A pool of water twenty feet long shining in the sun, or glimmering deeply in the twilight, that and nothing else save a few straggling annuals wrongly placed about it--yet it made Twin Fires over, it caused us weeks of toil, it got into our dreams, it got into our pockets, too.
"Now I know why sunken gardens are so called," said Stella, as she figured out the cost of the fall bulb planting we had already planned.
"It"s because you sink so much money in "em!"
Of course there was little that we could do to the margin of the pool that summer, but there was plenty to do beyond the margin. The first thing of all was to place the flower beds differently. This took considerable experimenting, and Stella, being ingenious, hit upon a scheme for testing various possible arrangements. She filled all sorts of receptacles, from tumblers to pitchers, with cut flowers, low and high, and stood them in ma.s.ses here and there, till the spot was found where they looked the best. As the pool centred on the line between the front door of the house and the yet-to-be-built garden bench against the stone wall, and as the orchard came down to within forty feet of the brook on the slope from the house, it was something of a problem to lead naturally from a gra.s.sy orchard slope into a water feature and a bit of almost formal gardening, without making the transition stiff and abrupt. We finally solved it with the aid of a lawn mower, flower beds, and imagination.
Going over the gra.s.s between the last apple trees and the brook again and again with the mower, I finally reduced that section to something like a lawn, and also kept mowed a straight path from the pool up to the front door. Then, beginning just beyond the last shadows, we cut a bed, thirty inches wide, on each side of the line of the path, running parallel with it to within ten feet of the pool; then they swung to left and right, following the curve of the bank until they flanked the pool. By planting low flowers at the beginning, and gradually increasing their height till we had larkspur and hollyhocks and mallow in the flanking beds, we could both make the transition from orchard to water feature, and also screen off the pool, increasing its intimacy, without, however, hiding it from the front door, where it was glimpsed down a path of trees and flowers. Of course we had no flowers now in mid-July to put into those beds, save what few we could dig up from elsewhere, setting poor little annual phloxes two feet apart; but we could, and did, use them for seed beds for next year"s perennials, and to the eye of faith they were beautiful.
Now we were confronted by the problem of the other side of the pool, which included the problem of how to get to the other side! Stella suggested tentatively a tiny j.a.panese moon bridge above the pool, but I would have none of it.
"The only way to build a j.a.panese garden in New England is to utilize New England features," I insisted. "We won"t copy anybody."
"All right," she answered, "then we want stepping-stones above the pool, and some more down below the dam, where we can see the waterfall."
"More suitable--and much easier," I agreed.
Once more we robbed the stone wall, building our two flanking paths of stepping-stones to the other side of the brook.
On the other side we decided to eliminate all flower beds in the open, merely planting iris and forget-me-not on the rim of the pool. We would clear out a wide semicircle of lawn, with the bench at the centre of the circ.u.mference, and plant our remaining flowers against the shrubbery on the sides, which was chiefly the wild red osier dogwood (_cornus stolonifera_). I got a brush scythe, a hatchet, a spade, a grub hoe, and a rake, and we went to work.
Work is certainly the word. It was not difficult to clear the brush and the tall, rank weeds and gra.s.ses away from our semicircle, which was hardly more than thirty feet in diameter, but to spade up the black soil thereafter, to eliminate the long, tenacious roots of the witch gra.s.s and the weeds, to clear out the stubborn stumps of innumerable little trees and wild shrubs which had overrun the place, to spread evenly the big pile of soil we had excavated from the pool, to reduce it all to a clean, level condition for sowing gra.s.s, was more than I had bargained for. Stella gave up helping, for it was beyond her strength; but I kept on, through the long, hot July afternoons, and at last had it ready. The time of year was anything but propitious for sowing gra.s.s seed, but we planted it, none the less, trusting that in such a low, moist spot it might make a catch. Then we turned to the bench.
"Gracious, you have to be everything to be a gardener, don"t you?"
Stella laughed, as we tried to draw a sketch first, which should satisfy us. "The bench ought to balance the old Governor Winthrop highboy top of the front door. But I"m sure I don"t know how we"re going to make it."
"Patience," said I, turning the leaves of a catalogue of expensive marble garden furniture. "Just a simple design of the cla.s.sic period will do. Colonial furniture was based on the Greek orders."
We found at last the picture of a marble bench which could be duplicated in general outline with wooden planking, so I telephoned to the lumber dealer in the next town for two twenty-four-inch wide chestnut planks, and was fairly staggered by the bill when it came. It appears that a twenty-four-inch wide plank nowadays has to come from North Carolina, or some other distant point, and is rarer than charity, at least that is what they told me.
"I think it would be cheaper in marble," said Stella. "And it looks to me as if you could make the bench out of one plank."
"We want another bench on the sundial lawn," said I, wisely.
"You do _now_," said she.
"But if I hadn"t got two planks," said I, "and had spoiled the first one, then we"d have had to wait two or three days again."
"Oh, that was the reason!" she smiled.
I sawed one of the planks into one six-foot and two two-foot lengths, and rounded the edges of the long piece for the top. Then, on the two short lengths, we carefully drew from the picture the outline of the supports on the marble original, and went to work with rip saw, hatchet, and draw knife to carve them out. The seasoned chestnut worked hard, and we were half a day about our task. The next day we put the three pieces together with braces and long screws, planed and sandpapered the wood till we had it smooth, and then painted it with white enamel paint. While the first coat was drying, we made a deep foundation of coal ashes and flat stones for the bench to rest on, and the next afternoon, when the second coat, which Stella had applied before breakfast, was nearly dry, I hove the heavy thing on a wheelbarrow, and carted it around the road to the point where it was to go. We put a little fresh cement on the foundation stones to hold the two legs, and with Mike"s aid the bench was lifted over the stone wall, through the hedge of ash-leaf maples, put in place, and levelled. Stella hovered near, with the can of paint, to cover our fingermarks and give the top a final glistening coat.
"There," I cried, as the job was done, "we have our pool and our garden bench! We have some of our flowers already planted for next year!
We have our bit of lawn! Let"s go up the orchard to the front door and see how it looks."
I left the wheelbarrow forgotten in the road, and we ran up the slope together, turned at the door, and gazed back. The pool shimmered in the afternoon sun. We could hear the water tinkling over the dam. Beyond the pool was the dark semicircle of fresh mould that was to be green gra.s.s backed by blossoms against the shrubbery, and finally, at the very rear, now stood the white bench, from this distance gleaming like marble.
"Fine! It looks fine!" I cried.
Stella"s eyes were squinted judicially. "Oh, dear," she said, "I wish there was a cedar, a tall, slender, dark cedar, just behind the bench at either end. And, John, do you know we ought to have some goldfish in the pool?"
I sighed profoundly. "You are a real gardener," said I. "Nothing is ever finished!"
"I"m afraid I am," she answered. "But we will have the goldfish, won"t we?"
"Yes, and the cedars, too," I replied. "I"ll ask Mike when is the best time to put "em in."
Mike was sure that spring was the best time, and there were some good ones up in our pasture.
"Oh, dear, spring is the best time for _everything_, it seems to me, and here it"s only July!" cried Stella. "Well, anyhow, I"m going to draw a plan of the pool garden, and hang it over my desk."
She got paper and pencil and drew the plan, while I lay under an orchard tree listening to the tinkle of the waterfall and watching her while Buster came and licked my face.
The plan appears on the following page:
"I think your arrangement of iris on the edge is rather formal," I was saying, "and it would be rather more decorous, if not decorative, for you to sit upon the bench, and----" when we heard a motor rumble over the bridge at the brook, and the engine stop by our side door.
[Ill.u.s.tration:]
Chapter XX
CALLERS
"Heavens!" cried Stella, leaping to her feet, "do you suppose it"s callers?"
She looked ruefully at her paint-stained fingers, at her old, soiled khaki garden skirt which stopped at least six inches from the ground, and then at my get-up, which consisted of a very dirty soft-collared shirt, no necktie, khaki trousers that beggared description, and soil-crusted boots. Some pa.s.sengers from the motor were unquestionably coming up our side path--they were coming around the corner by the lilac bush to the front door--they were around the lilac bush--they were upon us!
We looked at them--at a large, ample female in a silk gown anything but ample, at a young woman elaborately dressed, at a smallish man with white hair, white moustache, and ruddy complexion, clad in a juvenile Norfolk jacket and white flannels.
"They are coming to call!" whispered Stella. "The Lord help us! John, I"m scared!"
We advanced to meet them, and as I glanced at my wife, and then at the ample female, I was curiously struck with their resemblance to a couple of strange dogs approaching each other warily. I fully expected to see the stout lady sniff; she had that kind of a nose.
"How do you do," said she. "I"m Mrs. Eckstrom. I presume this is Mr.
and Mrs. Upton?"
Stella nodded.
"We are your neighbours," she continued, with an air which said, "You are very fortunate to have us for neighbours." "We live in the first place toward the village. This is Mr. Eckstrom, and my daughter, Miss Julia."
"We can hardly offer our hands," said Stella. "Will you forgive us?
You see, we are making a garden, and it"s rather messy work."
"You like to work in the garden yourself, I see," said Mrs. Eckstrom.
"I, too, enjoy it. I frequently pick rose bugs. I pick them before breakfast, very early, while they are still sleepy. I find it is the only way to save my tea roses."