The Idyl of Twin Fires Part 5

"Well, I'm a farmer now!" said I, surveying my soil-caked boots and grimy clothes.

"Yer on the way, anyhow," said Bert. "But yer'll have ter cultivate thet field hard, seein's how it oughter hev been ploughed last fall."

That afternoon I went back to my orchard, got out my shiny and sharp new double-edged pruning saw, and sawed till both arms ached. I sawed under limbs and over limbs, right-handed and left-handed, standing on my feet and on my head. I obeyed the first rule, to saw close to the trunk, so the bark can cover the scar. I obeyed the rule to let light into the tops. I didn't head my trees down as much as the pictures indicated, for I wanted my orchard before the house as a decoration quite as much as a source of fruit supply. One old tree, split by a winter storm, I decided to chop down entirely. About half-past three, as I supposed it to be, I went for an axe, and heard Mike putting the horse into the barn and calling the cows. I looked at my watch. It was five o'clock! I didn't get the axe, but walked back and surveyed the havoc I had wrought--dead limbs strewing the ground, bright-barked water spouts lying among them, tangles of top branches heaped high, and above this litter three old trees rising, apparently half denuded, with great white scars all over them where the limbs had been removed. I had gone that first day across half the top row of the orchard, and I suddenly realized that during the entire time I had been at work not a thought had crossed my mind except of apple trees and their culture. I had been utterly absorbed, joyfully absorbed, in the process of sawing off limbs! Where, said I to myself, are those poetic reflections, those delicious day dreams which come, in books, to the workers in gardens? Can it be that, in reality, the good gardener thinks of his job? Or am I simply a bad gardener?

I decided to go to the barn and ask Mike. I found him washing his hands, preparatory to milking, and looking extremely bored. He used an antiseptic solution which Bert had provided, for Bert was still buying my milk.

"Sure, it's silly rules they be makin' now about a little thing like milkin'," he said.

I wasn't ready to argue with him then, but I secretly resolved that I'd make him wear a milking coat, also. I asked abruptly: "Mike, what do you think about when you are working in the garden?"

Mike reflected quite seriously for a full moment, while the alternate ring of the milk streams sang a tune on the bottom of the pail.

"Begobs, Oi niver thought o' that before," he said. "Sure, it's interestin' to think what ye think about. Oi guess Oi thinks mostly o' me gardenin'. It ain't till Oi straightens the kink out o' me back and gits me lunch pail in the shade that Oi begins to wonder if the Dimicrats 'll carry the country or why we can't go sivin days without a drink, like the camels."

"You sort of have to keep your mind on your job, to do it right, eh?"

"Sure, if ye've got one to keep," Mike laughed.

The milk streams had ceased to ring. They were sizzling now, for the bottom of the pail was covered. There was a warm smell of milk in the stable, and of hay and cattle. Through the little door at the end I saw framed a pretty landscape of my pasture, then woods rising up a hill, and then the blue mountains, purpling now with sunset. My arms ached.

My ribs, where the plough handles had hit, were sore. I was sleepily, deliciously, tired. I had done a real day's work. I was rather proud of it, too, proud that I could stand so much physical toil. After all, it is human to glory in your muscles.

"Good night," I called to Mike, as I started for home.

"Good night, sor," he sang cheerily back.

Upon the plateau I saw my rusty old disk harrow--a legacy from Milt--standing on the brown earth. The furrows had disappeared. The field was almost ready for planting. I took a bath, rubbing my ribs and aching shoulders very tenderly, ate my supper hungrily, and settled down to my ma.n.u.scripts. In ten minutes I was nodding.

"Good heavens!" said I, "this will never do! I'll have to get up in the morning and work."

So I bade Mrs. Temple wake me when she got up at five.

"Well," I reflected, as I tumbled into bed, "you can't have everything and a country estate, too. Fancy _me_ getting up at five o'clock!"

Chapter IV

I PUMP UP A GHOST

As A matter of fact, I didn't. I went to sleep again at five, and slept till seven. It's not nearly so easy as it sounds in books to change all your habits of life. But I resolved to try again the next morning, and meanwhile to keep awake that night at all costs. Then, after breakfast, I set out for my farm. Hard Cider would be there with the estimate. The rest of that row of orchard was waiting for me. Mike and Joe would finish harrowing the potato field and begin planting. I almost ran down the road!

What is there about remodelling an old house, renovating an old orchard, planting a fresh-ploughed field, even building a chicken coop, which inspires us to such enthusiasm? I have written a few things of which I am not ashamed, and taken great joy in their creation. But it was not the same joy as that I take in making even one new garden bed, and not in the least comparable to the joy of those first glorious days when my old house was shaping up anew. It has often seemed to me almost biological, this delight in domestic planning both inside and outside of the dwelling--as though it were foreordained that man should have each his own plot of earth, which calls out a primal and instinctive aestheticism like nothing else, and is coupled with the domestic instinct to reinforce it. I have known men deaf and blind to every other form of beauty who clung with a loyal and redeeming love to the flowers in their dooryard.

As I came into my own dooryard, I found Hard Cider unloading lumber.

He nodded briefly, and handed me a dirty slip of paper--his estimate.

Evidently he, too, had paternally taken me over, for this estimate included the plumber's bill for a heater, the water connections for house and barn, a boiler on the kitchen range, and the bathroom. The bill would come to $3,000. That far exceeded my own estimate, and I had still the painters to reckon with! However, Hard's bill seemed fair enough, for Bert had told me the price of lumber, and there was a lot of digging to connect with the town main. I nodded "Go ahead,"

and opened the door. In three minutes he and his a.s.sistant were busily at work.

In the woodshed I found Mike cutting up the seed potatoes into baskets.

"Good mornin'," he said. "Joe's got the tooth harrer workin', and we'll be plantin' this afternoon."

I started then toward the orchard, only to meet the boss plumber arriving. With him I went down cellar to decide on the position for the heater. "Of course you're going to have hot water?" said the boss.

"Am I?" said I. "I loathe radiators. They spoil the rooms. Wouldn't you, as a great concession, let me have old-fashioned hot air?"

"You can have anything you want, of course," the plumber replied, being, like most of his kind, without a sense of humour, "but to get register pipes upstairs in this old house you'll spoil your rooms more than with radiators. We have some very ornamental radiators."

"There ain't no such animal," said I.

But I ended with hot water. There were to be four radiators downstairs and three upstairs, one in the bathroom, one in the hall, and one in a chamber. The other chambers, having fireplaces, I decided needed no further heat, though the plumber was mournfully skeptical. That made seven in all, and did not call for a large heater. After much d.i.c.kering and argument, the plumber consented to leave the old copper pump at the sink, in addition to the faucets. I refused to let that pump go, with its polished bra.s.s k.n.o.b on the iron handle, even though the sink was to be replaced by a porcelain one. As the bathroom was almost over the kitchen, and as the house already had a good cesspool, by some happy miracle, the work was comparatively simple, and the plumber left to get his men and supplies.

Again I started for the orchard. Already the buds were swelling on the old trees, and the haze of nascent foliage hung over them. I had four and a half rows to trim, and then the whole orchard to go over with paint pot and gouge and cement. I had never trimmed a tree in my life till the day before, yet I felt that I was doing a better job than Bert had done on his trees, for Bert's idea of pruning was to cut off all the limbs he could reach near the trunk, often leaving a stub four inches long when it didn't happen to be convenient to saw closer. He made his living, and a good one, selling milk and cauliflowers--he had thirty acres down to cauliflowers, and shipped them to New York--but, like so many New England farmers, he couldn't or wouldn't understand the simple science of tree culture. Anybody can learn tree culture with a little application to the right books or models and a little imagination to see into the future. A good tree pruner has to be a bit of an architect. I thought so then in my pride, at any rate, and it turned out I was right. Right or wrong, however, I went at my job that morning with a mighty zest, and soon had a second barrier of dead wood heaped upon the ground.

As I worked, I thought how this orchard must be trimmed and cleaned up first, but how the fine planting weather was upon us, too, and I ought to be getting my garden seeds in, if I was to have any flowers. I thought, also, of all my ma.n.u.scripts to be read. A nervous fit seized me, and I worked frantically. "How on earth shall I ever find time for all I've got to do?" I said to myself, sending the saw into a dead limb with a vicious jab. But I soon discovered that nervous haste wasn't helping any. In my excitement, I cleaned off all the suckers on a limb, and suddenly realized that I should have left two or three of the strongest to make new wood, as the limb itself was past bearing.

I thought of Mike's reflection, that he kept his thoughts on his gardening. So I calmed down, and gave my whole attention to my work, making a little study of each limb, deciding what I wished to leave for future development, and what would give the best decorative effect to my slope as well. You can really trim an old apple tree into a thing of gnarled power and quaint charm by a little care.

Tap, tap, tap, came the sound of hammers from my house. The plumbers had returned, and I could hear them rattling pipes. The water company was digging for the connections. Now and then a shout from Joe to the horses was wafted down from the plateau. A pair of persistent song sparrows, building in an evergreen by the brook, kept up a steady song. A robin sang in the next tree to me. The sun beat warmly on my neck. And I sawed and pruned, keeping steadily to my job, treating each tree and limb as a separate and important problem, till I heard the hammers cease at noon.

I had almost completed my first row!

As I returned from dinner, Joe was walking the drills in the potato field, dropping the fertilizer, and the bent form of Mike followed immediately behind him, dropping the seed from a basket. Joe walked with a fine, free stride, and dropped the fertilizer from his hand with a perfectly rhythmic gesture. The father's bent back behind him was an added touch from Millet. But the lone pine and the blue mountains gave a bright, sharp quality to the landscape which was quite unlike Millet. The picture held me, however, as do the Frenchman's canvases.

Even my knowledge of Mike's comfortable home and happy disposition did not rob it of that subtle pathos of agricultural toil. Why the pathos, I asked myself? Mike is healthy and happy. No toil is more healthful.

I'm working as hard as Mike, and having a glorious time! To be sure, I'm working my own land, but Mike, too, has a garden of his own, yet doubtless looks as pathetic in it. I could find no solution, unless it be that instinctive belief of a city-bred civilization that all joys are urban. Just then, however, Mike straightened up with a laugh, and the pathos vanished.

"So the pathos," thought I, as I caught myself instinctively straightening, too, "is a matter of spinal sympathy!"

This was a most comforting reflection, and I hastened to investigate Hard Cider's morning work. The kitchen floor was ready to relay. Over the old planking he had spread tar paper, then carefully adjusted a light, half-inch framework, and on top of this was laying the new floor.

"Thet'll keep out the cold," he said briefly, carefully lifting the lid of the stove and spitting into the fire pot.

I examined the framework on which he was laying the new floor. It was as carefully jointed as if it were the floor itself.

"Why so much pains with this?" I asked, pointing with my toe.

"Why not?" Hard Cider replied, as the March Hare replied to Alice.

I was braver than Alice. "But it doesn't show," I said.

"Somebody might take the floor up," he retorted, with some scorn.

"Hard Cider, after all, is an artist," I thought. "He has the artistic conscience--and, being a Yankee, he won't admit it."

I went back to my orchard, working with a greater confidence and speed now, born of practice; and I had begun on the second row by five o'clock. Then I walked up to the plateau. Joe was working overtime, covering the drills, while his father was doing the stable work. I staked the three sections of the field containing Early Rose, Dibble's Russet, and Irish Cobbler respectively, and entered in my notebook the date of planting. It occurred to me then and there to keep a diary of all seeds, soils, fertilizers, and plantings, noting weather conditions and pests during the growing season, and the time, quality, and quant.i.ty of harvest. That diary I began the same evening; I have kept it religiously ever since, and I have learned more about agriculture from its pages than from any other book--something I don't say vainly at all, because it is but the careful tabulation of practical experience, and that is any man's best teacher.

I picked up a hoe and helped Joe cover drills for half an hour. Thanks to golf and rowing, my hands were already calloused, or I don't know what would have happened to them in those first days!