Dwellers in Arcady Part 7

_Westbury had advised against wheat_

But if our venture in pig culture had not been an entire success, our agriculture gave better promise. Our rye and gra.s.s seed had come up abundantly, and by November the fields, viewed from a little distance, were a ma.s.s of vivid green. There is something approaching a thrill in seeing the seed of your own sowing actually break ground and spring up and wax strong with promise. You seem somehow to have had a hand in the ancient miracle of life.

Our rye had such a st.u.r.dy look that I said it was pretty sure to turn out something fancy in the way of grain, and that we could probably sell it as "seed" rye, which always brought a better price than the regular crop. Then, as the idea expanded, I said that with our few acres we could cultivate intensively and raise seed crops entirely. That would be something really aristocratic in the farming line. We would begin with seed rye and wheat, of which latter grain I had put in a modest sowing.

Next year we would go in for seed potatoes, oats, corn, and the like. We could have a neat sign on the stone wall in front, announcing our line of goods. Very likely buyers would come from a considerable distance for them--I had myself driven seven miles with Westbury for the seed rye. A business like that would grow. We could go in for new varieties of things, and in time set up a shipping-station, with a packing-house and a bookkeeper. No doubt Henderson and Hiram Sibley and Ferry and those other seed magnates had begun in some such modest way.

I don't think Elizabeth responded entirely to this particular enthusiasm, and I could see that she was doubtful about the sign in front, but on a winy, windless November day, warmed by a mellow sun, all things seem possible, and she graciously admitted that one never could tell--that stranger things had happened. Then we came to our small wheat-field, and the new seed enthusiasm received a slight check.

Westbury had advised against wheat. He said it did not do well in that section. This, I had insisted, must be a superst.i.tion, and I had gone to considerable expense to have the ground properly prepared, and to obtain the best seed.

The result, as it appeared now, was not promising. Here and there a spindling blade had come through, and some of those seemed about to turn into gra.s.s. I do not know why wheat acts like that in Connecticut. I did not follow up the scientific phases of the case, but I confided to Elizabeth that perhaps, after all, we would not announce "Seed Wheat"

on the neat sign planned for the outer wall.

Late October winds had changed the aspect of our world. Our woods were no longer deep, vast, and mysterious. We could see straight through them and read their most hidden secrets. We discovered one day, what we had never suspected, that at one place our brook turned and came back almost to the road. All that summer it had supped silently through that brushy corner which for some reason we had never penetrated. We discovered, too, a little to one side of our former excursions, a rocky acclivity, a place of pretty hemlock-trees and seclusion--a spot for a summer tent.

There were not many mushrooms any more, but we gathered gay red berries for decoration, bunches of late fern, sprays of bittersweet; we raked over the leaves for nuts, and sometimes found bits of spicy wintergreen or checkerberry, the kind that always flavored old-fashioned lozenges which our grandmothers bought in little rolls for a penny, on the way to school. You may guess that this was pleasant play to us who for ten years had known only city or suburban life at this season, and not the least pleasant part of it was the quiet noise the leaves made as we strode through them, the _fruis-sas-se-ar_, as the French of the Provence call it, and the word as they speak it conveys the sound.

Astride a stick horse, of which on our new back porch she kept a full stable, the Joy went racing this way and that, kicking high the loose brown drift of summer, stirred to a sort of ecstasy by its pleasant noise and the spicy autumn air.

The November woods had fewer voices than those of the earlier season, but there was more visible life. Many of the birds remained, and they could no longer hide so easily. A hawk or an owl on a bare bough was sharply outlined. Rabbits darted among the trees, or stood erect, staring at us with questioning eyes. Squirrels scampering over the limbs gave exhibitions of acrobatic skill. There were two kinds of squirrels--the fat gray ones, of which there were not many, and the venomous little red ones, of which there seemed an overproduction. They were cute little wretches, but we did not care for them. They were pugnacious pirates; they robbed their unmilitant gray relative and chased him from the premises. Earlier in the season they had thrown down quant.i.ties of green nuts to be wasted, and we were told they robbed birds' nests, not only of their eggs, but of their young. Those red rovers had no food value, or they would have been fewer. They were a mere furry skin drawn over a bunch of wires and strings, and not worth a charge of powder.

V

_Deer--wild deer--on our own farm!_

Animal life is still plentiful in New England--far more so than in the newer states of the Middle West. With the decrease of population in many districts the wild things have wandered back to their old haunts. They are not very persistently hunted, and some of them, like the deer, are protected. Now and again in our walks we saw a fox, wary and silent-footed, and often on sharp nights, on the hill above the house, one barked anxiously at the moon. At least that is the poetic form, though I really think he was barking for the same reason that I often sing when others of the family are not present. The others claim they do not care for it--I often wonder why. I suppose that fox's family was the same way, so he went out there alone in a dark, safe place to enjoy his music unrestrained. Yet no place seems entirely safe when one wants to sing, and I fear something happened to that fox, for by and by we did not hear him any more. Very likely one of his relatives crept up on him with a brick. We were sorry, for we had learned to like his music--it gave us a wild, primeval feeling.

I think there were no wolves or bears in our immediate neighborhood, though there came reports of them, now and then--exaggerated, I dare say--from adjoining ridges. The nearest thing we had to bears were some very fat and friendly woodchucks, who at a little distance, sitting on their haunches, looked very much like small grizzlies. They dug their holes a few yards from the house and sometimes came quite to the back door, probably intending to call, but when we approached them their courage failed and they went "galumphing" back to their houses. There they would sit up for a moment, staring at us, then, if we approached suddenly, would dive to lower recesses. I explained to the Joy that they most likely had cozy little houses down there, with chairs and tables and a nice stove to cook their food things on. She was sure it was all true, except about the stove, which seemed doubtful, because no smoke ever came from their chimneys.

Most of the animals were friendly to us, and I think made our house a sort of center. I remember one pleasant Sunday afternoon, when we were sitting outside, we noticed simultaneously two woodchucks playing in the field just across the road; a red squirrel pursuing a gray one along our stone wall, almost within arm's-reach; a blue heron among the willows by the brook, probably prospecting for trout; some bob-whites running along by the roadside; while in the woods just beyond a partridge was drumming up further recruits for the exhibition.

The deer did not call as soon as the others. They were reserved and aristocratic and would seem to have looked us over a good while before they accepted us. We frequently saw their tracks, and hoped for one of the glimpses reported by our neighbors.

It came one morning, very early. A cow in an adjoining field was making an unusual sound. Elizabeth looked out and beckoned me to the window.

There they were, at last! two reddish-tan, shy creatures--a doe and a half-grown fawn--stepping mincingly down to the brook to drink. We could have hugged ourselves with the delight of it--deer--wild deer--on our own farm, drinking from our own brook, here in this old, old land!

I wonder if they heard us, or perhaps sensed us. Or they may not have liked the noise of greeting, or protest, made by the neighbor's cow.

Whatever the reason, they suddenly threw up their heads, seemed to look straight at us, turned lightly, and simply floated away. What I mean by that is that their movement was not like that of any other animal, or like a bird's--it suggested thistledown. They drifted over the stone wall and clumps of bushes without haste and seemingly without weight. It was as if we had seen phantoms of the dawn.

We saw them often, after that. Sometimes at evening they grazed in our lower meadow. Once, three of them in full daylight crossed the upland just above the house. They were not fifty yards away, moving deliberately, looking neither to the right nor to the left.

We felt the honor of it--they had admitted us to their charmed circle.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER FIVE

I

_But Sarah was biding her time_

[Ill.u.s.tration]

I have not mentioned, I think, a small building that, when we came, stood just across the road from our house--a rather long, low structure with sliding windows, called "the shop." Red raspberries of a large, sweet variety were ripening about it, and within was a short box counter, a shoemaker's work-bench, a cutting-board, a great bag of wooden shoe-pegs, and a quant.i.ty of leather sc.r.a.ps, for it had, in fact, been a shop during the two generations preceding our ownership. Before that it appeared to have served as a sort of office for Captain Ben Meeker, who also had been not merely a farmer, as certain records proved. Captain Ben may have built the shop, though I think it was older, for when we examined the picturesque little building, with a view to restoration, it proved to be too far gone--too much a structure of decay. So we tore down "the shop," and, incidentally, Old Pop, who did the tearing, found a Revolutionary bayonet in the loft; also a more recent, and particularly hot, hornets' nest which caused him to leap through the window and spring into the air several times on the way to the bushes by the brook. But that is another story. We have already had the bee history; hornets would be in the nature of a repet.i.tion.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

We found something of still greater interest in the old shop. One day, digging over the leather sc.r.a.ps, we uncovered the records above mentioned--that is to say, the old account-books of Captain Ben Meeker and the two generations of shoemakers who had followed him. These ancient folios, stoutly made and legibly written, correlate a good deal of Brook Ridge history for a hundred years. The names of the dead are there, and the items of their forgotten activities.

From Westbury and others we already knew that Benjamin Meeker and Sarah, his wife, had occupied our house at the beginning of the last century--young married folks then--and that there had been a little girl (owner of the small bra.s.s-nailed trunk, maybe) who in due time had grown up and married the young shoemaker, Eli Brayton, of "distant parts," he being from eastern New York, as much as fifty miles away. Brayton had remained in the family, set up his bench in one end of the building across the road, and there for a generation made the boots of the countryside, followed in the trade by his son, the "Uncle Joe" who at eighty-five had laid down the hammer and the last a year prior to our coming. This was good history in outline, and Westbury had supplied episodes, here and there, embellished in his improving fashion. The old books came now as a supplement--an extension course, as it were, in the history of Captain Ben and his successors.

While not recorded, we may a.s.sume that Captain Ben belonged to the militia, hence his t.i.tle. That he had another official position we learn from certain items of entry:

To serving one summon on S. Davis 3 shillin To serving one tachment on J. Fillow 2 shillin To fees: execushun Eli Sherwood 2 shillin 6 pnc.

Evidently a constable or deputy sheriff, and I think we may a.s.sume that the last item records a process, and not a performance. The fees are rea.s.suring. Eli could hardly have been dismissed mortally for two and six.

Captain Ben had still other activities. He owned teams for hire; he dealt in livestock; in addition to his farm he owned a sawmill on the brook; he even went out at day's labor--certainly a busy man, requiring carefully kept accounts, and an office.

The accounts begin in 1797 and are sometimes kept in dollars and cents, sometimes in the English fashion, as above. Sometimes the charges are made in one form, the credits in another. It was just as he got started, I suppose, both moneys being in about equal circulation.

Captain Ben's spelling is interesting. He was by no means illiterate.

His writing is trim, his accounts in good form and correctly figured.

But it was more a fashion in that day to spell as p.r.o.nounced, and his orthography gives us a personal sense of the period.

"To plowin garding ... 2 shillin." You can almost hear him say that, while "To haulin stun" likewise carries the fine old flavor.

We have heard much of the "good old times when things were cheap," but Captain Ben's book proves that not all commodities were cheap in his day. Calico, for instance, is set down at three and six a yard--that is, eighty-five cents. Handkerchiefs at two shillings thrippence each, sugar at a shilling per pound, which is more than double our war-time prices. It is not well to complain, even to-day, remembering those rates, especially when we note that in 1805 Captain Ben's labor brought him only four shillings a day (six with team), and his sawing, in small lots, but a trifle. Labor was, in fact, cheap at that period; also unfortunately for Captain Ben--rum and brandy.

The book does not say where Ezekial Jackson kept his general store, but that was where Captain Ben dealt, and his items of purchase are faithfully set down. A good many men "swear off" on the New Year, but Captain Ben didn't. He bought a "decantur," price two and six (ah me! it would be an antique, now), and promptly started in having it filled.

Behold the startling credits to Ezekial Jackson during the first ten days of 1806:

Jan. 1, By 2 lb. sugar 2 shillin " 1, " 1 qt. brandy 2 shillin " 5, " 1 qt. brandy 2 shillin " 6, " 1 qt. brandy 2 shillin " 10, " 1 qt. brandy 2 shillin

But perhaps this was too costly a pace, for the next entry is, "Jan. 15, 1 jug, 1 shillin," and on the same date, "One gallon of rum, 6 shillin."

That, you see, was somewhat cheaper and required fewer trips to town. On January 20th the jug was filled again, and on the same date we find set down "four and a half yards of chintz and one scane of silk." That chintz and "scane" of silk look suspicious--they look like tranquilizers for Sarah, his wife.

Through that month and the three following the liquid items follow with alarming monotony, only separated here and there by entries of "tee" and sugar and certain yards of "cotting" and "scanes" of silk for Sarah.

But Sarah was biding her time. The book does not say that the minister was asked to call, or that he came. It does not need to. We may guess it from the next entry:

May 2, By 1 famly bible 1 poun, 13 shillin

That ended the rum chapter. There is not another spirituous entry in all of Ezekial Jackson's credits. "By one mometer" comes next, May 6th.

Probably Captain Ben felt himself cooling down pretty rapidly for the season, and wanted to take the temperature. Then follows "two combs"--he was going to keep slicked up--also earthenware, indigo, "cotting," and more scanes of silk, mainly for Sarah, no doubt, and so on to the end, when the account is closed and underneath is written: