The Hills of Hingham Part 9

"Let us do all things decently and in order, Joel," I continued, touching the great Book reverently.

"But I never set in this room. My chair's out there in the kitchen."

I moved over to the window to get what light I could, Joel following me with furtive, sidelong glances, as if he saw ghosts in the dark corners.

"We keep this room mostly for funerals," he volunteered, in order to stir up talk and lay what of the silence and the ghosts he could.

"I 'll read your story of Adam's farming first," I said, and began: "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth"--going on with the account of the dry, rainless world, and with no man to till the soil; then to the forming of Adam out of the dust, and the planting of Eden; of the rivers, of G.o.d's mistake in trying Adam alone in the Garden, of the rib made into Eve, of the prohibited tree, the snake, the wormy apple, the fall, the curse, the thorns--and how, in order to crown the curse and make it real, G.o.d drove the sinful pair forth from the Garden and condemned them to farm for a living.

"That's it," Joel muttered with a mourner's groan. "That's Holy Writ on farmin' as _I_ understand it. Now, where's the other story?"

"Here it is," I answered, "but we 've got to have some fresh air and more light on it," rising as I spoke and reaching for the bolt on the front door. With a single quick jerk I had it back, and throwing myself forward, swung the door wide to the open sky, while Joel groaned again, and the big, rusty hinges thrice groaned at the surprise and shock of it. But the thing was done.

A flood of warm, sweet sunshine poured over us; a breeze, wild-rose-and-elder-laden, swept in out of the broad meadow that stretched from the very doorstep to a distant hill of pines, and through the air, like a shower in June, fell the notes of soaring, singing bobolinks.

Joel stood looking out over his farm with the eyes of a stark stranger.

He had never seen it from the front door before. It was a new prospect.

"Let's sit here on the millstone step," I said, bringing the Bible out into the fresh air, "and I 'll read you something you never heard before," and I read,--laying the emphasis so as to render a new thing of the old story,--"In the beginning G.o.d created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of G.o.d moved upon the face of the waters. And G.o.d said, Let there be light; and there was light. And G.o.d saw the light that it was good. And G.o.d divided the light from the darkness. And G.o.d called the light day, and the darkness he called night.

"And the evening and the morning were the first day."

Starting each new phase of the tale with "And G.o.d said," and bringing it to a close with "And G.o.d saw that it was good," I read on through the seas and dry land, the sun and stars, and all living things, to man and woman--"male and female created he them"--and in his own likeness, blessing them and crowning the blessing with saying, "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and _subdue_ it,"--farm for a living; rounding out the whole marvelous story with the sweet refrain: "And G.o.d saw _everything_ that he had made, and behold it was _very_ good.

"And the evening and the morning were the sixth day."

"_Thus_, Joel," I concluded, glancing at him as with opened eyes he looked out for the first time over his new meadow,--"_thus_, according to my belief, and not as you have been reading it, were the heavens and the earth finished and all the host of them."

He took the old book in his lap and sat silent with me for a while on the step. Then he said:--

"n.o.body has got to the bottom of that book yet, have they? And it's true; it's all true. It's just accordin' as you see it. Do ye know what I'm going to do? I 'm going to buy one of them double-seated red swings and put it right out here under this sa.s.safras tree, and Hannah and I are going to set in, and swing in it, and listen a little to them bobolinks."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A pilgrim from Dubuque]

VIII

A PILGRIM FROM DUBUQUE

It is a long road from anywhere to Mullein Hill, and only the rural postman and myself travel it at all frequently. The postman goes by, if he can, every weekday, somewhere between dawn and dark, the absolute uncertainty of his pa.s.sing quite relieving the road of its wooded loneliness. I go back and forth somewhat regularly; now and then a neighbor takes this route to the village, and at rarer intervals an automobile speeds over the "roller coaster road"; but seldom does a stranger on foot appear so far from the beaten track. One who walks to Mullein Hill deserves and receives a welcome.

I may be carting gravel when he comes, as I was the day the Pilgrim from Dubuque arrived. Swinging the horses into the yard with their staggering load, I noticed him laboring up the Hill by the road in front. He stopped in the climb for a breathing spell,--a tall, erect old man in black, with soft, high-crowned hat, and about him something, even at the distance, that was--I don't know--unusual--old-fashioned--Presbyterian.

Dropping the lines, I went down to greet the stranger, though I saw he carried a big blue book under his arm. To my knowledge no book-agent had ever been seen on the Hill. But had I never seen one anywhere I should have known this man had not come to sell me a book. "More likely," I thought, "he has come to give me a book. We shall see."

Yet I could not quite make him out, for while he was surely professional, he was not exactly clerical, in spite of a certain Scotch-Covenanter-something in his appearance. He had never preached at men, I knew, as instinctively as I knew he had never persuaded them with books or stocks or corner-lots in Lha.s.sa. He had a fine, kindly face, that was singularly clear and simple, in which blent the shadows and sorrows of years with the serene and mellow light of good thoughts.

"Is this Mullein Hill?" he began, shifting the big blue copy of the "Edinburgh Review" from under his arm.

"You're on Mullein Hill," I replied, "and welcome."

"Is--are--you Dallas Lore--"

"Sharp?" I said, finishing for him. "Yes, sir, this is Dallas Lore Sharp, but these are not his over-alls--not yet; for they have never been washed and are about three sizes too large for him."

He looked at me, a little undone, I thought, disappointed, maybe, and a bit embarra.s.sed at having been betrayed by overalls and rolled-up sleeves and shovels. He had not expected the overalls, not new ones, anyhow. And why are new overalls so terribly new and unwashed! Only a woman, only a man's wife, is fitted to buy his overalls, for she only is capable of allowing enough for shrinkage. To-day I was in my new pair, but not of them, not being able to get near enough to them for that.

"I am getting old," he went on quickly, his face clearing; "my perceptions are not so keen, nor my memory so quick as it used to be.

I should have known that 'good writing must have a pre-literary existence as lived reality; the writing must be only the necessary accident of its being lived over again in thought'"--quoting verbatim, though I was slow in discovering it, from an essay of mine, published years before.

It was now my turn to allow for shrinkage. Had he learned this pa.s.sage for the visit and applied it thus by chance? My face must have showed my wonder, my incredulity, indeed, for explaining himself he said,--

"I am a literary pilgrim, sir--"

"Who has surely lost his way," I ventured.

Then with a smile that made no more allowances necessary he a.s.sured me,--

"Oh, no, sir! I am quite at home in the hills of Hingham. I have been out at Concord for a few days, and am now on the main road from Concord to Dubuque. I am Mr. Kinnier, Dr. Kinnier, of Dubuque, Iowa, and"--releasing my hand--"let me see"--pausing as we reached the top of the hill, and looking about in search of something--"Ah, yes [to himself], there on the horizon they stand, those two village spires, 'those tapering steeples where they look up to worship toward the sky, and look down to scowl across the street'"--quoting again, word for word, from another of my essays. Then to me: "They are a little farther away and a little closer together than I expected to see them--too close [to himself again] for G.o.d to tell from which side of the street the prayers and praises come, mingling as they must in the air."

He said it with such thought-out conviction, such sweet sorrow, and with such relief that I began now to fear for what he might quote next and _miss_ from the landscape. The spires were indeed there (may neither one of them now be struck by lightning!); but what a terrible memory the man has! Had he come from Dubuque to prove me--

The spires, however, seemed to satisfy him; he could steer by them; and to my great relief, he did not demand a chart to each of the wonders of Mullein Hill--my thirty-six woodchuck holes, etc., etc., nor ask, as John Burroughs did, for a sight of the fox that performed in one of my books somewhat after the manner of modern _literary_ foxes. Literary foxes! One or another of us watches this Hilltop day and night with a gun for literary foxes! I want no pilgrims from Dubuque, no naturalists from Woodchuck Lodge, poking into the landscape or under the stumps for spires and foxes and boa constrictors and things that they cannot find outside the book. I had often wondered what I would do if such visitors ever came. Details, I must confess, might on many pages be difficult to verify; but for some years now I have faithfully kept my four boys here in the woods to prove the reality of my main theme.

This morning, with heaps of gravel in the yard, the hilltop looked anything but like the green and fruitful mountain of the book, still less like a way station between anywhere and _Concord_! And as for myself--it was no wonder he said to me,--

"Now, sir, please go on with your teaming. I ken the lay of the land about Mullein Hill

"'Whether the simmer kindly warms Wi' life and light, Or winter howls in gusty storms The lang, dark night.'"

But I did not go on with the teaming. Gravel is a thing that will wait. Here it lies where it was dumped by the glaciers of the Ice Age.

There was no hurry about it; whereas pilgrims and poets from Dubuque must be stopped as they pa.s.s. So we sat down and talked--of books and men, of poems and places, but mostly of books,--books I had written, and other books--great books "whose dwelling is the light of setting suns." Then we walked--over the ridges, down to the meadow and the stream, and up through the orchard, still talking of books, my strange visitor, whether the books were prose or poetry, catching up the volume somewhere with a favorite pa.s.sage, and going on--reading on--from memory, line after line, pausing only to repeat some exquisite turn, or to comment upon some happy thought.

Not one book was he giving me, but many. The tiny leather-bound copy of Burns that he drew from his coat pocket he did not give me, however, but fondly holding it in his hands said:--

"It was my mother's. She always read to us out of it. She knew every line of it by heart as I do.

"'Some books are lies frae end to end'--

but this is no one of them. I have carried it these many years."

Our walk brought us back to the house and into the cool living-room where a few sticks were burning on the hearth. Taking one of the rocking-chairs before the fireplace, the Pilgrim sat for a time looking into the blaze. Then he began to rock gently back and forth, his eyes fixed upon the fire, quite forgetful evidently of my presence, and while he rocked his lips moved as, half audibly, he began to speak with some one--not with me--with some one invisible to me who had come to him out of the flame. I listened as he spoke, but it was a language that I could not understand.

Then remembering where he was he turned to me and said, his eyes going back again beyond the fire,--

"She often comes to me like this; but I am very lonely since she left me,--lonely--lonely--and so I came on to Concord to visit Th.o.r.eau's grave."