First harvests

by Frederic Jesup Stimson

But this the beauty flatly refused to do. And after much chaff at her expense, the party betook themselves to their several slumbers.

The next day was Sunday; but, as Wemyss said, to leave Poughkeepsie was a work of necessity and mercy; and they were early under way. Here they left the river, and they struck inland; the country grew more rural and primitive, and their spirits rose proportionately. Haviland appeared by the early train, and shared the back seat with Birmingham, Mrs. Gower, and Kitty Farnum. He brought the news of the day, which no one cared to hear; and some gossip of the town, which interested everybody. “How can you have the heart to bring him up?” Wemyss had said at breakfast; and Flossie had laughed, and said that she expected a very entertaining day. “He must go back Monday evening, you know,” she added.

They had another perfect day, and by this time all of them, even to Caryl Wemyss, were charged with ozone and overflowing with animal spirits. Even practical joking was in order; and Arthur had caught an instantaneous photograph, which he exhibited with much applause, of Van Kull assisting Mrs. Hay over a stone wall. Conversation was unnecessary; it was quite enough to live and laugh. Much amusement was caused by a rustic, at a farm-house where they stopped for milk, who first insisted that they were the advance-guard of a circus, and then would have it that they were “travelling” for something—“jerseys” and men’s clothing, he first suggested, and then parlor organs and patent medicines. And all the women were so pretty, and so stylish, and so sweet-tempered, that Arthur began to feel a little bit in love with every one of them.

“But one gets tired of women, after a while,” said Caryl Wemyss to Arthur, at Washington Hollow, where they lunched. The inn was an old roadside one, at the “four corners,” smelling of dusty leather and the road, with a large bar-room, fit political centre of the surrounding district; but the country was robed in beautiful green forests, into which the others had plunged, and came back loaded with wild flowers, Mrs. Gower with Lord Birmingham, and Haviland and Kitty Farnum last of all. For a wonder, Derwent had done the polite, and wandered off with Mrs. Wilton Hay. Van Kull and Miss Duval came back laughing over some quaint epitaphs they had discovered in what he termed a “boneyard” opposite. “What a jolly place this must have been in the old days!” said Flossie. “Look at the splendid great chimney-places and the old ball-room!” And Arthur’s memory suddenly went back to the ball-room at Lem Hitchcock’s. But it was summer now, and the place was civilized; some stranded woman-boarder was playing, upon an old piano overhead, one of Beethoven’s sonatas. And Derwent took up a curious old stone jug, in which they had had milk, and read:

“He who buys land, buys stones;

“He who buys meat, buys bones;

“He who buys eggs must buy their shells—

“Who buys good ale buys nothing else.”

But, after all, no stops were like the rapid riding; the sense of freedom and delight of sweeping high over the rolling country, making a panorama of it, and being in a little republic of their own. Two small roans were leaders to-day, and the chestnuts, being a little used up, were in the lighter baggage-wagon, in “spike team” with the cock-horse; for no great hills were expected that afternoon.

Arthur settled himself again to the pure delight of life, gazing joyously from sky to forest and from forest to the wide green carpet of the fields, sweeping by them with the changing angles of the long Virginia fences. Arthur and Pussie Duval were the least blasé of the party; and both drank in the very moments with enthusiasm. And when he was tired of looking at the swelling hills and spaces of the sky, it was pleasant to look in her fair face—or, for that matter, at any other of the beautiful women about him. As for Miss Duval, the world was like an opening treasure-house to her; she saw before her all she wanted, and had only to grasp her fill with full hands. Ah! saints and cynics to the contrary, this world has happiness for some—thought Arthur. But what he said was, “How lovely that long edge of the forest is, Miss Duval! See how boldly the high trees rise out of the meadow; I suppose it’s what the poets call a ‘hanging wood.’ La lisière they call it in French; I have always thought it was such a pretty name for Mrs. Gower’s place.”