The Idyl of Twin Fires Part 10

"That's just the point," I cried. "I don't know. I want you to help me."

"After Mrs. Bert's warning, I shouldn't dare advise you," she smiled.

"Well, let's ask Hiroshige," said I. "Come on."

"Is he your gardener? The name sounds quite un-Hibernian."

I scorned a reply, and we went around to the shed where all my belongings were stored, still unpacked. I got a hammer and opened the box containing pictures, drawing forth my two precious j.a.panese prints. Then I led Miss Goodwin through the kitchen in spite of her protests of propriety, through the fragrance of new flooring, into the big south room, where Hard had nearly completed his main work and was getting in the new door frames while his a.s.sistants were patching up the floor. She sat down on the new settle, while I climbed on a box and hung the pictures, one over each mantel. Instantly the room a.s.sumed to my imagination something of its coming charm. Those two spots of colour against the dingy wood panels dressed up the desolation wonderfully. I hastily kicked some shavings and chips into the fireplaces and applied a match.

"The first fires on the twin hearths!" I cried. "In your honour!"

The girl smiled into my face, and did not joke. "That is very nice,"

she said. Then she rose and put out her hand. "Let me wish Twin Fires always plenty of wood and the happiness which goes with it."

We shook hands, while the fire crackled, and already the spot seemed to me like home. Then she looked up at the prints. "Now," she cried, "how is honourable Hiroshige going to advise you? Here is a blue ca.n.a.l and a lavender sky in the west, and bright scarlet temple doors--and all the rest snow. Lavender and bright scarlet is rather a daring colour scheme, isn't it?"

"Not if it's the right scarlet," I replied. "But it's not the colour I'm going to copy. Neither is it the moon bridges in this other temple garden. It's the simplicity. Out here south of this room is my lawn and garden. Now I want it to be a real garden, but I don't want it to dwarf the landscape. I don't want it to look as if I'd bought a half acre of Italy and deposited it in the middle of Ma.s.sachusetts, either. I've never seen a picture of a real j.a.panese garden yet that didn't look as much like a natural j.a.panese landscape as a garden. I want my garden to be an extension of my south room which will somehow frame the real landscape beyond."

We went through the gla.s.s door, and I showed her where the grape arbour was to be, at the western side of the lawn, and how a lane of hollyhocks would lead to it from the pergola end, screening the kitchen windows and the yet-to-be-built hotbeds.

"Now," said I, "I'm going to build a rambler rose trellis along the south; there's your red against the lavender of the far hills at sunset!

But how shall the trellis be designed, and where shall the sundial be, and where the flower beds?"

The girl clapped her hands. "Oh, the fun of planning it all out from the beginning!" she cried. "My, but I envy you."

"Please don't envy; advise," said I.

"Oh, I can't. I don't know anything about gardens."

"But you know what you like! People always say that when they are ignorant, don't they?"

"Don't be nasty," she replied, running down the plank from the terrace to the lawn, and walking out to the centre. "I'd have the sundial right in the middle, where it gets all the sun," she said, "because it seems to me a dial ought to be in the natural focus point of the light. Then I'd ring it with flowers, some low, a few fairly tall, all bright colours, or maybe white, and the beds not too regular. Then, right in line with the door, I'd have an arch in the trellis so you could see through into the farm. Oh, I know! I'd have the trellis all arches, with a bigger one in the centre, and it would look like a Roman aqueduct of roses!"

"A Roman aqueduct of roses," I repeated, my imagination fired by the picture, "walking across the end of my green lawn, with the farm and the far hills glimpsed beneath! 'Rome's ghost since her decease.' Miss Goodwin, you are a wonder! But can you build it?"

"No," she sighed, "I can only give you the derivation of 'aqueduct'

and 'rose'."

"Come," said I, "we will consult Hard Cider."

"Heavens!" she laughed. "Is that anything like Dutch courage?"

Hard grunted, and came with us to the line of stakes where the rose trellis was to be. I sketched roughly the idea I wanted--a reproduction in simple trellis work, as it were, of High Bridge, New York.

Hard pondered a moment, and then departed for the shed. He returned with several pieces of trellis lumber, a spade, some tools, a small roll of chicken wire, and a step-ladder, all on a wheelbarrow. At his direction, I dug a post-hole at the extreme east end of the lawn, another two feet away, a third four feet beyond that, and a fourth again two feet to the west. Hard then mounted the 3 x 3 chestnut joists, levelled them as I set them, and connected the tops, leaving a s.p.a.ce for the next connection on the final post to the west.

"But where is the arch?" I cried.

Hard climbed down from the wheelbarrow in silence, cut off something over four feet from the three-foot wide chicken wire, and then cut a circ.u.mference into this wire which, in the centre, came within a foot of the top. He twisted the loose ends back and tacked the flat arch thus made to the top and inner posts of the trellis. Then he connected the two posts on each side with stripping. Thus I had the first arch of my aqueduct, nine feet high, with two-foot piers of trellis work and a four-foot arch with eight feet clear s.p.a.ce under the centre.

[Ill.u.s.tration:]

"It ain't pretty," said Hard, "but when it's painted green and covered with vines it won't show. Guess most of your roses will bloom on the south side of it, though, away from the house."

My face fell. "Golly, I hadn't thought of that!" said I.

"Oh, they'll peep over and all around it," said Miss Goodwin cheerfully.

"What could I have done else?" said I.

"Nothin', 'cept turned your house around," Hard replied. "You can buy wire arches so's you could plant your roses east and west, but that wouldn't give you no level top like a bridge. You could set those boughten arches on the south side of this trellis, though, so's you'd get the effect of something solid, lookin' through, without losin'

your top."

"Guess I'll get you paid first," I laughed, as Hard went back to his work.

"And now," I added to the girl at my side, "shall we see if _we_ can build the next arch?"

Again she clapped her hands delightedly, and ran with me around the house for the tools and lumber.

I let her dig the first post-hole, though it was evident that the effort tired her, and then I took the spade away, while she marked off the trellis strips into the proper lengths, and sawed them up, placing each strip across the wheelbarrow and holding it in place first with a hand which looked quite inadequate even for that small task, and, when the hand failed, with her foot.

She laughed as she put her foot on the wheelbarrow, hitching her skirt up where it bound her knee. "The new skirts weren't made for carpenters,"

she said, as she jabbed away with the saw. I darted a glance at the display of trim ankles, and resumed my digging in the post-holes. This was a new and disturbing distraction in agricultural toil!

The post-holes were soon dug, and while I held the posts, she adjusted the level against them, our hands and faces close together, and we both kicked the dirt in with our feet. Then I climbed on the step-ladder and levelled the top piece, which I nailed down. Then, while I was cutting a semicircle out of the wire, for the arch, she nailed the trellis strips across the piers, grasping the hammer halfway up to the head, and frowning earnestly as she tapped with little, short, jablike blows. She was so intent on this task that I laughed aloud.

"What are you laughing at?" said she.

"You," said I. "You drive a nail as if it were an abstruse problem in differential calculus."

"It is, for me," she answered, quite soberly. "I don't suppose I've driven a dozen nails in my life--only tacks in the plaster to hang pictures on. And it's very important to drive them right, because this is a rose trellis."

"When I first came here," said I, "I was pretty clumsy with my hands, too. I'd lost my technique, as you might say. I remember one afternoon when I was tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the orchard that I didn't think a single thought beyond the immediate problem each branch presented. And yet it was immensely stimulating. Personally, I believe that the educational value of manual dexterity has only begun to be appreciated."

Miss Goodwin marked off the place for the next strip, and started nailing. At the last blow she relaxed her frown.

"Maybe," she said. "No, probably. But the manual work, it seems to me, has got to be connected up in some way with--well, with higher things. I can't think of a word to fit, because my head is so full of the 'hy' group. You, for instance, were sawing your _own_ orchard, and you were working for better fruit, and more beautiful trees, and a lovely home. You saw the work in its higher relations, its relations to the beauty of living."

"And your nails?" I asked.

"I see the aqueduct of roses," she smiled.

"You will see them, I trust," said I. "You _shall_ see them. You must stay till they bloom."

Her brow suddenly clouded, and she shook her head. "I--I shall have to go back to the 'I's,'" she said. "But I shall know the roses are here. You must send me a picture of them."

Somehow I was less enthusiastic over the next arch, but her spirits soon came back, and she sawed the next batch of stripping with greater precision and skill in the use of the saw--and a more reckless show of stocking. "See!" she cried, "how much I'm improving! I didn't splinter any of the ends this time!"