The Idyl of Twin Fires

by Walter Prichard Eaton

It was not long afterward, one moonlight night, that I chanced to be sitting up late, and before retiring I glanced from the window. There was something–there were two somethings–moving about amid the apple trees. I looked closer and ran to awake Stella. Wrapped in a dressing-gown, she came with me to the window and peered out. There, in the full moonlight which flooded the white world with a misty silver radiance, were two deer pawing for apples in our orchard. Buster, by some sixth sense, suddenly scented them, and we heard him set up an alarm in the kitchen. The buck shot up his head and listened, a beautiful sight which made Stella gasp for breath. We heard the horse stamp in the stable, and Buster continued his yelps. But the buck was evidently satisfied of his safety, for he lowered his muzzle into the snow again. However, as we watched, there came a different sound to his ears, though not to ours, for suddenly he gave a leap, and with the doe after him took the stone wall at a bound, the wall across the road at another, and vanished up our pasture. A moment later we, too, heard the sound; it was the jingle of approaching sleigh-bells.

Stella sighed happily as she went back to bed. “All my dreams are coming true!” she whispered.

I wonder if any pleasure in this world is quite comparable with that of coming back to your own snug dwelling after a long tramp through the snowy woods, returning when the green sunset is fading in the west and the amethyst shadows are creeping up the hills and the cold night stillness is abroad, and seeing from afar the red window-squares of home gleaming over the snow? Our favourite method of return was to climb the stone wall by the frozen tamarack swamp and enter the pines, where the ice-covered brook crept like a flowing black ribbon through the white, with the snow on the banks curled over it in the most exquisite and fantastic of tiny cornices. We could see our south windows through the branches, just before the path emerged, and Mrs. Pillig had orders to light the lamps before our return so that they might glow a welcome. We always stood a moment, hand in hand, regarding them, before we climbed the slope and entered the door.

Ah, the warmth that greeted us when we stepped inside! The good smell of burning apple wood on the twin hearths! The cheerful bark of Buster, if he had not gone to walk with us! The prophetic rattle of dishes and the kettle song from the kitchen! We had a kettle of our own, too, now, in the long room. It hung on a crane in the west fireplace, and was delightfully black, and often made the tea taste smoky, like camp tea. Quickly we left our wraps in the hall, quickly Stella brought out cups and tea caddy to a little tabouret before the western fireplace, and sitting on our settle in the chimney nook, with the last wan light of sunset competing with the evening lamps, we warmed our hands before the blaze, and drank our tea, and felt that delicious drowse steal over us which comes only after brisk exercise in the mountain air of winter.

And then the evenings, the long winter evenings by the twin fires, when we were supposed by our friends in town to be pining for the opera or the theatre, and were in reality blissfully unaware of either! Stella’s first duty after supper was to hear Peter’s lessons, while Buster lay on the hearth and I sprawled in a Morris chair with my cigar, and read the morning paper. That is another delightful feature of country life. You never have time to read the morning paper till evening, and then you read it comfortably all through, if you like. Peter was going far ahead of his class as a result of this individual instruction, and had actually begun to develop a real interest in the acquisition of knowledge–a thing that did not exist as a rule in the pupils of Bentford, which, perhaps, was not the pupils’ fault. So far as I have observed, it is not characteristic of most of our public schools in America. Perhaps that is a penalty of democracy; certainly it is a penalty of too large classes and too low salaries paid for teaching. We make the profession of teacher a stop-gap for girls between the normal school and matrimony.

When Peter’s lesson was over, and we were left alone, we had the best books in the world, the best music in the world, to choose from. We could have a play if we liked, the kind too seldom seen on Broadway. We could have Mozart, or so much of him as Stella could render. We had letters to write, also, a task always left till evening. Sometimes I had tag ends of my morning labours to finish up. Any writing of my own I brought forth in the evening for Stella to read, and to criticise as mercilessly as she chose–which was sometimes very mercilessly; and we thrashed it over together. Sometimes, even, I agreed with her!

Once a week we gathered in several high school pupils who lived near by–Mike’s Nora, a boy, and three other girls–and read Shakespeare. It took them two months to read one play in school, but we read a play in two or three evenings, each of us taking a part. I showed them pictures of the ancient playhouses, and explained as best I could the conditions of stage productions in various periods. Stella supplied the necessary philology. We had a real course in Shakespeare, and yet one which interested the children, for they were reading the plays aloud, and visualizing them. One evening we dressed up in costume, so far as we could, amid much laughter, and acted a scene from “As You Like It,” with Nora as Rosalind (she wore my knickerbockers and a long cape of Stella’s, and blushed adorably), and Mrs. Pillig and Peter called in as audience.

Before the winter was over, two or three other children from the village had begged to come to the class, and made the long, cold trip out to the farm on foot every week. We had cake and chocolate when the lessons were over. As Stella and I stood in the door listening to the young voices die away down the road, we used to look at one another happily.

“Oh,” she once cried, “how much you can do for folks in the country! In town we’d pay $4 to see Shakespeare, played by professionals, and then go selfishly home. Here we can help give him to these children, with all that means. And some of them so need it! Why, look at Joe Bostwick! When he first began to come he had the manners of a bear, and read like a seven-year-old child. I don’t believe he’d ever read out loud, or been of an evening among nice people. Now he’s getting to know how to behave in company, poor fellow, and he reads almost intelligently!”

“You don’t want to go back to the city, then?” I smiled.