized; and added, "Is there much of it?"
"Five or six roots, but there won't be many blossoms, it's so shady."
"We might move it and give it a chance."
"Let's! We'll dig it up this fall, and put it over on the south side of the house, in that sunny open place."
When October came, we took Aunt Deborah's phlox and transplanted it to where it could get the sunshine it had been starving for all those years. I sat on a stump and watched Jonathan digging the holes.
"You don't suppose Henry will cut them down for weeds when they come up, do you?" I said.
"Seems probable," said Jonathan. "You might stick in a few bulbs that'll come up early and mark the spot."
"Oh, yes. And we could put a line of sweetalyssum along each side, to last along after the bulbs are over."
"You can do that in the spring if you want to. I'll bring up some bulbs to-morrow."
The winter passed and the spring came—sweet, tormenting.
"Jonathan," I said at luncheon one day, "I got the sweet alyssum seed this morning.
"Sweet alyssum?" He looked blank. "What do you want sweet alyssum for? It's a foolish flower. I thought you weren't going to have a garden, anyway."
"I'm not; but don't you remember about the phlox? We said we'd put in some sweet alyssum to mark it—so it wouldn't get cut down."
"The bulbs will do that, and when they're gone it will be high enough to show."
"Well, I have the seed, and I might as well use it. It won't do any harm."
"No. I don't believe sweet alyssum ever hurt anybody," said Jonathan.
That evening when he came in I met him in the hall. I had the florist's catalogue inmy hand. "Jonathan, it says English daisies are good for borders."
"Borders! What do you want of borders?"
"Why, up on the farm—the phlox, you know."
"Oh, the phlox. I thought you had sweet alyssum for a border."
He took off his coat and I drew him into the study.
"Why, yes, but that was such a little package. I don't believe there would be enough. And I thought I could try the English daisies, too, and if one didn't do well perhaps the other would. And look what it says— No, never mind the newspaper yet—there isn't any news—just look at this about pansies."
"Pansies! You don't wantthemfor a border!"
"Why, no, not exactly. But, you see, the phlox won't blossom till late August, and it says that if you plant this kind of pansies very early, they blossom in June, and then if you cover them they live over and blossom again the next May. And pansies are so lovely! Look at that picture! Don't you love those French-blue ones?"
"I like pansies. I don't know about the nationalities," said Jonathan. "Of course, if you want to bother with them, go ahead." He picked up his paper.
"Oh, it won't be any bother. They take care of themselves. Please, your pencil— I'm going to mark the colors I want."
We went up soon after to look at the farm. We found it very much as we had left it, except that there hung about it that indescribable something we call spring. We tramped about on the spongy ground, and sniffed the sweet air, and looked at the apple buds, and kicked up the soft, matted maple leaves to see the grass starting underneath.
"Oh, Jonathan! Our bulbs!" I exclaimed. We hurried over to them and lifted up the thick blanket of leaves and hay we had left over them. "Look! A crocus!" I said.
"And here's a snowdrop! Let's take off these leaves and give them a chance."
"Dear me!" I sighed; "isn't it wonderful? To think those hard little bullets we put in last fall should do all this! And here's the phlox just starting—look—"
"Oh, you can't kill phlox," said Jonathan imperturbably.
"All the better. I hate not giving people credit for things just because they come natural."
"That is a curious sentence," said Jonathan.
"Never mind. You know what I mean. You've understood a great many more curious ones than that. Listen, Jonathan. Why couldn't I put in my seeds now? I brought them along."
"Why—yes—it's pretty early for anything but peas, but you can try, of course. What are they? Sweet alyssum and pansy?"
"Yes—and I did get a few sweet peas too," I hesitated. "I thought Henry hadn't much to do yet, and perhaps he could make a trench—you know it needs a trench."
"Yes, I know," said Jonathan. I think he smiled. "Let's see your seeds."
"They're at the house. Come over to the south porch, where it's warm, and we'll plan about them."
I opened the bundle and laid out the little packets with their gay pictures indicating what the seeds within might be expected todo. "Sweet alyssum and pansies," I said, "and here are the sweet peas."
Jonathan took them—"'Dorothy Eckford, Lady Grisel Hamilton, Gladys Unwin, Early Dawn, White Spencer,' By George! you mean to keep Henry busy! Here's ten ounces of peas!"
"They were so much cheaper by the ounce," I murmured.
"And—hold up! Did you know they gave you some asters? These aren't sweet peas."
"No—I know—but I thought—you see, sweet peas are over by August, and asters go on all through October—don't you remember what lovely ones Christabel had?"
"Hm! But isn't the world full of asters, anyway, in September and October, without your planting any more?" He grinned a little. "I thought that was your idea—you said Christabel grubbed so."
"Why, yes; but asters aren't any trouble. You just put them in—"
"And weed them."
"Yes—and weed them; but I wouldn't mind that."
"But here's some larkspur!"
"Yes, but I didn't buy that," I explained, hurriedly. "Christabel sent me that. She thought I might like some from her garden—she has such lovely larkspurs, don't you remember? And I just brought them along."
"Yes. So I see. Is that all you've just brought along?"
"Yes—except the cosmos. The florist advised that, and I thought there might be a place for it over by the fence. And of course we needn't use it if we don't want to. I can give it to Mrs. Stone."
"But here's some nasturtiums!"
"Oh—I forgot about them—but I didn't buy them either. They came from the Department of Agriculture or something. There were some carrots and parsnips, and things like that, too, all in a big brown envelope. I knew you had all the other things you wanted, so I just brought these. But of course I don't have to plantthem, either."
"But you don't like nasturtiums. You've always said they made you think of railway stations and soldiers' homes—"
"Well, I did use to feel that way,—anchorsand crosses and rock-work on big shaved lawns,—and, besides, nasturtiums always seemed to be the sort of flowers that people picked with short stems, and tied up in a wad, and stuck in a blue-glass goblet, and set on a table with a red cover on it. I did have horrible associations with nasturtiums."
"Then why in thunder do you plant them?"
"I only thought—if there was a drought this summer—you know they don't mind drought; Millie Sutphen told me that. And she had a way of cutting them with long stems, so they trailed, and they were really lovely. And then—there the packagewas—I thought it wouldn't do any harm to take it."
"Oh, you don't have to apologize," said Jonathan. "I didn't understand your plan, that was all. I'll go and see Henry about the trench."
I sat on the sunny porch and the March wind swept by the house on each side of me. I gloated over my seed packets. Would they come up? Of course other people's seeds cameup, but would mine? It was very exciting. I pinched open a corner of the Lady Grisel Hamiltons and poured some of the pretty, smooth, fawn-colored balls into my hand. Then I opened the cosmos—what funny long thin ones! How long should I have to wait till they began to come up? I read the directions—"Plant when all danger from frost is past." Oh, dear! that meant May—another whole month! Well, I would get in my sweet peas and risk my pansies and alyssum, anyhow. And I jumped off the porch and went back to the phlox to plan out my campaign.
By early May we were settled on the farm once more. My pansies and alyssum were up—at least I believed they were up, but I spent many minutes of each day kneeling by them and studying the physiognomy of their cotyledons. I led Jonathan out to them one Sunday morning, and he regarded them with indulgence if not with enthusiasm. As he stooped to throw out a bunch of pebbles in one of the new beds I stopped him. "Oh, don't! Those are my Mizpah stones."
"Your what!"
"Why, just some little stones to mark a place. Some of the nasturtiums are there. I didn't know whether they were going to do anything—they looked so like chips—and then, being sent free that way—but they are.
"How do you know? They aren't up."
"No, but they will be soon. I—why, I just thought I'd see what they were doing."
"So you dug them up?" he probed.
"Not them—justit—just one. That's why I marked the place. I didn't want to keep disturbing different ones. Now whatareyou laughing at? Wouldn't you have wanted to know? And you wouldn't want to dig up different ones all the time! I don't know much about gardening, but—"
"I'm not laughing," said Jonathan. "Of course I should have wanted to know. And it is certainly better not to dig up different ones. There! Have I put your Mizpah back right?"
A few days later Jonathan wheeled into the yard and over near where I was kneelingby the phlox. "I saw a lady-slipper bud almost out to-day," he said.
"Did you? Look at my sweet alyssum. It's grown an inch since yesterday," I said. "Don't you think I could plant my cosmos and asters now?"
"Thunder!" said Jonathan; "don't you care more about the pink lady-slipper than about your blooming little sweet alyssum?"
"Why, yes, of course. Ilovelady-slippers. You know I do," I protested; "only—you see—I can't explain exactly—but—it seems to make a difference when you plant a thing yourself. And, oh, Jonathan! Won't youpleasecome here and tell me if these are young pansies or only plantain? I'm so afraid of pulling up the wrong thing. I do wish somebody would make a book with pictures of all the cotyledons of all the different plants. It's so confusing. Millie had an awful time telling marigold from ragweed last summer. She had to break off a tip of each leaf and taste it. Why do you just stand there looking like that? Please come and help."
But Jonathan did not move. He stood, leaning on his wheel, regarding me with openamusement, and possibly a shade of disapproval.
"Lord!" he finally remarked; "you've got it!"
"Got what?" I said, though I knew.
"The garden germ."
Yes. There was no denying it. I had it. I have it still, and there is very little chance of my shaking it off. It is a disease that grows with what it feeds on. Now and then, indeed, I make a feeble fight against its inroads: I will not have another flower-bed, I will not have any more annuals, I will have only things that live on from year to year and take care of themselves. But—
"Alas, alas, repentance oft beforeI swore—but was I sober when I swore?And then—and then—came spring—"
and the florist's catalogues! And is any one who has once given way to them proof against the seductions of those catalogues? Those asters! Those larkspurs! Those foxgloves and poppies and Canterbury bells! All that ravishing company, mine at the price of a few cents and a little grubbing. Mine! There isthe secret of it. Out in the great and wonderful world beyond my garden, nature works her miracles constantly. She lays her riches at my feet; they are mine for the gathering. But to work these miracles myself,—to have my own little hoard that looks to me for tending, for very life,—that is a joy by itself. My little garden bed gives me something that all the luxuriance of woods and fields can never give—not better, not so good, perhaps, but different. Once having known the thrill of watching the first tiny shoot from a seed that I have planted myself, once having followed it to leaf and flower and seed again, I can never give it up.
My garden is not very big nor very beautiful. Perhaps the stretch of rocks and grass and weeds beside the house—an expanse which not even the wildest flight of the imagination could call a lawn—perhaps this might be more pleasing if the garden were not there, but it is there, and there it will stay. It means much grubbing. Just putting in seeds and then weeding is, I find, no mere affair of rhetoric. Moreover, I am introduced through my garden to an entirely new set of troubles:beetles and cutworms and moles and hens and a host of marauding creatures above ground and below, whose number and energy amaze me. And each summer seems to add to their variety and resourcefulness. Clearly, the pleasures of a garden are not commensurate with its pains. And yet—
But there is one kind of joy which it gives me at which even the Scoffer—to wit, Jonathan—does not scoff. It began with Aunt Deborah's phlox. Then came Christabel's larkspur. The next summer Mrs. Stone sent me over some of her hardy little fall asters—"artemishy," she called them. And Anne Stafford sent on some hollyhock seeds culled from Emerson's garden. And Great-Aunt Sarah was dividing her peony roots, and said I might take one. And Cousin Patty asked me if I wouldn't like some of her mother's old-fashioned pinks. And so it goes.
And so it will go, I hope, to the end of the long day. Each year my garden has in it more of my friends, and as I look at it I can adopt poor Ophelia's pretty speech in a new meaning, and say, "Larkspur—that's for remembrance; hollyhocks—that's forthoughts." Remembrance of all those dear other gardens which I have come to know, and in whose beauties I am coming to have a share; thoughts of all those dear other gardeners upon whom, as upon me, the miracle of the seed has laid a spell from which they can never escape.
I have never been able to discover why it is that things always happen Sunday morning. We mean to get to church. We speak of it almost every Sunday, unless there is a steady downpour that puts it quite out of the question. But, somehow, between nine and ten o'clock on a Sunday morning seems to be the farm's busiest time. If there are new broods of chickens, they appear then; if there is a young calf coming, it is his birthday; if the gray cat—an uninvited resident of the barn—must go forth on marauding expeditions, he chooses this day for his evil work, and the air is rent with shrieks of robins, or of cat-birds, or of phœbes, and there is a wrecked nest, and scattered young ones, half-fledged, that have to be gathered into a basket and hung up in the tree again by our united efforts. And always there is the same conversation:
"Well, what about church?"
"Church! It's half-past ten now."
"We can't do it. Too bad!"
"Now, if it hadn't been for that cat!"—or that hen—or that calf!
There are many Sunday morning stories that might be told, but one must be told.
It was a hot, still Sunday in July. The hens sought the shade early, and stood about with their beaks half open and a distant look in their eyes, as if they saw you but chose to look just beyond you. It always irritates me to see the hens do that. It makes me feel hotter. Such a day it was. But things on the farm seemed propitious, and we said at breakfast that we would go.
"I've just got to take that two-year-old Devon down to the lower pasture," said Jonathan, "and then I'll harness. We ought to start early, because it's too hot to drive Kit fast."
"Do you think you'd better take the cow down this morning?" I said, doubtfully. "Couldn't you wait until we come back?"
"No; that upper pasture is getting burned out, and she ought to get into some goodgrass this morning. I meant to take her down last night."
"Well, do hurry." I still felt dubious.
"Oh, it's only five minutes' walk down the road," said Jonathan easily. "I'm all ready for church, except for these shoes. I'll have the carriage at the door before you're dressed."
I said no more, but went upstairs, while Jonathan started for the barnyard. A few minutes later I heard from that direction the sounds of exhortation such as are usually employed towards "critters." They seemed to be coming nearer. I glanced out of a front window, and saw Jonathan and his cow coming up the road past the house.
"Where are you taking her?" I called. "I thought you meant to go the other way."
"So I did," he shouted, in some irritation. "But she swung up to the right as she went out of the gate, and I couldn't head her off in time. Oh, there's Bill Russell. Head her round, will you, Bill? There, now we're all right."
"I'll be back in ten minutes," he called up at my window as he repassed.
I watched them go back up the road. At the big farm gate the cow made a break for the barnyard again, but the two men managed to turn her. Just beyond, at the fork in the road, I saw Bill turn down towards the cider-mill, while Jonathan kept on with his convoy over the hill. I glanced at the clock. It was not yet nine. There was plenty of time, of course.
At half-past nine I went downstairs again, and wandered out toward the big gate. It seemed to me time for Jonathan to be back. In the Sunday hush I thought I heard sounds of distant "hi-ing." They grew louder; yes, surely, there was the cow, just appearing over the hill and trotting briskly along the road towards home. And there was Jonathan, also trotting briskly. He looked red and warm. I stepped out into the road to keep the cow from going past, but there was no need. She swung cheerfully in at the big gate, and fell to cropping the long grass just inside the fence.
Jonathan slowed down beside me, and, pulling out his handkerchief, began flapping the dust off his trousers while he explained:—
"You see, I got her down there all right, but I had to let down the bars, and while Iwas doing that she went along the road a bit, and when she saw me coming she just kicked up her heels and galloped."
"How did you stop her?" I asked.
"I didn't. The Maxwells were coming along with their team, and they headed her back for me. Then they went on. Only by that time, you see, she was a bit excited, and when we came along back to those bars she shot right past them, and never stopped till she got here."
I looked at her grazing quietly inside the fence. "She doesn't look as though she had done so much,"—and then, as I glanced at Jonathan, I could not forbear saying,—"but you do."
"I suppose I do." He gave his trousers a last flick, and, putting up his handkerchief, shifted his stick to his right hand.
"Well, put her back in the inner yard," I said, "and this afternoon I'll help you."
"Put her back!" said Jonathan. "Not much! You don't think I'd let a cow beat me that way!"
"But Jonathan, it's half-past nine!"
"What of it? I'll just work her slowly—she'squiet now, you see, and the bars are open. There won't be any trouble."
"Oh, I wish you wouldn't," I said. But, seeing he was firm, "Well, if youwillgo, I'll harness."
Jonathan looked at me ruefully. "That's too bad—you're all dressed." He wavered, but I would take no concessions based on feminine equipment. "Oh, that doesn't matter. I'll get my big apron. First you start her out, and I'll keep her from going towards the house or down to the mill."
Jonathan sidled cautiously through the gate and around the grazing cow. Then, with a gentle and ingratiating "Hi there, Bossie!" he managed to turn her, still grazing, towards the road. While the grass held out she drifted along easily enough, but when she reached the dirt of the roadway she raised her head, flicked her tail, and gave a little hop with her hind quarters that seemed to me indicative of an unquiet spirit. But I stood firm and Jonathan was gently urgent, and we managed to start her on the right road once more. She was not, however, going as slowly as Jonathan had planned, and it was with some misgivings thatI donned my apron and went in to harness Kit. I led her around to the carriage-house and put her into the buggy, and still he had not returned. I got out the lap robe, shook it, and folded it neatly on the back of the seat. No Jonathan! There was nothing more for me to do, so I took off my apron and climbed into the carriage to wait. The carriage-house was as cool a place as one could have found. Both its big sliding doors were pushed back, one opening out toward the front gate, the other, opposite, opening into the inner barnyard. I sat and looked out over the rolling, sunny country and felt the breeze, warm, but fresh and sweet, and listened to the barn swallows in the barnyard behind me, and wondered, as I have wondered a thousand times, why in New England the outbuildings always have so much better views than the house.
Ten o'clock! WherewasJonathan? The Morehouses drove past, then the Elkinses; they went to the Baptist. Ten minutes past! There went the O'Neils—they belonged to our church—and the Scrantons, and Billy Howard and his sister, driving fast as usual;they were always late. Quarter-past ten! Well, we might as well give up church. I thought of unharnessing, but I was very comfortable where I was, and Kit seemed contented as she stood looking out of the door. Hark! What was that? It sounded like the beat of hoofs in the lane—the cattle wouldn't come up at this hour! I stood up to see past the inner barnyard and off down the lane. "What on earth!" I said to myself. For—yes—surely—that was the two-year-old Devon coming leisurely up the lane towards the yard. In a few moments Jonathan's head appeared, then his shoulders, then his entire dusty, discouraged self. Yes, somehow or other, they must have made the round trip. As this dawned upon me, I smiled, then I laughed, then I sat down and laughed again till I was weak and tearful. It was cruel, and by the time Jonathan had reached the carriage-house and sunk down on its threshold I had recovered enough to be sorry for him. But I was unfortunate in my first remark. "Why, Jonathan," I gasped, "whathaveyou been doing with that cow?"
Jonathan mopped his forehead. "Havingiced tea under the trees. Couldn't you see that to look at me?" he replied, almost savagely.
"You poor thing! I'll make you some when we go in. But do tell me, how did youeverget around here again from the back of the farm that way?"
"Easy enough," said Jonathan. "I drove her along to the pasture in great shape, only we were going a little fast. She tried to dodge the bars, but I turned her in through them all right. But some idiot had left the bars down at the other end of the pasture—between that and the back lots, you know—and that blamed cow went for that opening, just as straight—"
I began to shake again. "Oh, that brought you out by the huckleberry knoll, and the ledges! Why, she could go anywhere!"
"She could, and she did," said Jonathan grimly. He leaned back against the doorpost, immersed in bitter reminiscence. "She—certainly—did. I chased her up the ledges and through the sumachs and down through the birches and across the swamp. Oh, we did the farm, the whole blamed farm. What time is it?"
"Half-past ten," I said gently; and added, "What are you going to do with her now?"
His jaw set in a fashion I knew.
"I'm going to put her in that lower pasture."
I saw it was useless to protest. Church was a vanished dream, but I began to fear that Sunday dinner was also doomed. "Do you want me to help?" I asked.
"Oh, no," said Jonathan. "I'll put her in the barn till I can get a rope, and then I'll lead her."
However, I did help get her into the barn. Then while he went for his rope I unharnessed. When he came back, he had changed into a flannel shirt and working trousers. He entered the barn and in a few moments emerged, pulling hard on the rope. Nothing happened.
"Go around the other way," he called, "and take a stick, and poke that cow till she starts."
I went in at the back door, slid between the stanchions into the cow stall, and gingerly poked at the animal's hind quarters and said, "Hi!" until at last, with a hunching of hipsand tossing of head, she bounded out into the sunny barnyard.
"She'll be all right now," said Jonathan.
I watched them doubtfully, but they got through the bars and as far as the road without incident. At the road she suddenly balked. She twisted her horns and set her front legs. I hurried down from my post of observation in the carriage-house door, and said "Hi!" again.
"That's no good," panted Jonathan; "get your stick again. Now, when I pull, you hit her behind, and she'll come. I guess she hasn't been taught to lead yet."
"If she has, she has apparently forgotten," I replied. "Now, then, you pull!"
The creature moved on grudgingly, with curious and unlovely sidewise lunges and much brandishing of horns, where the rope was tied.
"Hit her again, now!" said Jonathan. "Oh,hither! Hit her harder! She doesn't feel that.Hither! There! Now, she's coming."
Truly, she did come. But I am ashamed to think how I used that stick. As we progressed up the road, over the hill, and down to thelower pasture, there kept repeating themselves over and over in my head the lines:—
"The sergeant pushed and the corporal pulled,And the three they wagged along."
But I did not quote these to Jonathan until afterwards. There was something else, too, that I did not quote until afterwards. This was the remark of a sailor uncle of mine: "A man never tackled a job yet that he didn't have to have a woman to hold on to the slack."
So much for Sunday business. But it should not for a moment be supposed that Sunday is full of these incidents. It is only for a little while in the morning. After the church hour, about eleven o'clock or earlier, the farm settles down. The "critters" are all attended to, the chicks are stowed, the cat has disappeared, the hens have finished all their important business and are lying on their sides in their favorite dirt-holes enjoying their dust-baths, so still, yet so disheveled that I used to think they were dead, and poke them to see—with what cacklings and flutterings resulting may be imagined.I have often wished for the hen's ability to express indignation.
Yes, the farm is at peace, and as we sit under the big maples it seems to be reproaching us—"See how quiet everything is! And you couldn't even manage church!"
Other people seem to manage it very comfortably and quite regularly. On Sunday morning our quiet little road, unfrequented even by the ubiquitous automobile, is gay with church-goers. "Gay" may seem the wrong word, but it is quite the right one. In the city church-going is rather a sober affair. People either walk or take cars. They wear a certain sort of clothes, known as "church clothes," which represent a sort of hedging compromise between their morning and their afternoon wear. They approach the church in decorous silence; as they emerge they exchange subdued greetings, walk a block or two in little companies, then scatter to their homes and their Sunday dinners.
But in the country everybody but the village people drives, and the roads are full of teams,—buggies, surreys, phaetons,—the carriages newly washed, the horses freshlygroomed, the occupants scrupulously dressed in the prettiest things they own—their "Sunday-go-to-meeting" ones, which means something quite different from "church clothes." As one nears the village there is some friendly rivalry between horses, there is the pleasure of "catching up" with neighbors' teams, or of being caught up with, and at the church door there is the business of alighting and hitching the horses, and then, if it is early, waiting about outside for the "last bell" before going in.
Even in the church itself there is more freedom and variety than in our city tabernacles. In these there are always the same memorial windows to look at,—except perhaps once in ten years when somebody dies and a new one goes in,—but in the country stained glass is more rare. In many it has not even gained place at all, and the panes of clear glass let in a glory of blueness and whiteness and greenness to rejoice the heart of the worshiper. In others, more ambitious, alas! there is ground glass with tinted borders; but this is not very disturbing, especially when the sashes are set open aslant, and the ivy andVirginia creeper cluster just outside, in bright greens and dark, or cast their shifting shadows on the glass, a dainty tracery of gray on silver.
And at the altar there are flowers—not florist flowers, contracted for by the year, but neighborhood flowers. There are Mrs. Cummings's peonies—she always has such beauties; and Mrs. Hiram Brown's roses—nobody else has any of just that shade of yellow; and Mary Lord's foxgloves and larkspur—what a wonder of yellow and white and blue! Each in its season, the flowers are full of personal significance. The choir, too, is made up of our friends. There is Hiram Brown, and Jennie Sewall, and young Mrs. Harris, back for three weeks to visit her mother, and little Sally Winter, a shy new recruit, very pink over her promotion. The singing is perhaps not as finished as that of a paid quartette, but it is full of life and sweetness, and it makes a direct human appeal that the other often misses.
After the service people go out slowly, waiting for this friend and that, and in the vestibule and on the steps and in the church-yard they gather in groups. The men saunteroff to the sheds to get the horses, and the women chat while they wait. Then the teams come up, as many as the roadway will hold, and there is the bustle of departure, the taking of seats, the harsh grinding of wheels against the wagon body as the driver "cramps" to turn round, then good-byes, and one after another the teams start off, out into the open country for another week of quiet, busy farm life.
Yes, church is distinctively a social affair, and very delightful, and when our cows and hens and calves and other "critters" do not prevent, we are glad to have our part in it all. When they do, we yet feel that we have a share in it simply through seeing "the folks" go by. It is a distinct pleasure to see our neighbors trundling along towards the village. And then, if luck has been against us and we cannot join them, it is a pleasure to lie in the grass and listen to the quiet. After the last church-goers have passed, the road is deserted for two hours, until they begin to return. The neighboring farms are quiet, the "folks" are away, or, if some of the men are at home, they are sitting on their doorsteps smoking.
If there is no wind, or if it is in the right quarter, we can hear the church bells, faintly now, and now very clear; there is the First Church bell, and the Baptist; there is St. John's, on a higher note, and Trinity, a little lower. After a time even the bells cease, and there is no sound but the wind in the big maples and the bees as they drone among the flower heads.
Sunday, at least Sunday on a Connecticut farm, has a distinct quality of its own. I can hardly say what it means to me—no one, I suppose, could say all that it means. To call it a day of rest does not individualize it enough. It has to be described not so much in terms of rest as of balance and height. I think of the week as a long, sweeping curve, like the curve of a swift, deep wave at sea, and Sunday is the crest, the moment of poise, before one is drawn down into the next great concave, then up again, to pause and look off, and it is Sunday once more.
The weather does not matter. If it rains, you get one kind of pause and outlook—the intimate, indoor kind. If the sun shines, you get another kind—wide and bright. Andwhat you do does not matter so long as it is different from the week, and so long as it expresses and develops that peculiar Sunday quality of balance and height. I can imagine nothing drearier than seven days all alike, and seven more, and seven more! Sundays are the big beads on the chain. They need not be all of the same color, but there must be the big beads to satisfy the eye and the finger-tip.
And a New England Sunday always is different. Whatever changes may have come or may be coming elsewhere, in New England Sunday has its own atmosphere. Over the fields and woods and rocks there is a sense of poise between reminiscence and expectancy. The stir of the morning church-going brightens but does not mar this. It adds the human note—rather not a note, but a quiet chord of many tones. And after it comes a hush. The early afternoon of a New England Sunday is the most absolutely quiet thing imaginable. It is the precise middle of the wave crest, the moment when motion ceases.
From that point time begins to stir again. Life resumes. There is a certain amount of desultory intercourse between farm and farm.If people are engaged, or mean to be, they drive out together; if they are married, they go home to "his folks" or "her folks." Friends walk together, farmers saunter along the road or back on the farms to "take a look" at things. Consciously or not, and usually not, there is a kind of synthesis taking place, a gathering together of the scattered threads of many interests, a vague sense of the wholeness of life.
At five o'clock the cows turn towards home, and graze their leisurely way along the barnyard lanes. And with the cows come duties,—chore-time,—then the simple, cold supper, then the short, quiet evening, and off we swing into the night that sweeps us away from the crest down into the long, blind hollow of the week.
There is a story about an artist who espied a picturesque old man and wished to paint him. At the time appointed the model arrived—new-shaven, new-washed, freshly attired, with all the delicious and incommunicable flavor of the years irretrievably lost! Doubtless there are many such stories; doubtless the thing has happened many, many times. And I am sorrier for the artist now than I used to be, because it is happening to me.
Only it is not an old man—it is the farm, the blessed old farm, unkempt, unshorn, out at the elbows. In spite of itself, in spite of me, in spite of everybody, the farm is being groomed.
It is nobody's fault, of course. Like most hopelessly disastrous things, it has all been done with the best possible intentions, perhaps it has even been necessary, but it is none the less deplorable.
It began, I think, with the sheds. They had in ages past been added one after another by a method of almost unconscious accretion, as the chambered nautilus makes his shell. They looked as if they had been, not exactly built, but rather laid together in the desultory, provisional fashion of the farmer, and held by an occasional nail, or the natural adhesion of the boards themselves. They leaned confidingly against the great barn and settled comfortably among the bare faces of rock in the barnyard, as if they had always been there, as, indeed, they had been there longer than any one now living can remember. Neither they nor the barn had ever been painted, and they had all weathered to a silver-gray—not the gray of any paint or stain ever made, but the gray that comes only to certain kinds of wood when it has lived out in the rain and the sunshine for fifty, seventy, a hundred years. It is to an old building what white hair is to an old lady. And as not all white hair is beautiful, so not all gray buildings are beautiful. But these were beautiful. When it rained, they grew dark and every knot-hole showed. When the sun came out and baked them dry, theypaled to silver, and the smooth, rain-worn grooves and hollows of the boards glistened like a rifle barrel.
The sheds were, I am afraid, not very useful. One, they said, had been built to hold ploughs, another for turkeys, another for ducks. One, the only one that was hen-tight, we used for the incarceration of confirmed "setters," and it thus gained the title of "Durance Vile." The rest were nameless, the abode of cobwebs and rats and old grain-bags and stolen nests and surprise broods of chickens, who dropped through cracks between loose boards and had to be extracted by Jonathan with much difficulty. Perhaps it was this that set him against them. At all events, he decided that they must go. I protested faintly, trying to think of some really sensible argument.
"But Durance Vile," I said. "We need that. Where shall we put the setters?"
"No, we don't. That isn't the way to treat setters, anyway. They should be cooped and fed on meat."
"I suppose you read that in one of those agricultural experiment station pamphlets," I said.
Many things that I consider disasters on the farm can be traced to one or another of these little pamphlets, and when a new one arrives I regard it with resignation but without cordiality.
The sheds went, and I missed them. Possibly the hens missed them too. They wandered thoughtfully about the barnyard, stepping rather higher than usual, cocking their heads and regarding me with their red-rimmed eyes as if they were cluckfully conjuring up old associations. Did they remember Durance Vile? Perhaps, but probably not. For all their philosophic airs and their attitudinizing, I know nobody who thinks less than a hen, or, at all events, their thinking is contemplative rather than practical.
Jonathan also surveyed the raw spot. But Jonathan's mind is practical rather than contemplative.
"Just the place for a carriage-house," he remarked.
And the carriage-house was perpetrated. Perhaps a hundred years from now it will have been assimilated, but at present it stands out absolutely undigested in all itsuncompromising newness of line and color. Its ridgepole, its roof edges, its corners, look as if they had been drawn with a ruler, where those of the old barn were sketched freehand. The barn and the sheds had settled into the landscape, the carriage-house cut into it.
Even Jonathan saw it. "We'll paint it the old-fashioned red to make it more in keeping," he said apologetically.
But old-fashioned red is apparently not to be had in new-fashioned cans. And the farm remained implacable: it refused to digest the carriage-house. I felt rather proud of the farm for being so firm.
The next blow was a heavy one. In the middle of the cowyard there was a wonderful gray rock, shoulder high, with a flat top and three sides abrupt, the other sloping. I used to sit on this rock and feed the hens and watch the "critters" come into the yard at milking-time. I like "critters," but when there are more than two or three in the yard, including some irresponsible calves, I like to have some vantage-point from which to view them—and be viewed. Our cattle are always gentle, but some of them are, to use a colloquial wordthat seems to me richly descriptive, so "nose-y."
Of course a rock like this did not belong in a well-planned barnyard. Nowhere, except in New England, or perhaps in Switzerland, would one occur. But in our part of New England they occur so thickly that they are hard to dodge, even in building a house. I remember an entry in an old ledger discovered in the attic: "To blasten rocks in my sollor—£0 3 6."
Without doubt the rock was in the way. Jonathan used to speak about it in ungentle terms every time he drove in and turned around. But this gave me no anxiety, because I felt sure that it had survived much stronger language than his. I did not think about dynamite. Probably when the Psalmist wrote about the eternal hills he did not think about dynamite either.
And dynamite did the deed. It broke my pretty rock into little pieces as one might break up a chunk of maple sugar with a pair of scissors. It made a beautiful barnyard, but I missed my refuge, my stronghold.
But this was only the beginning. Back ofthe barns lay the farm itself—scores of acres, chiefly rocks and huckleberry bushes, with thistles and mullein and sumac. There were dry, warm slopes, where the birches grew; not the queenly paper birch of the North, but the girlish little gray birch with its veil of twinkling leaves and its glimmer of slender stems. There were rugged ledges, deep-shadowed with oak and chestnut; there were hot, open hillsides thick-set with cat-brier and blackberry canes, where one could never go without setting a brown rabbit scampering. It was a delectable farm, but not, in the ordinary sense, highly productive, and its appeal was rather to the contemplative than to the practical mind.
Jonathan was from the first infected with the desire of making the farm more productive—in the ordinary sense; and one day, when I wandered up to a distant corner, oh, dismay! There was a slope of twinkling birches—no longer twinkling—prone! Cut, dragged, and piled up in masses of white stems and limp green leafage and tangled red-brown twigs! It was a sorry sight. I walked about it much, perhaps, as my white hens had walkedabout the barnyard, and to as little purpose. For the contemplative mind is no match for the practical. I knew this, yet I could not forbear saying, later:—
"Jonathan, I was up near the long meadow to-day."
"Were you?"
"O Jonathan! Those birches!"
"What about them?"
"All cut!"
"Oh, yes. We need that piece for pasturage."
"Oh, dear! We might as well not have a farm if we cut down all the birches."
"We might as well not have a farm if we don't cut them down. They'll run us out in no time."
"They don't look as if they would run anybody out—the dears!"
"Why, I didn't know you felt that way about them. We'll let that other patch stand, if you like."
"IfI like!"
I saved the birches, but other things kept happening. I went out one day and found one of our prettiest fence lines reduced to barebones, all its bushes and vines—clematis, elderberry, wild cherry, sweet-fern, bitter-sweet—all cut, hacked, torn away. It looked like a collie dog in the summer when his long yellow fur has been sheared off. And, another day, it was a company of red lilies escaped along a bank above the roadside. There were weeds mixed in, to be sure, and some bushes, a delightful tangle—and all snipped, shaved to the skin!
When I spoke about it, Jonathan said: "I'm sorry. I suppose Hiram was just making the place shipshape."
"Shipshape! This farm shipshape! You could no more make this farm shipshape than you could make a woodchuck look as though he had been groomed. The farm isn't a ship."
"I hope it isn't a woodchuck, either," said Jonathan.
During the haying season there was always a lull. The hand of the destroyer was stayed. Rather, every one was so busy cutting the hay that there was no time to cut anything else. One day in early August I took a pail and sauntered up the lane in the peaceful mood of the berry-picker—a state of mind as satisfactoryas any I know. One is conscious of being useful—for what more useful than the accumulating of berries for pies? One has suitable ideals—the ideal of a happy home, since in attaining a happy home berry pies are demonstrably helpful. And one is also having a beautiful time. On my way I turned down the side lane to see how the blackberries were coming on. There lay my blackberry canes—lay, not stood—their long stems thick-set with fruit just turning from light red to dark. I do not love blackberries as I do birches; it was rather the practical than the contemplative part of me that protested that time, but it was with a lagging step that I went on, over the hill, to the berry patches. There another shock awaited me. Where I expected to see green clumps of low huckleberries there were great blotches of black earth and gray ashy stems, and in the midst a heap of brush still sending up idle streamers and puffs of blue smoke. Desolation of desolations! That they should do this thing to a harmless berry patch!
They were not all burned. Only the heart of the patch had been taken, and after thefirst shock I explored the edges to see what was left, but with no courage for picking. I came home with an empty pail and a mind severe.
"Jonathan," I said that night, "I thought you liked pies?"
"I do," he said expectantly.
"Well, what do you like in them?"
"Berries, preferably."
"Oh, I thought perhaps you preferred cinders or dried briers."
Jonathan looked up inquiringly, then a light broke. "Oh, you mean those blackberry bushes. Didn't I tell you about that? That was a mistake."
"So I thought," I said, unappeased.
"I mean, I didn't mean them to be cut. It was that fool hobo I gave work to last week. I told him to cut the brush in the lane. Idiot! I thought he knew a blackberry bush!"
"With the fruit on it, too," I added, relenting toward Jonathan a little. Then I stiffened again. "How about the huckleberry patch? Was that a mistake, too?"
Jonathan looked guilty, but held himself as a man should.
"Why, no," he said; "that is, Hiram thought we needed more ground to plough up next year, and that's as good a piece as there is—no big rocks or trees, you know. And we must have crops, you know."
"Bless the rocks!" I burst out. "I wish there were more of them! If it weren't for the rocks the farm would beallcrops!"
Jonathan laughed, then we both laughed.
"You talk as though that would be a misfortune," he said.
"It would be simply unendurable," I replied.
"Jonathan," I added, "I am afraid you have not a proper subordination of values. I have heard of one farmer—just one—who had."
"What is it?—and who was he?" said Jonathan, submissively.
I think he was relieved that the huckleberry question was not being followed up.
"I believe he was your great-uncle by marriage. They say that there was a certain field that was full of butterfly-weed—you know, gorgeous orange stuff—"
"I know," said he. "What about it?"
"Well, there was a meadow that was full of it, just in its glory when the grass was ready to cut. Jonathan, what would you have done?"
"Go on," said Jonathan.
"Well, he always mowed that field himself, and when he came to a clump of butterfly-weed, he alwaysmowed aroundit."
"Very pretty," said Jonathan, in an impersonal way.
"And that," I added, "is what I call having a proper subordination of values."
"I see," said he.
"And now," I went on, with almost too ostentatious sweetness, "if you will tell me where to find a huckleberry patch that is not already reduced to cinders, I will go out to-morrow and get some for pies."
Jonathan knew, and so did I, that there were still plenty of berry bushes left. Nevertheless, he was moved.
"Now, see here," he began seriously, "I don't want to spoil the farm for you. Only I don't know which things you like. If you'll just tell me the places you don't want touched, I'll speak to Hiram about them."
"Really?" I exclaimed. "Why, I'll tellyou now, right away. There's the lane—you know, that mustn't be touched; and the ledges—but you couldn't do anything to those, of course, anyway."
"No, even the hobo wouldn't tackle them," said Jonathan grimly.
"And the birches, the ones that are left. You promised me those, you know. And the swamp, of course, and the cedar knoll where the high-bush blueberries grow, and then—oh, yes—that lovely hillside beyond the long meadow where the sumac is, and the dogwood, and everything. And, of course, the rest of the huckleberries—"
"The rest of the huckleberries!" said he. "That means all the farm. There isn't a spot as big as your hat where you can't show me some sort of a huckleberry bush."
"So much the better," I said contentedly.
"Oh, come now," he protested. "Be reasonable. Even your wonderful farmer that you tell about did a little mowing. He mowed around the butterfly-weed, but he mowed. You're making the farm into solid butterfly-weed, and there'll be no mowing at all."
"Why, Jonathan, I've left you the longmeadow, and the corner meadow, and the hill orchard, and then there's the ten-acre lot for corn and potatoes—only I wish you wouldn't plant potatoes."
"What's the matter with potatoes?"
"Oh, I don't know. First, they are too neat and green, and then they are all covered with potato-bug powder, and then they wither up and lie all around, and then they are dug, and the field is a sight! Now, rye and corn! They're lovely from beginning to end."
Jonathan ruminated. "I seem to see myself expressing these ideas to Hiram," he remarked dryly.
"I suppose it all comes down to the simple question, What is the farm for?" I said.
"I am afraid that is what Hiram would think," said Jonathan.
"Never mind about Hiram," I said severely. "Now really, away down deep, haven't you yourself a sneaking desire for—oh, for crops, and for having things look shipshape, as you call it? Now, haven't you?"
"I wonder," said Jonathan, as though we were talking about a third person.
"I don't wonder; I know. The trouble withmen," I went on, "is that when they want to make a thing look well, all they can think of is cutting and chopping. Look at a man when he goes to a party, or to have his picture taken! He always dashes to the barber's first—that is, unless there's a woman around to interfere. Do you remember Jack Mason when he was married? Face and neck the color of raw beef from sunburn, and hair cropped so close it made his head look like a drab egg!"
"I didn't notice," said Jonathan.
"No, I suppose not. You would have done the same thing—you're all alike. Look at horses! When men want to make a horse look stylish, why, chop off his tail, of course! And they are only beginning to learn better. When a man builds a house, what does he do? Cuts down every tree, every bush and twig, and makes it 'shipshape,' as you call it. And then the women have to come along and plant everything all over again."
"But things need cutting now and then," said Jonathan. "You wouldn't like it, you know, if a man never went to the barber's. He'd look like a woodchuck."
"There are worse-looking things than woodchucks. Still, of course, there's a medium. Possibly the woodchuck carries neglect to excess."
The discussion rested there. I do not know whether Jonathan expressed any of these ideas to Hiram, but the grooming process appeared to be temporarily suspended. Then one day my turn came. It was dusk, and I was sitting on an old log at the back of the orchard, looking out over the little swamp, all a-twinkle with fireflies. Jonathan had been up the lane, prowling about, as he often does at nightfall, "to take a look at the farm." I heard his step in the lane, and he jumped over the bars at the far end of the orchard. There was a pause, then a vehement exclamation—too vehement to print. Jonathan's remarks do not usually need editing, and I listened to these in the dusk in some degree of wonder, if not of positive enjoyment.
Finally I called out, "What's the matter?"
"Oh! You there?" He strode over. "Matter! Come and see what that fool hobo did."
"You called him something besides that a moment ago," I remarked.
"I hope so. Whatever I called him, he's it. Come over."
He led me to the orchard edge, and there in the half light I saw a line of stubs and a pile of brush.
"Not your quince bushes!" I gasped.
"Just that," he said, grimly, and then burst into further unprintable phrases descriptive of the city-bred loafer. "If I ever give work to a hobo again, I'll be—"
"Sh-h-h," I said; and I could not forbear adding, "Now you know how I have felt about those huckleberry bushes and birches and things, only I hadn't the language to express it."
"You have language enough," said Jonathan.
Undoubtedly Jonathan was depressed. I had been depressed for some time on account of the grooming of my berry patches and fence lines, but now I found myself growing suddenly cheerful. I do not habitually batten on the sorrow of others, but this was a special case. For how could I be blind to the fact that chance had thrust a weapon into my hand? I knew that hereafter, at critical moments,I need only murmur "quince bushes" and discussion would die out. It made me feel very gentle towards Jonathan, to be thus armed against him. Gentle, but also cheerful.
"Jonathan," I said, "it's no use standing here. Come back to the log where I was sitting."
He came, with heavy tread. We sat down, and looked out over the twinkling swamp. The hay had just been cut, and the air was richly fragrant. The hush of night encompassed us, yet the darkness was full of life. Crickets chirruped steadily in the orchard behind us. From a distant meadow the purring whistle of the whip-poor-will sounded in continuous cadence, like a monotonous and gentle lullaby. The woods beyond the open swamp, a shadowy blur against the sky, were still, except for a sleepy note now and then from some bird half-awakened. Once a wood thrush sang his daytime song all through, and murmured part of it a second time, then sank into silence.
"Jonathan," I said at last, "the farm is rather a good place to be."
"Not bad."
"Let's not groom it too much. Let's not make it too shipshape. After all, you know, it isn't really a ship."
"Nor yet a woodchuck, I hope," said Jonathan.
And I was content not to press the matter.