"Mrs. Temple," said I, "your solicitude quite overwhelms me. Comfort me with petticoats! Good Lord! And an anaemic, too! I'll bet she has nerves! When can Mrs. Pillig come to me, woman?"

Mrs. Bert's eyes closed still farther. "Oh, your house ain't near ready yet," she said. "Why, the painters ain't even began."

I fled to my chamber, and hauled forth a ma.n.u.script. A female boarder! No doubt she'd expect me to shave every day and change my working clothes for the noonday dinner! Heavens! probably she'd come down and advise me how to lay out my garden! So far, I had been blissfully free from advice. I had gone to the village just once--to open my account at the bank. I had not met a soul in the town. One or two of the early arrivals on the estates had driven by in their cars and stared curiously, but I had ignored them. I didn't want advice. I was having fun in my own way.

"Hang Mrs. Temple!" I muttered, reading a whole paragraph of ma.n.u.script without taking in a word of it. In fact, I gave up all attempt to work, and crossly and wearily went to bed, where I lay on one of my strained shoulders and dreamed that a sick female with spectacles was hauling at my arm and begging me to come and rescue her sciatic nerve, which had fallen into my not-yet-built garden pool and was being swallowed by a gold fish.

Chapter VI

THE HERMIT SINGS AT TWILIGHT

The next morning I demanded that Mrs. Temple again put me up some lunch.

"For," said I, "I'm going to postpone meeting this broken-down wreck of a perhaps once proud female as long as possible."

"Maybe when you see her drive by you'll be sorry," Mrs. Bert smiled.

"I shall be working on the south side of the house," I retorted.

I had not been long at my place, indeed, I had scarcely finished watering my seed bed and carting out my daily stint of two barrow loads of slash from the orchard, when I heard the road sc.r.a.per rattling over the bridge by the brook. Mike came from the vegetable garden and met his "frind Morrissy," to whom I was ceremoniously presented.

The sc.r.a.per was a large affair with flat-tired iron wheels and a blade eight feet long. It was drawn by four horses, and Mr. Morrissy himself was driving, while a younger man manipulated the levers. We drove in behind the woodshed to the proposed lawn, I explained what I wanted done, and the sc.r.a.per went to work, with me trotting anxiously alongside, quite useless but convinced that I was helping, like Marceline at the Hippodrome. The way that eight-foot blade, with four horses hauling it, peeled off the old furrows and brought the top soil down from the high side to the low made my poor efforts with the scoop look puny enough. After a few trips it began to look as if my lawn could be fairly level after all. Where I had worked an hour to lower the ground six inches, the sc.r.a.per accomplished the same result in five minutes and on four times as wide a strip. I soon saw, too, that Mike and Joe were useless in the garden, so long as "frind Morrissy" and his helper were here on the lawn, so I set them to spreading the loose dirt at the lower end, as fast as the sc.r.a.per brought it down, taking a hand myself. The lawn was shaping up so fast that I began once more to grow expansive.

"It really won't be square," thought I, "because my pergola will cut off twelve feet of the length, and if I have flower beds by the roses, they'll cut off some more. I guess those roses ought to be 112 feet from the house."

I threw down my shovel, went over to the row of stakes, and moved them south again, twenty-five feet, having added thirteen feet as I walked; then I called out to "frind Morrissy" to bring his sc.r.a.per.

"Sure," said Mike, "you'll get it right yet. But I was goin' to put me cauliflowers there."

The sc.r.a.per went at the new twenty-five foot strip, and in an hour that, too, was down eight inches at the west end and up as much at the east.

The lawn still sloped, and though an afternoon with the sc.r.a.per could probably have put it nearly level, and I was tempted to have it done, Mike pointed out that we were already getting perilously close to the subsoil, and if we went deeper we'd get into tough sledding, and I'd end, besides, by getting a surface which wouldn't grow gra.s.s. So I took his advice, paid "frind Morrissy"--for the town!--as the far-off noon whistle at Slab City blew, and took my lunch down to the brook while the sc.r.a.per rattled off down the road.

The brook reminded me of the pool I was going to build, and the pool of my dream, and my dream of the new boarder, and then with the patness of a "well-made" play the boarder herself entered, as it were. That is, I heard the buggy coming, and the voice of Bert. I lay down flat behind the tall weeds and gra.s.ses, and remained hidden till the buggy had pa.s.sed.

"Confounded petticoats!" thought I. "Well, if she tries to advise me, I'll snub her so she won't try a second time!"

Then I finished my lunch, and lay for a quarter of an hour lazily regarding the sky, a great blue sky with cloud ships floating at anchor in its depths, while the indescribable fragrance of May in moist places filled my nostrils and a song sparrow practised in the alders. As I got up to return to my work, I saw suddenly that the old apple trees in my orchard were showing pink--just a frail hint of it in the veil of young green. A great c.u.mulus cloud piled up like a Himalayan peak in the west beyond my mouse-gray dwelling. To the left, the new lawn was shiny brown, and as I climbed the slopes the smell of it came to me. Out still farther to the left my land was already staked in rows of packed earth, neatly. The scene was beautiful to my eyes, and the imagined beauty of to-morrow made me almost run through the orchard to leave my lunch basket in the kitchen and get my tools for the afternoon's work.

I had, unfortunately, no roller, but I found in the shed an old piece of tattered carpet, which I tacked on a ten-foot beam, tied a rope to each end, united the two ropes around a stick for a handle, and dragged this improvised smoother back and forth over my lawn, as I had seen the keepers of the dirt tennis courts at college do. It was really surprising how well this smoothed the surface, especially at the lower end where the dirt was loose. It had much less effect on the ground where the sc.r.a.per had taken off the top soil. After the lawn looked tolerably level to the eye, I brought three loads of manure from the barn, scattered them lightly, and went over the surface with a light tooth harrow. I saw I was not going to get the lawn done that afternoon, for it would have to be "rolled" again. I further realized, as the horse sank into the loose soil at the lower side, that I should have to wait till a rain had settled the earth before I resmoothed it, and could sow my gra.s.s seed. At five o'clock, as Joe was leaving the garden, and Mike had gone to the barn to milk the cows, I, too, put up my tools, resolved to enjoy an hour's loaf--my first since I bought the farm!

I scrubbed my hands and face at the kitchen sink in a tin basin which recalled my childhood, took a long draught from the tin dipper, filled my pipe, and strolled down through the budding orchard toward the brook. The song sparrow was still singing. The cloud ships were still riding at anchor. Even with my pipe in my mouth I could smell the odour of moist places in May. Walking beside the brook, I suddenly found the green spears of an iris plant amid the gra.s.ses. A few steps farther on, under the maples, the ground was blue and white with violets and anemones.

Then the brook entered the pines, lisping a secret as it went, and I followed it into their cool hush.

I had gone scarcely six paces when I heard the crackle of footsteps on dead twigs somewhere ahead of me, and a moment later the vague form of a woman was visible making her way amid the impeding dead branches.

I stood still. She did not see me till she was close up. Then she gave a slight start and said, "I beg your pardon. I trust I am not trespa.s.sing."

I looked at her, while my pipe bowl was hot in my calloused hand. She was scarce more than a girl, I fancied, pale and unmistakably not of this country world. I cannot say how she was dressed, save that she wore no hat and looked white and cool. But I saw that she had very blue eyes on each side of a decidedly tilted nose, and these eyes were unmistakably the kind which twinkle.

"Trespa.s.sing is a relative term," said I, after this, I fear, rather rudely prolonged scrutiny.

"You talk like 'Hill's Rhetoric,'" she smiled, with a quick glance at the incongruity of my clothes.

"Naturally," I replied. "It was the text-book I formerly used with my cla.s.ses."

There was a little upward gurgle of laughter from the girl. "Clearness, force, and elegance, wasn't that the great triumvirate?" she said.

"Something like that, I believe," said I. "I am trying to forget."

"And are these pines yours to forget in? It should be easy. I was walking out there in the road, and I spied the brook over the wall and climbed through the briers to walk beside it, because it was trying so hard to talk to me. That was wrong of me, perhaps, but I never could resist a brook--nor pine trees. They are such nice old men."

"Why, then," I asked, "are the little virgin birches always running away from them?"

Her eyes contracted a second, and then twinkled. "The birches _plague_ them," she replied.

"How do they plague them?" I demanded.

"Pull their pine needles when they are asleep, of course," she answered. "Thank you for letting me walk here."

"Not at all," said I, "it is always a pleasure to entertain a true naturalist."

She smiled, and made to pa.s.s on. I stood a little aside, in silence.

And in that moment of silence suddenly, from near at hand, from somewhere in these very pines, there rang out the golden throb of a hermit thrush so close that the grace notes of his song were audible, cool and liquid and lovely. The suddenness, the nearness, the wildness of this song made it indescribably thrilling, and the girl and I both stood rigid, breathless, peering into the gloom of the pines. Again the call rang out, but a little farther away this time, more plaintive, more fairylike with distance. She took a step as if to follow, and instinctively I put out my hand, grasping her arm to restrain her. So we stood and waited, while from farther still, evidently from the tamaracks in the corner of my lot, came the elfin clarion. The singer was a good one; his attack was flawless, and he scattered his triplets with Mozartian ease and precision. Still we waited, in silence, but he did not sing again. Then in a kind of wonder the girl turned her face to mine, and in a kind of wonder I realized that I was still holding her arm. She appeared as unconscious of it as I, till I let my hand fall. Then she coloured a little, smiled a little, and said, "What was it? I never heard anything so beautiful."

"A hermit thrush," I answered. "Th.o.r.eau once described his song as 'cool bars of melody from the everlasting morning or evening.' I think that expresses it as well as words can."

"I have always wanted to hear a hermit," she said wistfully. "And, oh, it is lovelier than I dreamed! I am going now before I get too jealous of you for having one all your own."

"Don't go!" I said impulsively. "The hermit has never sung for me.

That song must have been in your honour."

The moment when I stood holding her arm, the moment when she had turned her wondering, eager face to mine, had been very pleasant. It was dusk now in the pines, and, looking westward, the low sun was making daggers of light between the trees. My ghost that I had brought up from the pump suddenly walked again, but walked in flesh and blood, with blue eyes and tilted nose. I was undeniably affected. My voice must have betrayed it as I repeated, "Don't go!"

"But I fear it is time for my supper," she said, with a little nervous laugh. "The thrush has evidently gone for his."

"Birds eat early," said I. "They have to, because they get up so early, after that worm."

Her laugh was once more an up-gushing gurgle. The tenseness was broken.

I found myself walking by her side through the maples, and pointing out my house.

She clapped her hands ecstatically. "Oh," she cried, "they made the front door out of a highboy! How jolly! Is it as nice inside?"

"It's going to be nicer," said I. "Come and see."

"I'll peep through the windows," she smiled.