Chapter XI
ACTAEON AND DIANA
Memorial Day dawned fair and warm. Bert and his wife and all their"help" went off to the village after breakfast. There were no paintersin my house, and Mike had milked the cows and gone home before I arrived.Miss Goodwin and I seemed to have that little section of Bentford quiteto ourselves, after the last of the carryalls had rattled past, takingthe veterans from Slab City to the town. Having no flag yet of my own, Iborrowed one from Bert, and we hung it from a second-story window,facing the road, as our tiny contribution to the sentiment of the day.Then we tackled the rose trellis, speedily completing it, for only twoarches remained to be built, one of the carpenters having built threefor me the day before, while waiting for some shingles to come forthe barn. Indeed, we had it done by ten o'clock.
"Now what?" said she.
I looked about the garden. The roses had not yet come, so we couldn'tvery well plant them. I judged that the morning of a warm, sunny day wasno time to transplant seedlings. The painting was not yet completedinside, so I could fix up no more of my rooms. The vegetable gardendidn't appear to need cultivation. We couldn't paint the trellis, asthere was no green paint.
"Good gracious!" I exclaimed, "this is the first time I've been at aloss for something to do. It's a terrible sensation."
"Couldn't we build a bird bath?" she suggested.
"Madam," said I, "you are a genius!"
"At the brook?" she added.
"No, not the brook. I've a better idea. Up in Stephen Parrish'slovely garden in Cornish I once saw a bird bath which we'll try toduplicate, here on the lawn, so the birds will have the water handy towash down the grass seed they are eating so fast. Let's see; we'llneed bricks, sand, cement, a mason's trowel, a spade, a hoe, a level, abox to mix in, and a box for a frame."
I had nearly a whole bag of cement left over from my dab at orchardrenovation, and there were plenty of packing-boxes. I selected onewhich was exactly square, about two feet on each side, and carefullyknocked the bottom out. A shallower one did for a mixing-box. Downcellar, where my heater had been installed, was a barrow load of extrabricks which the plumber had left behind--inefficient business but veryconvenient for me. Sand was easily procured by digging a hole near thebrook.
"Now," said I, "my plan is to put the bird bath on the east edge ofthe lawn, halfway between the house and the rose aqueduct, correspondingto the sundial in the centre, and to a white bench which will be placedat the west side when the grape arbour is built."
"Approved," laughed Miss Goodwin.
We measured off the spot, and I trundled the barrow to a pile of coalashes behind the barn--where the previous owner had deposited them--andbrought back enough to make a frost-proof foundation. After we hadpacked these into the ground and levelled them off, I mixed a lot ofcement, laid it over thick, set the bottomless box frame down uponit, levelled that, and working from the inside, of course, laid thebricks up against the box, with a great deal of cement between them,and built up the four sides. As the girl had no gloves, I would notallow her to handle the cement (for nothing cracks the skin so badly,as I had discovered in my orchard work). But she kept busy mixing withthe hoe, and handing me bricks. Some I broke and put in endwise, andI was careful to give all as irregular a setting as possible, tillthe top was reached. Then, of course, I laid an even line of the bestbricks all the way around, and levelled them carefully. We had scarcelygot the last brick on when we heard Bert's carryall rattle over thebridge and Bert's voice yelling "Dinner!"
"Oh, dear! That cement in the box will harden!" I cried. "Dump it allin."
We tipped up the box, dumped the contents down into the hollow centreof the brick work, and hurried home to a cold dinner, for Mrs. Bert,too, had taken a holiday that morning. But we were so impatient to beback at our work that we didn't care. On our return we filled the restof the hollow up with cement and stones to within three inches of thetop. Then, mixing more cement, with only two parts of fine sand to oneof cement, I laid over an even surface of the mixture and filled allthe corners and cracks between the top row of bricks, making a squarebowl, as it were, two inches deep, on the top of the little brick pile.We let it settle a few moments, and then carefully broke away the box.There stood the bird bath, needing only some cleaning away of cementwhich had squeezed out between bricks, and some filling in of hollowscaused in removing the frame. It really looked quite neat and attractive,and not too formally bricky, as so much cement showed.
"Can we put water in it yet?" the girl asked.
"Surely," said I. "Cement will harden under water. And we'll plantclimbing nasturtiums around it, too."
I spaded up the ground at the base a little, and we went to the seedbed and dug up half a dozen climbing nasturtiums, which were alreadysix or seven inches high. We set them in, got a pail of water from thebrook and watered them, and carefully filled the bath level with thebrim. Then we removed all the tools and boxes to the shed again, andcame back to the south door to survey our work.
We passed through the house. The kitchen, dining-room, and hall werefinished and the paint drying. They looked very fresh and bright. Thesouth room, as we stepped into it, was flooded with sunlight and cheerfulwith rugs and books. Flinging wide the glass door, we stepped out uponthe terrace of the pergola-to-be, and looked toward the new bird bath.Upon its rim sat a song sparrow! Even as we watched, another came andfluttered his feet and breast daintily through the trembling littlemirror of water. Then came a robin and drove them both away.
"The pig!" laughed Miss Goodwin. "Do you know, I've got a pooreropinion of robins since I came here. We city dwellers think of robins asharbingers of spring, and all that, and they epitomize the bird world.But when you really are in that world, you find they are rather largeand vulgar and--and sort of upper West Side-y. They aren't half so niceas the song sparrows, or the Peabodies, and, of course, compared with thethrushes--well, it's like comparing Owen Meredith with Keats, isn'tit?"
"Don't be too hard on the robins," I smiled.
We looked our fill at the new bird bath, which was already functioning,as she said her boss on the dictionary would put it, and at the whitesundial pillar, and at our prospective aqueduct of roses, and at the farmand the far hills beyond--and then she suddenly announced with greatenergy that she was going to saw wood.
"You may saw just one piece," said I, "and then you are going to takea book and rest. I'm going to work, myself. Twin Fires is getting inshape fast enough now so I can give up part of the daytime to the purelymundane task of paying the bills."
I wheeled up a big dead apple branch from the orchard to the wood shed,put it on the buck, gave her the buck-saw, and watched her first efforts,grinning.
"Go away," she laughed. "You bother me."
So I went, opened the west window by my desk to the wandering summerbreeze, and went at my toil. Presently I heard her tiptoeing into theroom.
"Done?" said I.
She nodded. "Now I want--let's see what I want--well, I guess 'Mariusthe Epicurean' and 'Alice in Wonderland' will do. I'm going to sitin the orchard. You work here till five or your salary will be docked.Good-bye."
I heard her go out by the front door, and then silence settled over thesun-filled, cheerful room, while I plugged away at my tasks. I don'tknow how long I worked, but finally my attention began to wander. Iwondered if she were still in the orchard. I looked out upon the sweetstretches of my farm, with the golden light of afternoon upon it, andwork became a burden. "Shall I ever be able to work, except at night, oron rainy days!" I wondered with a smile, as I tossed the manuscript Iwas reading into a drawer, and went out through the front entrance.
The girl was nowhere to be seen. "She's probably in her belovedpines," I reflected. "It would be a good time to clear out a path inthe pines." I turned back to get a hatchet, and then went down towardthe brook.
I trod as noiselessly as I could through the maples, thinking to surpriseher at her reading, and took care in the pines not to step on any deadtwigs. She
was nowhere to be seen near the upper end of the grove, but asI advanced I heard a splashing louder than the soft ripple of the brook,and suddenly around a thick tree at a bend in the stream, where thebrook ran out toward the tamarack swamp in the corner of my farm, I cameupon her. She had her shoes and stockings off, and with her skirts heldhigh she was wading with solemn, quiet delight in a little pool. Herback was toward me. I could have discreetly retreated, and she beennone the wiser. But, alas! Actaeon was neither the first nor the lastof his sex. The water rippled so coolly around her white ankles! Thesunlight dappled down so charmingly upon her chestnut hair! And I said,with a laugh, "So that is why you wanted my brook to come from thespring!"
She turned with a little exclamation, the colour flaming to her cheeks.Then she, too, laughed, as she stood in the brook, holding her skirtsabove the water.
"Consider yourself turned to a stag," she said.
"All right," I answered, "but don't stay in that cold water toolong."
"If I do it will be your fault," she smiled, with a sidelong glance.Then she turned and began wading tentatively downstream. But the brookdeepened suddenly, and she sank almost to her knees, catching her skirtsup just in time. I withdrew hastily, and called back to her to comeout. When I heard her on the bank, I brought her a big handkerchief for atowel, and withdrew once more, telling her to hurry and help me planthe path through the pines. In a moment or two she was by my side. Welooked at each other. Her face was still flushed, but her eyes weremerry. We were standing on almost the exact spot where we had firstmet. But now there seemed in some subtle wise a new bond of intimacybetween us, a bond that had not existed before this hour. I could notanalyze it, but I felt it, and I knew she felt it. But what she said was:
"I told you to work till five o'clock."
"It's half-past four," I answered. "Besides, you must have sent forme. Something suddenly prompted me to come out and hunt you up, at anyrate."
"To say I sent for you is rather--rather _forward_, under thecircumstances, don't you think?"
"It might be--and it might not be," I answered. "Did you have a goodtime?"
"The best I ever had--till you spoiled it," she exclaimed. "Oh, thenice, cold brook! Now, let's build the path you spoke about once."
We went back to the maples, where the ground was open, and selected aspot on the edge of the pines where the path would most naturally enter.Then we let it wind along by the brook, lopping off dead branches whichwere in the way, and removing one or two small trees. Once we took itacross the brook, laying a line of stepping-stones, and out almost tothe stone wall, where one could get a momentary glimpse of the road andover the road the blue mountains. Then we bent it in again, crossedthe brook once more just above the point where she had waded, and thereI rolled a large stone to the edge of the pool--"for you to sit on nexttime," I explained. Finally we skirted the tamarack swamp, took thepath up through the fringe of pines at the southern end of the fieldcrops, and let it come back to the house beside the hayfield wall. Whenwe reached this wall, it was nearly six o'clock.
"Now, let's just walk back through it!" she cried. "To-morrow we canbring the wheelbarrow, can't we, and pick up the litter we've made?"
"I can, at any rate, while you wade," said I.
She shot a little look up into my face. "I guess I'll help," shesmiled.
In the low afternoon light we turned about and retraced our steps.There was but a fringe of pines along the southern wall, and as theywere forty-year-old trees here the view both back to the house andover the wall into the next pasture was airy and open. Then the path ledthrough a corner of the tamarack swamp where in wet weather I shouldhave to put down some planks, and where the cattails grew breast high oneither side. Then it entered the thick pine grove where a great manyof the trees were evidently not more than fifteen or twenty years oldand grew very close. The sunlight was shut out, save for daggers ofblue between the trunks toward the west. The air seemed hushed, as iftwilight were already brooding here. The little brook rippled softly.
As we came to the first crossing, I pointed to the pool, already darkwith shadow, and said, "It was wrong of me to play Actaeon to your Diana,but I am not ashamed nor sorry. You were very charming in the dappledlight, and you were doing a natural thing, and in among these littlepines, perhaps, two friends may be two friends, though they are man andwoman."
She did not reply at once, but stood beside me looking at the dark pooland apparently listening to the whisper of the running water against thestepping-stones. Finally she said with a little laugh, "I have alwaysthought that perhaps Diana was unduly severe. Come, we must be movingon."
As the path swung out by the road, we heard a carriage, and stopped,keeping very still, to watch it drive past within twenty feet of us.The occupants were quite unaware of our existence behind the thin screenof roadside alders.
"How exciting!" she half whispered when the carriage had gone by.
Once more we entered the pines, following the new path over the brookagain to the spot where we first had met. There I touched her hand. "Letus wait for the thrush here," I whispered.
I could see her glimmering face lifted to mine. "Why here?" she asked.
"Because it was here we first heard him."
"Oh, forgive me," she answered. "I didn't realize! The path has madeit look different, I guess. Forgive me."
She spoke very low, and her voice was grieving. Did it mean so much toher? A sudden pang went through my heart--and then a sudden hot wave ofjoy--and then sudden doubts. I was silent. So was the thrush. PresentlyI touched her hand again, gently.
"Come," said I, "we have scared him with our chopping. He will comeback, though, and then we will walk down the clean path, making no noise,and hear him sing."
"Nice path," she said, "to come out of your door, through yourorchard, and wander up a path by a brook, through your own pines! Oh,fortunate mortal!"
"And find Diana wading in a pool," I added.
Again she shot an odd, questioning look at me, and shook her head. Thenshe ran into the south room and put the books back on the shelves.
"Which one did you read, Marius or Alice?" I asked.
"Neither," she smiled, as I locked the house behind us.