The Idyl of Twin Fires

by Walter Prichard Eaton

She shook her head. “Not to-night,” she said briefly, and I walked, grieved and puzzling, up the road by her side.

The next day she pleaded a headache, and I went to the farm alone. The south room was shining with its first coat of paint. Hard was, as he put it “seein’ daylight” in his work, and I realized that soon I should be sending for Mrs. Pillig and son Peter and moving away from Bert’s. Somehow the idea made me perversely melancholy. The house seemed lonely as I wandered through it, sniffing the strong odour of fresh paint.

I went out to find Mike, and learned that the small fruits had come–a hundred red raspberries, fifty blackcaps, twenty-five of the yellow variety, a hundred blackberries, not to mention currant bushes. We walked about the garden to find the best site for them, and finally chose for the berries the end of the slope between the vegetables and field crops and the pines and tamaracks. Here was a long, narrow stretch where the brook in times past had made the soil sandy, so that it drained well, but where the swampy land was close enough to offer the least danger of complete drying out. While Mike and Joe were ploughing the dressing under and harrowing, I took my garden manual in hand and carefully sorted out the varieties according to their bearing season. Then we began planting them in rows.

There is no berry so fascinating nor so delicious to me as a raspberry, especially at breakfast, half hidden under golden cream. There is something soft and cool and wild about it; it is the feline of berries. As we planted, I could almost smell the fruit. I could fancy the joy of walking between these dewy rows in the fresh morning sun and picking my breakfast. I could imagine the crates of ripe fruit sent to market.

In the pleasures of my fancy and the monotony of measured planting, I lost track of time, nor did I think of Miss Goodwin. But thought of her returned at noon, however, when Mrs. Bert told me her head had felt better and she had gone off for a day’s trolley trip to see the country. After all, it was rather selfish of me not to show her the country! Besides, I hadn’t seen it myself. I had been too busy. Why shouldn’t I take a day off? But I couldn’t do that till the berries were all in, and that afternoon was not enough to finish them. It took all of the next day as well, and most of the day following, for we had the double rows of wire to mount as supports for the vines, and the currant bushes to set in as a border to the garden six feet south of the rose trellis. Most of this work I did alone, leaving Mike free for other tasks, and Joe free to cut the pea brush. I saw Miss Goodwin only at meals. After supper I had to drive myself to my manuscripts.

“It will be you who will need a rest soon,” she said the second morning, as she came down to breakfast and found me hard at work out on the front porch.

“I’m going to take one–with you!” said I. “I want to see the country, too.”

She smiled a little, and picked a lilac bud, holding it to her nose. She seemed quite far away now. The first few days of our rapid intimacy had passed, and now she was as much a stranger to me as on that first meeting in the pines. I said nothing about her coming to the farm; I don’t know why. Somehow, I was piqued. I wished her to make the first move. In some way, it was all due to my asking her to choose the paint for my dining-room, and that seemed to me ridiculous. I fear my manner showed my pique a trifle, for I did not see her anywhere about when I left after breakfast.

That evening I found the second coat of paint practically dry in the south room, and there was no reason why I shouldn’t install my desk at last, order some kerosene for my student lamp, and do my work there, in my own new home, by my twin fires. The wind was east as I walked back to supper, and there was no sun to wake me in the morning, so that I slept till half-past six. Outside the rain was pouring steadily down, and I found Bert rejoicing, for it was badly needed. After breakfast I waylaid Miss Goodwin.

“No work on the trellis to-day,” said I, swallowing my pique; “so I’m going to fix up the south room. I’m going to make twin fires out of some of the nice, fragrant apple wood you haven’t sawed for me, and hang the Hiroshiges, and unpack the books, and have an elegant time–if you don’t make me do it alone.”