The Idyl of Twin Fires

  Chapter VII

  THE GHOST OF ROME IN ROSES

  "Stella Goodwin." "It's rather a pretty name," I thought, as I readit on the flyleaf of a volume she had left in Mrs. Bert's sitting-room.The volume itself amused me--Chamberlain's "Foundations of theNineteenth Century." Fancy coming to the country for a rest, andreading Chamberlain, most restless because most provocative of books!I was waiting for breakfast, impatiently, having been at work on mymanuscripts since five. Mrs. Bert was in the kitchen; Bert was at thebarn. The hour was seven-thirty. I was idly turning the leaves ofChamberlain when there was a rustle on the stairs, and Miss StellaGoodwin entered with a cheerful "Good morning."

  "See here," said I, "what are you doing with this book, if you are offfor a rest? This is no book for a nervous wreck to be reading."

  "Who said I was a nervous wreck?" she answered. "I'm just tired,that's all. I guess it's really spring fever. I saw a spear of realgrass in Central Park, and ran away."

  "From what?" I asked.

  "From the dictionary," she replied.

  "The _which?_" said I.

  "The dictionary. Would you like me to sing you a song of the things thatbegin with 'hy'?"

  She laughed again, and began to chant in burlesque Gregorian,"Hyopotamus, hyoscapular, hyoscine, Hyoscyameae, hyoscyamine,Hyoscyamus-----"

  "Stop!" I cried. "You will have me hypnotized. See, I'm on the'hy's' myself! Please explain--not sing."

  "Well," she laughed, "you see it's this way. I have to eat, drink,and try to be merry, or to-morrow I die, so to postpone to-morrow I amworking on a new dictionary. _Somebody_ has to work on dictionaries, youknow, and justify the pronunciation of America to man. I'm sort oflearned, in a mild, harmless, anti-militant way. It isn't fair tokeep the truth from you--_I have a degree in philology!_ My doctor'sthesis was published by the press of my kind University, at $1.50per copy, of which as many as seventeen were sold, and I'm stillpaying up the money I borrowed while preparing it. I stood the dictionarypretty well down to the 'hy's,' and then one day something snappedinside of me, and I began to cry. That wouldn't have been so bad, if Ihadn't made the mistake of crying on a sheet of manuscript by alearned professor, about Hyoscyamus (which is a genus of dicotyledonousgamopetalous plants), and the ink ran. Then I knew I should have totake a rest in the cause of English, pure and well defined. So here Iam. The doctor tells me I must live out of doors and saw wood."

  "Madam," I cried, "God has sent you! I shall get my orchard cleanedup at last!"

  "Breakfast!" called Mrs. Bert.

  "Miss Goodwin," I announced at that meal, "is going to saw up the deadwood in my orchard this morning."

  "No, she ain't. The idee!" cried Mrs. Bert. "She's jest goin' terrest up for the next four weeks, an' grow fat."

  "You are both wrong," laughed the young lady. "I'm not going to beginon Mr. Upton's wood pile this morning, but I expect to finish it beforeI go away."

  "If thet's how you feel, _I_ got a wood pile," said Bert.

  She refused to come down to Twin Fires with me that morning, so I toiledalone, getting out more of the brush from the orchard--all of the smallstuff, in fact, which wasn't fit to save for fuel. In the afternoonshe consented to come. As I looked at her hands and then at mine, Irealized how pale she was.

  "It's wrong for anybody to be so pale as that," I thought, "to _have_to be so pale as that!"

  I was beginning to pity her.

  When we reached the farm, I took her around under the kitchen window andshowed her my seed beds, where the asters were already growing madly,some other varieties were up, and the weeds were busy, too; but in thepresent uncertainty of my horticultural knowledge I didn't dare pull upanything. I hadn't realized till that moment that half the fun of havinga new place is showing it to somebody else and telling how grand it isgoing to be.

  "And where are you going to put these babies when you set them out?"she asked.

  "That's just the point," I cried. "I don't know. I want you to helpme."

  "After Mrs. Bert's warning, I shouldn't dare advise you," she smiled.

  "Well, let's ask Hiroshige," said I. "Come on."

  "Is he your gardener? The name sounds quite un-Hibernian."

  I scorned a reply, and we went around to the shed where all mybelongings were stored, still unpacked. I got a hammer and opened thebox containing pictures, drawing forth my two precious Japaneseprints. Then I led Miss Goodwin through the kitchen in spite of herprotests of propriety, through the fragrance of new flooring, intothe big south room, where Hard had nearly completed his main work and wasgetting in the new door frames while his assistants were patching upthe floor. She sat down on the new settle, while I climbed on a boxand hung the pictures, one over each mantel. Instantly the room assumedto my imagination something of its coming charm. Those two spots ofcolour against the dingy wood panels dressed up the desolationwonderfully. I hastily kicked some shavings and chips into thefireplaces and applied a match.

  "The first fires on the twin hearths!" I cried. "In your honour!"

  The girl smiled into my face, and did not joke. "That is very nice,"she said. Then she rose and put out her hand. "Let me wish Twin Firesalways plenty of wood and the happiness which goes with it."

  We shook hands, while the fire crackled, and already the spot seemedto me like home. Then she looked up at the prints. "Now," she cried,"how is honourable Hiroshige going to advise you? Here is a blue canaland a lavender sky in the west, and bright scarlet temple doors--and allthe rest snow. Lavender and bright scarlet is rather a daring colourscheme, isn't it?"

  "Not if it's the right scarlet," I replied. "But it's not the colourI'm going to copy. Neither is it the moon bridges in this other templegarden. It's the simplicity. Out here south of this room is my lawnand garden. Now I want it to be a real garden, but I don't want itto dwarf the landscape. I don't want it to look as if I'd bought ahalf acre of Italy and deposited it in the middle of Massachusetts,either. I've never seen a picture of a real Japanese garden yet thatdidn't look as much like a natural Japanese landscape as a garden. Iwant my garden to be an extension of my south room which will somehowframe the real landscape beyond."

  We went through the glass door, and I showed her where the grape arbourwas to be, at the western side of the lawn, and how a lane of hollyhockswould lead to it from the pergola end, screening the kitchen windows andthe yet-to-be-built hotbeds.

  "Now," said I, "I'm going to build a rambler rose trellis along thesouth; there's your red against the lavender of the far hills at sunset!But how shall the trellis be designed, and where shall the sundial be,and where the flower beds?"

  The girl clapped her hands. "Oh, the fun of planning it all out fromthe beginning!" she cried. "My, but I envy you."

  "Please don't envy; advise," said I.

  "Oh, I can't. I don't know anything about gardens."

  "But you know what you like! People always say that when they areignorant, don't they?"

  "Don't be nasty," she replied, running down the plank from the terraceto the lawn, and walking out to the centre. "I'd have the sundialright in the middle, where it gets all the sun," she said, "becauseit seems to me a dial ought to be in the natural focus point of thelight. Then I'd ring it with flowers, some low, a few fairly tall, allbright colours, or maybe white, and the beds not too regular. Then,right in line with the door, I'd have an arch in the trellis so youcould see through into the farm. Oh, I know! I'd have the trellis allarches, with a bigger one in the centre, and it would look like a Romanaqueduct of roses!"

  "A Roman aqueduct of roses," I repeated, my imagination fired by thepicture, "walking across the end of my green lawn, with the farm and thefar hills glimpsed beneath! 'Rome's ghost since her decease.' MissGoodwin, you are a wonder! But can you build it?"

  "No," she sighed, "I can only give you the derivation of 'aqueduct'and 'rose'."

  "Come," said I, "we will consult Hard Cider."

  "Heavens!" she laughed. "Is that anything like Dutch courage?"

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p; Hard grunted, and came with us to the line of stakes where the rosetrellis was to be. I sketched roughly the idea I wanted--a reproductionin simple trellis work, as it were, of High Bridge, New York.

  Hard pondered a moment, and then departed for the shed. He returnedwith several pieces of trellis lumber, a spade, some tools, a smallroll of chicken wire, and a step-ladder, all on a wheelbarrow. At hisdirection, I dug a post-hole at the extreme east end of the lawn, anothertwo feet away, a third four feet beyond that, and a fourth again twofeet to the west. Hard then mounted the 3 x 3 chestnut joists, levelledthem as I set them, and connected the tops, leaving a space for thenext connection on the final post to the west.

  "But where is the arch?" I cried.

  Hard climbed down from the wheelbarrow in silence, cut off somethingover four feet from the three-foot wide chicken wire, and then cut acircumference into this wire which, in the centre, came within a foot ofthe top. He twisted the loose ends back and tacked the flat arch thusmade to the top and inner posts of the trellis. Then he connected thetwo posts on each side with stripping. Thus I had the first arch of myaqueduct, nine feet high, with two-foot piers of trellis work and afour-foot arch with eight feet clear space under the centre.

  ]

  "It ain't pretty," said Hard, "but when it's painted green andcovered with vines it won't show. Guess most of your roses will bloomon the south side of it, though, away from the house."

  My face fell. "Golly, I hadn't thought of that!" said I.

  "Oh, they'll peep over and all around it," said Miss Goodwincheerfully.

  "What could I have done else?" said I.

  "Nothin', 'cept turned your house around," Hard replied. "You canbuy wire arches so's you could plant your roses east and west, butthat wouldn't give you no level top like a bridge. You could set thoseboughten arches on the south side of this trellis, though, so's you'dget the effect of something solid, lookin' through, without losin'your top."

  "Guess I'll get you paid first," I laughed, as Hard went back to hiswork.

  "And now," I added to the girl at my side, "shall we see if _we_ canbuild the next arch?"

  Again she clapped her hands delightedly, and ran with me around the housefor the tools and lumber.

  I let her dig the first post-hole, though it was evident that the efforttired her, and then I took the spade away, while she marked off thetrellis strips into the proper lengths, and sawed them up, placing eachstrip across the wheelbarrow and holding it in place first with a handwhich looked quite inadequate even for that small task, and, when thehand failed, with her foot.

  She laughed as she put her foot on the wheelbarrow, hitching her skirt upwhere it bound her knee. "The new skirts weren't made for carpenters,"she said, as she jabbed away with the saw. I darted a glance at thedisplay of trim ankles, and resumed my digging in the post-holes. Thiswas a new and disturbing distraction in agricultural toil!

  The post-holes were soon dug, and while I held the posts, she adjustedthe level against them, our hands and faces close together, and weboth kicked the dirt in with our feet. Then I climbed on the step-ladderand levelled the top piece, which I nailed down. Then, while I wascutting a semicircle out of the wire, for the arch, she nailed thetrellis strips across the piers, grasping the hammer halfway up to thehead, and frowning earnestly as she tapped with little, short, jablikeblows. She was so intent on this task that I laughed aloud.

  "What are you laughing at?" said she.

  "You," said I. "You drive a nail as if it were an abstruse problemin differential calculus."

  "It is, for me," she answered, quite soberly. "I don't supposeI've driven a dozen nails in my life--only tacks in the plaster to hangpictures on. And it's very important to drive them right, because thisis a rose trellis."

  "When I first came here," said I, "I was pretty clumsy with my hands,too. I'd lost my technique, as you might say. I remember one afternoonwhen I was trimming the orchard that I didn't think a single thoughtbeyond the immediate problem each branch presented. And yet it wasimmensely stimulating. Personally, I believe that the educational valueof manual dexterity has only begun to be appreciated."

  Miss Goodwin marked off the place for the next strip, and startednailing. At the last blow she relaxed her frown.

  "Maybe," she said. "No, probably. But the manual work, it seemsto me, has got to be connected up in some way with--well, with higherthings. I can't think of a word to fit, because my head is so full ofthe 'hy' group. You, for instance, were sawing your _own_ orchard,and you were working for better fruit, and more beautiful trees, and alovely home. You saw the work in its higher relations, its relationsto the beauty of living."

  "And your nails?" I asked.

  "I see the aqueduct of roses," she smiled.

  "You will see them, I trust," said I. "You _shall_ see them. You muststay till they bloom."

  Her brow suddenly clouded, and she shook her head. "I--I shall have togo back to the 'I's,'" she said. "But I shall know the roses arehere. You must send me a picture of them."

  Somehow I was less enthusiastic over the next arch, but her spiritssoon came back, and she sawed the next batch of stripping with greaterprecision and skill in the use of the saw--and a more reckless showof stocking. "See!" she cried, "how much I'm improving! I didn'tsplinter any of the ends this time!"

  "Fine," said I. "You can tackle the firewood in the orchard soon!"

  We got up two more arches, working close together, intent upon our task.As each arch, with its piers, took up eight feet, and the central archwould take up twelve, we should need exactly a dozen arches to completethe trellis. Here were four of them done!

  "Hooray!" cried the girl, as the fourth was finished. "How we aregetting on!"

  "I could never have done it alone," said I. "You have really been agreat help."

  "Oh, I hope so!" she exclaimed. "I haven't had so much fun in years."

  We looked into the vegetable garden, and saw that Mike had gone, and Joe,too. My watch and the lengthening shadows warned me it was approachingsix. Hot and pleasantly tired, we packed up the tools on the barrow,and wheeled them to the shed.

  "Now shall we go and hear the hermit?" I asked.

  She nodded, and we went down through the orchard, past the pool where theiris buds were already showing a spike of greenish white, through themaples, and into the pines. There we stood, side by side, in the quiethush of coming sunset, and waited for the fairy horn. A song sparrowwas singing out by the road, and the thin, sweet flutings of a Peabodycame from the pasture. But the thrush was silent.

  "Please sing, Mr. Thrush!" she pleaded, looking at me after she spoke,with a wistful little smile of apology for her foolishness. "I want soto hear him again," she said. "We don't hear thrushes in New York,nor smell pine trees, nor feel this sweet, cool silence. Oh, the goodpines!"

  "He will sing to-morrow," said I. "There is no opera on Thursdays."

  Her eyes twinkled once more. "Perhaps he has that terrible disease,'sudden indisposition'," she laughed. "Come, we must go home tosupper. It will take me hours to get clean."

  Out in the open, she looked at her hands. "See, I've begun to getcallouses, too!" she exclaimed, holding out her palms proudly.

  "You've got blisters," said I. "No work for you to-morrow! Let mesee."

  I touched her hand, as we paused beneath a blossoming apple tree, withthe fragrance shedding about us. Our eyes met, too, as I did so. Shedrew her hand back gently, as the colour came to her cheeks. We walkedon in silence, as far as the pump. Mike had finished milking, and hadgone home. The stable was closed. Inside, we could hear the animalsstamp. Suddenly I put my head under the pump spout, and asked her towork the handle. Laughing, she did so, and as I raised my dripping head,I saw her standing with the low western sun full upon her, her eyeslaughing into mine, her nose and lips provocative, her plain blousewaist open at the throat so that I could see the gurgle of laughter rise.

  "Why did you do that?" she asked, arrested, perhaps, by something in mygaze.

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bsp; "Because," I answered, "there's a ghost lives in this well, and maybewith your aid I shall pump it out."

  "Don't you like the ghost?" she said.

  "Very much," said I, as we climbed the slope to Bert's.

  That evening Mrs. Bert sent her off to bed, and I toiled cheerfully atmy manuscripts till the unholy hour of eleven.