Thorns
There may be a more smiling hill-top than "La Collina Ridente" somewhere on the Southern California edge of the Pacific Ocean, but deep down in my heart I don't believe that there is. It is just the right size hill-top—except when I first began to drive the motor, and then it seemed a trifle small for turning around. It's just high enough above the coast highway and the town to give us seclusion, and it's just far enough from the waves to be peaceful. It used to be called "Suma Paz"—perfect peace—but we changed the name, that being so unpleasantly suggestiveof angels, and, anyway, there isn't such a thing. If "The Smiling Hill-Top" were everything it seems on a blue and green day like to-day, for instance, it would be a menace to my character. I should never leave, I should exist beautifully, leading the life of a cauliflower or bit of seaweed floating in one of the pools in the rocks, or to be even more tropically poetic, a lovely lotus flower! I should not bother about the children's education or grieve over J——'s bachelor state of undarned socks and promiscuous meals, or the various responsibilities I left behind in town, so it is fortunate that there are thorns. Every garden, from Eden down, has produced them.
I haven't catalogued mine, I have just put them down "higgledy-piggledy," as we used to say when we were children.J——'s having to work in town, too far to come home except for an occasional week-end, the neighbors' dogs, servants, Bermuda grass, tenants, ants, the eccentricities of an adobe road during the rains, and the lapses of the delivery system of the village. Of course they are of varying degrees of unpleasantness. J——'s absence is horrid but the common lot, so I have accepted it and am learning "to possess, in loneliness, the joy of all the earth." Truth compels me to add that it isn't always loneliness, either, as, for example, one week-end that was much cheered by a visit from our architect friend, who rode down from Santa Barbara in his motor, and made himself very popular with every member of the household. He brought home the laundry, bearded the ice man in his lair, making ice-cream possible for Sundaydinner, mended the garden lattice, and drew entrancing pictures of galleons sailing in from fairy shores with all their canvas spread, for the boys. As we waved our handkerchiefs to him from the Good-by Gate on Monday, Joedy turned to me:
"I wish he didn't have to go!" A little pause.
"Muvs, if you weren't married to Father, how would you like—" but here I interrupted by calling his attention to a rabbit in the canyon.
One thing I do not consider a part of the joy of all the earth—the neighbors' dogs. On the next hill-top is an Airedale with a voice like a fog-horn. He is an ungainly creature and thoroughly disillusioned, because his family keep him locked up in a wire-screened tennis-court, where he barks all day and nearly all night. Hecan watch the motors on the coast road from one corner of his cage, and that seems to drive him almost wild. He ought to realize how much better off he is than the Lady of Shalott, who only dared to watch the highway to Camelot in a mirror! Sometimes he has a bad attack of lamentation in the night—he is quite Jeremiah's peer at that—and then we all call his house on the telephone. You can see the lights flash on in the various cottages and hear the tinkle of the bell, as we each in turn voice our indignation. Once I even saw a white-robed figure in the road across the canyon, and heard a voice borne on the night wind, "For heaven's sake, shut that dog up." We all bore it with Christian resignation when his family decided to take a motor camping trip, Prince to be included in the party. He is probablyeven now waking the echoes on Lake Tahoe, or barking himself hoarse at the Bridal Veil Falls in the Yosemite, but thank goodness we can't hear him quite as far away as that.
I dare say that he might be a perfectly nice, desirable dog if he had had any early training. Our own "pufflers," as the boys call "Rags" and "Tags," their twin silver-haired Yorkshire terriers, could tell him what a restraining influence the force of early training has on them, even on moonlight nights.
Prince is the worst affliction we have had, but not the only one. The people on the mountain-slope above us acquired a yellowish collie-like dog to scare away coyotes. He ought to have been a success at it, though I don't know just what it takes to scare a coyote. At any rate, heused to bark long and grievously about dawn in the road across the canyon. One morning I was almost frantic with the irregularity of his outbursts. It was like waiting for the other shoe to drop. Suddenly a rifle shot rang out; a spurt of yellow dust, a streak of yellow dog, and silence! I rushed to J——'s room, to find him with the weapon, still smoking, in his hands. I begged him not to start a neighborhood feud, even if we never slept after dawn. I even wept. He laughed at me. "I didn't shoot at him," he said. "I shot a foot behind him, and I've given him a rare fright!" He had, indeed. The terror of the coyotes never came near us again.
As to servants, the subject is so rich that I can only choose. Unfortunately, the glory of the view does not make up tothem for the lack of town bustle and nightly "movies," so it isn't always easy to make comfortable summer arrangements. As you start so you go on, for changing horses in mid-stream has ever been a parlous business. A temperamental high-school boy who came to drive the motor and water the garden, though he appeared barefooted to drive me to town, and took French leave for a day's fishing, pinning a note to the kitchen door, saying, "Expect me when you see me and don't wait dinner," afflicted me one entire summer. I tried to rouse his ambition by pointing out the capitalists who began by digging ditches—California is full of them—and assuring him that there were no heights to which he might not rise by patient application, etc. It was no use. He watered the garden when I watched him;otherwise not. I came to the final conclusion that he was in love. Love is responsible for so much.
Another summer I decided to try darkies and carefully selected two of contrasting shades of brown. The cook was a slim little quadroon, with flashing white teeth and hair arranged in curious small doughnuts all over her head. She was agrass widow with quite an assortment of children, though she looked little more than a child herself. "Grandma" was taking care of them while the worthless husband was supposed to be running an elevator in New Orleans. Essie had quite lost interest in him, I gathered, for I brought her letters and candy from another swain, who used such thin paper that I couldn't avoid seeing the salutation, "Oh, you chicken!"
Mandy was quite different. She was a rich seal brown, large and determined, and had left a husband on his honor, in town. We had hardly washed off the dust of our long motor-ride before trouble began. A telegram for Mandy conveyed the disquieting news that George had been arrested on a charge of assault at the request of "grandma." It appeared that after seeing wifey off for the seashore he felt the joy of bachelor freedom so strongly that he dropped in to see Essie's mother, who gave him a glass of sub rosa port, which so warmed his heart that he tried to embrace her. Grandma was only thirty-four and would have been pretty except for gaps in the front ranks of her teeth. She had spirit as well as spirits, and had him clapped into jail. Telegrams came in—do you say droves, covies, or flocks? Night letters especially, and long-distance telephonecalls—all collect. The neighbors, the Masons, the lawyer, and various relatives all went into minute detail. Grandma, being the injured party, prudently confined herself to the mail. As we have only one servant's room and that directly under my sleeping-porch, it made it very pleasant! The choicest telegram J—— took down late one night. It was from one of Mandy's neighbors, and ended with the illuminating statement: "George never had a gun or a knife on him; he was soused at the time!" Mandy emerged from bed, clad in a red kimono and a pink boudoir cap, to receive this comforting message. She wept; Essie, who had followed in order to miss nothing, scowled, while J—— and I wound our bath-robes tightly about us and gritted our teeth, in an effort to preserve a proper solemnity.Of course we had to let her go back to the trial, which she did with the dignity of one engaged in affairs of state. She and the judge had a kind of mother's meeting about George, and decided that a touch of the law might be just the steadying influence he needed.
The sentence was for three months, which suited me exactly, as I calculated that his release and our return to town would happily synchronize. Mandy really stood the gaff pretty well and returned to her job, and an armed neutrality ensued, varied by mild outbreaks. Essie was afraid of Mandy. She said that she would never stay in the house with her alone; Mandy wouldn't stay in the house alone after dark, so it became rather complicated. We apparently had to take them or else find them weeping on the hillside,when we came back from a picnic. In justice to the darky heart I must say that when Billie was taken very ill they buried the hatchet for the time, and helped us all to pull him through.
The summer was almost over when I began to suffer from a strange hallucination. I kept seeing a colored gentleman slipping around corners when I approached. As Mandy was usually near said corner, I certainly thought of George, but calmed myself with the reflection that he was safe in jail. Not so. George had experienced a change of heart and had behaved in so exemplary a manner that his sentence had been shortened two weeks, and what more natural than that he should join his wife? It wasn't that I was afraid of George; I was afraid for George. I did not want him to meet Essie, for if Grandma's smilehad cost him so dearly, I hated to think of the effect of Essie's black eyes and unbroken set of white teeth. I needn't have worried, for George was apparently "sick of lies and women," and never let go his hold on the apron-string to which he was in duty bound.
This summer I am unusually fortunate, owing to a moment of clear vision that I had forty-eight hours before leaving town. I had a Christian Science cook, a real artist if given unlimited materials, and she didn't mind loneliness, as she said that God is everywhere; to which I heartily agreed. I know that He is on this hill-top. So far so good, but her idea of obeying Mr. Hoover's precepts was not to mention that any staple was out until the last moment. At about six o'clock she usually came pussy-footing to my door in the tennis shoes shealways wore, to tell me that there wasn't a potato in the house, or any butter. Not so bad in Pasadena, with a man to send to the store, but very trying on a smiling hill-top, one mile from town, with me the only thing dimly suggestive of a chauffeur on the place. At 3a.m.I resolved to bounce her, heavenly disposition and all. I did, and engaged a cateress for what I should call a comfortable salary, rather than wages. She can get up a very appetizing meal from sawdust and candle-ends, when necessary, and that is certainly what is needed nowadays. Also, she has launched a wonderful counter-offensive against the ants. There was a time when we ate our meals surrounded by a magic circle like Brunhilde, but ours was not of flames, but of ant powder. Not that they mind it much. I'm told that they rather dislikecamphor, but do you know the present price of that old friend?
There are singularly few pests or blights in the garden itself. Bermuda or devil grass is one of our Western specialties, though it may have invaded the East, too, since we left. It is an unusually husky plant, rooting itself afresh at every joint with new vigor, and quite choking out the aristocratic blue grass with which we started our lawn. At first you don't notice it as it sneaks along the ground, some time above and some time below, as it feels disposed, and then suddenly you see it's cobwebby outlines as plainly as the concealed animals in a newspaper puzzle. If you begin to pull it out you can't stop. It reminds me of the German system of espionage, and that adds zest to my weeding. The other day I laboriously uprooted anintricate network of tentacles, all leading to one big root, which I am sure must have been Wilhelmstrasse itself. Being able to do so little to help win the war, this is a valuable imaginative outlet to me!
Everything about the place, as well as the lawn, seems to get out of order when we have tenants. No one likes tenants any more than we like "Central." There is a prejudice against them. They do the things they ought not to do and leave undone the things they ought to do, and there is no health in them. I have more often been one than had one, and I hate to think of the language that was probably used about us, though we meant well.
I am not going to tell all I know about tenants after all. I have changed my mind. I am also going to draw a veil over the adobe road during the rains, because we really do like to rent the place to help pay for the children's and the motor's shoes, and it wouldn't be good business.
The village delivery system enrages and entertains me by turns. I was frankly told by the leading grocery store that they did not expect to deliver to people who had their own motors, and when I occasionally insist on a few necessities being sent up to my house, they arrive after dark conveyed by an ancient horse, as the grocery manager is conservative. A horse doesn't get a puncture or break a vital part often (if he does, you bury him and get another) and it is about a toss-up between hay and gasoline.
Every now and then I am marooned on my hill, if the motor is "hors de combat," and then I get my neighbour to let me join her in her morning marketing trip, sometimeswith disastrous results. One day the boys and I sat down to dinner with fine sea-air appetites, to be confronted by a small, crushed-looking fish. I sent out to ask the cook for more. She said there was no more, and as no miracle was wrought in our behalf, we filled up the void with mashed potatoes as best we could. Just as the plates were being removed the telephone rang, and my neighbor's agitated voice asked if I had her cat's dinner! Light flooded in on my understanding. We had just eaten her cat's dinner. She went on to say that the fish-man had picked out a little barracuda (our household fish in California) from his scraps and made her a present of it. I faintly asked if she thought it was a very old one, visions of ptomaine poisoning rising vividly. Oh, no, she said, "it wasn't old at all, he hadmerely stepped on it." My own perfectly good dinner was at her house. I told her to take off a portion for her cat, and I would send the boys for the rest. I heaved a sigh of relief—a fresh young fish, even if crushed, would not have fatal results.
I will pass rapidly on to my last thorn, which isn't on the list because I'm not quite sure that it is one. It is a small, second-hand, rather vicious little motor, which I have learned to drive as a war measure. After the first time I ever tried to turn it around, and it flew at our lovely rose-garlanded lattice fence at one hundred miles an hour, I christened it "the little fury." I missed the fence by revolving the steering wheel as though I were playing roulette. I almost went round twice, but J—— rescued me by kicking my foot off the throttle. Since then I have sufficiently mastered it to drive to townfor the laundry and the newspaper. I am like a child learning to walk by having an orange rolled in front of it. I must know how far the Allies have driven the Germans, so I set my teeth and start for town in the "little fury." Every one told me that I'd have to break something before I really got the upper hand. I have. I bravely drove out to a Japanese truck garden for vegetables and came to grief. One of the boys tersely expressed it in his diary, "Muvs ran into a Japanese barn and rooked the bumper!" Now that that is over, I begin to feel a certain sense of independence that is not unpleasant. It is some time since I have stalled the engine or tried to climb a hill with the emergency brake set. The boys and the "pufflers" are game and keep me company; we live or die together.
After all, the loveliest rose in my garden,the Sunburst, lifts its fragrant flower of creamy orange on a stalk bristling with wicked-looking mahogany spikes. If I'm very careful about cutting it, I don't prick my fingers and the thorns really add to the effect.
The Gypsy Trail
A friend of mine once wrote an article on motoring in Southern California for one of the smart Eastern magazines. In it she said that often a motor would be followed by a trailer loaded with a camp outfit. What was her surprise and amusement to read her own article later, dressed for company, so to speak."A trailer goes ahead with the servants and outfit, so that when the motoring party arrives on the scene all is in readiness for their comfort." Great care must be taken that the sensibilities of the elect should not be offended by the horrid thought that ladies and gentlemen actually do make their own camp at times! So the trailer has to go ahead, and that is just where the lure and magic of Southern California slips through the fingers.
Most of us have a few drops, at least, of gypsy blood in us, and in this land of sunshine and the open road we all become vagabonds as far as our conventional upbringing will let us. When you know that it won't rain from May to October, and the country is full of the most lovely and picturesque spots, how can you help at least picnicking whenever you can?
Trains are becoming as obsolete in our family as the horse. We wish to take a trip: out purrs the motor; in goes the family lunch-box, a thermos bottle, and a motor-case of indispensables, and we are off. No fuss about missing the train, no baggage, no tickets, no cinders—just the open road.
I had heard that every one deteriorated in Southern California, and after the first year I began earnestly searching my soul for signs of slackening. Perhaps my soul is naturally easy-going, for somehow I can't feel that the things we let slip matter so greatly.
This much I will admit. There is no deadlier drug habit than fresh air! The first summer on our Smiling Hill-Top kind ladies used to ask me to tea-parties and card-parties, but I could never come indoorslong enough to be anything but a trial to my partners at bridge, so now I don't even make believe I'm a polite member of society. Of course, there are people who carry it further than I do, and can't be quite happy except in their bathing-suits. I'm not as bad as that. I can still enjoy the sea breezes and the colors and the sound of the waves with my clothes on. I don't even wear my bathing-suit to market, which is one of the customs of the place. It is a picturesque little village; half the houses are mere shacks, a kind of compromise between dwelling and bath-houses, everyone being much too thrifty to pay money to the Casino when they can drip freely on their own sitting-room floor, without the least damage to the furnishings. Life for many consists largely of a prolonged bath and bask on the beach,with dinner at a cafeteria and a cold bite for supper at home or on the rocks. It is surely an easy life and yet a great deal of earnest effort and strenuous thinking goes on, too, women's clubs, even an "open forum," and there are many delightful people who live there all the year for the sake of the perfect climate. Also, there are a few charming houses perched on the cliffs, most suggestive of Sorrento and Amalfi. An incident J—— is fond of telling gives the combined interests of the place. He was on his way to the post-office when he met two women in very scanty jersey bathing-suits with legs bare, wearing, to be sure, law-fulfilling mackintoshes, but which, being unbuttoned, flapped so in the breeze that they were only a technical covering. The ladies were in earnest conversation as he passed.J—— heard one say, "I grant all you say about the charm of his style, but I consider his writing very superficial!"
It is a wonderful life for small boys. My sons are the loveliest shades of brown with cheeks of red, and in faded khaki and bare legs are as good an example of protective coloring on the hillside as any zebra in a jungle. Quite naturally they view September and the long stockings of the city with dislike.
There is a place on the beach by the coast road between Pasadena and San Diego where we always have lunch on our journeys to and from town. Just after you leave the picturesque ruins of the Capistrano Mission in its sheltered valley, you come out suddenly on the ocean, and the road runs by the sand for miles. With a salt breeze blowing in your face you can't resist the lunch box long. With a stuffedegg in one hand and a sandwich in the other, Joedy, aged eight, observed on our last trip south, "This is the bright side of living." I agree with him.
One late afternoon a friend of ours was driving alone and offered a lift to two young men who were swinging along on foot. "Your price?" they asked. "A smile and a song," was the reply. So in they got, and those last fifty miles were gay. That is the sort of thing which fits so perfectly into the atmosphere of this land. Perhaps it is the orange blossoms, perhaps it is that we have extra-sized moons, perhaps it is the old Spanish charm still lingering. All I know is that it is a land of glamour and romance. J—— said he was going to import a pair of nightingales. I said that if he did he'd have a lot to answer for.
Places are as different as people. TheEast, and by that I mean the country east of the Alleghanies and not Iowa and Kansas, which are sometimes so described out here, has reached years of discretion and is set in its way. California has temperament, and it is still very young and enthusiastic and is having a lot of fun "growing up." I love the stone walls, huckleberry pies, and johnny cakes of Rhode Island, and I love the associations of my childhood and my family tree, but there is something in the air of this part of the world that enchants me. It is a certain "Why not?" that leads me into all sorts of delightful experiences. Conventionality does not hold us as tightly as it does in the East, and a certain tempting feeling of unlimited possibilities in life makes waking up in the morning a small adventure in itself. It isn't necessary to point out the dangers of an unlimited "Why not?" cult—theyare too obvious. "Why not?" is a question that one's imagination asks, and imagination is one of the best spurs to action. I will give an example of what I mean: When war was declared J——suggested putting contribution boxes with red crosses on the collars of Rags" and "Tags," the boys' twin Yorkshire terriers, and coaxing them to sit up on the back of the motor. I never had begged on a street corner, but I thought at once, "Why not?" The result was much money for the Red Cross, an increased knowledge of human nature for me, as well as some delightful new friends. I should never have had the courage to try it in New York— let us say; I should have been afraid I'd be arrested.
At first to an Easterner the summer landscape seems dry and dusty, but after living here one grows to love the peculiarsoft tones of tan and bisque, with bright shades of ice plant for color, and by the sea the wonderful blues and greens of the water. No one can do justice to the glory of that. Sky-blue, sea-blue, the shimmer of peacocks' tails and the calm of that blue Italian painters use for the robes of their madonnas, ever blend and ever change. Trees there are few, the graceful silhouette of a eucalyptus against a golden sky, occasional clumps of live oaks, and on the coast road to San Diego the Torry pines, relics of a bygone age, growing but one other place in the world, and more picturesque than any tree I ever saw. One swaying over a canyon is the photographer's joy. It has been posing for hundreds of years and will still for centuries more, I have no doubt.
Were I trying to write a sort of sugar-coatedguide-book, I could make the reader's mouth water, just as the menu of a Parisian restaurant does. The canyons through which we have wandered, the hills we have circled, Grossmont—that island in the air—Point Loma, the southern tip of the United States, now, alas, closed on account of the war (Fort Rosecrans is near its point), and further north the mountains and orange groves—snow-capped Sierras looming above orchards of blooming peach-trees!
Even the names add to the fascination, the Cuyamaca Mountains meaning the hills of the brave one; Sierra Madre, the mother mountains; even Tia Juana is euphonious, if you don't stop to translate it into the plebeian "Aunt Jane," and no names could be as lovely as the places themselves. So much beauty rather goesto one's head. For years in the East we had lived in rented houses, ugly rented houses, always near the station, so that J—— could catch the 7.59 or the 8.17, on foot. To find ourselves on a smiling hill-top—our own hill-top, with "magic casements opening on the foam"—seemed like a dream. After three years it still seems too good to be true.
They say that if you spend a year in Southern California you will never be able to leave it. I don't know. We haven't tried. The only possible reason for going back would be that you aren't in the stirring heart of things here as you are in New York, and theTimesis five days old when you get it. Your friends—they all come to you if you just wait a little. What amazes them always is to find that Southern California has the most perfect summerclimate in the world, if you keep near the sea. No rain—many are the umbrellas I have gently extracted from the reluctant hands of doubting visitors; no heat such as we know it in the East. We have an out-of-door dining-room, and it is only two or three times in summer that it is warm enough to have our meals there. In the cities or the "back country" it is different. I have felt heat in Pasadena that made me feel in the same class with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, but never by the sea.
One result of all this fresh air is that we won't even go indoors to be amused. Hence the outdoor theatre. Why go to a play when it's so lovely outside? But to go to a play out-of-doors in an enchanting Greek theatre with a real moon rising above it—that's another matter. I shall never forget "Midsummer Night's Dream"as given by the Theosophical Society at Point Loma. Strolling through the grounds with the mauve and amber domes of their temples dimly lighted I found myself murmuring: "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree." In a canyon by the sea we found a theatre. The setting was perfect and the performance was worthy of it. Never have I seen that play so beautifully given, so artistically set and delightfully acted, though the parts were taken by students in the Theosophical School. After the last adorable little fairy had toddled off—I hope to bed—we heard a youth behind us observe, "These nuts sure can give a play." We echoed his sentiments.
I should make one exception to my statement that people won't go indoors to be amused. They go to the "movies"—I think they would risk their lives to see a new film almost as recklessly as the actors who make them. The most interesting part of the moving-picture business is out-of-doors, however. You are walking down the street and notice an excitement ahead. Douglas Fairbanks is doing a little tightrope walking on the telegraph wires. A little farther on a large crowd indicates further thrills. Presently there is a splash and Charley Chaplin has disappeared into a fountain with two policemen in pursuit. Once while we were motoring we came to a disused railway spur, and were surprised to find a large and fussy engine getting up steam while a crowd blocked the road for some distance. A lady in pink satin was chained to the rails—placed there by the villain, who was smoking cigarettes in the offing, waiting for his next cue. The ladyin pink satin had made a little dugout for herself under the track, and as the locomotive thundered up she was to slip underneath—a job that the mines of Golconda would not have tempted me to try. Moving-picture actors have a very high order of courage. We could not stay for the denouement, as we had a nervous old lady with us, who firmly declined to witness any such hair-raising spectacle. I looked in the paper next morning for railway accidents to pink ladies, but could find nothing, so she probably pulled it off successfully.
Every year new theatres are built. We have seen Ruth St. Denis at the Organ Pavilion of the San Diego Exposition, and Julius Cæsar with an all-star cast in the hills back of Hollywood, where the space was unlimited, and Cæsar's triumph included elephants and other beasts, loanedby the "movies," and Brutus' camp spread over the hillside as it might actually have done long ago. There is a place in the back country near Escondido, where at the time of the harvest moon an Indian play with music is given every year. At Easter thousands of people go up Mount Rubidoux, near Riverside, for the sunrise service. Some celebrated singer usually takes part and it is very lovely—quite unlike anything else.
So we have come to belong to what the French would call the school of "pleine air." I once knew an adorable little boy who expressed it better than I can:
An Adventure in Solitude
My windows were all wide open one lovely April day, the loveliest time of all the year in Southern California, filling the house with the sweetness of wistaria and orange blossoms, but also, truth compels me to add, with so many noises of such excruciating kinds that I followed Ulysses' well-known plan and then tried to find quiet for my siesta in the back spare-room. The worst of this house is that it really has no back—it has various fronts, like the war. The spinster next door but one has a parrot—a cynical, tired parrot, but still fond of the sound of his own voice. Thelady across the street is raising Pekinese puppies, who apparently bitterly regret being born outside of Pekin. She puts them in baskets on the roof in the sun and lets them cry it out, in that hard-hearted modern method applied to babies.
A sight-seeing car had paused while the gentleman with the megaphone explained to a few late tourists the Arroyo Seco, that great river-bed with only a trickle of water at the bottom, on whose brink our house perches. At home two plumbers were playfully tossing bricks about our courtyard in a half-hearted endeavor to find out why our cellar was flooded. Hence the back bedroom. No amount of cotton wool in one's ears, however, could camouflage a telephone bell.
"The Red Cross Executive Committee will meet at ten on Wednesday."
A short interval followed. "Will Mr. S—— make a 'four-minute' speech on Friday at the Strand Theatre for the Liberty Bond Campaign?"
Another interval during which I began to feel drowsy. "Will Mr. S—— say a few words of appreciation and present a wrist watch to the Chapter Secretary just starting for France?" etc. Just here I made a resolve. Escape I would, for one week, to my lovely hill-top by the sea, and leave J——, the two boys, the two dogs, the two white mice, the Red Cross, the Red Star, Food Conservation and Liberty Bonds to manage beautifully without me. I even had the reckless idea of trying to forget that there was a war going on! I was furnished with a perfectly good excuse; we had rented "The Smiling Hill-Top" for two months, and it must be putin order. Hence my "Adventure in Solitude."
Everything is called an adventure nowadays, and to me it was a most exciting one, as I had not gone forth independently for many years. One chauffeur, one smiling Helen to clean house for the tenants and cook for me, my worst clothes and my best picnic lunch went into the motor, and I followed. I think my family expected me back next day, when I bade them a loving farewell. Not I! My spirit was craving silence. I wanted not to curl my hair or be neat or polite or a good mother, or any of the things I usually try to be, for just one week. Longer, and I would be lonely and homesick.
It was a lovely day. The coast road to San Diego runs through orange groves for miles, and the perfume of the blossomshung about us till we came to the sea, where a salt breeze blew away the heavy sweetness. I lunched on the sand and watched the waves for an hour. There, at least, are endless re-enforcements! As fast as the front ranks break more come always to fill their places.
I felt no hurry, as the Smiling Hill-Top is some fifteen miles nearer Pasadena than San Diego—an easy day's run—and I had no engagements, but at last my impatience to see how much our garden had grown started me once more on my way, and we arrived at our wicket gate in the late afternoon. There were twenty-seven keys on the ring the real-estate agent gave me—twenty more than caused so much trouble at Baldpate—but none fitted, so I had the chauffeur lift the gate bodily from its hinges and I was at home!
In California things grow riotously. Grandparents who haven't seen their grandsons for years, and find that they have shot up from toddling babies to tall youths, must feel as I did when I saw the vines and shrubs, especially the banana trees planted only six months before! The lawn over which I had positively wept lay innocent and green—almost English in its freshness. The patio was entrancing with blooming vines. The streptasolen, which has no "little name," as the French say, was like a cascade of flame over one end of the wall. The place was ablaze with it. The three goldfish in the fountain seemed as calm as ever, and apparently have solved the present problem of the high cost of living, for they don't have to be fed at all. The three had picked up what they needed without human aid. I reallyfelt like patting them on the head, but that being out of the question, I was moved to rhyme:
All this time the chauffeur had been wrestling with the key ring, and finally had our bare necessities in the way of doors open. I had telegraphed our agent that I was coming only long enough before for the house to have what is vulgarly known as "a lick and a promise," but it looked just as comfortable and pleasant as I knew that it would, and the terrace—no need tobother about that. The south wind does the housework there.
That night I went to sleep between sheets fragrant with lavender from my own garden, while the ocean boomed gently on the beach below the hill. In the week that followed I abolished a number of things. First of all, meal hours. I had my meals when I felt like it; in fact, I didn't wind the clock till I was leaving. I only did it then on account of the tenants, as some people find the ticking of a clock and the chirping of a cricket pleasant and cosy sounds. I don't. Then I cut out the usual items from my bill of fare, and lived on young peas, asparagus, eggs, milk, and fruit, with just a little bread and butter—not enough to agitate Mr. Hoover. I never had had as much asparagus as I really wanted before. I wore an old smock and a disreputablehat, and I pruned and dug in my garden till I was tired, and then I lay on the terrace and watched the waves endlessly gather and glide and spread. Counting sheep jumping over a wall is nothing to compare with waves for soothing rasped nerves.
My first solitary day was so clear that the Pasadena Mountains, as we call that part of the Sierra Madre, rose soft over the water on the far horizon, so that I couldn't feel lonely with home in sight. Long unused muscles expostulated with me, but smoothed-out nerves more than balanced their twinges. Of course I couldn't forget the war. Who could, especially with flocks of aeroplanes flying over me as I lay on a chaise longue on the terrace, listening to the big guns of Camp Kearny roaring behind the hills; but it no longer gave methe sensation of sand-paper in my feelings. I thought about it all more calmly and realized a little of what it is doing to us Americans—to our souls!—that is worth the price; and in addition, how much it is teaching us of economy, conservation, and efficiency, as well as more spiritual things.
It has also brought home to me the beauty of throwing away. In a fever of enthusiasm to make every outgrown union suit and superfluous berry spoon tell, I have ransacked my house from garret to cellar, and I bless the Belgians, Servians, and Armenians, the Poles and the French orphans for ridding me of a suffocating mass of things that I didn't use, and yet felt obliged to keep.
My wardrobe is now the irreducible minimum, the French Relief has the rest, and at last I have more than enough hangersin my closet to support my frocks. The shoes that pinched but looked so smart that they kept tempting me into one more trial have gone to the Red Cross Shop. No more concerts will be ruined by them. The hat that made me look ten years older than I like to think I do, accompanied them. It was a good hat, almost new, and it cost—more than I pay for hats nowadays. I do not need to wear it out. My large silver tea-pot given me by my maid of honor did good work for the Belgians—I hope if she ever finds out about its fate that she will be glad that it is now warm stockings for many thin little Belgian legs. Nora, from Ireland, viewed its departure with satisfaction—it made one less thing to polish. Many odds and ends of silver followed, and were put into the melting-pot, being too homely to survive—I'msaving enough for heirlooms for my grandchildren, of course. One must not allow sentiment to go by the board; we need it especially now that we have lost such quantities of it out of the world. So much was "made in Germany," that old Germany of the fairy tales and Christmas trees which seems to be gone forever.
I need not go on enumerating my activities. Every one has been doing the same thing, and in all probability is now enjoying the same sense of orderliness and freedom that I feel. Even the children have caught the spirit. I was just leaving my house the other day when a palatial automobile stopped at the gate and a very perfect chauffeur alighted and touched his cap. "Madam," he said, "I have come for a case of empty bottles that Master John says your little boy promised him forthe Red Cross." There was a trace of embarrassment in his manner, but there was none in mine as I led him to the cellar and watched with satisfaction while he clasped a cobwebby box of—dare I whisper it?—empty beer bottles to his immaculate chest and eventually stowed it in the exquisite interior of the limousine. How wonderful of the Red Cross to want my bottles, and how intelligent of my "little boy" to arrange the matter so pleasantly!
To do away with the needless accumulations of life, or better still, not to let them accumulate, what a comfort that would be! Letters? The fire as rapidly as possible! No one ought to have a good time reading over old letters—there's always a tinge of sadness about them, and it's morbid to conserve sadness, added to which, in the remote contingency of one's becomingfamous, some vandalish relative always publishes the ones that are most sacred.
J—— has the pigeon-hole habit. He hates to see anything sink into the abyss of the waste-basket, but I am training him to throw away something every morning before breakfast. After a while he'll get so that he can dispose of several things at once, and the time may come when I'll have to look over the rubbish to be sure that nothing valuable has gone, because throwing away is just as insidious a habit as any other.
If only one could pile old bills on top of the old letters, what a glorious bonfire that would make! But that will have to wait until the millennium; as things are now, it would mean paying twice for the motor fender of last year, and never feeling sure of your relations with the butcher.
It isn't only things that I am disposing of. I've rid myself of a lot of useless ideas. We don't have to live in any special way. It isn't necessary to have meat twice a day, and there is no law about chicken for Sunday dinner. Butter does not come like the air we breathe. Numerous courses aren't necessary even for guests. New clothes aren't essential unless your old ones are worn out—and so on.
And so I'm stepping forth on a road leading, even the graybeards can't say where, with surprises behind every hedge and round every corner. There hasn't been so thrillingly interesting an age to be alive since that remote time when the Creation was going on. Except for moments of tired nerves, like this, it is very stimulating, and I find myself stepping out much more briskly since I threw my extrawraps and bundles beside the road. Here on my hill-top I have even enjoyed a little of that charm of unencumberedness that all vagabonds know—and later if I come to some steep stretches I shall be more likely to make the top, for I'm resolved to "travel light."
There is usually one serpent in Eden, if it is only a garter snake. Ours was a frog in the fountain. He had a volume of sound equal to Edouard de Reske in his prime. I set the chauffeur the task of catching him, but after emptying out all the water one little half-inch frog skipped off, and John assured me that he could never be the offender. But he was "Edouard" in spite of appearances, for he returned at dusk and took up the refrain just where he had left off. I decided to hunt him myself. It was like the game of "magic music" thatwe used to play as children: loud and you are "warm"; soft and you are far away. I never caught him. He was ready to greet the tenants instead of the cosy cricket, and may have been the reason why they suddenly departed after only a three weeks' stay, but as it was a foggy May, as it sometimes is on this coast, that is an open question. J—— tersely put it, "Frog or fog?"
The smiling Helen smiled more beamingly every day, but the chauffeur hated it. He was a city product and looked as much at home on that hill-top as a dancing-master in a hay-field. He smoked cigarettes and read the sporting page of the paper in the garage, where gasoline rather deadened the country smells of flowers and hay, and tried to forget his degrading surroundings, but he was overjoyed when theday to start for home arrived. I did not share his feelings, and yet I was ready to go. It had been a great success, and the only time I had felt lonely was in a crowded restaurant in San Diego, where J—— and I had had many jolly times in past summers. On the Smiling Hill-Top who could be lonely with the ever-changing sea and sky and sunsets. I dare not describe the picture, as I don't wish to be put down as mad or a cubist. Scent of the honeysuckle, the flutter of the breeze, the song of pink-breasted linnets and their tiny splashings in the birds' pool outside my sleeping-porch, the velvet of the sky at night, with its stars and the motor lights on the highway like more stars below—how I love it all! I was taking enough of it home with me, I hoped, to last through some strenuous weeks in Pasadena, until I couldcome back for the summer, bringing my family.
Much bustling about on the part of the smiling Helen and me, much locking of gates and doors by the bored chauffeur, and we were off for home! After all is said and done, "home is where the heart is," irrespective of the view.
The first part of the way we made good time, but just out of one of the small seaside towns something vital snapped in the motor's insides. It happened on a bridge at the foot of a hill, and we were very lucky to escape an accident. I will say for the chauffeur that while, as a farmer, he would never get far, as a driver he knew his business. One slight skid and we stopped short, "never to go again," like grandfather's clock. It resulted in our having to be towed backwards to the nearest garage,while the chauffeur jumped on a passing motor bound for Pasadena, and was snatched from my sight like Elijah in the chariot—he was off to get a new driving shaft. The smiling Helen followed in a Ford full of old ladies. I elected to travel by train and sat for hours in a small station waiting for the so-called "express." In a hasty division of the lunch I got all the hard-boiled eggs, and of course one can eat only a limited number of them, though I will say that a few quite deaden one's appetite.
I had an amazing collection of bags, coats, and packages, and was dreading embarking on the train. However, I have a private motto, "There is a way." There was. The only occupant of the waiting-room besides myself was a very dapper gentleman of what I should call lively middleage, with very upstanding gray mustaches. I took him to be a marooned motorist, also. He was well-dressed, with the added touch of an orange blossom in his button-hole, and he had a slightly roving eye. His hand-baggage was most "refined." I had noticed him looking my way at intervals, and wondered if he craved a hard-boiled egg; I could easily have spared him one! While I am certainly not in the habit of seeking conversation with strange gentlemen, there are always exceptions to everything, and I concluded that this was one. I smiled! We chatted on the subject of the flora and fauna of California in a perfectly blameless way till my train whistled, when he said, "I am going to carry those bags for you, if you will allow me!" I thanked him aloud and inwardly remarked, "I have known that for a long time!"
What made it especially pleasant was that I was going north and he was going south. So ended my Adventure—not all Solitude, if you like, but as near it as one can achieve with comfort. The amazing thing about it was how well I got on with myself, for I don't think I'm particularly easy to live with. I must ask J——. Probably it was the novelty.