The Idyl of Twin Fires

  Chapter IX

  WE SEAT THOREAU IN THE CHIMNEY NOOK, AND I WRITE A SONNET

  After dinner she approved the sundial beds with a mock-judicial gravity,and then she went at the trellis, working with a kind of impersonalnervous intensity that troubled me, I didn't quite know why. She said,with a brief laugh, it was because she had suggested the structure, andshe could never rest till any job she had undertaken was completed.

  "You live too hard," said I. "That's the trouble with most of usnowadays. We are over-civilized. We don't know how to take thingseasy, because we have the vague idea of so many other things to bedone always crowding across the threshold of our consciousness."

  "Perhaps," she answered. "The 'J' words, for instance, if they get'I' done before my return. Thank heaven, 'J' hasn't contributed somany words to science as 'Hy'!"

  "Forget the dictionary!" I cried. "You are going to stay here a longtime--till these roses bloom, or at any rate till the sundial beds havecome to flower. Besides, there'll be a lot of things about my housewhere your advice cannot be spared."

  She darted a quick look at me, and turned back to the trellis, whereshe was nailing on strips. She did not speak, and when I came over toface her, with a post for the next arch, I saw that her eyes were moist.She turned her face half away, blinking her eyelids hard, bit her lip,then picked up the level and set it with a smack against the post. Iput my hand over hers--both our hands were dirty!--and said, "What isthe matter? Are you tired?"

  "Please, please--level this post," she replied.

  "Are you tired?"

  "No, I'm not tired. I'm a fool. Come, we must finish the arch!"

  "I guess we won't do any more arches to-day," I replied, "or youwon't, at any rate. You'll go home and rest."

  She looked at me an instant with just the hint of her twinkle comingback. "I'm so unused to taking orders," she said, "that I've lostthe art of obedience. Move the post a little to the right, please."

  I did so, and we worked on in silence. We had built the wide central archby the time the sun began to drop down into our faces. There were onlyfive arches more to build.

  "I shall write to-night and have the roses hurried along," said I.

  We walked back toward the house and looked over the lawn, past thesundial, and saw the farm through the trellis, and beyond the farm thetrees at the edge of my clearing, and then a distant roof or two, andthe far hills. The apple blossoms were fragrant in the orchard. Thepersistent song sparrows were singing. The shadow of the dial poststretched far out toward the east.

  "It is pointing toward the brook," said I. "Shall we go and ask thethrush to sing?"

  She shook her head. "Not to-night," she said briefly, and I walked,grieved and puzzling, up the road by her side.

  The next day she pleaded a headache, and I went to the farm alone. Thesouth room was shining with its first coat of paint. Hard was, as he putit "seein' daylight" in his work, and I realized that soon I shouldbe sending for Mrs. Pillig and son Peter and moving away from Bert's.Somehow the idea made me perversely melancholy. The house seemed lonelyas I wandered through it, sniffing the strong odour of fresh paint.

  I went out to find Mike, and learned that the small fruits had come--ahundred red raspberries, fifty blackcaps, twenty-five of the yellowvariety, a hundred blackberries, not to mention currant bushes. Wewalked about the garden to find the best site for them, and finally chosefor the berries the end of the slope between the vegetables and fieldcrops and the pines and tamaracks. Here was a long, narrow stretch wherethe brook in times past had made the soil sandy, so that it drained well,but where the swampy land was close enough to offer the least danger ofcomplete drying out. While Mike and Joe were ploughing the dressingunder and harrowing, I took my garden manual in hand and carefullysorted out the varieties according to their bearing season. Then webegan planting them in rows.

  There is no berry so fascinating nor so delicious to me as a raspberry,especially at breakfast, half hidden under golden cream. There issomething soft and cool and wild about it; it is the feline of berries.As we planted, I could almost smell the fruit. I could fancy the joyof walking between these dewy rows in the fresh morning sun and pickingmy breakfast. I could imagine the crates of ripe fruit sent to market.

  In the pleasures of my fancy and the monotony of measured planting,I lost track of time, nor did I think of Miss Goodwin. But thought ofher returned at noon, however, when Mrs. Bert told me her head hadfelt better and she had gone off for a day's trolley trip to see thecountry. After all, it was rather selfish of me not to show her thecountry! Besides, I hadn't seen it myself. I had been too busy. Whyshouldn't I take a day off? But I couldn't do that till the berrieswere all in, and that afternoon was not enough to finish them. It tookall of the next day as well, and most of the day following, for wehad the double rows of wire to mount as supports for the vines, and thecurrant bushes to set in as a border to the garden six feet south ofthe rose trellis. Most of this work I did alone, leaving Mike free forother tasks, and Joe free to cut the pea brush. I saw Miss Goodwinonly at meals. After supper I had to drive myself to my manuscripts.

  "It will be you who will need a rest soon," she said the secondmorning, as she came down to breakfast and found me hard at work outon the front porch.

  "I'm going to take one--with you!" said I. "I want to see thecountry, too."

  She smiled a little, and picked a lilac bud, holding it to her nose.She seemed quite far away now. The first few days of our rapid intimacyhad passed, and now she was as much a stranger to me as on that firstmeeting in the pines. I said nothing about her coming to the farm; Idon't know why. Somehow, I was piqued. I wished her to make the firstmove. In some way, it was all due to my asking her to choose the paintfor my dining-room, and that seemed to me ridiculous. I fear my mannershowed my pique a trifle, for I did not see her anywhere about when Ileft after breakfast.

  That evening I found the second coat of paint practically dry in thesouth room, and there was no reason why I shouldn't install my desk atlast, order some kerosene for my student lamp, and do my work there, inmy own new home, by my twin fires. The wind was east as I walked backto supper, and there was no sun to wake me in the morning, so that Islept till half-past six. Outside the rain was pouring steadily down,and I found Bert rejoicing, for it was badly needed. After breakfast Iwaylaid Miss Goodwin.

  "No work on the trellis to-day," said I, swallowing my pique; "soI'm going to fix up the south room. I'm going to make twin fires out ofsome of the nice, fragrant apple wood you haven't sawed for me, and hangthe Hiroshiges, and unpack the books, and have an elegant time--if youdon't make me do it alone."

  The girl shot a look around Mrs. Bert's sitting-room, where a smallstuffed owl stood on the mantel under a glass case and a transparent pinkmuslin sack filled with burst milkweed pods was draped over a crayonportrait of Bert as a young man. I followed her glance and then our eyesmet.

  "Just the same, they are dear, good souls," she smiled.

  "Of course," I answered. "But to sit here on a cold, rainy day! Youmay read by the fire while I work. Only please come!"

  "May I read 'The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century,' DoctorUpton?" she said.

  "You may read the dictionary, if you wish," I replied.

  She went to get her raincoat. It was cold out of doors, and the raindrove in our faces as we splashed down the road. The painters had madea fire in the kitchen range, and as we stepped in the warmth greeted usin a curious, friendly way. I brought several logs of dead apple woodinto the big room, made a second trip for kindlings, brought my one pairof andirons from the shed and improvised a pair with bricks for theother fireplace, and soon had the twin hearths cheerful with dancingflames. Then I went back to the shed, and brought the two cushionswhich had been on my window-seats at college, to place them on thesettle. But as I came into the room, instead of finding the girl waitingto sit by the fire, I saw her with sleeves rolled up washing the westwindow. Her body was outlined against the light, her hair making ana
ura about her head. As she turned a little, I caught the saucy graceof her profile. She was so intent upon her task that she had not heardme enter, and I paused a full moment watching her. Then I dropped thecushions and cried, "Come, here's your seat! That is no task for aPh. D."

  "I don't want a seat," she laughed. "I'm having a grand time,and don't care to have my erudition thrown in my face. I love to washwindows."

  "But 'The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century?'" said I.

  "The whole nineteenth century is on these windows," she replied."I've got to scrub here to get at its foundations."

  "But you'll get tired again," I laughed, though with real solicitude."I didn't want you to come to work--only to be company."

  "I don't know how to be company. Please get me some fresh hot water."

  I took the pail and fetched obediently. Then, while she worked at thewindows, I began tugging things in from the shed, calling Joe fromthe barn to help me with the desk and bookcases. The desk, obviously,went by the west window, where the light would come from the left. Myfive bookcases, which had been made for my college rooms, of uniformsize, were placed, four along the south wall, filling the spaces betweenthe central door and the two windows, and the two windows and the endwalls, with the fifth on the west wall between the window and thesouth, where I could have my reference books close to my desk chair. Mypiano, which had stood in the dining-room ever since the furniture hadarrived, we unboxed, wheeled in to fill the space between the small eastwindows, and took the covers off.

  I looked around. Already the place was assuming a homelike air, and thelong room had contracted into intimacy. The girl dropped her rag into thepail, and stood looking about.

  "Oh, the nice room!" she cried. "And oh, the dirty piano!"

  I went out to begin on the books, and when I returned with the firstload (I used a wheelbarrow, and wheeled a big load covered with myraincoat as far as the front door, and up into the hall on a plank),Miss Goodwin was scrubbing the keys. As I began to wipe off the booksand set them into the cases, I could hear that peculiar dust-clothglissando which denotes domestic operations on the piano, and whichbrings curiously home to a man memories of his mother. When I returnedwith the next load, I brought the piano bench, as well. The girl wasbusy with the east window, and I set the bench down in silence. She wasseated upon it, when I arrived with the third load, and through thehouse were dancing the sounds of a Bach gavotte.

  She stopped playing as I entered, and looked up with a little smile ofapology.

  "Please go on!" I cried.

  "But you play," she said, "and I just drum. It's too silly."

  "I play with one finger only," said I, "the forefinger of the righthand."

  "Then why do you have the piano?"

  "For you," I smiled. "Please play on. You can't guess how pleasantit is, how--how--homelike."

  She wheeled back and let her hands fall on the keys, rippling by anatural suggestion into the old tune "Amaryllis." The logs werecrackling. The gay old measures flooded the room with sound. My headnodded in time, as I stacked the books on the shelves.

  Suddenly the music stopped, and with a rustle of skirts the girl wasbeside me. "There! Now I must help you with the books!" she cried."What's this? Oh, you're not putting them up right at all! Here'sJames's 'Pragmatism' hobnobbing with 'The Freedom of the Will.'Oh, horrors, and 'Cranford' next to Guy de Maupassant! I'm sure thatisn't proper!"

  "On the contrary," said I, "it ought to prove a fine thing for both ofthem."

  She began to inspect titles, pulling out books here, substituting othersthere, carrying some to other cases. "You won't know where anythingis, anyhow, in these new surroundings," she said, "so you might aswell start right--separate cases for fiction, history, philosophy, andso on. Please have the poetry over the settle by the fire."

  "Surely," said I. "That goes without saying. Here, I'll lug the booksin, and you put 'em up. Only I insist on the reference books going overby my desk."

  "Yes, sir, you may have them," she laughed.

  I wheeled in load after load. "Lord," I cried, "of the making of manybooks, _et cetera!_ I'll never buy another one, or else I'll never moveagain."

  "You'll never move again, you mean," said she. "Look, all the nicepoetry by the west fireplace. Don't the green Globe editions look prettyin the white cases? And Keats right by the chimney. Please, may I putthe garden books, and old Mr. Thoreau, by the east fire?"

  "Give old Mr. Thoreau any seat he wants," said I, "only Mr. Emersonmust sit beside him."

  "Where's Mr. Emerson? Oh, yes, here he is, in a blue suit. Here, we'llplant the rose of beauty on the brow of chaos!"

  She took the set of Emerson and placed it in the top shelf by the eastfireplace, above a tumbled heap of unassorted volumes, standing back tosurvey it with her gurgling laugh. "What is so decorative as books?"she cried. "They beat pictures or wall paper. Oh, the nice room, thenice books, nice old Mr. Emerson, nice twin fires!"

  "And nice librarian," I added.

  She darted a look at me, laughed with heightened colour, and herselfadded, with a glance at her wrist watch, "And nice dinner!"

  I brought back some of my manuscripts after dinner, in case the roomshould be completed before supper time. We attacked it again withenthusiasm, hers being no less, apparently, than mine, for it wasindeed wonderful to see the place emerge from bareness into the mostalluring charm as the books filled the shelves, as my two Morris chairswere placed before the fires, as my three or four treasured rugs wereunrolled on the rather uneven but charmingly old floor which justfitted the old, rugged hearthstones, and finally as the two brightHiroshiges were placed in the centre of the two white wood panels overthe fireplaces, and the other pictures hung over the bookcases.

  "Wait," cried the girl suddenly. "Have you any vases?"

  "A couple of glass ones," I said. "Why?"

  "Get them, and never mind."

  I found the barrel which contained breakables in the shed, unpackedit, and brought in the contents--a few vases, my college tea set, alittle Tanagra dancing-girl. I placed the dancing figure on top of theshelf between the settles, and Miss Goodwin set the tea things on myone table by the south door. Then she got an umbrella and vanished.A few minutes later she returned with two clumps of sweet flag bladesfrom the brookside, placed one in each of the small vases, and stoodthem on the twin mantels, beneath the Japanese prints.

  "There!" she cried, clapping her hands. "Now what do you think of yourroom?"

  I looked at the young green spears, at the bookcases with their patternsof colour, at the warm rugs on the floor, at my desk ready for me bythe window, at the student lamp upon it, at the crimson cushions onthe twin settles, at the leaping flames on the hearths, and then at thebright, flushed, eager face of the girl, raindrops glistening in her hair.

  She was sitting with a closed book on her knee, gazinginto the fire]

  "I think it is wonderful," said I. "I have my home at last! And howyou have helped me!"

  "Yes, you have your home," said she. "Oh, it is such a nice one!"

  She turned away, and went over to the east fire, poking it with her toe.I lit my pipe, sat down at my old, familiar desk, heaved a great sighof comfort, and opened a manuscript.

  "It's only four o'clock," said I. "I can get in that hour I wastedin sleep this morning. Can you find something to read?"

  "I ought to," she smiled.

  I plunged into the manuscript--a silly novel. I heard Miss Goodwin onthe other side of the settle, taking down a book. I read on. The roomwas very still. Presently the stillness roused me from my work, and Ilooked up. I could not see the girl, so I rose from my chair and tiptoedaround the settle. She was sitting with a closed book on her knee, gazinginto the fire. I sat down, too, and touched her arm.

  "What is there?" I asked, pointing to the flames.

  She looked around, with a half-wistful little smile. "You are not makingup that lost hour," she answered.

  "But the room was so still," said I, "that I won
dered where you were."

  "Perhaps I was many miles away," she replied. "Do you want me to makea noise?"

  "You might sing for me."

  "I should hate to make the thrush jealous. No, my accomplishments ceasewith philology. I'm very happy here, really. You must go back to yourwork."

  I went back, and read a few more pages of the silly novel.

  "This story is so silly I really think it would be a success," I calledout.

  A head peeped up at me over the settle. "You aren't working," shereproached. "I'm going away, so you won't have me to talk to."

  "Very well, I'll go with you," I cried, slamming the manuscript into adrawer. "I'll come down here and work after supper."

  "No, you'll work till five o'clock."

  "Not unless you'll stay!"

  The eyes looked at me over the settle, and I looked steadily back. Weeach smiled a little, silently.

  "Very well," said she, as the head disappeared.

  I read on, vaguely aware that the west was breaking, and the room growingwarm. Presently I heard a window opened and felt the cooler rush ofrain-freshened air from the fragrant orchard. Then I heard the painterscome downstairs, talking, and tramp out through the kitchen. It wasfive o'clock. But I still read on, to finish a chapter. The painters haddeparted. The entire house was still.

  Suddenly there stole through the room the soft andante theme of a Mozartsonata, and the low sun at almost the same instant dropped into the clearblue hole in the west and flooded the room. I let the manuscript fall,and sat listening peacefully for a full minute. Then I moved across thefloor and stood behind the player. How cheerful the room looked, howbooky and old-fashioned! It seemed as if I had always dwelt there.It seemed as if this figure at the piano had always dwelt there. Howeasy it would be to put out my hands and rest them on her shoulders, andlay my cheek to her hair! The impulse was ridiculously strong to do so,and I tingled to my finger tips with a strange excitement.

  "Come," I said, "it is after five, and the sun is out. We will go tohear the thrush."

  The girl faced around on the bench, raising her face to mine, "Yes, letus," she answered. "How lovely the room looks now. Oh, the nice newold room!"

  She lingered in the doorway a second, and then we stepped out of thefront entrance, where we stood entranced by the freshness of therain-washed world in the low light of afternoon, and the heavy fragranceof wet lilac buds enveloped us. Then the girl gathered her skirts upand we went down through the orchard, where the ground was strewn withthe fallen petals, through the maples where the song sparrow wassinging, and in among the dripping pines. The brook was whisperingsecret things, and the drip from the trees made a soft tinkle, justdetectable, on its pools.

  We waited one minute, two minutes, three minutes in silence, and then thefairy clarion sounded, the "cool bars of melody from the everlastingevening." It sounded with a thrilling nearness, so lovely that italmost hurt, and instinctively I put out my hand and felt for hers.She yielded it, and so we stood, hand in hand, while the thrush sangonce, twice, three times, now near, now farther away, and then it seemedfrom the very edge of my clearing. I still held her hand, as we waitedfor another burst of melody. But he evidently did not intend to singagain. My fingers closed tighter over hers as I felt her face turntoward mine, and she answered their pressure while her eyes glistened, Ithought, with tears. Then her hand slipped away.

  "Don't speak," she said, leading the way out of the grove.

  We went into the house again to make sure that the fires had burneddown. The room was darker now, filled with twilight shadows. The lastof the logs were glowing red on the hearths, and the air was hot andheavy after the fresh outdoors. But how cheerful, how friendly, howlike a human thing, with human feelings of warmth and welcome, the roomseemed to me!

  "It has been a wonderful day," said I, as we turned from the fires topass out. "I wonder if I shall ever have so much joy again in my house?"

  The girl at my side did not answer. I looked at her, and saw that she wasstruggling with tears.

  I did instinctively the only thing my clumsy ignorance could suggest--putmy hand upon hers. She withdrew it quickly.

  "No, no!" she cried under her breath. "Oh, I am such a fool!Fool--Middle English _fool_, _fole_, _fol_; Icelandic, _fol_; oldFrench _fol_--always the same word!"

  She broke into a plaintive little laugh, ran through the hall and liftedthe stove lid to see if the fire there was out, and hastened to the road,where I had difficulty to keep pace with her as we walked up the slopeto supper.

  "You need a rest more than you think, I guess," I tried to say, butshe only answered, "I need it less!" and made off at once to her room.That night I didn't go back to my house to work. I didn't work atall. I looked out of my window at a young moon for a long while, andthen--yes, I confess it, though I was thirty years old, I wrote a sonnet!