The Idyl of Twin Fires

by Walter Prichard Eaton

The scraper was a large affair with flat-tired iron wheels and a blade eight feet long. It was drawn by four horses, and Mr. Morrissy himself was driving, while a younger man manipulated the levers. We drove in behind the woodshed to the proposed lawn, I explained what I wanted done, and the scraper went to work, with me trotting anxiously alongside, quite useless but convinced that I was helping, like Marceline at the Hippodrome. The way that eight-foot blade, with four horses hauling it, peeled off the old furrows and brought the top soil down from the high side to the low made my poor efforts with the scoop look puny enough. After a few trips it began to look as if my lawn could be fairly level after all. Where I had worked an hour to lower the ground six inches, the scraper accomplished the same result in five minutes and on four times as wide a strip. I soon saw, too, that Mike and Joe were useless in the garden, so long as “frind Morrissy” and his helper were here on the lawn, so I set them to spreading the loose dirt at the lower end, as fast as the scraper brought it down, taking a hand myself. The lawn was shaping up so fast that I began once more to grow expansive.

“It really won’t be square,” thought I, “because my pergola will cut off twelve feet of the length, and if I have flower beds by the roses, they’ll cut off some more. I guess those roses ought to be 112 feet from the house.”

I threw down my shovel, went over to the row of stakes, and moved them south again, twenty-five feet, having added thirteen feet as I walked; then I called out to “frind Morrissy” to bring his scraper.

“Sure,” said Mike, “you’ll get it right yet. But I was goin’ to put me cauliflowers there.”

The scraper went at the new twenty-five foot strip, and in an hour that, too, was down eight inches at the west end and up as much at the east. The lawn still sloped, and though an afternoon with the scraper could probably have put it nearly level, and I was tempted to have it done, Mike pointed out that we were already getting perilously close to the subsoil, and if we went deeper we’d get into tough sledding, and I’d end, besides, by getting a surface which wouldn’t grow grass. So I took his advice, paid “frind Morrissy”–for the town!–as the far-off noon whistle at Slab City blew, and took my lunch down to the brook while the scraper rattled off down the road.

The brook reminded me of the pool I was going to build, and the pool of my dream, and my dream of the new boarder, and then with the patness of a “well-made” play the boarder herself entered, as it were. That is, I heard the buggy coming, and the voice of Bert. I lay down flat behind the tall weeds and grasses, and remained hidden till the buggy had passed.

“Confounded petticoats!” thought I. “Well, if she tries to advise me, I’ll snub her so she won’t try a second time!”

Then I finished my lunch, and lay for a quarter of an hour lazily regarding the sky, a great blue sky with cloud ships floating at anchor in its depths, while the indescribable fragrance of May in moist places filled my nostrils and a song sparrow practised in the alders. As I got up to return to my work, I saw suddenly that the old apple trees in my orchard were showing pink–just a frail hint of it in the veil of young green. A great cumulus cloud piled up like a Himalayan peak in the west beyond my mouse-gray dwelling. To the left, the new lawn was shiny brown, and as I climbed the slopes the smell of it came to me. Out still farther to the left my land was already staked in rows of packed earth, neatly. The scene was beautiful to my eyes, and the imagined beauty of to-morrow made me almost run through the orchard to leave my lunch basket in the kitchen and get my tools for the afternoon’s work.

I had, unfortunately, no roller, but I found in the shed an old piece of tattered carpet, which I tacked on a ten-foot beam, tied a rope to each end, united the two ropes around a stick for a handle, and dragged this improvised smoother back and forth over my lawn, as I had seen the keepers of the dirt tennis courts at college do. It was really surprising how well this smoothed the surface, especially at the lower end where the dirt was loose. It had much less effect on the ground where the scraper had taken off the top soil. After the lawn looked tolerably level to the eye, I brought three loads of manure from the barn, scattered them lightly, and went over the surface with a light tooth harrow. I saw I was not going to get the lawn done that afternoon, for it would have to be “rolled” again. I further realized, as the horse sank into the loose soil at the lower side, that I should have to wait till a rain had settled the earth before I resmoothed it, and could sow my grass seed. At five o’clock, as Joe was leaving the garden, and Mike had gone to the barn to milk the cows, I, too, put up my tools, resolved to enjoy an hour’s loaf–my first since I bought the farm!

I scrubbed my hands and face at the kitchen sink in a tin basin which recalled my childhood, took a long draught from the tin dipper, filled my pipe, and strolled down through the budding orchard toward the brook. The song sparrow was still singing. The cloud ships were still riding at anchor. Even with my pipe in my mouth I could smell the odour of moist places in May. Walking beside the brook, I suddenly found the green spears of an iris plant amid the grasses. A few steps farther on, under the maples, the ground was blue and white with violets and anemones. Then the brook entered the pines, lisping a secret as it went, and I followed it into their cool hush.