THEIR FORTUNATE ESCAPE
CONCERNING EVERGREENS AND HENS
(Mary Penrose to Barbara Campbell)
June 5. I have not dipped pen in ink for an entire week, which has been one of stirring events, for not only have we wholly emerged from indoor life, but we have had a hair-breadth escape from something that not only threatened to mar the present summer, but to cast so heavy a shadow over the garden that no self-respecting flowers could flourish even under the thought of it. You cannot possibly guess with what we were threatened, but I am running ahead of myself.
The day that we began it—the vacation—by stopping the clocks, we overslept until nine o'clock. When we came downstairs, the house was in a condition of cheerful good order unknown to that hour of the day.
There is such a temperamental difference in this mere setting things to rights. It can be done so that every chair has a stiffly repellent look, and the conspicuous absence of dust makes one painfully conscious that it has not always been thus, while the fingers inadvertently stray over one's attire, plucking a shred here and a thread there. Even flowers can be arranged in a vase so as to look thoroughly and reproachfully uncomfortable, and all the grace and meaning crushed out of them. But Maria Maxwell has the touch gracious that makes even a plainly furnished room hold out detaining hands as you go through, and the flowers on the greeting table in the hall (yes, Lavinia Cortright taught me that little fancy of yours during her first visit), though much the same as I had been gathering for a week past, wore an air of novelty!
For a moment we stood at the foot of the stairs looking about and getting our bearings, as guests in an unfamiliar place rather than householders. It flitted through my body that I was hungry, and one of the "must be's" of the vacation country was that we were to forage for breakfast. At the same time Bart sauntered unconsciously toward the mail-box under the hat-rack and then, suddenly putting his hands behind him, turned to me with a quizzical expression, saying: "Letters are forbidden, I know, but how about the paper? Even the 'Weekly Tribune' would be something; you know that sheet was devised for farmers!"
"If this vacation isn't to be a punishment, but a pleasure, I think we had both better 'have what we want when we want it'!" I replied, for at that moment I spied the Infant out on the porch, and to hug her ladyship was a swiftly accomplished desire. For some reason she seemed rather astonished at this very usual performance, and putting her hands, boy-fashion, into the pockets of her checked overalls, surveyed herself deliberately, and then looking up at me rather reproachfully remarked, "Tousin Maria says that now you and father are tumpany!"
"And what is company?" I asked, rather anxious to know from what new point we were to be regarded.
"Tumpany is people that comes to stay in the pink room wif trunks, and we play wif them and make them do somfing to amuse 'em all the time hard, and give 'em nicer things than we have to eat, and father shaves too much and tuts him and wears his little dinky coat to dinner. And by and by when they've gone away Ann-stasia says, 'Glory be!' and muvver goes to sleep. But muvver, if you are the tumpany, you can't go to sleep when you've gone away, can you?"
A voice joined me in laughter, Maria Maxwell's, from inside the open window of the dining room. Looking toward the sound, I saw that, though the dining table itself had been cleared, a side table drawn close to the window was set with places for two, a posy of poets' narcissus and the last lilies-of-the-valley between, while a folded napkin at one place rested on a newspaper!
"I thought we were to get our own breakfasts," I said, in a tone of very feeble expostulation, which plainly told that, at that particular moment, it was the last thing I wished to do.
"You are, the very minute you feel like it, and not before! You must let yourselves down gradually, and not bolt out of the house as if you had been evicted. If Bart went paperless and letterless this very first morning, until he has met something that interests him more, he would think about the lack of the news and the mail all day until they became more than usually important!" So saying, Maria swept the stems and litter of the flowers she had been arranging into her apron, and annexing the Infant to one capable finger, all the other nine being occupied, she went down the path toward the garden for fresh supplies, leaving Ann-stasia, as the Infant calls her, to serve the coffee, a prerogative of which she would not consent to be bereft, not even upon the plea of lightening her labours!
"Isn't this perfect!" I exclaimed, looking toward a gap in the hills that was framed by the debatable knoll on one side and reached by a short cut across the old orchard and abandoned meadows of the farm above, the lack of cultivation resulting in a wealth of field flowers.
"Entirely!" assented Bart, his spoon in the coffee cup stirring vigorously and his head enveloped in the newspaper. But what did the point of view matter: he was content and unhurried—what better beginning for a vacation? In fact in those two words lies the real vacation essence.
Meanwhile, as I munched and sipped, with luxurious irresponsibility, I watched Maria moving to and fro between the shrubs that bounded the east alley of the old garden. In her compressed city surroundings she had always seemed to me a very big sort of person, with an efficiency that was at times overpowering, whose brown eyes had a "charge bayonet" way of fixing one, as if commanding the attention of her pupils by force of eye had become a habit. But here, her most cherished belongings given room to breathe in the spare room that rambles across one end of the house, while her wardrobe has a chance to realize itself in the deep closet, Maria in two short days had become another person.
She does not seem large, but merely well built. The black gowns and straight white collars that she always wore, as a sort of professional garb, have vanished before a shirtwaist with an openwork neck and half sleeves, while the flesh exposed thereby is pink and wholesome. Hair not secured for the wear and tear of the daily rounds of school, but allowed to air itself, requires only a few hair-pins, and, if it is naturally wavy, follows its own will with good effect. While as to her eyes, what in them seemed piercing at short range melted to an engaging frankness in the soft light under the trees. In short, if she had been any other than Maria Maxwell, music teacher, Bart's staid cousin and the avowed family spinster, I should have thought of her as a fine-looking woman who only needed a magic touch of some sort to become positively handsome. Coffee and paper finished, I became aware that Bart was gazing at me.
"Well," I said, extending my hand, "what next?" I had speedily made up my mind that Bart should take the initiative in our camping-out arrangement, and I therefore did not suggest that the first thing to be done was to set our camp itself in order.
"Come out," he said, taking my hand in the same way that the Infant does when she wishes to lead the way to the discovery of the fairyland that lies beyond the meadows of the farm. So we sauntered out. Once under the sun, the same delicious thought occurred to each that, certain prudences having been seen to, we were for the time without responsibilities, and the fact made us laugh for the very freedom of it and pull one another hither and thither like a couple of children.
Meanwhile the word knoll had not been uttered, but our feet were at once drawn in its direction by an irresistible force, and presently we found ourselves standing at the lower end of the ridge and looking up the slope!
"I wish we had a picture of it as it must have been before the land was cleared,—it would be a great help in replanting," I said; "it needs something dense and bold for a background to the rocks."
"The skeleton of the old barn on the other side spoils it; it ought to come down," was Bart's rejoinder. "It seems as if everything we wish to do hinges on some other thing."
This barn had been set back against the knoll so that from the house the hayloft window seemed like a part of a low shed. Certainly our forbears knew the ways of the New England wind very thoroughly, judging by the way they huddled their houses and outbuildings in hollows or under hillsides to avoid its stress. And when they couldn't do that, they turned sloping, humpbacked roofs toward the northeast to shed the snow and tempt the wind in its wild moods to play leapfrog and thus pass over.
Such a roof as this has the house at the next farm, and judging by the location of the old hay barn, and the lay of the road, it must have once belonged to this adjoining property rather than to ours.
Slowly we circled the knoll, dropped into the hollow, and stood upon the uneven floor of wide chestnut planks that was to be our camp. Other lodgers had this barn besides ourselves and, unlike ourselves, hereditary tenants. Swallows of steel-blue wings hung their nests in a whispering colony against the beams, a pair of gray squirrels arched their tails at us and chattering whisked up aloft, where they evidently have a family in the dilapidated pigeon cote, while among some cornstalks and other litter in the low earth cellar beneath we could hear the rustling doubtless born of the swift little feet of mice. (Yes, I know that it is a feminine quality lacking in me, but I have never yet been able to conjure up any species of fear in connection with these playful little rodents.)
The cots, table, chairs, and screens were as I had placed them several days ago; but it was not the interior that held us but the view looking eastward across the sunlit meadows. In fact this side of the barn had the wide openings of an observatory. The gnarled apple trees of the orchard still bore pink-and-white wreaths on the shady side, and the purling of bluebirds blended with the voice of the river that ran between the hills afar off—the same stream that further up country was to be pent between walls and prisoned to make a reservoir. Sitting there, we gazed upon the soft yet glowing beauty of it all, with never a thought of pick and spade, grub axe or crowbar, to pry between the rocks of the knoll to find the depth or quality of its soil or test the planting possibilities.
"Let us go up to the woods and see Blake; he wrote me that he is to be there to-day, and suggested we should both meet him and see the treasure-trove to be found there before the spring blossoms are quite shed," said Bart, suddenly, fumbling among the letters in his pocket; "and by the way, he said he would come back with us. He evidently forgets that we are not 'at home' to company!"
"But The Man from Everywhere is not company. He is simply a permanent institution and can go on dropping in as usual all summer if he likes. Ann-stasia adores him, for did he not bring her a beautiful sandalwood rosary of carved beads from somewhere and a pair of real tortoise-shell combs not two months ago? And of course Maria Maxwell will not object; why should she? he will come and go as usual, and she will hardly know that he is in the house."
Barney harnessed the mild-faced horse of our neighbour's lending to that most comfortable of all vehicles, a buggy with an ample box behind and a top that can be dropped and made into a deep pocket to hold gleanings, or raised as a shield from sun and rain. Ah! dear Mrs. Evan, is there anything that turns a sober, settled married couple backward to the enchanted "engaged" region like driving away through the spring lanes in a buggy pulled by a horse who has had nature-loving owners, so that he seems to know by intuition when to pause and when it would be most acceptable to his passengers to have him wander from the beaten track and browse among the tender wayside grasses that always seem so much more tempting than any pasture grazing?
As you will infer from this, Romeo is not only of a gentle, meditative disposition, but his harness is destitute of a check rein, overdraw, or otherwise.
"Have you put in the trowels?" I asked, as we drove out the gate, the reins hanging so loosely from between Bart's knees, as he lit his pipe, that it was by mere chance that Romeo took the right turn.
"No, I never thought of them; this is merely a prospecting trip. Did you put in the lunch?"
I was obliged to confess that I had not, but later on a box of sandwiches was found under the seat in company with Romeo's nose-bag of oats, this indication being that, as Barney alone knew directly of our destination, he must have informed Anastasia, who took pity, regarding us, as she does, as a cross between lunatics and the babes in the woods.
We chose byways, and only crossed the macadamized highroad, that haunt of automobiles, once, and after an hour's sauntering crossed the river and drove into the woodlots to the north of it, now the property of the water company, who have already posted warning to trespassers. We straightway began to trespass, seeing The Man from Everywhere on horseback coming down to meet us.
Without an apparent change of soil or altitude, the scenery at once grew more bold and dramatic.
"What is it?" I said. "We have been driving through lanes lined by dogwood and yet that little tree below and the scrubby bit of hillside make a more perfect picture than any we have seen!"
The Pictorial Value of Evergreens.
Bart, who had left the buggy and was walking beside it with The Man, who had dismounted and led his nag, turned and looked backward, but did not answer.
"It is the evergreens that give it the quality," said The Man, "even though they are only those stiff little Noah's-ark cedars. I notice it far and wide, wherever I go; a landscape is never monotonous so long as there is a pine, spruce, hemlock, or bit of a cedar to bind it together. I believe that is why I am never content for long in the land of palms!"
"I love evergreens in winter, but I've never thought much about them in the growing leafy season; they seem unimportant then," I said.
"Unimportant or not, they are still there. Look at that wall of trees rising across the river! Every conceivable tint of green is there, besides shades of pink and lavender in leaf case and catkin, but what dominates and translates the whole? The great hemlocks on the crest and the dark pointed cedars off on the horizon where the woodland thins toward the pastures. Whether you separate them or not, they are there. People are only just beginning to understand the value of evergreens in their home gardens, both as windbreaks and backgrounds. No, I don't mean stark, isolated specimens, stiff as Christmas trees. You have a magnificent chance to use them on that knoll of yours that you are going to restore!"
As he was speaking I thought Bart paid very scant attention, but following his pointing finger I at once saw what had absorbed him. On the opposite side of the river, extending into the brush lots, was a knoll the size and counterpart of ours, even in the way that it lay by the compass, only this was untouched, as nature planned it, and the model for our restoration.
"Do you clear the land as far back as this?" Bart asked of The Man, eagerly.
"Yes, not for the sake of the land, but for the boulders and loose rock on those ledges; all the rock hereabout will be little enough for our masonry!"
"Then," said Bart, "I'm going to transplant the growth on this knoll, root and branch, herb and shrub, moss and fern, to our own, if it takes me until Christmas! It isn't often that a man finds an illustrated plan with all the materials for carrying it out under his hand for merely the taking. There are enough young hemlocks up there to windbreak our whole garden. The thing I'm not sure about is just when it will do to begin the transplanting. Meanwhile I'll make a list of the plants we know that we can add to as others develop and blossom."
So he set to work on his list then and there, The Man from Everywhere helping, because he can name a plant from its leaves or even the twigs.
I said that I would write to you at once and ask you or Evan to tell us about the best way to transplant all the wild things, except woody shrubs and trees, because we know it's best to wait for those until leaf fall. But as it turns out, I've waited six days—oh! such aggravating days when there is so much to decide and do!
That afternoon The Man rode home with us, as a matter of course, we quite forgetting that instead of late dinner, as usual, the meal would be tea, as the Infant and Maria Maxwell are to dine now at one! As a shower threatened, it seemed much more natural for us to turn into the house than the camp, and before I knew how it happened I was sitting at the head of my own table serving soup instead of tea! I dared not look at Maria, but as the meal was nearly ended she remarked demurely, looking out of the west window to where the shower was passing off slantwise, leaving a glorious sunset trail in its wake, "Wouldn't you like to have your coffee in camp, as the rain forced you to take dinner indoors?" by which I knew that Maria would not allow us to lose sight of our outdoor intentions.
Bart laughed, and The Man, gazing around the table innocently said, "Oh, has it begun, and am I intruding and breaking up plans? Why didn't you tell me?"
So we went out through the sweet-smelling twilight, or rather the glow that comes before it, and as we idly sipped the coffee, lo and behold, the old farm lay before us—a dream picture painted by the twilight! The little window-panes, iridescent with age and bulged into odd shapes by yielding sashes, caught the sunset hues and turned to fire opals; the light mist rising over the green meadows where the flowers now slept with heads bent and eyes closed lent the green and pearl tints of those mysterious gems to which drops of rain or dew strung everywhere made diamond settings.
"By Jove!" exclaimed Bart, "how beautiful the Opie farm looks to-night! If a real-estate agent could only get a photograph of what we see, we should soon have a neighbour to rescue the place!"
"You mustn't call it the Opie farm any more; it is Opal Farm from to-night!" I cried, "and no one shall buy it unless they promise to leave in the old windows and let the meadow and crab orchard stay as they are, besides giving me right of way through it quite down to the river woods!"
But to get back by this circuitous route to the threatened danger with which I opened this letter—
The postman whistled, as he has an alluring way of doing when he brings the evening mail, always hoping that some one will come out for a bit of evening gossip, in which he is rarely disappointed.
We all started to our feet, but Maria, whose special duty it had become to look over the mail, distanced us all by taking a short cut, regardless of wet grass.
Talk branched into divers pleasant ways, and we had almost forgotten her errand when she returned and, breaking abruptly into the conversation, said to Bart, "Sorry to interrupt, but the postman reports that there are three large crates of live stock down at the station, and the agent says will you please send for them to-night, as he doesn't dare leave them out, there are so many strangers about, and they will surely stifle if he crowds them into the office!"
"Live stock!" exclaimed Bart, "I'm sure I've bought nothing!" Then, as light broke in his brain,—"Maybe it's that setter pup that Truesdale promised me as soon as it was weaned, which would be about now!"
"Would a setter pup come in three crates?" inquired The Man, solemnly.
"It must be live plants and not live stock!" I said, coming to Bart's rescue, "for Aunt Lavinia Cortright wrote me last week that she was sending me some of her prize pink Dahlias, and some gladioli bulbs!"
"Possibly these might fill three large cases!" laughed Bart, in his turn.
"Why not see if any of those letters throw light upon the mystery, and then I'll help 'hook up,' as I suppose Barney has gone home, and we will bring up the crates even if they contain crocodiles!" said The Man, cheerfully. Complications always have an especially cheering effect upon him, I've often noticed.
The beams of a quarter moon were picturesque, but not a satisfactory light by which to read letters, especially when under excitement, so Bart brought out a carriage lantern with which we had equipped our camp, and proceeded to sort the mail, tossing the rejected letters into my lap.
Suddenly he paused at one, extra bulky and bearing the handwriting of his mother, weighed it on the palm of his hand, and opened it slowly. From it fell three of the yellow-brown papers upon which receipts for expressage are commonly written; I picked them up while Bart read slowly—
"My dear Son,
"We were most glad to hear through daughter Mary of your eminently sensible and frugal plan for passing your summer vacation in the improvement of your land without the expense of travel.
"Wishing to give you some solid mark of our approval, as well as to contribute what must be a material aid to your income, father and I send you to-day, by express, three crates of Hens—one of White Leghorns, one of Plymouth Rocks, and one of Brown Dorkings, a male companion accompanying each crate, as I am told is usual. We did not select an incubator, thinking you might have some preference in the matter, but it will be forthcoming when your decision is made.
"Of course I know that you cannot usually spare the time for the care of these fowls, but it will be a good outdoor vocation for Mary, amusing and lucrative, besides being thoroughly feminine, for such poultry raising was considered even in my younger days.
"A book, The Complete Guide to Poultry Farming, which I sent Mary a year ago on her birthday, as a mere suggestion, will tell her all she need know in the beginning, and the responsibility and occupation itself will be a good corrective for giving too much time to the beauties of the flower garden, which are merely pleasurable.
"I need not remind you that the different breeds should be housed separately, but you who always had a gift for carpentry can easily arrange this. Indeed it was only yesterday that in opening a chest of drawers I came across a small lead saw bought for sixpence, with which you succeeded in quite cutting through the large Wisteria vine on Grandma Bartram's porch! I wished to punish you, but she said—'No, Susanna, rather preserve the tool as a memento of his industry and patience.'
"I wish that I could be near to witness your natural surprise on receiving this token of our approval, but I must trust Mary to write us of it.
"Your mother,
"Susan Bartram Penrose."
With something between a groan and a laugh Bart dropped this letter into my lap, with the others.
"So, after a successful struggle all these five years of our country life against the fatal magnetism of Hens that has run epidemic up and down the population of commuting householders, bringing financial prostration to some and the purely nervous article to others; after avoiding 'The Wars of the Chickens, or Who scratched up those Early Peas,'—events as celebrated in local history as the Revolution or War of the Rebellion,—we are to be forced into the chicken business for the good of Bart's health and pocket, and my mental discipline, and also that a thrifty Pennsylvania air may be thrown about our altogether too delightful and altruistic summer arrangements! It's t-o-o bad!" I wailed.
Of course I know, Mrs. Evan, that I was in a temper, and that my "in-laws" mean well, but since comfortable setting hens have gone out of fashion, and incubators and brooders taken their place, there is no more pleasure or sentiment about raising poultry than in manufacturing any other article by rule. It's a business, and a very pernickety one to boot, and it's to keep Bart away from business that we are striving. Besides, that chicken book tells how many square feet per hen must be allowed for the exercising yards, and how the pens for the little chicks must be built on wheels and moved daily to fresh pasture. All the vegetable garden and flower beds and the bit of side lawn which I want for mother's rose garden would not be too much! But I seem to be leaving the track again.
Bart didn't say a word, except that "At any rate we must bring the fowls up from the station," and as the stable door was locked and the key in Barney's pocket, Bart and The Man started to walk down to the village to look him up in some of his haunts, or failing in this to get the express wagon from the stable.
Maria and I sat and talked for some time about The Man from Everywhere, the chickens, and the location of the rose beds. She is surprisingly keen about flowers, considering that it is quite ten years since her own home in the country was broken up, but then I think this is the sort of knowledge that stays by one the longest of all. I hope that I have succeeded in convincing her that The Man is not company to be bothered about, but a comfortable family institution to come and go as he likes, to be taken easily and not too seriously.
When the moon disappeared beyond the river woods, we went to the southwest porch, and there decided that the piece of lawn where we had some uninteresting foliage beds one summer was the best place for the roses and we might possibly have a trellis across the north wall for climbers. Would you plant roses in rows or small separate beds? And how about the soil? But perhaps the plan you are sending me will explain all this.
It was more than an hour before the men returned, and, not having found Barney, Bart had signed for the poultry in order to leave the express agent free to go home, and had left word at the stable for them to send the crates up as soon as the long wagon returned from Leighton, whither it had gone with trunks.
After much discussion we decided that the fowls should be housed for the night in the small yard back of the stable, where the Infant's cow (a present from my mother) spends her nights under the shed.
"Did you find any signs of a chicken house on the place when you first came?" asked Maria, in a matter-of-fact tone, as if its location was the only thing now to be considered.
"Yes, there was one directly in the fence line at the eastern gap where we see the Three Brothers Hills," said Bart, "and I've always intended to plant a flower bed of some sort there both to hide the gap in the wall and that something may be benefited by the hen manure of decades that must have accumulated there!"
"How would the place do for the new hen-house?" pursued Maria, relentlessly.
"Not at all!" I snapped very decidedly: "it is directly in the path the cool summer winds take on their way to the dining room, and you know at best fowl houses are not bushes of lemon balm!"
"Then why not locate your bed of good-smelling things in the gap, and sup on nectar and distilled perfume," said The Man from Everywhere, soothingly.
"The very thing! and I will write Mrs. Evan at once for a list of the plants in her 'bed of sweet odours,' as she calls it." Then presently, as the men sat talking, Maria having gone into the house, our summer work seemed to lie accomplished and complete before me, even as you once saw your garden of dreams before its making,—the knoll restored to its wildness, ending not too abruptly at the garden in some loose rock; the bed of sweet odours filling the gap between it and the gate of the little pasture in the rear; straight beds of hardy plants bordering the vegetable squares; the two seed beds topping the furthest bit, then a space of lawn with the straight walk of the old garden running through, to the sundial amid some beds of summer flowers at the orchard end, while the open lawn below the side porch is given up to roses!
I even crossed the fence in imagination, and took in the possibilities of Opal Farm. If only I could have some one there to talk flowers and other perplexities to, as you have Lavinia Cortright, without going through the front gate!
Two hours must have passed in pleasant chat, for the hall clock, the only one in the front part of the house we had not stopped, was chiming eleven when wheels paused before the house and the latch of the gate that swung both ways gave its double click!
"The hens have come!" I cried in dismay, the dream garden vanishing before an equally imaginary chorus of clucks and crows.
Mr. Hale himself, the stable keeper, appeared at the house corner at the same moment that Bart and The Man reached it. Consternation sat upon his features, and his voice was fairly husky as he jerked out,—"They've gone,—clean gone,—Mr. Penrose, all three crates! and the dust is so kicked up about that depot that you can't read out no tracks. Some loafers must hev seen them come and laid to get in ahead o' you, as hevin' signed the company ain't liable! What! don't you want to drive down to the sheriff's?" and Mr. Hale's lips hung loose with dismay at Bart's apparent apathy.
"Mr. Hale," said Bart, in mock heroic tones, "I thank you for your sympathy, but because some troubles fall upon us unawares, it does not follow that we should set bait for others!"
Whereupon Mr. Hale the next day remarked that he didn't know whether or not Penrose was taking action in the matter, because you could never judge a good lawyer's meanings by his speech.
However, if the hens escaped, so did we, and the next morning Bart forgot his paper until afternoon, so eager was he to test the depth of soil in the knoll.
I'm sending you a list of the wild things at hand. Will you tell me in due course which of the ferns are best for our purpose? I've noticed some of the larger ones turn quite shabby early in August.