The Idyl of Twin Fires

by Walter Prichard Eaton

  Chapter V

  I AM HUMBLED BY A DRAG SCRAPER

  One of the advantages of being a bachelor when you are building orrestoring a house is that you can spend most of your time in thegarden. I am by nature a trusting soul anyway (which no woman andpossibly no wise man ever is where carpenters, builders, and plumbers areconcerned), and I trusted Hard Cider implicitly. He told me the plumberswere "doin' all right," and I believed him. That he himself was doingall right my own eyes told me, for he had by now reached the southrooms, removed the dividing partition, revealing the old, hand-hewn oakbeam at the top, and was cutting a double door out in the centre oneither side of the great oak upright, toward my future sundial lawn.I stood in this new door, looking back at my twin fireplaces, withtheir plain-panelled old mantels.

  "Mr. Howard," said I, "those mantels are about as plain as you couldmake 'em, and yet they are very handsome, somehow, dingy as they are."

  "It's the lines," said Hard Cider. "Jest the right lines. Lower 'emsix inches, and whar'd they be?"

  "Could you build me a bookcase, against the wall, just like them, fromone to the other and bring it out at right angles five feet into the roomfrom the centre, making it the back of a double settle?" I asked.

  "I'm a carpenter," Hard replied laconically.

  "Could you draw me what it would look like first?"

  "I ain't said I wuz an artist," he answered. "Draw it yerself."

  I took his proffered pencil, and sketched what I wanted on a clean board.

  "Yer got too much curve on the base and arms o' them settles," he saidjudicially. "Ain't no curves in your mantels. You want 'em square,with a panel like them over your fireplaces."

  He took the pencil away from me, and made a quick, neat, accurate sketchof just what I instantly saw I did want.

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  I shrugged my shoulders. "Go ahead!" said I. "What did you ask me todraw it for in the first place?"

  "Folks likes to think they hev their own idees," he answered.

  I turned away, through the new south door, into the May sunshine. Thepergola was not commenced. In fact, I had decided not to build it tillthe following spring. Those beastly painters whom I had forgotten weregoing to eat up too much of my slender capital. Before me stretched the250 feet of ploughed slope which was to be my sundial lawn. At the end ofit was my line of stakes where the ramblers were to climb. Beyond thatwas the vegetable garden, newly harrowed and fertilized, where Mike andJoe were busily working, the one planting peas, the other setting out arow of beets. The horse was not in evidence. I could have him at last,to make my lawn! I ran around the house to the stable, clumsily put onhis harness, for I was not used to horses, led him to the shed where mytools were stored, hitched him to my new drag scraper, and drove him tothe slope.

  As I have said, the ground here sloped down eastward toward the brook,and if I was to have a level lawn south of my house, I should have toremove at least two feet of soil from the western end and deposit it onthe eastern end. I wisely decided to start close to the house. Hauling atthe handles of the heavy scraper and yelling "Back up, there!" at thehorse, I got the steel scoop into the ground at the line of my proposedgrape arbour, tipped down the blade, and cried, "Giddup!" I hung tothe reins as best I could, twisting them about my wrist, and the horsestarted obediently forward. The scoop did its work very nicely. Infact, it was quite full after we had gone six feet, and I had only tolet the horse drag it the remaining ninety-four feet of the proposedwidth of the lawn, and empty it. Then I went back, and repeated theprocess. After five repetitions of the same process, the perspicaciousreader will have reckoned that I had shaved off something less thanhalf the width of my lawn, on one furrow, and was still a long, longway from being down to the required depth of two feet at the higherend. My arms already ached. As the scraper covered a furrow but two feetwide, that meant 125 furrows to scrape my entire lawn as planned, andat least twenty trips to the furrow. I did some rapid multiplication asI paused to wipe my brow. "Twenty times 125 is 2,500," thought I. Idropped the reins and moved toward my stakes. I saw that Joe and Mikewere looking at me.

  "I think," said I, with some dignity, as I began to pull the stakesup, "that this lawn will look better square. As it's a hundred feetbroad, a hundred feet will be far enough to extend it from the house."

  "Sure," said Mike, "the big road scraper 'll be over here to-morrow,scrapin' the road, and it do be easier an' quicker to borry that."

  In some ways, I consider this remark of Mike's, under the circumstances,one of the most gentlemanly I ever heard! And I jumped at his suggestion.

  "Mike," said I, "I'll admit this job is bigger than I thought. Howcan I borrow the road scraper?"

  "Sure, ain't me frind Dan Morrissy one o' the selictmen?" said Mike,"and ain't he the road boss, and ain't he willin' to earn an extrapenny for--for the town?"

  "H'm," said I; "for the town! Well, I've got to have this lawn! Youget your friend Dan in the morning. Just the same, I don't love the townso much that I want a 250-foot lawn."

  I took my line of stakes back 150 feet, and replanted them. That gave mea more intimate lawn, like a large outdoor south room, I thought. Italso increased my vegetable garden acreage. I returned to the scraperand the patient horse with a new humbleness, a new realization of whatone man cannot do in a day. That, perhaps, is one of the first andmost important lessons of farming and gardening. Once you have learnedit, you are either discouraged or fired anew with the persistence ofpatience. I was not discouraged. Besides, I had Mike's friend Dan, theselectman, to fall back on! It is always well to be friends with TammanyHall. First, I decided not to grade even my smaller lawn to a deadlevel, but merely to smooth it off, letting that process counteract theslope as much as it would. Then I started to scoop again, bringingdown the soil from the higher western side directly to the south faceof my house and dumping it there, to be packed into a terrace which nextseason should be the floor of my pergola.

  Did you ever try to handle a drag scraper and drive the horse at thesame time, dear reader? It requires more muscle and as much patience asgolf. Joe offered to come and drive for me, but I preferred him toplant, and kept on by myself. It is amazing how much dirt you can dump inone place without increasing the pile perceptibly. The only thing moreamazing is the amount of dirt you can take out of one place withoutperceptibly increasing the depth of your hole. I ran the scoop alongthe edge of my proposed grape arbour time after time, dumping thecontents in front of my new south door, but still that first furrowdidn't sink more than six inches, and still the sills of my houserose above the piles. Noon came and found me with aching arms andstrained shoulder sockets. I had brought some lunch, to save the walkback to Mrs. Temple's, and I took it into my big south room to eat it.Hard was in there eating his. The plumbers were eating theirs in thenew kitchen, already completed.

  Hard, I found, had begun the bookcase, which was just the height of themantels. He had been preparing the top moulding with his universal planewhen noon came, and the sweet shavings lay curled on the floor. I scuffedmy feet in them, and even hung one from my ear, as children do, whileHard Cider regarded me scornfully.

  "I'm going to have great times in this room!" I exclaimed. "Booksbetween the fireplaces, books along the walls, just a few pictures,including my Hiroshiges, over the mantels, my desk by the west window,and out there the green garden! A man ought to write something prettygood in this room, eh?"

  Hard looked at me with narrowed eyes. "I don't know nothin' aboutwritin'," he said, "but it 'pears to me a feller could write mostanywhar pervided he had somethin' ter say."

  Whereupon Hard concluded by biting into a large piece of prune pie.

  The Yankee temperament is occasionally depressing! I went outdoors again,eating my doughnuts as I walked, and strolled into the vegetable gardento survey the staked rows which denoted beets and peas. Then I wentdown the slope into my little stand of pines, into the cool hush ofthem, and unconsciously my brain relaxed in the bath of their peace, andfor ten minute
s I lay on the needles, neither asleep nor awake, justblissfully vacant. Then I returned to my scooping, marvellously rested.

  I scooped till three o'clock, led the horse back to the barn, got ashovel and rake, and began to spread my terrace. As this south end of myhouse (and accordingly my big south room) was but thirty-three feet long,the task was not very severe, particularly as the upper, or western, end,did not require much grading. I built the terrace out about twelve feetfrom the wall, stamped up and down on it to pack it, and raked itsmooth. I realized that it would settle, of course, and I should needmore earth yet upon it before it was sown down to grass, or, if I couldafford it, bricked; but in order to hold the bank, I got some grassseed and planted the edge, and also got a couple of planks to stretchfrom the south door across the terrace and down to the lawn, until Icould build my proposed brick path and steps. It was six o'clock when Ihad finished. Palm-sore and weary, I drank a great tin dipperful ofwater from my copper pump in the kitchen, took a last look at Hard'sbookcase, which had already been built out the required five feet intothe room along the line of the old partition, fourteen inches wide tohold books on both sides, tried the doors to see that they were locked,and tramped up the dusty road to supper.

  Mrs. Temple was beaming when I came down from my bath.

  "Why so happy?" said I.

  "Well," said she, "in the first place, I've got you the housekeeper Iwant."

  "By which I infer that she's the one _I_ want, too?" I asked.

  "Of course," said Mrs. Temple, on whom irony had no effect. "She'sMrs. Pillig, from Slab City, and she's an artist in pies."

  "Go on; you interest me strangely!" I cried. "Is her husband dead,and has she got a small boy?" (Here I winked at Bert.)

  "Pillig ain't dead, worse luck," said Mrs. Temple, "but he's wharhe won't trouble you. I guess Peter won't trouble you none, neither.He's a nice boy, and he'll be awful handy round the place."

  "Peter Pillig!" I exclaimed. "There ain't no such animal! If thereis, Dickens was his grandfather. How old is Peter?"

  "Peter's eleven," Mrs. Bert replied. "He's real nice and bright.His mother's brought him up fine. Anyhow, she was a Corliss."

  "But, eugenically speaking, Peter may have a predisposition to follow infather's footsteps, which I infer led toward the little green swingingdoors," I protested.

  "Speakin' U. S. A., tommyrot!" said Mrs. Temple. "Anyhow, it's thedoor o' the drugstore in this town. They sell more'n sody water downto Danforth's."

  "What am I to pay the author of Peter and the pies?" I asked.

  "Well, seein's how you keep Peter, as it were, and Mrs. Pilligcalc'lates she can rent her house up to Slab City, she's goin' tocome to you for $20 a month. She's wuth it, too. You'll have the bestkept and cleanest house in Bentford."

  I rose from the table solemnly. "Mrs. Temple," said I, "I accept Mrs.Pillig, Peter, and the pies at these terms, but only on one condition:_She is never to clean my study!_"

  "Why?" asked Mrs. Temple.

  "Because," said I, "you can never tell where an orderly woman will putthings."

  Bert chuckled as he filled his pipe. Mrs. Temple grinned herself. I wasabout to make a triumphant exit, when these words from Mrs. Temple'slips arrested me:

  "Bert," she said, "did you clean the buggy to-day? You know you gottergo over ter the deepot to-morrow an' git that boarder."

  "That _what?_" I cried.

  Mrs. Bert's eyes half closed with a purely feminine delight. "Oh,ain't I told you?" she said innocently. "We're goin' ter hev anotherboarder, a young lady. From Noo York, too. Her health's broke down,she says, only that's not the way she said it, and somehow she heardof us. We ain't never taken many boarders, but I guess our name's inthat old railroad advertisin' book. I wouldn't hev took her, only Ithought maybe you wuz kind o' lonesome here with jest us."

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

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

  I fled to my chamber, and hauled forth a manuscript. A female boarder! Nodoubt she'd expect me to shave every day and change my working clothesfor the noonday dinner! Heavens! probably she'd come down and adviseme how to lay out my garden! So far, I had been blissfully free fromadvice. I had gone to the village just once--to open my account at thebank. I had not met a soul in the town. One or two of the early arrivalson the estates had driven by in their cars and stared curiously, but Ihad 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 manuscriptwithout 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 strainedshoulders and dreamed that a sick female with spectacles was hauling atmy arm and begging me to come and rescue her sciatic nerve, which hadfallen into my not-yet-built garden pool and was being swallowed by agold fish.