"But Twin Fires comes first, doesn"t it? I fear I"ve been selfish to drag you off to-day."
"Drag me off is good!" I laughed. "You poor little city-bred, you, as if your enjoyment hadn"t given me the happiest day of my life! Only I"m afraid you did too much."
"I _am_ pretty tired," she admitted, with a happy smile. "But I wouldn"t have missed it for the world."
I was pretty tired myself, but I did a remarkably good evening"s work, nevertheless, only pausing before the start to wonder why it was she wept one night when she wasn"t tired, and smiled the next when she had tramped ten miles. But a man cannot afford to ponder such problems in feminine psychology too closely if he has anything else to do!
Chapter XI
ACTaeON AND DIANA
Memorial Day dawned fair and warm. Bert and his wife and all their "help" went off to the village after breakfast. There were no painters in my house, and Mike had milked the cows and gone home before I arrived.
Miss Goodwin and I seemed to have that little section of Bentford quite to ourselves, after the last of the carryalls had rattled past, taking the veterans from Slab City to the town. Having no flag yet of my own, I borrowed one from Bert, and we hung it from a second-story window, facing the road, as our tiny contribution to the sentiment of the day.
Then we tackled the rose trellis, speedily completing it, for only two arches remained to be built, one of the carpenters having built three for me the day before, while waiting for some shingles to come for the barn. Indeed, we had it done by ten o"clock.
"Now what?" said she.
I looked about the garden. The roses had not yet come, so we couldn"t very well plant them. I judged that the morning of a warm, sunny day was no time to transplant seedlings. The painting was not yet completed inside, so I could fix up no more of my rooms. The vegetable garden didn"t appear to need cultivation. We couldn"t paint the trellis, as there was no green paint.
"Good gracious!" I exclaimed, "this is the first time I"ve been at a loss for something to do. It"s a terrible sensation."
"Couldn"t we build a bird bath?" she suggested.
"Madam," said I, "you are a genius!"
"At the brook?" she added.
"No, not the brook. I"ve a better idea. Up in Stephen Parrish"s lovely garden in Cornish I once saw a bird bath which we"ll try to duplicate, here on the lawn, so the birds will have the water handy to wash down the gra.s.s seed they are eating so fast. Let"s see; we"ll need bricks, sand, cement, a mason"s trowel, a spade, a hoe, a level, a box to mix in, and a box for a frame."
I had nearly a whole bag of cement left over from my dab at orchard renovation, and there were plenty of packing-boxes. I selected one which was exactly square, about two feet on each side, and carefully knocked the bottom out. A shallower one did for a mixing-box. Down cellar, where my heater had been installed, was a barrow load of extra bricks which the plumber had left behind--inefficient business but very convenient for me. Sand was easily procured by digging a hole near the brook.
"Now," said I, "my plan is to put the bird bath on the east edge of the lawn, halfway between the house and the rose aqueduct, corresponding to the sundial in the centre, and to a white bench which will be placed at the west side when the grape arbour is built."
"Approved," laughed Miss Goodwin.
We measured off the spot, and I trundled the barrow to a pile of coal ashes behind the barn--where the previous owner had deposited them--and brought back enough to make a frost-proof foundation. After we had packed these into the ground and levelled them off, I mixed a lot of cement, laid it over thick, set the bottomless box frame down upon it, levelled that, and working from the inside, of course, laid the bricks up against the box, with a great deal of cement between them, and built up the four sides. As the girl had no gloves, I would not allow her to handle the cement (for nothing cracks the skin so badly, as I had discovered in my orchard work). But she kept busy mixing with the hoe, and handing me bricks. Some I broke and put in endwise, and I was careful to give all as irregular a setting as possible, till the top was reached. Then, of course, I laid an even line of the best bricks all the way around, and levelled them carefully. We had scarcely got the last brick on when we heard Bert"s carryall rattle over the bridge and Bert"s voice yelling "Dinner!"
"Oh, dear! That cement in the box will harden!" I cried. "Dump it all in."
We tipped up the box, dumped the contents down into the hollow centre of the brick work, and hurried home to a cold dinner, for Mrs. Bert, too, had taken a holiday that morning. But we were so impatient to be back at our work that we didn"t care. On our return we filled the rest of the hollow up with cement and stones to within three inches of the top. Then, mixing more cement, with only two parts of fine sand to one of cement, I laid over an even surface of the mixture and filled all the corners and cracks between the top row of bricks, making a square bowl, as it were, two inches deep, on the top of the little brick pile.
We let it settle a few moments, and then carefully broke away the box.
There stood the bird bath, needing only some cleaning away of cement which had squeezed out between bricks, and some filling in of hollows caused in removing the frame. It really looked quite neat and attractive, and not too formally bricky, as so much cement showed.
"Can we put water in it yet?" the girl asked.
"Surely," said I. "Cement will harden under water. And we"ll plant climbing nasturtiums around it, too."
I spaded up the ground at the base a little, and we went to the seed bed and dug up half a dozen climbing nasturtiums, which were already six or seven inches high. We set them in, got a pail of water from the brook and watered them, and carefully filled the bath level with the brim. Then we removed all the tools and boxes to the shed again, and came back to the south door to survey our work.
We pa.s.sed through the house. The kitchen, dining-room, and hall were finished and the paint drying. They looked very fresh and bright. The south room, as we stepped into it, was flooded with sunlight and cheerful with rugs and books. Flinging wide the gla.s.s door, we stepped out upon the terrace of the pergola-to-be, and looked toward the new bird bath.
Upon its rim sat a song sparrow! Even as we watched, another came and fluttered his feet and breast daintily through the trembling little mirror of water. Then came a robin and drove them both away.
"The pig!" laughed Miss Goodwin. "Do you know, I"ve got a poorer opinion of robins since I came here. We city dwellers think of robins as harbingers of spring, and all that, and they epitomize the bird world.
But when you really are in that world, you find they are rather large and vulgar and--and sort of upper West Side-y. They aren"t half so nice as the song sparrows, or the Peabodies, and, of course, compared with the thrushes--well, it"s like comparing Owen Meredith with Keats, isn"t it?"
"Don"t be too hard on the robins," I smiled.
We looked our fill at the new bird bath, which was already functioning, as she said her boss on the dictionary would put it, and at the white sundial pillar, and at our prospective aqueduct of roses, and at the farm and the far hills beyond--and then she suddenly announced with great energy that she was going to saw wood.
"You may saw just one piece," said I, "and then you are going to take a book and rest. I"m going to work, myself. Twin Fires is getting in shape fast enough now so I can give up part of the daytime to the purely mundane task of paying the bills."
I wheeled up a big dead apple branch from the orchard to the wood shed, put it on the buck, gave her the buck-saw, and watched her first efforts, grinning.
"Go away," she laughed. "You bother me."
So I went, opened the west window by my desk to the wandering summer breeze, and went at my toil. Presently I heard her tiptoeing into the room.
"Done?" said I.
She nodded. "Now I want--let"s see what I want--well, I guess "Marius the Epicurean" and "Alice in Wonderland" will do. I"m going to sit in the orchard. You work here till five or your salary will be docked.
Good-bye."
I heard her go out by the front door, and then silence settled over the sun-filled, cheerful room, while I plugged away at my tasks. I don"t know how long I worked, but finally my attention began to wander. I wondered if she were still in the orchard. I looked out upon the sweet stretches of my farm, with the golden light of afternoon upon it, and work became a burden. "Shall I ever be able to work, except at night, or on rainy days!" I wondered with a smile, as I tossed the ma.n.u.script I was reading into a drawer, and went out through the front entrance.
The girl was nowhere to be seen. "She"s probably in her beloved pines," I reflected. "It would be a good time to clear out a path in the pines." I turned back to get a hatchet, and then went down toward the brook.
I trod as noiselessly as I could through the maples, thinking to surprise her at her reading, and took care in the pines not to step on any dead twigs. She was nowhere to be seen near the upper end of the grove, but as I advanced I heard a splashing louder than the soft ripple of the brook, and suddenly around a thick tree at a bend in the stream, where the brook ran out toward the tamarack swamp in the corner of my farm, I came upon her. She had her shoes and stockings off, and with her skirts held high she was wading with solemn, quiet delight in a little pool. Her back was toward me. I could have discreetly retreated, and she been none the wiser. But, alas! Actaeon was neither the first nor the last of his s.e.x. The water rippled so coolly around her white ankles! The sunlight dappled down so charmingly upon her chestnut hair! And I said, with a laugh, "So that is why you wanted my brook to come from the spring!"
She turned with a little exclamation, the colour flaming to her cheeks.
Then she, too, laughed, as she stood in the brook, holding her skirts above the water.
"Consider yourself turned to a stag," she said.
"All right," I answered, "but don"t stay in that cold water too long."
"If I do it will be your fault," she smiled, with a sidelong glance.
Then she turned and began wading tentatively downstream. But the brook deepened suddenly, and she sank almost to her knees, catching her skirts up just in time. I withdrew hastily, and called back to her to come out. When I heard her on the bank, I brought her a big handkerchief for a towel, and withdrew once more, telling her to hurry and help me plan the path through the pines. In a moment or two she was by my side. We looked at each other. Her face was still flushed, but her eyes were merry. We were standing on almost the exact spot where we had first met. But now there seemed in some subtle wise a new bond of intimacy between us, a bond that had not existed before this hour. I could not a.n.a.lyze it, but I felt it, and I knew she felt it. But what she said was:
"I told you to work till five o"clock."
"It"s half-past four," I answered. "Besides, you must have sent for me. Something suddenly prompted me to come out and hunt you up, at any rate."
"To say I sent for you is rather--rather _forward_, under the circ.u.mstances, don"t you think?"