Dwellers in Arcady Part 11

I was relieved. If he had demanded my purse I should not have been surprised. I nodded eagerly.

"Yes, indeed. We need some wood. If you'll cut a little, I'll see that you have some breakfast. You'll find the wood-pile and the ax down there by the barn."

He rose by a sort of slow unfolding process, and I was impressed by his height. I gave him some specifications as to the wood needed, and he was presently swinging the ax, though without force. He lacked "pep," I could see that, and as soon as the food was ready I called him. He ate little, but he emptied the pot of hot coffee in record time. Then he came down to where I was tr.i.m.m.i.n.g some rose-bushes.

"W'u'd ye let me lie a bit on the hay?" he said. "Thin I'll do some more of the little shtove-shticks fer yeh. I'm feelin' none too brisk this mornin'."

"Been sick?" I asked.

"Naw, just a trrifle weery with trav'lin' an' losin' of sleep."

Inside I hesitated. It was probably overtime at housebreaking that had told on him. I pointed at the barn, however.

"All right," I said, "take a nap--only, don t smoke in there."

He vanished, and some three hours later when I had forgotten him I suddenly heard a sound of great chopping. Our guest had reappeared at the wood-pile, transformed. He was no longer pale and listless. His face was ruddy--in fact, tanned. The cast in his eye had taken on fire. Every movement was of amazing vigor and direction. The wood-pile was disappearing and the little heap of "stove-sticks" growing in a most astonis.h.i.+ng way. I called Elizabeth out to see.

"If coffee and a nap will make him do that." I said, "we'd better give him dinner and get enough wood to last all summer." I went down there.

"What is your name?" I asked.

"William--William Deegan."

"Well, William, you seem to understand work. Come up to dinner presently, and if you want to go on cutting this afternoon I'll pay you for it."

He came, and there was nothing the matter with his appet.i.te this time.

Ham and eggs, potatoes, beans, corn-bread, pie--whatever came went.

William was the apostle of the clean plate. Reflecting somewhat on the matter, I reached the conclusion (and it was justified by later events) that William had perhaps been entertaining himself with friends the night before--during several nights before, I judge--and was suffering from temporary reaction when he had appeared on our horizon. Coffee and a nap had restored him. He was quick on recovery, I will say that.

You never saw such a hole in a wood-pile as he made that afternoon. When I went down to settle with him and announce supper he was still in full swing, apparently intending to go on all night.

"William," I said, "you're a boss hand with an ax."

"Well, sur," said William, his Celtic timbre pitched to the sky, "if I could be shtayin' a day or two longer I'd finish the job fer ye."

Was this a proposition to rob the house and murder us in our beds? I looked at the wood-pile and at William. There was something about their intimate relations that had an honest look. I remembered the extensive garden that would have to be hoed in July.

"Where would you go from here?" I said.

"I don't know, sur. I'll be lookin' fer a job."

"Do you understand gardening and taking care of a horse and cow?"

"Yes, sur, I do that."

I had an impulse to ask him about his last job, but I checked it. It was a question that could lead to embarra.s.sment. I would accept him on his demonstration, or not at all.

"So you want a summer job, at general farm-work?"

"Yes, sur, I do."

"Well, William, you've found one, right here."

Even after the lapse of a dozen years I cannot write of William without a tugging at the heart. We never knew his antecedents--never knew where behind the sky-line he had been concealed all those years before that morning when he appeared, pale and unannounced, at the well. We got the impression, as time pa.s.sed, that he had once been married and that he had at some time been somewhere on a peach-farm. With the exception of certain brief intervals--of which I may speak later--he remained with us three years, and that was as much as we ever knew, for he talked little, and not at all of the past. His face value was certainly not much, and some of his habits could have been improved, but a more faithful and honest soul than William Deegan never lived.

III

_"Ah, the bonny cow!"_

We had acquired Mis' Cow a few weeks before William's arrival. It was partly on account of the milk that we wanted her, partly because there was an empty stall next to Old Beek's and we thought she would be company for him, partly because we wanted a cow in the landscape--a moving picture of her in the green pasture across the road--finally (and I believe princ.i.p.ally) because we have a mania for restoring things and Mis' Cow looked as if she needed to be restored.

She was owned by a man who was moving away--moving because he had not made a success of chicken-farming by book, and still less of Mis' Cow.

He was not her first owner, nor her second, nor her third. I don't know what his number was on her list of owners, but I know if he had kept her much longer he would have been her last one. More than once we had bought the mere frame of a haircloth couch, and taken an esthetic pleasure in having it polished and upholstered, and made into a thing of beauty and service. It was with this view that we acquired Mis Cow, who at the moment was a mere frame with a patchy Holstein covering and a feebly hanging tail. We gave thirty-five dollars for her, and the man who was moving because he had not made a success of chickens threw in a single buggy that broke down the week after he left.

We consulted Westbury on the matter of Mis' Cow's past history, and it was the only time I ever knew W. C. Westbury to be inexact as to the age and habits of any animal in Brook Ridge. He said he had always known her as a good milker, but that she had been unfortunate of late years in her owners. He couldn't remember her age, but he didn't think it was enough to hurt her. My opinion is that he could have given her exact birthday and record had he really tried, but that kindness of heart prompted him to encourage a trade that might improve her fortunes. I suspect that they had played together in childhood.

We managed to get Mis' Cow up the hill and into her stall, where we could provide her with upholstery material. The little pasture across the road was getting green and she presently had the full run of it. The restoring progress began, as it were, overnight. If ever an article of furniture paid a quick return in the matter of looks, she did. She could never be a very fat Mis' Cow--she was not of that build. But a few days of good food and plenty of it certainly worked wonders. She filled out several of the most alarming hollows around her hips and along her ridge-pole, she seemingly took on height and length. She grew smooth, even glossy; her tail no longer hung on her like a bell-cord, but became a lithe weapon of defense that could swat a fly with fatal precision on any given spot of her black-and-white area. It was only a little while until we were really proud to have her in the landscape, and the picture she made grazing against the green or standing in the apple shade was really gratifying. When the trees were pink and white with bloom and Mis' Cow rested under them, chewing in time to her long reflections, we often called one another out to admire the pastoral scene. A visiting friend of Scotch ancestry was moved to exclaim, "Ah, the bonny cow!"

Then there was the matter of milk--she certainly justified Westbury's reputation in that respect. From a quart or two of thin, pale unusable fluid her daily dividend grew into gallons of foaming richness that became pitchers of cream and pounds of b.u.t.ter; for Elizabeth, like myself, had known farming in an earlier day, and rows of milk-pans and a churn went with her idea of the simple life. All day Mis' Cow munched the new gra.s.s, and night and morning yielded a br.i.m.m.i.n.g pail. She was a n.o.ble worker, I will say that.

But there was another side to Mis' Cow--a side which Westbury forgot to mention. Mis' Cow was an acrobat. When she had been on bran mash and clover for a few weeks she showed a decided tendency to be gay--to caper and kick up her heels--to break away into the woods or down the road, if one was not watching. But this was not all--this was mere ordinary cow nature, which is more foolish and contrary than any other kind of nature except that which goes with a human being or a hen. I was not surprised at these things--they were only a sign that she was getting tolerably restored, according to specifications. But when one day I saw her going down the road, soon after I had turned her into the pasture and carefully put up the bars, I realized that she had special gifts. Stone walls did not a prison make--not for her. Elizabeth and I rounded her up and got her back into the pasture, and from concealment I watched her.

She fed peacefully enough, for some time, then, doubtless believing herself un.o.bserved, she took a brief promenade along the wall until she came to what looked like a promising place, and simply walked over it, like a goat.

We herded her into the barn, and I engaged a man to put a string of wire above the wall. That was effective as long as it was in repair. But it was Mis' Cow's business to see that it did not remain in repair permanently. She would examine it during idle moments, pick out a weak spot in the entanglement, and pull it flat with her horns. Or where the wall was broad enough at the top she would climb up and walk it, just for exercise, stepping over when she got ready. If she could have been persuaded to do those things to order I could have sold her to a circus.

It was necessary to reinforce the wire and add another string.

Even that was not always a cure. I came home from the city one night, after a hard day. Elizabeth and the Joy, with Old Beek, had met me at the station, and as we drove up the hill in the dim evening I said how glad I was to get home, and that Elizabeth had milked, so that I could drop into a chair and eat my supper and rest, the minute I entered the house. We reached the top of the hill just then, and a dim gray shadow met and pa.s.sed us in the velvet dusk. It was Mis' Cow, starting out to spend the night. She was moving with a long, swinging trot, and in another second I was out and after her.

She had several rods' start and could run downhill better than I could, especially in the dark. It seemed to me that every step I went plunging out into s.p.a.ce. My empty stomach became demoralized, the blood rushed to my head. "Gosh dern a cow, anyway!" By the time we had reached Westbury's and started up the next hill I had made up my mind to sell her--to give her away--to drive her off the premises. Some people were standing in front of the next house and they laughed as we went by, we being about neck and neck at the time. Westbury was in that crowd, and for the moment our friends.h.i.+p was in grave danger. But then we came to the house of the man who had made a failure of book chicken-farming, and she darted in. She had remembered it as her home and wanted to return to it. Imagine wanting to go back to such a home!

Westbury came, and we got a rope on her and led her uphill. I suppose I felt better in the morning, and it was about this time that William arrived on the scene. William loved Mis' Cow and did not mind chasing her up and down the road and through the bushes, though sometimes during the summer, when he had had a hard day with her, and our windows were open, we could hear him still hi-hi-ing and whooping in his sleep, chasing Mis' Cow through the woods of dream.

IV

_Strawberries and trout. How is that for a combination?_

[Ill.u.s.tration: _I remember that as a golden summer, an enthusiastic summer, and, on the whole, a successful one_]

I remember that as a golden summer, an enthusiastic summer, and, on the whole, a successful one. Our early garden grew--also the second planting and the third. William Deegan made it his business to see that they did. I realized presently that my special forte lay in directing a sizable garden like that rather than in performing the actual labor, especially when June arrived and the sun began to approach the perpendicular and take on callithump. You probably don't know what callithump is, but you will find out if you undertake to hoe sod-ground potatoes in July. It has something to do with brazen trumpets and violence.

I became acquainted with callithump when I straightened out the asparagus-bed. The weeds had got a master start there, and the feeble feathery asparagus shoots were quite overtopped and lost. I said the job required a microscopic eye and a delicate hand. I would set the asparagus-bed in order myself.

It is surprising how much ground a hundred asparagus roots can cover.

Elizabeth had superintended their planting, during a period when I had been absent, and, remembering my mania for having things far apart, she had let herself go in the matter of s.p.a.ce. She had made it rich, too, and the weeds just loved it. Some of them were up to my waist. I said they would have to be pulled by hand and I would get up in the cool of the morning and do it.

It is almost impossible to beat the sun up in June. I was out there at five o'clock, but the sun was already busy and had got the range. By the time I had pulled half-way down one row I could feel the callithump working. Also something else. We claimed to have no mosquitoes in Brook Ridge, so it could not have been those. Whatever it was kept me swearing steadily, and pawing and slapping and sweating blood. When I had finished a row I crept in, got some fresh clothes and a towel, and made a dash for the brook. I had cleaned out a special pool behind the ice-house, and built a little dressing-platform. In less than a minute I was in the water, looking up at the sky and hearing the birds sing. Talk about luxury! After breakfast I took Elizabeth out to show her my progress.

"It looks nice," she said, "and how easily you did it!"