Arent you hateful! said Janet.
Not at all. Just appreciative. But now, if you havent any _other_ plan, well go back to bed.
It was half-past eight when we waked next morning. But there was nothing to wake up for. The old house was filled with the rain-noises that only such an old house knows. On the little windows the drops p.r.i.c.ked sharply; in the fireplace with the straight flue they fell, hissing, on the embers.
On the porch roofs the rain made a dull patter of sound; on the tin roof of the little attic over the kitchen it beat with flat resonance. In the big attic, when we went up to see if all was tight, it filled the place with a mult.i.tudinous clamor; on the sides of the house it drove with a fury that re-echoed dimly within doors.
Outside, everything was afloat. We visited the trees and viewed with consternation the torrents of rain-water pouring into the pails. We tried fastening pans over the spouts to protect them. The wind blew them merrily down the road. It would have been easy enough to cover the pails, but how to let the sap drip in and the rain drip outthat was the question.
It seems as if there was a curse on the syrup this year, said Janet.
The trouble is, I said, I know just enough to have lost my hold on the fools Providence, and not enough really to take care of myself.
Superst.i.tion! said Janet.
What do you call your idea of the curse? I retorted. Anyway, I have an idea! Look, Janet! Well just cut up these enamel-cloth table-covers here by the sink and everywhere, and tack them around the spouts.
Janets thrifty spirit was doubtful. Dont you need them?
Not half so much as the trees do. Come on! Pull them off. Well have to have fresh ones this summer, anyway.
We stripped the kitchen tables and the pantry and the milk-room. We got tacks and a hammer and scissors, and out we went again. We cut a piece for each tree, just enough to go over each pair of spouts and protect the pail. When tacked on, it had the appearance of a neat bib, and as the pattern was a blue and white check, the effect, as one looked down the road at the twelve trees, was very fresh and pleasing. It seemed to cheer the people who drove by, too.
But the bibs served their purpose, and the sap dripped cozily into the pails without any distraction from alien elements. Sap doesnt run in the rain, they say, but this sap did. Probably Hiram was right, and you cant tell. I am glad if you cant. The physical mysteries of the universe are being unveiled so swiftly that one likes to find something that still keeps its secretthough, indeed, the spiritual mysteries seem in no danger of such enforcement.
The next day the rain stopped, the floods began to subside, and Jonathan managed to arrive, though the roads had even less bottom to em than before. The sun blazed out, and the sap ran faster, and, after Jonathan had fully enjoyed them, the blue and white bibs were taken off. Somehow in the clear March sunshine they looked almost shocking. By the next day we had syrup enough to try for sugar.
For on sugar my heart was set. Syrup was all very well for the first year, but now it had to be sugar. Moreover, as I explained to Janet, when it came to sugar, being absolutely ignorant, I was again in a position to expect the aid of the fools Providence.
How much _do_ you know about it? asked Janet.
Oh, just what people say. It seems to be partly like fudge and partly like mola.s.ses candy. You boil it, and then you beat it, and then you pour it off.
Ive got more to go on than that, said Jonathan. I came up on the train with the Judge. He used to see it done.
Youve got to drive Janet over to her train to-night; Hiram cant, I said.
All right. Theres time enough.
We sat down to early supper, and took turns running out to the kitchen to try the syrup as it boiled down. At least we said we would take turns, but usually we all three went. Supper seemed distinctly a side issue.
Im going to take it off now, said Jonathan. Look out!
Do you think its time? I demurred.
Well know soon, said Jonathan, with his usual composure.
We hung over him. Now you beat it, I said. But he was already beating.
Get some cold water to set it in, he commanded. We brought the dishpan with water from the well, where ice still floated.
Maybe you oughtnt to stir so muchdo you think? I suggested, helpfully.
Beat it moreup, you know.
More the way you would eggs, said Janet.
Ill show you. I lunged at the spoon.
Go away! This isnt eggs, said Jonathan, beating steadily.
Your arm must be tired. Let me take it, pleaded Janet.
No, me! I said. Janet, youve got to get your coat and things. Youll have to start in fifteen minutes. Here, Jonathan, you need a fresh arm.
Im fresh enough.
And I really dont think you have the motion.
I have motion enough. This is my job. You go and help Janet.
Janets all right.
So am I. See how white its getting. The Judge said
Here come Hiram and Kit, announced Janet, returning with bag and wraps.
But you have ten minutes. Cant I help?
He wont let us. Hes that sot, I murmured. h.e.l.l make you miss your train.
You _could_ b.u.t.ter the pans, he counter charged, and you havent.
We flew to prepare, and the pouring began. It was a thrilling moment. The syrup, or sugar, now a pale hay color, poured out thickly, blob-blob-blob, into the little pans. Janet moved them up as they were needed, and I s.n.a.t.c.hed the spoon, at last, and encouraged the stuff to fall where it should. But Jonathan got it from me again, and sc.r.a.ped out the remnant, making designs of clovers and polliwogs on the tops of the cakes. Then a dash for coats and hats and a rush to the carriage.
When the surrey disappeared around the turn of the road, I went back, shivering, to the house. It seemed very empty, as houses will, being sensitive things. I went to the kitchen. There on the table sat a huddle of little pans, to cheer me, and I fell to work getting things in order to be left in the morning. Then I went back to the fire and waited for Jonathan. I picked up a book and tried to read, but the stillness of the house was too importunate, it had to be listened to. I leaned back and watched the fire, and the old house and I held communion together.
Perhaps in no other way is it possible to get quite what I got that evening. It was partly my own att.i.tude; I was going away in the morning, and I had, in a sense, no duties toward the place. The magazines of last fall lay on the tables, the newspapers of last fall lay beside them. The dust of last fall was, doubtless, in the closets and on the floors. It did not matter. For though I was the mistress of the house, I was for the moment even more its guest, and guests do not concern themselves with such things as these.
If it had been really an empty house, I should have been obliged to think of these things, for in an empty house the dust speaks and the house is still, dumbly imprisoned in its own past. On the other hand, when a house is filled with life, it is still, too; it is absorbed in its own present.
But when one sojourns in a house that is merely resting, full of the life that has only for a brief season left it, ready for the life that is soon to returnthen one is in the midst of silences that are not empty and hollow, but richly eloquent. The house is the link that joins and interprets the living past and the living future.
Something of this I came to feel as I sat there in the wonderful stillness. There were no house noises such as generally form the unnoticed background of ones consciousnessthe steps overhead, the distant voices, the ticking of the clock, the breathing of the dog in the corner. Even the mice and the chimney-swallows had not come back, and I missed the scurrying in the walls and the flutter of wings in the chimney. The fire purred low, now and then the wind sighed gently about the corner of the new part, and a loose door-latch clicked as the draught shook it. A branch drew back and forth across a window-pane with the faintest squeak.
And little by little the old house opened its heart. All that it told me I hardly yet know myself. It gathered up for me all its past, the past that I had known and the past that I had not known. Time fell away. My own importance dwindled. I seemed a very small part of the life of the housevery small, yet wholly belonging to it. I felt that it absorbed me as it absorbed the restthose before and after mefor time was not.
There was the sound of slow wheels outside, the long roll of the carriage-house door, and the trampling of hoofs on the flooring within.
Then the clinking of the lantern and the even tread of feet on the path behind the house, a gust of raw snow-airand the house fell silent so that Jonathan might come in.
Your sugar is hardening nicely, I see, he said, rubbing his hands before the fire.
Yes, I said. You know I _told_ Janet that for this part of the affair we could trust to the fools Providence.