Chapter IV
I PUMP UP A GHOST
As A matter of fact, I didn't. I went to sleep again at five, andslept till seven. It's not nearly so easy as it sounds in books tochange all your habits of life. But I resolved to try again the nextmorning, and meanwhile to keep awake that night at all costs. Then,after breakfast, I set out for my farm. Hard Cider would be there withthe estimate. The rest of that row of orchard was waiting for me. Mikeand Joe would finish harrowing the potato field and begin planting. Ialmost ran down the road!
What is there about remodelling an old house, renovating an old orchard,planting a fresh-ploughed field, even building a chicken coop, whichinspires us to such enthusiasm? I have written a few things of which I amnot ashamed, and taken great joy in their creation. But it was not thesame joy as that I take in making even one new garden bed, and not inthe least comparable to the joy of those first glorious days when myold house was shaping up anew. It has often seemed to me almostbiological, this delight in domestic planning both inside and outside ofthe dwelling--as though it were foreordained that man should have eachhis own plot of earth, which calls out a primal and instinctiveaestheticism like nothing else, and is coupled with the domestic instinctto reinforce it. I have known men deaf and blind to every other form ofbeauty who clung with a loyal and redeeming love to the flowers intheir dooryard.
As I came into my own dooryard, I found Hard Cider unloading lumber.He nodded briefly, and handed me a dirty slip of paper--his estimate.Evidently he, too, had paternally taken me over, for this estimateincluded the plumber's bill for a heater, the water connections forhouse and barn, a boiler on the kitchen range, and the bathroom. Thebill would come to $3,000. That far exceeded my own estimate, and Ihad still the painters to reckon with! However, Hard's bill seemedfair enough, for Bert had told me the price of lumber, and there was alot of digging to connect with the town main. I nodded "Go ahead,"and opened the door. In three minutes he and his assistant were busilyat work.
In the woodshed I found Mike cutting up the seed potatoes into baskets.
"Good mornin'," he said. "Joe's got the tooth harrer workin', andwe'll be plantin' this afternoon."
I started then toward the orchard, only to meet the boss plumberarriving. With him I went down cellar to decide on the position for theheater. "Of course you're going to have hot water?" said the boss.
"Am I?" said I. "I loathe radiators. They spoil the rooms. Wouldn'tyou, as a great concession, let me have old-fashioned hot air?"
"You can have anything you want, of course," the plumber replied,being, like most of his kind, without a sense of humour, "but to getregister pipes upstairs in this old house you'll spoil your rooms morethan with radiators. We have some very ornamental radiators."
"There ain't no such animal," said I.
But I ended with hot water. There were to be four radiators downstairsand three upstairs, one in the bathroom, one in the hall, and one in achamber. The other chambers, having fireplaces, I decided needed nofurther heat, though the plumber was mournfully skeptical. That madeseven in all, and did not call for a large heater. After much dickeringand argument, the plumber consented to leave the old copper pump at thesink, in addition to the faucets. I refused to let that pump go, withits polished brass knob on the iron handle, even though the sink was tobe replaced by a porcelain one. As the bathroom was almost over thekitchen, and as the house already had a good cesspool, by some happymiracle, the work was comparatively simple, and the plumber left to gethis men and supplies.
Again I started for the orchard. Already the buds were swelling on theold trees, and the haze of nascent foliage hung over them. I had fourand a half rows to trim, and then the whole orchard to go over withpaint pot and gouge and cement. I had never trimmed a tree in my lifetill the day before, yet I felt that I was doing a better job thanBert had done on his trees, for Bert's idea of pruning was to cut offall the limbs he could reach near the trunk, often leaving a stub fourinches long when it didn't happen to be convenient to saw closer. Hemade his living, and a good one, selling milk and cauliflowers--he hadthirty acres down to cauliflowers, and shipped them to New York--but,like so many New England farmers, he couldn't or wouldn't understandthe simple science of tree culture. Anybody can learn tree culturewith a little application to the right books or models and a littleimagination to see into the future. A good tree pruner has to be a bitof an architect. I thought so then in my pride, at any rate, and itturned out I was right. Right or wrong, however, I went at my job thatmorning with a mighty zest, and soon had a second barrier of dead woodheaped upon the ground.
As I worked, I thought how this orchard must be trimmed and cleanedup first, but how the fine planting weather was upon us, too, and I oughtto be getting my garden seeds in, if I was to have any flowers. Ithought, also, of all my manuscripts to be read. A nervous fit seizedme, and I worked frantically. "How on earth shall I ever find time forall I've got to do?" I said to myself, sending the saw into a deadlimb with a vicious jab. But I soon discovered that nervous hastewasn't helping any. In my excitement, I cleaned off all the suckers ona limb, and suddenly realized that I should have left two or three ofthe strongest to make new wood, as the limb itself was past bearing.I thought of Mike's reflection, that he kept his thoughts on hisgardening. So I calmed down, and gave my whole attention to my work,making a little study of each limb, deciding what I wished to leave forfuture development, and what would give the best decorative effect to myslope as well. You can really trim an old apple tree into a thing ofgnarled power and quaint charm by a little care.
Tap, tap, tap, came the sound of hammers from my house. The plumbershad returned, and I could hear them rattling pipes. The water companywas digging for the connections. Now and then a shout from Joe to thehorses was wafted down from the plateau. A pair of persistent songsparrows, building in an evergreen by the brook, kept up a steady song. Arobin sang in the next tree to me. The sun beat warmly on my neck. And Isawed and pruned, keeping steadily to my job, treating each tree andlimb as a separate and important problem, till I heard the hammerscease at noon.
I had almost completed my first row!
As I returned from dinner, Joe was walking the drills in the potatofield, dropping the fertilizer, and the bent form of Mike followedimmediately behind him, dropping the seed from a basket. Joe walkedwith a fine, free stride, and dropped the fertilizer from his handwith a perfectly rhythmic gesture. The father's bent back behind himwas an added touch from Millet. But the lone pine and the blue mountainsgave a bright, sharp quality to the landscape which was quite unlikeMillet. The picture held me, however, as do the Frenchman's canvases.Even my knowledge of Mike's comfortable home and happy disposition didnot rob it of that subtle pathos of agricultural toil. Why the pathos, Iasked myself? Mike is healthy and happy. No toil is more healthful.I'm working as hard as Mike, and having a glorious time! To be sure,I'm working my own land, but Mike, too, has a garden of his own, yetdoubtless looks as pathetic in it. I could find no solution, unless itbe that instinctive belief of a city-bred civilization that all joysare urban. Just then, however, Mike straightened up with a laugh, andthe pathos vanished.
"So the pathos," thought I, as I caught myself instinctivelystraightening, too, "is a matter of spinal sympathy!"
This was a most comforting reflection, and I hastened to investigate HardCider's morning work. The kitchen floor was ready to relay. Over theold planking he had spread tar paper, then carefully adjusted a light,half-inch framework, and on top of this was laying the new floor.
"Thet'll keep out the cold," he said briefly, carefully lifting thelid of the stove and spitting into the fire pot.
I examined the framework on which he was laying the new floor. It wasas carefully jointed as if it were the floor itself.
"Why so much pains with this?" I asked, pointing with my toe.
"Why not?" Hard Cider replied, as the March Hare replied to Alice.
I was braver than Alice. "But it doesn't show," I said.
"Some
body might take the floor up," he retorted, with some scorn.
"Hard Cider, after all, is an artist," I thought. "He has the artisticconscience--and, being a Yankee, he won't admit it."
I went back to my orchard, working with a greater confidence andspeed now, born of practice; and I had begun on the second row by fiveo'clock. Then I walked up to the plateau. Joe was working overtime,covering the drills, while his father was doing the stable work. I stakedthe three sections of the field containing Early Rose, Dibble'sRusset, and Irish Cobbler respectively, and entered in my notebook thedate of planting. It occurred to me then and there to keep a diary ofall seeds, soils, fertilizers, and plantings, noting weather conditionsand pests during the growing season, and the time, quality, andquantity of harvest. That diary I began the same evening; I have keptit religiously ever since, and I have learned more about agriculturefrom its pages than from any other book--something I don't sayvainly at all, because it is but the careful tabulation of practicalexperience, and that is any man's best teacher.
I picked up a hoe and helped Joe cover drills for half an hour. Thanksto golf and rowing, my hands were already calloused, or I don't knowwhat would have happened to them in those first days!
Then I walked back to my house. I could not bring myself to leave it. Iwalked down through the littered orchard to the brook, and plannedout a cement dam and a pool. Then I walked back to the south side of thedwelling, and looked out over the slope where my main vegetable farmwas to be. The land had been ploughed close up to the house. It would beeasy to level it off for a hundred feet or more into a grass terrace,with a rose hedge at the end to shut out the farm, and a sundial inthe centre. To the east it would go naturally into an extension of theorchard; to the west it would end at a grape arbour just beyond thefarthest woodshed. I would place my garden hotbeds against the shelteredsouth side of the kitchen, and screen them with a bed of hollyhocksrunning west from the end of the main house, which extended in a jogsome twelve or fifteen feet beyond the kitchen. Thus one end of mypergola veranda would naturally run off into a hollyhock walk, theother into the grassy slope of the orchard, while directly in front ofthe glass door would be the lawn, the sundial, and then a white benchagainst the rambler hedge. I saw it all as I stood there, saw it andthrilled to it as a painter must thrill to a new conception; thrilled,also, at the prospect of achieving it with my own hands; thrilled atthe thought of dwelling with it all my days. I must have remained there along time, lost in reverie, for I was very late to supper, and Mrs.Temple was not so cheerful as her wont.
That night I managed to keep awake till eleven, and got some work done.I also rose at a compromise hour of six in the morning, and workedanother hour, almost catching up with what should have been my dailystint. But I realized that hereafter I could not work on the farm allday. I must give up my mornings to my manuscript reading.
"Well," thought I, "I'll do it--as soon as the orchard is finished."
As soon as the orchard was finished! I stood amid the litter I had madeon the ground, and reflected. I had completed the preliminary trimmingof one row and part of a second. There were still over two rows and ahalf to do. And the worst trees were in those rows, at that. After theywere trimmed, there was all the litter to clear out, and the stubs tobe painted, and cement work to be done.
"Good gracious!" thought I, "if I do all that, when will I plant, whenwill I make my lawn?"
Were you ever lost in the woods, so that you suddenly felt a mad desireto rush blindly in every direction, helpless, bewildered, with a horridsensation that your heart has gone down somewhere into your abdomen? Thatis the way I suddenly felt toward my farm. I couldn't afford to employmore labour. Besides, I didn't want to. I wanted to do the work myself.But there was so much to do!
I stood stock still and pulled myself together. "Rome was not built ina day," I told myself. "You just take out the worst of the dead woodin those remaining trees now, and finish them another season, or elseat odd times during the summer."
Then one of those things called a still, small voice whispered in my ear:"But you should never begin a new job till you have finished the old.Hoe out your row, my son!"
I recognized the latter words as the catch phrase of a moral story inan ancient reader used in my boyhood school days. Oh, these blightingdogmas taught us in our youth! I resisted the still, small voice, butI felt secretly ashamed. That day I finished the orchard by merely takingout unsightly dead wood and a few of the worst suckers; so that onehalf of it looked naked and one half bearded, even as the half-shavedhunchback in the "Arabian Nights." I knew I was doing right, yet Ifelt I was doing wrong, and in my heart of hearts I was never quite happyfor a year, till I had that orchard finished.
Meanwhile, Hard Cider had finished the kitchen floor and cut out the newdoor frame into the dining-room, while the plumbers had mounted theboiler by the range and begun on the piping. Mike and Joe had beenbusy on the slope to the south, ploughing the most distant portionfor the fodder crops and harrowing in load after load of old stablemanure from the barn. The next day would bring them into the gardenarea, so I staked out my contemplated sundial lawn, allowing a liberal250 feet, and ran the line westward till it came a trifle beyond thelast woodshed, whence I ran it north to the shed for the grape arbour.West of the arbour, on the half acre of slope remaining before theplateau was reached, I planned to set out a new orchard--some day. Thatsame night I filled out an order for fifty rambler roses! "I'll grow'em on poles, till I can build the trellises," said I. Then I satdown to my manuscripts.
The next morning I managed to prod myself out of bed at five-thirty, andfound that I could do more work before breakfast than in three hours inthe evening. I must confess I was a little annoyed at this verificationof a hoary superstition. Personally, I like best to work at night, andsome day I shall work at night again. It is a goal to strive for. Butyou cannot drive your brain at night when you've been driving yourbody all day. That, alas! is a drawback on farming.
Reaching my farm at eight, I found Joe harrowing in manure on the gardenand Mike sowing peas.
"Can I have the horse to-morrow?" said I.
"Yez cannot," said Mike. "Sure, we'll be another day at the leastgettin' the garden ready."
"But I want to grade my lawn," I said. "The day after, then?"
"Maybe," said Mike. "Yez must make lawns when there's nothin' elseat all to do."
"Yes, sir," I replied, and he grinned.
That sundial lawn had now taken possession of my imagination. My fingersfairly itched to be at it. I lingered fondly on the rough furrowed slopeas I crossed to the orchard, and saw a rambler in pink or red glory ateach of my stakes, climbing a trellis and making a great, outdoor roomfor my house. I stepped into the house straightway, and told Hard Ciderto order the trellis lumber for me.
Then I went at my orchard. Armed with a gouge, a mallet, a bag ofcement, a barrowful of sand, a box for mixing, a trowel, and a pail ofcarbolic solution, I gouged out a few--only a few--of the worst cavitiesin the old trunks, washed them, and filled them with cement. It was aslow process, that took me all the morning, and I fear it was nonetoo neatly done, for I had never worked in cement before. Moreover, Iwill admit that I got frightened at my inexperience, and confined myexperiments to three or four cavities. But it was extraordinarilyinteresting. I found a certain childish fascination in the similarity ofthe work to a dentist's filling teeth. If every tree died, I toldmyself, I would still have been repaid in the fun of doing the jobmyself. Early in the afternoon I started to paint the scars where limbshad been removed, but changed my mind suddenly, and decided to cleanup the litter on the ground first. The orchard looked so disgusting. Sofor more than three hours I sawed and chopped, chopped and sawed,carted wheelbarrow load after wheelbarrow load of firewood to the shed,and load after load of brush and dead stuff to a heap in the garden.Still the rake brought up more litter from the tangled grass (for theorchard had not been mowed the year before), and still I trundled thebarrow back for it.
When six o'clock came I was still carting from the top of the orchard,and for an hour past I had been working with that grim automatismwhich characterizes the last lap of a two-mile race. There is no joyof creation in clearing up! It is just a grind. And yet it is a partof creation, too, the final stage in the achievement of garden beauty.I wonder if any gardener exists, though, with the imagination so toregard it while he cleans? Certainly I am not the man. I then and thereresolved to finish the job by installments, from day to day. Perhaps,taken a little at a time, it would not seem so boresome!
The next morning the smoke of my burning brush pile was coming over thehill as I drew near my farm. The harrow was at work in the garden.Hard's hammer was ringing from the chamber over the dining-room, whichhe was converting into a bathroom so that the plumbers could get to workin it. The old orchard trees held up their cropped and denuded topswith a brave show of buds, and I debated with myself what I shoulddo. "Spray!" I decided. So I got a hoe, and started to scrape thetrees mildly on the trunks and large lower limbs, while my lime-sulphurmixture was boiling on the stove. I soon found that here, again, Ihad tackled a job which would require a day, not an hour, so I gaveit up, and put the solution in my spraying barrel, summoned Joe to thepump, and sprayed for scale on the unscraped bark. I was by this timegetting used to half measures. You have to, when you try to bring up afarm with limited labour!
The wiseacre has now, of course, foreseen that I killed all the youngbuds. Alas! I am again compelled to spoil a good story, and confessthat I didn't kill any of them. I mixed the lime-sulphur one part tosixty, for I carefully read the warning in my spraying bulletin. I havemy doubts whether it was strong enough to kill the scale, certainlynot with the bark left on, but at least it was weak enough not to killthe buds, and it was fun applying it.
"There," I cried, as noon came, "the orchard may rest for the present!Now for the next thing!"
Have you ever watched a small boy picking berries? He never picks abush clean, but rushes after this or that big cluster of fruit whichstrikes his eye, covering half an acre of ground while you, perhaps,are stripping a single clump of bushes. And he is usually amazed whenyour pail fills quicker than his. Alas! I fear I was much like that smallboy during my first season on the farm, or at any rate during the firstmonth or two. There was little "efficiency" in my methods--but, oh,much delight!
I fairly gobbled my dinner, and rushed back, a fever of work upon me.Seed beds, that was what I wanted next. As I had planned to put my gardencoldframes along the south wall of the kitchen, I decided to make mytemporary seed beds there. Mike assented to the plan as a good one,and I had him dump me a load of manure, while I brought earth from thenearest point in the garden, spaded up the soil, mixed in the gardenearth and dressing, and then worked and reworked it with a rake, andfinally with my hands.
Ah, the joy of working earth with your naked hands, making it ready forplanting! The ladies I had seen in their gardens always wore gloves.Even my mother, I recalled, in her little garden, had always worn gloves.Surely, thought I, they miss something--the cool, moist feel of theloam, the very sensations of the seeds themselves. At four o'clockI had my bed ready, and I got my seed packets, sorted them in a tintobacco box, and began to sow the seeds. The directions which I read withscrupulous care always said, "press the earth down firmly with aboard." I was working with a flat mason's trowel, so I got up andfound a board. It wasn't half so easy to work with, but I was takingno chances!
"There must," I grinned, "be some magic efficacy in that board."
The seeds were not my own selection. They had been chosen for me byProfessor Grey's assistant. That, I confess, was a cloud on my pleasure.Half the fun in sowing flower seeds comes from your hope of achievingthose golden promises held out by the seed catalogues--like a secondmarriage, alas! too often "the triumph of hope over experience"--orelse from your memory of some bright bed of the year before.
But the cloud was a small one, after all. I sat in the afternoon sun,beneath my kitchen windows, opening little packets of annuals with grimyfingers that turned the white papers brown, and gently, lovingly, putthe seeds into the ground. I had no beds as yet to transplant them to;very often I didn't know whether they could be transplanted. (As itturned out, I wasted all my poppy seeds.) But I was in no mood to wait.As each little square was sown, I thrust the packet on a stick for amarker, and hitched along to the next square. Bachelors' buttons,love-in-a-mist, Drummond's phlox, zinnias, asters, stock, annuallarkspur, cosmos, mignonette (of course I lost all that later, as wellas the poppies), marigolds, nasturtiums, and several more went into thesoil. My border seeds, the sweet alyssum and lobelia, I had senseenough not to plant, and I sowed none of the perennials. But what I putin was enough to keep a gardener busy the rest of the summer. Then Igot my new watering-pot, filled it at the kitchen sink, and gentlywatered the hopeful earth.
Mike and Joe were unhitching the horse from the harrow as I finished. Thegreat brown slope of the vegetable garden, lying away from the housetoward the ring of southern hills, was ready for planting. There wasmy farm, thence would come my profits--if profits there should be. Butjust at that moment the little strip of soaked seed bed behind me wasmore important. It stood for the colour box with which I was going topaint, for the fragrant pigments out of which I should create about mydwelling a dream of gardens.
"After all," I thought, "a country place is but half realized withoutits garden, even though it be primarily a farm; and the richness ofcountry living is but half fulfilled unless we become painters withshrub and tree and flower. I cannot draw, nor sing, nor play. PerhapsI cannot even write. But surely I can express myself here, about me, incolour and landscape charm, and not be any the worse farmer for that.I have my work; I shall write; I shall be a farmer; I shall be agardener--an artist in flowers; I shall make my house lovely within;I shall live a rich, full life. Surely I am a happy, a fortunate, man!"
I put the watering-pot back in the shed, crossed the road to the oldwooden pump by the barn on a sudden impulse, and pumped water on my handsand head, for I was hot. Mike stood in the barn door and laughed.
"What are yez doin' that for?" he asked.
I stood up and shook the water from my face and hair. "Just to be a kid,I guess," I laughed.
There are some things Mike couldn't understand. Perhaps I did notclearly understand myself. In some dim way an old pump before a barn andthe shock of water from its spout on my head was fraught with happymemories and with dreams. The sight of the pump at that moment hadwaked the echo of their mood.
But as I plodded up the road in the May twilight to supper, one of thosememories came back with haunting clearness--a summer day, a long tramp,the tender wistfulness of young love shy at its own too sudden passion,the plunge of cool water from a pump, and then at twilight half-spokenwords, and words unspoken, sweeter still!
The amethyst glow went off the hills that ring our valley, and a farblue peak faded into the gathering dusk. A light shivered off my spirit,too. I felt suddenly cold, and the cheery face of Mrs. Temple was theface of a stranger. I felt unutterably lonely and depressed. My farm wasdust and ashes. That evening I savagely turned down a manuscript by arather well-known author, and went to bed without confessing what wasthe matter with me. The matter was, I had pumped up a ghost.