More Jonathan Papers Part 13

When the work was done, the edge of the garden looked like Stonehenge, and the spot where my gra.s.s was to be was nothing but a yawning pit, crying to be filled. We surveyed it with interest. If we had a water-supply, I wouldnt make a gra.s.s-plot, I said; Id make a swimming-pool. Its deep enough.

And sit in the middle with your book? asked Jonathan.

But there was no water-supply, so we filled it in with earth. Thirty wheelbarrow loads went in where those rocks came out. And the little gnomes perched on Stonehenge and jeered the while. I photographed it, and the rocks took well, but as regards the gnomes, the film was underexposed.

Thus the gra.s.s seed was planted. And we reminded each other of the version of America once given, with unconscious inspiration, by a little friend of ours:

Land where our father died, Land where the pilgrims pried.

It seemed to us to suit the adventure.

As I have said, I love to have my friends love my garden. But there is one thing about it that I find does not always appeal to them pleasantly, and that is its color-schemes. Yet this is not my doing. For in nothing do I feel more keenly the fact of my mere stewardship than in this matter of color-scheme.

I set out with a very rigid one. I was quite decided in my own mind that what I wanted was white and salmon-pink and lavender. Asters, phlox, sweet peas, hollyhocks, all were to bend themselves to my rules. At first affairs went very well. White was easy. White phlox I had, and havean inheritancewhich from a few roots is spreading and spreading in waves of whiteness that grow more luxuriant every year. But I bought roots of salmon-pink and lavender, and then my troubles commenced. About the third season strange things began to happen. The pink phlox had the strength of ten. It spread amazingly; but it forgot all about my rules. It degenerated, some of itreverted toward that magenta shade that nature seems so naturally to adore in the vegetable world. To my horror I found my garden blossoming into magenta pink, blue pink, crimson, cardinalall the colors I had determined not under any circ.u.mstances to admit. On the other hand, the lavender phlox, which I particularly wanted, was most lovely, but frail. It refused to spread. It effaced itself before the rampant pink and its magenta-tainted brood. I vowed I would pull out the magentas, but each year my courage failed. They bloomed so bravely; I would wait till they were through. But by that time I was not quite sure which was which; I might pull out the wrong ones. And so I hesitated.

Moreover, I discovered, lingering among the flowers at dusk, that there were certain colors, most unpleasant by daylight, which at that time took on a new shade, and, for perhaps half an hour before night fell, were richly lovely. This is true of some of the magentas, which at dusk turn suddenly to royal purples and deep lavender-blues that are wonderfully satisfying.

For that half-hour of beauty I spare them. While the sun shines I try to look the other way, and at twilight I linger near them and enjoy their strange, dim glories, born literally of the magic hour. But I have trouble explaining them, by daylight, to some of my visitors who like color-schemes.

Insubordination is contagious. And I found after a while that my asters were not running true; queer things were happening among the sweet peas, and in the ranks of the hollyhocks all was not as it should be. And the last charge was made upon me by the childrens gardens. Children know not color-schemes. What they demand is flowers, flowersflowers to pick and pick, flowers to do things with. Snapdragon, for instance, is a jolly playmate, and little fingers love to pinch its cheeks and see its jaws yawn wide. But snapdragon tends dangerously toward the magenta. Then there was the calendulaa delight to the young, because it blooms incessantly long past the early frosts, and has brittle stems that yield themselves to the clumsiest plucking by small hands. But calendula ranges from a faded yellow, through really pretty primrose shades, to a deep red-orange touched with maroon.

And, finally, there was the portulaca. Children love it, perhaps, best of all. It offers them fresh blossoms and new colors each morning, and it is even more easy to pick than the calendula. Who would deny them portulaca?

Yet if this be admitted, one may as well give up the battle. For, as we all know, there is absolutely no color, except green, that portulaca does not perpetrate in its blossoms. It knows no shame.

In short, I am giving up. I am beginning to say with conviction that color-schemes are the mark of a narrow and rigid tastethat they are born of convention and are meant not for living things but for wall-papers and portieres and clothes. Moreover, I am really growing callousor is it, rather, broad? Colors in my garden that would once have made my teeth ache now leave them feeling perfectly comfortable. I find myself looking with unmoved fleshno creeps nor withdrawalsupon a bed of mixed magentas, scarlets, rose-pinks, and yellow-pinks. I even look with pleasure. I begin to think there may be a point beyond which discord achieves a higher harmony. At least, this sounds well. But, again, I find it hard to explain to some of my friends.

Indoors, it is another story. When I bring in the spoils of the garden I am again mistress and bend all to my will. Here Ill have no tricks of color played on me. Sunshine and sky, perhaps, work some spell, for as soon as I get within four walls my prejudices return; scarlets and crimsons and pinks have to live in different rooms. I must have my color-schemes again, and perhaps I am as narrow as the worst. Except, indeed, for the childrens bowls; here the pink and the magenta, the lamb and the lion, may lie down together. But it takes a little child to lead them.

Out in my garden I feel myself less and less owner, more and more merely steward. I decree certain paths, and the phlox says, Paths? Did you say paths? and obliterates them in a seasons growth, so that children walk by faith and not by sight. I decree iris in one corner, and the primroses say, Iris? Not at all. This is our bed. Iris indeed! And I submit, and move the iris elsewhere.

And yet this slipping of responsibility is pleasant, too. So long as my garden will let me dig in it and weed it and pick it, so long as it entertains my friends for me, so long as it tosses up an occasional rock so that Jonathan does not lose all interest in it, so long as it plays prettily with the children and flings gay greetings to every pa.s.ser-by, I can find no fault with it.

The joys of stewardship are great and I am well content.

VI

Trout and Arbutus

Every year, toward the end of March, I find Jonathan poking about in my sewing-box. And, unless I am very absent-minded, I know what he is after.

No use looking there, I remark; I keep my silks put away.

I want red, and as strong as there is.

I know what you want. Here. and I hand him a spool of red b.u.t.tonhole twist.

Ah! Just right! And for the rest of the evening his fingers are busy.

Over what? Mending our trout-rods, of course. It is pretty work, calling for strength and precision of grasp, and as he winds and winds, adjusting all the little bra.s.s leading-rings, or supplying new ones, and staying points in the bamboo where he suspects weakness, we talk over last years trout-pools, and wonder what they will be like this year.

But beyond wonder we do not get, often for weeks after the trout season is, legislatively, open. Jonathan is busy. I am busy. We know that, if April pa.s.ses, there is still May and June, and so, if at the end of April, or early May, we do at last pick up our rods,all new-bedight with red silk windings, and shiny with fresh varnish,it is not alone the call of the trout that decides us, but another call which is to me at least more imperious, because, if we neglect it now, there is no May and June in which to heed it. It is the call of the arbutus.

Any one with New England traditions knows what this call is. Its appeal is to something far deeper than the love of a pretty flower. For it is the flower that, to our fathers and our grandfathers, and to their fathers and grandfathers, meant spring; and not spring in its prettiness and ease, appealing to the idler in us, nor spring in its melancholy, appealing toshall I say the poet in us? But spring in its blessedness of opportunity, its joyously triumphant life, appealing to the worker in us.

Here, of course, we touch hands with all the races of the world for whom winter has been the supreme menace, spring the supreme and saving miracle.

But each race has its own symbols, and to the New Englander the symbol is the arbutus.

This may seem a bit of sentimentality. And, indeed, we need not expect to find it expressed by any New England farmer. New England does not go out in gay companies to bring back the first blossoms. But New England does nothing in gay companies. It has been taught to distrust ceremonies and expression of any sort. It rejoices with reticence, it appreciates with a reservation. And yet I have seen a sprig of arbutus in rough and clumsy b.u.t.tonholes on weather-faded lapels which, the rest of the twelve-month through, know no other flower. And when, in unfamiliar country, I have interrupted the ploughing to ask for guidance, I usually get it:Arbutus?

Yaas. Thes a lot of it up along that hillside and in the woods over beyondt was out last week, some of it, I happened to noticethis in the apologetic tone of one who admits a weaknessguess youll find all you want. I venture to say that of no other wild flower, except those which work specific harm or good, could I get such information.

To many of us, city-bred, the tradition comes through inheritance. It means, perhaps, the shy, poetic side of our fathers boyhood, only half acknowledged, after the New England fashion, but none the less real and none the less our possession. It means rare days, when the citywhose chiefest signs of spring were the flare of dandelions in yards and parks and the chatter of English sparrows on ivy-clad church wallswas left behind, and we were in the country. It was a country excitingly different from the country of the summer vacation, a country not deeply green, but warmly brown, and sweet with the smell of moist, living earth.

Green enough, indeed, in the spring-fed meadows and folds of the hills, where the early gra.s.s flashes into vividest emerald, but in the woods the soft mist-colored mazes of mult.i.tudinous twigs still show through their veilings and dustings of colorpalest green of birches, gray-green of poplar, yellow-green of willows, and redder tones of the maples; and along the fence-lines and roadsidesblessed, untidy fence-lines and roadsides of New Englanda fine penciling of red stemsthe cut-back maple bushes and tangled vines alive to their tips and just bursting into leaf. And everywhere in the woods, on fence-lines and roadsides, the white blossoms of the shad-blow, daintiest of spring trees,too slight for a tree, indeed, though too tall for a bush and looking less like a tree in blossom than like floating blossoms caught for a moment among the twigs. A moment only, for the first gust loosens them again and carpets the woods with their petals, but while they last their whiteness shimmers everywhere.

Such rare days were all blown through with the wonderful wind of spring.

Spring wind is really different from any other. It is not a finished thing, like the mellow winds of summer and the cold blasts of winter. It is an imperfect blend of shivering reminiscence and eager promise. One moment it breathes sun and stirring earth, the next it reminds us of old snow in the hollows, and bleak northern slopes.

When, on these days, the wind blew to us, almost before we saw it, the first greeting of the arbutus, it always seemed that the day had found its complete and satisfying expression. Every one comes to realize, at some time in his life, the power of suggestion possessed by odors. Does not half the power of the Church lie in its incense? An odor, just because it is at once concrete and formless, can carry an appeal overwhelmingly strong and searching, superseding all other expression. This is the appeal made to me by the arbutus. It can never be quite precipitated into words, but it holds in solution all the things it has come to meandear human tradition and beloved companionship, the poetry of the land and the miracle of new birth.

In late March or early April I am likely to see the first blossom on some friends tableI try not to see it first in a florists display! To my startled question she gives rea.s.suring answer, Oh, no, not from around here. This came from Virginia.

Days pa.s.s, and, perhaps, the mail brings some to me, this time from Pennsylvania or New Jersey, and soon I can no longer ignore the trays of tight, leafless bunches for sale on street corners and behind plate-gla.s.s windows. From York State, they tell me. I grow restive.

Jonathan, I say, holding up a spray for him to smell, weve got to go.

You cant resist that. Well take a day and go for itand trout, too.

It is as well that arbutus comes in the trout season, for to take a day off just to pick a flower might seem a little absurd. But, coupled with troutall is well. Trout is food. One must eat. The search for food needs no defense, and yet, the curious fact is, that if you go for trout and dont get any, it doesnt make so much difference as you might suppose, but if you go for arbutus and dont get any, it makes all the difference in the world. And so Jonathan knows that in choosing his brook for that particular day, he must have regard primarily to the arbutus it will give us and only secondarily to the trout.

Every one knows the kind of brook that is, for every one knows the kind of country arbutus loveshilly country, with slopes toward the north; bits of woodland, preferably with pine in it, to give shade, but not too deep shade; a scrub undergrowth of laurel and huckleberry and bay; and always, somewhere within sight or hearing, water. It is curious how arbutus, which never grows in wet places, yet seems to like the neighborhood of water. It loves the slopes above a brook or the s.h.a.ggy hillsides overlooking a little pond or river.

Fortunately, there is such a brook, in just such country, on our list.

There are not so many trout as in other brooks, but enough to justify our rods; and not so much arbutus as I could find elsewhere, but enoughoh, enough!

To this brook we go. We tie Kit at the bridge, Jonathan slings on a fish-basket, to do for both, and I take a box or two for the flowers. But from this moment on our interests are somewhat at variance. The fact is, Jonathan cares a little more about the trout than about the arbutus, while I care a little more about the arbutus than about the trout. His eye is keenly on the brook, mine is, yearningly, on the ragged hillsides that roll up above it.

Jonathan feels this. There isnt any for two fields yetmight as well stick to the brook.

I know. I thought perhaps Id go on down and let you fish this part. Then Id meet you beyond the second fence

Oh, no, that wont do at all. Why, theres a rock just below heredown by that wild cherrywhere I took out a beauty last year, and left another. I want you to go down and get him.