Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 219, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 September 1916 — The IDYL of TWIN FIRES by WALTER PRICHARD EATON [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The IDYL of TWIN FIRES by WALTER PRICHARD EATON

SYNOPSIS.

I grow tired of my work ss a college instructor and buy a New England farm on sight. I Inspect my farm and go to board at Bert Temple’s. Bert helps me to hire a carpenter and a farmer. Hard Cider, the carpenter, estimates the repairs and changes necessary on the house. Mike commences plowing. I start to prune the orchard tree. Hard Cider builds bookcases around the twin fireplaces. Mrs. Temple hires Mrs. Pllllg for me as a housekeeper, and announces the coming of a new boarder from New York, a halfatck young woman who needs the country air.

City life looks all right from this distance, and it is all right for • while. But after the glamour of hurrying crowds and big buildings and noise and excitement has worn off there Isn’t any place In the world more tiresome than a city—especially In the springtime when things are beginning to sprout In the country.

CHAPTER Vl—Continued.

"Madam,” I cried, “God hag sent you! I shall get my orchard cleaned op at last!” “Breakfast!” called Mrs. Bert. She refused to come down to Twin Fires with me that morning, so I toiled alone, getting out more of the brush from the orchard —all of the •mall stuff. In fact, which wasn’t fit to save for fuel. In the afternoon she consented to come. As I looked at her bands and then at mine, I realized how pale she was. “It’s wrong for anybody to be so pale as that,” I thought, “to have to be so pale as that!” I was beginning to pity her. When we reached the farm I took her around under the kitchen window and showed her my seedbeds, where the asters were already growing madly, some other varieties were up, and the weeds were busy, too; but in the present uncertainty of my horticultural knowledge I didn’t dare pull up anything. I hadn’t realized till that moment that half the fun of having a new place is showing it to somebody else and telling how grand it is going to be. “And where are you going to put these babies when you set them out? she asked. “That’s just the point,” I cried. “I don’t know. I want you to help me.” “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 Japanese prints. fThen 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 bis assistants were patching up the floor. She sat down on the new settle, while I climbed on a box and bung the pictures, one over each man 1 tel. Instantly the room assumed to my imagination something of its coming charm. Those two spots of color 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—er|e<fc “In your honor!” 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. “Sow,” she cried, “how is honorable Hiroshige going to advise you? Here is a bide.can.aL,an4 • lavender sky in the west, and bright scarlet temple doors—and all the fest snow. Lavender and bright scarlet is rather a daring color scheme, isn’t it?” “Not If It’s the right scarlet,” I replied. “But It’s not the color 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 Massachusetts, either. I’ve never seen a picture of a reai Japanese garden yet thst didn’t look, as much like a natural Japanese landscape as a garden. | want oay garden to be an extension

Of my south room which will somehow frame the real landscape beyond.” We went through the glass door, and I showed her where the grape arbor 'was to be, at the frestern side of the lawn, and how a lane of hollyhocks would lead to It from the pergola end, screening the kitchen windows jmd 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 center. “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 colors, 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 center, 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 ns to the line of stakes where the rose trellis was to be. I sketched roughly the idea" I ‘'reproduction in simple trellis work, as it were, of High bridge, New York. Hard pondered a moment, and then departed for the shed, returning with several pieces of trellis lumber, a spade, some tools, a small roll of chicken wire and a stepladder, all on a wheelbarrow. At his direction, I dug a post bole and soon had the first arch of my aqueduct. “And now,” I said 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 4oois 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 theWoper 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, Jiltching her skirt up where it bound her knee. “The new j

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 toll! The post holes were soon dag, 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 Btepladder and leveled 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 bands, too. I’d lost my technique, as you might say. I remember one afternoon when I was trimming 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 witji—well, with higher things. I can’t think of a word for it, 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.” i Her brow suddenly clouded, and she shook her head. “I—l shall have to go back to the Ts,’ ” she. said. “But I shall know the roses ard 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 lm proving! I didn’t splinter any of the ends this time!” “Fine." said I. “You can tackle the firewood in the orchard soon!” “Hooray!” cried the girl, as the fourth was finished. “How we are getting on!” „ “I could never have done it alone, said I. “You have really been a great help.” MI “Oh. I hope so!” she_ » haven’t had so much fun in years.

We looked into the vegetable garden, and saw that Mike had gone, and Joe. too. My watch and the lengthening shadows warned me it was approaching six. Hot and pleasantly tired, we packed up the tools on barrow, and wheeled them to the shed. “Now shall we go and hear the hermit?” I asked.

She nodded, and we went down through the orchard, past the pool where the iris buds were already showing a spike of greenish white, through the maples, and into the pines. There we stood, side by side, in the quiet hush of coming sunset, and waited for the„falry born. A song sparrow was singing out by the road, and the thin, sweet flutiugs of a Peabody came from the pasture. But thedhrush was silent. “Please sing, Mr. Thrush!” she pleaded. looking at me after she spoke, with a wistful little smile of apology for her foolishness. “I want so to hear him again,” she said. “We don’t hear thrushes in New York, nor smell pine trees, nor feel this sweet, cool silence. Oh. the good pines!”

Just how far will this state of affairs' go beforo Bachelor John forgets himself, takes Stella In his arms, gives her a eavsman hug and kiss and rushes her off to the parson to have the knot tied tight?

(TO BE CONTUfUIUXi,

I Led Miss Goodwin Through the Kitchen.