Over Paradise Ridge
Page 10
stopped at the post-office andgot my mail to read while I waited at the drug-store for Mr. Simmons toput up some of every kind of flower and vegetable grandmothermentioned--if it was still in stock. He offered me a book ofinstructions, which I declined. I meant to garden by ancestraltendencies. And while I waited I looked over my letters. The volume fromPeter I put aside to enjoy in a leisure hour, as I felt sure that I knewwhat was in it; but I opened another thin one that looked as if it mightbe from him, if he had written it in an unpoetic mood. It was from JudgeVandyne, and I then understood Peter's sudden determination to come downand live with Sam for a time, though I don't believe Peter knew the realreason of it himself. The judge is a great diplomat, and knows just whenand to whom to be frank. We have always understood each other from thefirst vacation I spent with Mabel, and I value his confidence highly.He wrote:
No man can get a hold on the complex problems of this day and especially the next, who doesn't go at them with at least some sunburn on his neck and a few horny spots on his hands. Put Pete at it, you and Sam. Your description of Sam's habitation and vocation in letter to Mabel made me feel twenty-five again. I never had the real thing; but Peter shall. Ease him along. If he kicks over the traces let me know. When are you coming North again? Soon, I hope,
Your aged admirer, PETER VANDYNE, Sr.
_P.S._--Thought I'd better say that Dr. Herbrick doesn't like Peter's weight--one sixteen. You understand.
I wonder what the paternal Keats was like. I don't remember, and I mustlook him up to see. It's funny how sturdy-oak fathers can haveferny-mimosa sons. Mothers can stand producing poets, but it is hard onfathers. I felt that I must help out Judge Vandyne, and with thatresolve I headed Redwheels out along Providence Road.
As I had told mother, the sobs and tears of the April day had beenwilfully misleading demonstrations, for by ten o'clock the whole face ofnature wore a sun-sweetened smile that was positively entrancing. Theyoung April world seemed to spring dripping from a bath that glistenedall over with crystal water gems. Winter is staid and dignified andgrand with its stark trees and mantle of brown earth, and summer isglowing and glorious; but very young spring is so sappy and curly andyellow and green and lavender that you take it to heart and let itnestle there to suck its pink apple-blow thumb, and curl up its youngsprout toes sheltered away from the cold that sets it back and the sunthat forces it to break bud. Sometimes it stays with you a day andsometimes a week and a day, but you can't hold it back. You can just bethankful that you had it. I was.
But if the five miles of Providence Road had been a delight, asRedwheels and I ran along it, the dirt lane that led to The Briers wasan intoxicating joy. The wet earth, the drenched cedars, the oak buds,the spongy moss, the reddening blackberry-bushes, and the sproutinggrain, all mingled in a queer creation odor that went right through thepores of my skin into my vitals and made me feel as strong as an ox, orrather, as Sam's new mule. I caught a glimpse of that mule through avista before I came out of the lane, plodding along before Sam and theplow with a great splendid lurch of a gait that threw the black dirt ashigh as Sam's knees as he plunged along at the plow-handles. I stoppedthe car at the cedar-pole gate of Eden and stood up and shouted at thetop of my lungs, but Sam plowed on heroically, with never a glance in mydirection, and I just stood and looked at him and the mule. Seeing a manplow cuts right down to the bottom of a woman's nature, because Isuppose it looks so--so fundamental. At least that is about the way Ifelt though it was much more so until I remembered the blistered heeland shouted again, this time in alarm. At my cry of distress Samsuddenly looked up and jerked the mule's head so that he, too, stoppedand regarded me. They looked like wary jungle things that had beenbelled from the thicket, but for just a second; then Sam threw his linearound the plow-handle, thus hitching the mule to himself, and camerunning across the field to me, as lightly as the blue jay skimmed fromover my head into the branches of another cedar in answer to the sametwit I had heard the day I first came out into the habitation of thebirds. The pleasure of seeing Sam run to me was almost as keen as thepain of seeing him run away from me, but it was mitigated by my alarmover the poor sore foot.
"Gracious sakes, Betty! is that a mud-scow you came out in?" he asked,as he started to take my hand in his, which was brown with mud, andended by rubbing his cheek in my palm. That seemed to be about the onlymember he had kept clean enough for the greeting.
"Aren't you hurting your heel plowing like that, Sam?" I asked,anxiously.
"Heel--what heel? Oh, that's all right. I haven't heard from it sinceyou tucked it away in the cream Tuesday night. I have cold-bucketedmyself every morning, standing on one leg with it up on the wash-benchso as not to wake it up. Come on up to the house. I'll walk, because I'mtoo muddy to get in with you in your sedan-chair."
"No; you go back to the plowing and I'll go and unload and begin mywork," I answered, with positive heroism. I wanted to get out and go andbe introduced to the mule, but I came to Sam to be not a clinging vine,but a competent garden-hoe to him.
"All right," said Sam, in the nice way he has of acquiescing in all myserious moods until they pass. "I'll be through after about three morerounds and then I'll come and help you. Say, Bettykin, what do you thinkof that for good land?" And as he looked back at the great square ofblack earth he had upturned, Sam's eyes flecked with the blue sky andsnapped with enthusiasm.
THE BYRD WAS ATTIRED IN MINIATURES OF SAM'S OVERALLS]
"It looks good enough to eat," I answered, with a queer dirt enthusiasmrising in me that I had never even heard of one's having before.
"Yes, and you will eat it in about four months' time in the form ofroasting ears," answered Sam, smacking his lips, which had a streak ofthe mud delicacy across them at right angles. "But go on up and tellMammy to put your name in her dinner-pot and buy the Byrd to get youanything you need or want to the half of our kingdom. I'll be there inten shakes of the mule's tail."
The road that leads from the cedar-pole gate through Sam's wilderness upto the farm-house curves in and out and around the hill past as manylovely spots as my enthusiasm could endure. Halfway up, there is aglimpse past a gray old tree with crimson thorns, of the valley with OldHarpeth looming opposite. Further on a rocky old road leads down arounda clump of age-distorted cedar-trees to the moss-greened stonespring-house, from which the water gurgles and pours past Sam's hugeearthern crocks of milk. Over it all broods the low white house on theplateau, from under whose wings I found one small blue chicken runningand cheeping wildly for a ride up the hill.
The Byrd was, as usual, attired in miniatures of Sam's overalls, and hisred mop stood on ends all over his head, while his freckles shone forthresplendently from the excitement of my arrival.
"Say, Betty, what you think? Old Buttercup found a calf out in the woodsand it has got a white nose and two spots. Sam wanted to name it Chubbfor the doctor that saved its life 'fore it got borned, but I saidladies first, and I calls it Betty. You can let it lick your fingers ifSam milks on 'em first. And Dominick have hatched 'fore the whitehen--eleven, and one what Sam calls a half chicken, because he don't seehow it is black when the eggs was bought thoroughbreds; but Mammy saysbecause they is Yankee eggs. Come see all everything."
Sam's barn is an old tumble-down collection of sheds and the most lovelyplace I ever got into. It is running over with new-born life, and youcan get an armful of first one variety and then another. I liked thecollie puppies best, but the Byrd was crazy about the little fawn calfwhich old Buttercup is so proud of that she switches her tail in thegreatest complacency. He was just showing me how to tempt her littlewhite nose with a wisp of hay that she was learning to eat, and I wasluxuriating with one new-born wriggler in my arms and two yellow-downpuff-balls in my hand, when Sam and the mule came up from the field.
"My, it's great to have a nice family party like this to plow for!" hesaid, as he led the mule into his stall and poured down h
is oats out ofa bucket the Byrd ran to bring him. "Any news from Petie, Bettykin?"
"I've got a letter from Peter that I haven't read, but one from JudgeVandyne that I have. Here it is--read it," and I held the letter openfor Sam to read over my shoulder.
"Read it to me, Betty; I'm too dirty to come that near you," he said, ashe took the cob pipe out of his pocket and prepared to light up whilethe Byrd scampered to the house to hurry Mammy's dinner.
"You're not exactly dirty, Sam," I answered, surveying him with asatisfiedly critical eye. "You only look and smell like the earth andthe sky and the barn and--and--"
"Just call it cosmic, Betty, and let it go at that," he