V
Mrs. Neal saved Pegeen the trouble of keeping her promise to run down and tell her all about the day in Pittsfield.
The breakfast dishes were washed at the shack, but Pegeen was busily tidying the living-room, and Archibald was only half-way through his after-breakfast smoke when the bulky form of their neighbor appeared in the doorway.
“My soul,” she commented cheerfully. “You folks don’t keep country hours, do you? Pa and I had breakfast pretty nigh three hours ago. I might ’a’ known you’d be backwards if I’d stopped to think; but, you see, I’d got through all my chores and it seemed as if the heft of the morning was over, so I just ran along up to see Peg’s new clothes. I allowed the pile was too big for her to bring down to me. I’m some big myself but I c’n navigate handier than a lot of boxes and bundles can. You said you was coming down this morning to tell me all about everything, Peg, but I thought I could see and hear at the same time. Don’t want to bother you, though. Maybe I’d rather come up later.”
Archibald uttered a prompt protest.
“You’re not bothering anybody, Mrs. Neal. We’re lazy but hospitable. At least I’m lazy. Peggy’s not; but she’s an indulgent person, so she doesn’t insist on ramping around very early in the mornings. It isn’t as if I were farming, you know. I can get at my painting any time I feel like it, and when I don’t feel like it I don’t do good painting; so there you are! No merit in my getting up with the early bird; my own special worm wouldn’t be out.”
Mrs. Neal settled into the chair he had pushed forward to her and chuckled comfortably.
“Sort of a lazy man’s job, ain’t it?” she said; “but it takes all sorts of work to keep the world moving and everybody happy. I guess there’s folks in the cities that like your kind of pictures. They look sort of daubed up and queer to me, though. Sitting over here, that one on the painting stand by the window don’t look like anything at all but a mess of greens.”
Pegeen turned indignant eyes upon the art critic.
“Why, Mrs. Neal! That’s a piece of the woods above Baker’s Spring, ’n’ it’s perfectly lovely. I can most smell the woodsy things growing.”
“Smell nothing!—without its turpentine!” Mrs. Neal was genial but firm in her opinion. “You ain’t got a call to be mad, Peg. Mr. Archibald don’t care. Didn’t I say there was folks that’d like his kind of pictures? I ain’t educated. That’s what’s the matter with me, and I know it, but there’s no use pretending I don’t like my pictures plain and clear and neat. You ain’t so awful educated either, but you’re different. You’ve got imagination to look with. I’ve only got far-sighted specs—and that young eye doctor over at Pittsfield made a bad guess on them too.”
“Fire away, Mrs. Neal,” laughed the painter. “I’ve known other people who didn’t like my pictures. Some day I’ll paint you a nice, clear, tidy one of your house and garden. I really can, you know.”
The visitor’s broad face beamed delight.
“Say, will you? That’d be fine. Pa and I’d be tickled most to death—when the flowers along the front walk get going real good, you know—and maybe Pa and me on the front porch!”
“Anything you say.”
“Well, you’re real kind. I guess Peg’s had you sized up right along, but it don’t take much to be nice to Peg. When it comes to being nice to a fat old party like me, you’re proving something. Say, were you figuring to go off painting somewheres this mornin’?”
Archibald blinked, looked at her thoughtfully, and grinned.
“I can,” he said amiably.
“Oh, don’t you do it, unless you were going anyway, but you most always do and so they thought it’d be all right and wouldn’t bother you and—”
“Where are they?” Archibald asked comprehendingly.
“Well, they’re sort of waiting around down at my house. I was to wave a towel or something if you were gone. We didn’t any of us realize about you not getting up early, and everybody was crazy to see Peg’s dresses and things. Ginsy Shalloway’s curiosity was boiling so hard when I left that it most moved her false front up and down like a kettle cover. She took a mornin’ off from Mrs. Frisbie so as to come down here, but it don’t make much difference, for Mrs. Frisbie was coming anyway.”
“Save the false front, Mrs. Neal,” Archibald urged. “I’ll take myself out of the way and Peggy will lend you a towel to wave.”
Mrs. Neal smiled at him in friendly fashion.
“They’d all like first rate to meet you some other time,” she said, “but, seein’ it’s about clothes and all, I guess things ’ud be freer and easier without you this mornin’. My apron’ll do to wave, Peg.”
As Archibald climbed the wood trail behind the shack, he looked through an opening in the leafiness and counted eight feminine figures filing out of the Neals’ side gate and taking the meadow path.
He laughed, as he stood holding the branches aside, but there was a pleasant warmth at his heart. Neighbors of his!
He was still feeling neighborly when an hour or two later he wandered down the western slope of Pine Knob and found himself confronted by the bars beyond which a crooked lane led through the land of the Smiling Lady to the white farmhouse under the maples. He glanced at the sun, then looked at his watch. Eleven o’clock. Time enough for an hour’s neighboring and a stroll around by the road to his one o’clock dinner. Morning calls were informal but they seemed to be the accepted thing in the Happy Valley, and the Smiling Lady would send him away quite frankly and amiably if he was in the way. He felt sure of that. She would never allow a man to make a nuisance of himself.
He found her in the vegetable garden and she waved a trowel at him in a fashion that left no doubt as to his welcome.
“Heaven Sent One!” she hailed, coming toward the fence to meet him. “I prayed for a man—an able-bodied, obliging man, and behold! I had set my heart on a morning’s gardening and John had to take the horse to the blacksmith. It was absolutely necessary. He explained it all to me very clearly. As a matter of fact, John hates gardening as the devil hates holy water. He’ll commit any of the venial sins to escape it. I telephoned for Bill Briggs but he’s been away for two days, so even if I could put a hand on him he wouldn’t be garden-worthy. The last time he pulled up all my young spinach and transplanted a lot of very superior plantain into the lettuce bed—but he gave me a day’s work for nothing afterward. Bill’s ‘overtaken’ sometimes. He admits it, but he’s a gentleman. Can you dig?”
The wind had ruffled her hair into wild disorder. The hand that held the trowel was grubby. The other hand was grubbier. There was a broad streak of dirt across one cheek and a smudge on her forehead. Her short blue denim skirt was caked with earth at the knees. A shockingly untidy young woman, but, as she stood in the sunlight, laughing, Archibald could have shouted for joy in the free glad life of her. It was good just to be in the world with anything so young and brave and gay—and so lovely. Yes; even when wind and gardening had done their worst, so very lovely. Where was the man who could refuse to dig for her?
“Lead me to a spade,” he urged valiantly.
Two hours later, Ellen coming out in the garden to announce dinner, found two dirty, tired, but cheerful beings scrambling across freshly pulverized earth on all fours.
“The saints preserve us!” she exclaimed piously.
“They will, Ellen. That’s their job! But I’m putting in beets and Mr. Archibald’s planting beans.”
The Smiling Lady sat back on her heels, pushed back her hair with a grimy hand, and looked up into the disapproving face of the scandalized personage in spotless blue chambray and white apron and cap.
“You can’t think what a success Mr. Archibald’s been.”
The man at the other end of the garden looked up and grinned his gratitude for the testimonial, then went back to his absorbing task.
“He’s wasted on painting, Ellen,” the girl went on gaily. “When you bring artistic genius to bear on a vegetable garden, you’re getting somewhere; but pictures—Pouff! Who eats pictures? He’s strong, too—and willing—and very industrious. I don’t see but what our gardening problem is solved for this summer.”
“If you could be seein’ yourself, Miss Nora!”
Ellen’s voice was dripping with disapproval.
“But I can’t. That’s the beauty of it. And when I go up to make myself tidy, I sha’n’t look in the mirror until after I’ve washed—so I’ll never know the worst—and gardening’s no fun at all if one keeps clean. Look at Mr. Archibald. He was perfectly clean when he came—painfully clean. Isn’t he splendid now?”
Archibald had finished his row and came toward them, sleeves rolled up, collar a limp rag, coatless, perspiring, dirt incrusted, radiating satisfaction.
“There isn’t a bean a twentieth of an inch out of plumb in that row,” he boasted. “Straight as a string, the whole procession. It’ll be a garden ornament.
“Funny thing, I never planted a seed before in my life. I can’t believe the things’ll come up—and I’m likely to perish of joy and pride if they do. You’ll have to break the news to me gently, Miss Moran. There’s something about getting down to the soil—”
“Ellen thinks we’ve got down to too much soil,” explained the girl who had risen to her feet and was futilely brushing at her skirt. “She has an old-fashioned prejudice in favor of cleanliness and I suppose we’ll have to humor her by washing before dinner. Stiff?”
“Not a bit.”
“Well, you will be,” she promised encouragingly. “I always am, at first. Gardening is queer. Every time I finish a day of it, I vow that the game isn’t worth the candle and that I’ll eat tinned stuff and use wild flowers for the rest of my life. Then the next morning, I fairly wriggle with impatience to get out into the garden and go to digging again. It’s as bad as the cocaine habit. If you aren’t willing to be a slave to it, you’d better turn your back on it here and now.”
“Too late. I’m a victim—and you’ll have to oversee my digging. It’s the least you can do when you’ve started me on my downward way. Don’t you think so, Ellen?”
“Go your ways in and make yourselves decent, the two of you.”
Ellen’s voice was stern but her eyes were merry.
“You’ve made a tremendous hit with her,” the Smiling Lady confided to him as they went through the hall. “She’s never nice and disrespectful to anybody unless she likes him enormously.”
He stayed to dinner, after a faint-hearted protest and a murmur of contrition in regard to Pegeen’s wasted culinary efforts. He voiced the latter to Ellen when, coming downstairs before his hostess, he met the woman in the hall.
“Don’t be worryin’ about Peg, sir,” she said reassuringly. “She’s used to irregular doin’s and she’ll just give you your dinner for supper—the way that there’ll be nothin’ to do but warm things up and set them on. It’d be a shame—you to be goin’ and dinner ready here.”
She looked toward the stairway and added, in a low voice:
“And it’s I that’ll be glad to see Miss Nora sittin’ down with one of her own kind—and her what she is, and everybody crazy about her before, and all the fine clothes and visitin’ and travelin’ and all—”
“But she’s very happy, here, isn’t she?” the man asked gently.
“Oh, she’s happy. It’s her that has the trick of happiness, but she’s the lonely days and thinkin’ long’s the weary work. There’s good people here, but none of them talk her own talk, sir. It’d be well enough for a bit in the summer, but winter and summer, in and out—it don’t seem right. If you could have seen how it was in the old days, sir—and now only that daft John and me to do for her, and she so cheerful and never a word of regret or wishin’.”
There was sorrow and pride and great love in the plain old Irish face, and Archibald realized that he was being honored. Ellen was not the woman to talk of her mistress to any chance comer.
There was a step in the upper hall, and the servant vanished into the dining-room, while Archibald went forward to meet a vision in white linen, smooth-haired, immaculate, laughing-eyed.
“Soap and water couldn’t revive my collar,” he said apologetically, “but my hands and face are approximately clean.”
“You’re very, very beautiful,” said the Smiling Lady. “What’s a collar, between gardeners!”
He came around to the matter of neighboring again, while they sat at dinner.
“It’s as new to me as gardening,” he confessed,—“this getting interested in the people who live round about me and having them take an interest—approving or otherwise—in me. I can’t quite make up my mind whether I like it or not. Just at the first jump, I’d say I didn’t. Theoretically it’s a nuisance. Down in New York, I didn’t care a hoot whether the chap in the bachelor quarters across the hall from mine lived or died or drank himself into d-t’s or gave temperance lectures or wore tweeds or pink velvet tights, and I’d have resented his being curious about me. But up here—well, everything’s different. I fairly lap up Peg’s flow of information about the Valley folk and I’m absorbingly interested in the amount of Mrs. Frisbie’s egg money, and in Bill Briggs’ habits and in Ezra Watts’ bad reputation. I’m thirsting to meet Ginsy Shalloway, and I’m Mrs. Neal’s humble admirer. What’s more, I’ve an amazing desire to make myself solid with them all. Queer, isn’t it? I suppose it’s mostly Pegeen—Pegeen and you. You two make a fascinating sort of talisman of human sympathy. Along came gray days and stupid people. You rub your magic ring—and the world’s an interesting place, and living in it is glorious business. Makes a chap feel like humping himself and going shopping for magic rings.”
Nora Moran dimpled at him approvingly across the bowl of June roses that stood in the center of the table. Spicy pink and white, old-fashioned garden roses they were. It occurred to Archibald that they rimed with the face beyond them as no hot-house flowers could have rimed with it. For one foolish, inconsequent moment he tried to imagine himself buying orchids for this garden girl. He had bought many orchids. Women liked them because they were so expensive, but for the Smiling Lady—
He came back from the Fifth Avenue flower shops to the June roses and the girl beyond them.
“You’re coming on rapidly,” she was saying. “It isn’t every one who could discover, neighboring and gardening all in one short June. Some people never discover either of them—poor souls. That’s why the yellow journals have scandals enough and tragedies enough to keep them going. But if you’ve got it in you to garden—and to neighbor—Oh, I’ve great hopes of you. Peggy will make something of you yet.”
“And there aren’t any scandals and tragedies in the country?” he asked lightly.
A shadow crept into the girl’s smiling eyes.
“But there are—dreadful ones sometimes—and they seem even more dreadful up here than they do in town because each one stands out so stark and ugly against the beauty all round about it. I had frightfully heartachey times when I first began to find the sordid, ugly things growing along with the loveliness in this quiet country place—jealousies and feuds and slovenliness and vulgarity and cruelty and worse—but I worked my way through those heartaches—or at least I learned to understand and be tolerant The weeds grow with the flowers everywhere, I guess. And it’s so easy to think too much about your neighbors’ business when you haven’t anything else to entertain you, and to magnify little slights and offenses when you haven’t more important things to occupy your mind. And it’s hard to live up to standards when there’s no one to appreciate—and natural beauty doesn’t give you much joy, if you’ve always been doing hard, grinding work in the midst of it. Gracious! I only wonder that most of the country folk are such plumb dears as they are.”
“But they garden and neighbor,” prompted Archibald.
“They don’t.” She was too much in earnest to be polite. “You don’t think raising vegetables and knowing everybody for miles around are gardening and neighboring, do you? Not a bit of it. You’ve got to put your heart into the garden and the people if you’re going to do real gardening and neighboring. When you get around to that, you’ve learned how to be happy most of the time and contented all of the time. I used to think that nine tenths of the people I met were uninteresting, but I’ve found out that, all the time, there weren’t any uninteresting people. There were only people I hadn’t got at.”
Archibald shook his head doubtfully. “Short of using a pickax or an auger—” he demurred. He was thinking of some of the men and women he had known.
The girl laughed.
“Aren’t they awful—that kind? But there are more of them in town than in the country. There really are—more in proportion to numbers, I mean. I don’t mean for a minute that I’ve got at everybody up here in the Valley but, accidentally or by mainforce, I’ve broken through some such hard shells and with such surprising results that I’m beginning to have a comfortable conviction about what’s inside of the very toughest human crust, if one could only get through to it. Now there’s Ezra Watts. He lives just a little way from here up the back road—much too near for the welfare of my chickens and fruit and vegetables. I’ve an idea he even milks my cows. He’s one of my failures and nobody in the Valley doubts that he’s bad all the way through. I have awful misgivings myself sometimes, but in my optimistic moments I still contend that there’s a decent scrap of soul hidden away somewhere in Ezra—hidden so thoroughly that even he doesn’t suspect it’s there.”
“I feel strangely drawn to Ezra,” Archibald murmured gravely.
The Smiling Lady flashed back a challenge.
“Why don’t you take him on?” she asked. “I’ve fumbled the thing. Maybe what he needs is man talk. It’s a long chance, but there’s really something very sporty about soul hunting.”
There was a mirthful ring even to her sentiment. She talked of souls as she might have talked of kittens or puppies or marigolds. From that angle, talk of souls did not seem the indelicate or embarrassing thing it is taken for by the average person not professionally concerned with soul culture or soul saving.
“I’m willing to warn you, though,” she conceded generously, “that Ezra needs disinfecting as much as he needs moral suasion. Nobody will ever burrow through to his soul until he’s had a bath.”