Dwellers in Arcady: The Story of an Abandoned Farm

V

Elizabeth's ideas were not poetic

We were busy with our new plans. We decided to shingle the roof, which showed an inclination to leak; also the sides, which in numerous places besides the windows admitted samples of the outdoors. Such things did not matter so much in summer-time, but New England in winter is different. Then the roof and door-yard are piled with snow, the northwest wind seeks out the tiniest crevice in one's armor. How did those long-ago people manage? Their walls were not sheeted, and they did not know the use of building-paper. Our old wide siding had been laid directly on the bare timbers, the studding; every crevice under the windows, every crack in the plaster, was a short circuit with zero. We decided to take off the antique siding, cut out the bad places, and relay it flat, as sheeting. Over it we would lay building-paper, and on top of this, good substantial shingles, laid wide to the weather in the old-fashioned way.

It hurt us to think of covering up that fine original siding – priceless stuff, a foot wide and of the softest, straightest-grained white pine, cut from large trees such as no longer grow – but we did not know what else to do with it. It was a wonderful antique, but we could not afford to keep a pile of lumber just for exhibition purposes. I said it ought to be in a museum, and I had some thought of offering it to the Metropolitan, at a modest valuation, next time I went to town. Elizabeth discouraged this idea. She suggested that I have it made up into Brook Ridge souvenirs – little trays and paper-cutters – a wagon-load or two, then start out and peddle them. The scheme dazzled me for a moment, but I resisted it. So in the end it became just sheeting. I did pick out one fine example – a piece with some of the original red paint still on it – and said I meant to have it framed, but in the course of the work, at a moment when my back was turned, the carpenter got hold of it, so I fear there is no exposed scrap of it to-day. It is all there under the shingles, and will still be there for other shingles when those are gone. The nails that held it were made by hand, every one of them, and I did save some of those, for they were really beautiful. But think of the patient labor of making them. I suppose a skilled and rapid workman could turn out as many as twenty of those nails in an hour. A detail like that gives one a sort of measurement of those deliberate days.

We did not always agree as to our improvements. I don t think our arguments ever became heated – one might characterize them as, well, ardent. If Elizabeth thought my ideas sometimes wild, not to say crazy, I don t remember that she ever put it just in that way. If I thought hers inclined to be prosaic and earthy, I was careful to be out of range and hearing before I expressed myself. I remember once suggesting that we do our cooking and heating entirely in the old way – that is to say, using the fireplaces and the Dutch oven – and was pained to find that Elizabeth was contemplating a furnace and a kitchen range. She asked me rather pointedly who I thought was going to get in wood enough to keep four fireplaces running, and if I fancied the idea of going to bed in the big north room up-stairs with the thermometer shrinking below zero.

It was still August at the moment, and the prospect was not so disturbing. I said that hardy races always did those things, that the old builders of this house had probably not minded it at all, and just see to what great old ages they had lived. I said that as a child I had even done it myself.

"So did I," said Elizabeth; "that is why I am not going to do it now."

She walked out with quite a firm step, and I did not pursue the matter. I might have done so, but I had a vision, just then, of a boy who had lived on the Western prairies, in a big box of a house, and had gone to bed in a room that was about the temperature of the snow-drifted yard. I could see him madly flinging off a few outer garments, making a spring into a bed that was like a frozen pond, lying there in a bunch, getting tolerably warm at last, but all night long fearful of moving an inch because of his frigid boundaries. As for the matter of wood, well, I had carried that, too, cords of it, for a fireplace that had devoured it relentlessly and given nothing adequate in return. I recalled that in cold weather I had never known what it was to be warm on both sides at once, that I had scorched my face while my back was freezing, then turned, like a chicken on a spit, to bake the other side. Without doubt I had grown used to it, so used to it that it had never occurred to me that in cold weather any one really could be warm on both sides at once; also, perhaps, it had hardened me, still —

Elizabeth's ideas were not poetic; they did not express art for art's sake; anybody could see that; but, after all, there would be days – January days – when a fireplace alone, however beautiful as an ornament, would not make enough impression on the family circle, and scarcely any at all on the up-stairs. Coming up rather quietly somewhat later, she found me sitting under the big maple, surreptitiously studying a range and furnace catalogue borrowed of Westbury. We decided on Acme Hummers and I gave the order to the postman next morning.

VI

Our last night in the barn was not like the others

We lived a full week in the wood-house and barn, a week that is chiefly memorable to me now because of the kindness of our neighbors.

I wonder if in every New England neighborhood new-comers are treated as we were. It was high garden season, and I think not a day passed, that at least one basket of sweet corn, beans, lettuce, and such noble things was not set at our doors.

From all about they came, and how sweet and fresh they were! There had been no lack of showers that summer, and gardens were at their best. Nothing is so good as sweet corn, freshly picked and put in the pot. We had never really had enough of it before. Now we had to strain our appetites to keep up with the supply. And lima beans, and buttered beets, and cucumbers and crisp salads, and fresh cabbage slaw! Dear me! Why must any one have to stay in town where all those things are scarce, and costly, and days old, and wilted, when he can go to the country and have them fresh and abundant from the garden – of his neighbor?

Some of the offerings were really artistic, prettily arranged, and garnished with flowers. Old Nat of the whitewash came one evening with a huge round basket, in the center of which was a big yellow pumpkin, the first of his crop, and ranged about it ears of corn, big red tomatoes, and heads of lettuce, the whole like some wonderful great flower. But then Nat was always an artist at heart.

Our last night in the barn was not like the others. We had become very comfortable there, for we had built our hay higher, and we had learned the art of resting in that processional fashion, while the big, airy place and the patter of the not infrequent rain had grown dear to us. But that last night was different. It rained, as usual, but it did something more. I had been asleep an indeterminable time when I was aroused by a crash of thunder that for a moment I thought had taken off the roof. In the glimmer of lightning that followed I realized that Elizabeth was awake – also the Pride, aged twelve.

It was the sort of storm to make one sit up on his elbow. Elizabeth sat up on hers, and declined to lie back even when assured that it would be easier for the lightning to hit her in that half-erect position. The Pride began asking persistently if the barn was going to be struck. The Joy, who was next me, suddenly grabbed my arm and clung like a burr, saying nothing. The Hope, secure in the knowledge of an upright life, aided by a perfect digestion, slept as one in a trance, while the fierce pounding grew more alarming as flash followed flash and the crashes came more promptly and forcibly on the heels of every flare. I don't think I was exactly afraid, but I could not altogether forget the tradition that lightning has a mania for striking barns and it was this that had occurred to Elizabeth. She said she had been reading of storms like this in Jamaica, and that invariably they had struck barns, though whether she meant Jamaica of southern waters or the pretty suburb on Long Island by that name I have not learned to this day.

There was no wind, but all at once, at the very height of things, when the flashes and the crashes came together and the very sky seemed about to explode, one of our wide barn doors swung slowly, silently open, as if moved by a spirit hand, and at the same instant there came a blaze and roar that fairly filled the barn. A moment later the great door silently closed; then once more opened to let in a blinding, deafening shot.

I could tell by what Elizabeth said that the big door ought to be shut and securely fastened. I made about three leaps and grabbed it, and a second later had it hooked and was back, the lightning at my heels. Then the clouds must have upset, for there came a downpour that fairly drowned the world.

But the artillery was passing. Soon flash and roar came farther apart and modified by distance. Nothing was left at last but a soothing rumble and the whisper of the receding rain. We slept, and woke to find ourselves rich, in sunlight, blue sky, and overflowing rain-barrels. This made it washday for Elizabeth and the tribe, and presently all the lines were full. It was a glorious storm, but that afternoon we moved our sleeping-arrangements to the house. The painters had finished up-stairs, and there was no purpose in exposing ourselves to storms which for all we knew, came straight from Jamaica, where they had a mania for hitting barns.

CHAPTER THREE

I

At the threshold of the past

I wonder if you are anything like as anxious to get into our old attic as we were. That is not likely. To us it meant romance, even a kind of sorcery – a bodily transmigration into the magic past.

Now and then during those August days we would open the door below and look up, perhaps even climb the stair and peer around a little, possessed by the spell of it, deterred only by our immediate affairs and the heat.

Then at last came a day, a cool Sunday when it was raining softly, and the tribe were having a "perfectly lovelly" time in the barn, Elizabeth and I climbed the rickety stairway to the Land of the Long Ago. There could be no better time for it – the quiet rain overhead, no workmen, no likelihood of visitors.

At the top of the stair we hesitated and looked about with something of the feeling that I suppose the Egyptian explorer had when he looked into the furnished tomb of Queen Thi. We were at the threshold of the past.

A small window at each end gave light in plenty. There was a good deal of dust, and there were some cobwebs in the corners, but these did not disturb us. Only, we were a little bewildered by the extent of our possessions. We hardly knew where to begin.

At first we picked our way about rather aimlessly, pointing to this thing and that, our voices subdued. There were all the high-backed chairs – fourteen, we counted, with those already carried down. Most of them would need new rush bottoms and black paint, but otherwise they had withstood the generations. They were probably a part of the old house's original furnishing – these and at least one of the spinning-wheels, of which there were four, the large kind, used for spinning wool; also the reel for winding yarn. Then we noticed a low wooden cradle, darkened with age, its sides polished by the hands that had rocked it – that had come next, no doubt. We remarked that one of the spinning-wheels was considerably smaller than the others – a child's wheel. We thought it might have come later, when one of the early occupants of the cradle had been taught to do her stint. It made a small, plaintive noise when I turned it, and I could see a little old-fashioned girl in linsey-woolsey dress and home-made shoes and stockings, in front of the big fireplace down-stairs, turning and turning to that droning cadence, through long winter afternoons. Those other wheels had come for other daughters, or daughters-in-law, and if there ever was a time when all four were going at once, the low, long room must have been a busy place.

From a nail in a rafter hung a rusty tin lantern, through the patterned holes of which a single candle had once sprinkled with light the progress of the farmer's evening chores. That, too, had belonged to the early time, and from a dim corner I drew another important piece of furniture of that day. At first this appeared to be a nest of wooden chopping-bowls, oblong as to shape and evidently fashioned by hand. Then remembering something that Westbury had told me, I recognized these bowls as trenchers, the kind used in New England when pioneer homes were rather short in the matter of tableware. The trencher stood in the middle of the table and contained the dinner – oftenest a boiled dinner, I suppose – and members of the family helped themselves from it – I hesitate to say with their fingers, but evidence as to table cutlery in the pioneer home of that period is very scanty. And, after all, if they had no plates, what need of cutlery? Their good, active fingers and stout teeth were made before knives and forks, and they did not enjoy their dinner the less for having it in that intimate way. I confess a sneaking weakness myself for an informal chicken bone or spare-rib – for most anything of the sort, in fact, that I can get a fairly firm hold of. It is better, of course, to have a handle to one's gravy, and sometimes, when the family is looking the other way, I can manage a swipe with a slice of bread, and so get a brief golden sample of the joys of my ancestors. The two smaller trenchers must have been used when company came – one for the bread, possibly; the other for pudding. I hope it was good, firm pudding, so that it could be managed without waste.

We found the kettle that they made the boiled dinner in, an enormous three-legged witch-pot, also a number of big iron crane hangers, for swinging vessels above the open fire. And there were three gridirons of different patterns, for grilling meat over the coals – one of them round with a revolving top, another square, sloping, with a little trough at the bottom to catch the juice of a broiling steak. Elizabeth agreed that we might use those sometimes and I set them over by the stair. We were not delving deeply, not by any means – just picking off the nuggets, as it were. It would be weeks before we would know the full extent of our collection.

Pushed back under the eaves there were what appeared to be several "cord" bedsteads, not the high-posted kind – that would have been too much to expect – but the low, home-made maple bedsteads such as one often sees to-day in New England, shortened up into garden seats. There were, in fact, seven of them, as we discovered later. They would be of the early period, too, and probably had not been used for a good hundred years.

But it was the item we discovered next that would take rank, I think, in the matter of age. At the moment we did not understand it at all. It was a section of a hickory-tree, about fifteen inches through and two feet high, hollowed out at the top to a depth of nearly a foot. It was smooth inside and looked as if something had been pounded in it, as in a mortar. Presently we came upon a long, heavy hickory mallet, tapering at one end, smoothly rounded at the other. It had a short handle, and we thought it might have been a sort of pestle for the big mortar. But what had those old people ground in it?

Westbury told us later; it had been their mill. By a slow, patient process they had macerated their corn in it until it was fine enough for bread.

The old hand-mill would undoubtedly take priority in the matter of antiquity. Those early settlers could do without beds and chairs and trenchers and cradles, even without spinning-wheels for a time, but they must very quickly have bread – corn, and a place to grind it. I think the old mill was older than the house. I think it came almost with the earliest camp-fire.

The articles thus far mentioned were all in one end of the attic. We were by no means through when we turned to the other end, the space beyond the great chimney. Here under the eaves were piles of yellow periodicals – religious papers, the New York Tribune, and those weekly story-papers whose thrilling "romances of real life," like "Parted at the Altar" and "The Lost Heir of Earlecliffe," were so popular with those young ladies of slender waists and sloping shoulders who became our grandmothers. I think none of the numbers dated farther back than the early forties of the last century, and they were not very inviting, for they were dusty and discolored and the mice had gnawed holes in the career of Lord Reginald and the sorrows of Lady Maude.

But there were better things than these – jugs, jars, and bottles of marvelous patterns, and a stone churn, and some pewter and luster teapots, damaged somewhat, it is true, but good for mantel decoration over our fireplaces, and there were some queer old bandboxes, ornamented with flowers and landscapes, and finally two small wooden chests and a fascinating box of odds and ends, metal things, for the most part.

We looked into the bandboxes. Some of them were empty, but in others were odds and ends of finery and quaint examples of millinery, the turban and poke and calash of vanished generations, some of them clearly copied after the model worn by Lady Maude at the very moment when at the church door she turned haughtily from Lord Crewston forever. We drew the chests to the light and took out garments of several sorts and of a variety of fashions. There were dresses of calico and delaine of the Civil War days, a curious cape which we thought had been called a "circular," a pretty silk apron with a bib, once precious to some young girl. Some of the waists were very slim, closely following the outlines of Lady Maude. Others were different – oh, very much so. I think these were of an earlier period, for among other things there were a number of garments made of stout, hand-woven linen, embroidered with initials which had not belonged to the house for nearly a century. I hope they were not a part of a bridal outfit, for no bride, no really popular bride, ought to be as ample as must have been the owner of those ch – garments, I mean. One of them, opened out, would be quite wide enough for a sheet, Elizabeth said, though somewhat lacking in length. She thought they would do for single beds, turned the other way. There were sturdy women in those days.

In the bottom of the chest there was a pair of red and very pointed dancing-slippers. I don't think they belonged to the same person. Neither did they belong to the period of Lady Maude, being much older. They were very small and slim, and daintily made. Where had such pretty feet found floors on which to dance?

We laid them back with the other things where they had been put such a long time ago, and turned to the box of odds and ends. There were knobs and latches and keys – all of the old pattern – a hand-made padlock, some flat wrought hinges and some hand-wrought nails, left, perhaps, after the house was built. We sat flat on the floor to paw over these curious things, and the dull light, and the rain just overhead, certainly detracted nothing from our illusions. Every little piece in that box seemed to us a treasure. The old hinges would go on our new closet doors, held by the hand-made nails. The padlock was for the outside cellar door. The knobs would replace certain reproductions on some of our antique furniture. We knew what such things cost at the shops and how hard they were to find. And just then Elizabeth came upon a plated-silver buckle, and then upon another – a pair of them – old shoe or garter buckles, we could not be sure which. Why, our attic was a regular treasure island!

We picked out a number of things that seemed of special interest, including an iron crane we had found, and carried them down-stairs. The crane fitted the fireplace in the smaller room, which was to become our kitchen. We hung it and kindled a fire – our first real fire, for it was our first cool day. There was litter on the floor, but we did not mind it. We looked into the cheerful blaze, handled over the trifles we had found, and in quiet voices spoke of the past. During our two hours or so in the old attic we had been in step with the generations. We had broken bread at the camp-fire of the pioneer; we had seen him build his house and provide it with the simple, durable furnishings of his day; we had shared the easy comfort of his hearty board; we had drawn near to his good wife as she rocked the cradle or sat spinning in the firelight; we had watched their descendants attain prosperity and a taste for finery; we had seen how they had acquired fashion and in time had patterned their gowns, their bonnets, perhaps even their romances upon models of Lady Maude. They were all gone now, leaving us to carry on the story. We also would go our way; others would follow us, and they, too, would pass. It was a moment to look into the fire and think long, long thoughts.

II

Paper-hanging is not a natural gift

One day I measured up our walls, and the next I went to town and bought the paper that was to cover them. I think it generally pays to do that, provided you can get somebody to hang it. There is a very pretty margin in wall-paper, and when you get a good deal of it that margin gnaws into one's substance. Shopping around the department stores, picking up remnant bargains, is the thing. I ran onto a lot of bedroom paper of a quaint chintzy pattern at four cents a roll, or about one-fifth what it would have cost in the regular way. I took enough of it for all the upper rooms, with some to spare, and was sorry there were not more rooms, so I could take it all. Then I found a gorgeous remnant of the glazed-tile variety for the kitchen, and still another for our prospective bath-room. A dull-green cartridge-paper for our living-room, "best" room, and my tiny study behind the chimney cost me eighteen cents a roll. The total bill was sixteen fifty-nine, and I got at least twice the pleasure out of the size of that bill that I would have had in earning double the sum in the time I spent. Figure out the profit in that transaction if you can. Whatever it was, it was satisfactory, and indeed few things in life are sweeter than the practice of our pet and petty economies. We all have them. I once knew a very rich man who would light a match and race from one gas-jet to another until he burnt his fingers, lighting as many as he could before striking a second match. He would generally say something when his fingers began to smoke, but to have lighted all the jets at both ends of his long room was a triumph that made this brief inconvenience of small account. I have also seen him spend more time, and even money, utilizing some worn-out appliance than a new one would cost. He was not a stingy man, either, not by any means, but those things were ingrained and vital. They helped to provide his life with interest and satisfaction – hence, were worth while.

To go back to the papering: I bought some tools – that is to say, a paste-brush, and a smoothing-down brush, and a long pair of scissors, for I had a suspicion that my painters would be at their fall farming presently, in which case Westbury, who I was satisfied could do anything, had agreed to beautify our walls.

As a matter of fact, I hung most of that sixteen dollars and fifty-nine cents' worth of paper myself. When I got back, my painters were about to begin cutting their corn. Westbury came, but at the end of the first day, when one of the up-stairs rooms was about finished, he also developed a violent interest in corn-cutting. I was thus abandoned to fate, also quite deserted. My carpenters were cutting corn; Luther Merrill, my handsome plowman, was cutting corn; Old Pop and Sam were cutting corn; while Elizabeth had gone to the apartment in town to begin preparations for moving, and to put the Pride and the Hope into school. I was alone – alone with sixteen dollars' worth of paper, a big, flat paste-brush, and my bare, bare walls.

Meantime I had trimmed some of the strips for Westbury and had given some slight attention to his artistic method. It looked rather easy, and there was still half a pail of paste. In some things I am impulsive, even daring. With a steady hand, I measured, cut off, and trimmed a strip of the pretty chintzy paper, laid it face down on the papering-board which Westbury had made, slapped on the paste with a free and business-like dash, folded up the end just as Westbury did, picked it up with an easy, professional swing, and started for the wall.

Being a tall man, I did not need the step-ladder. In those low rooms I could quite easily stand on the floor and paper from the ceiling down. Certainly that was an advantage. I discovered, however, that a step-ladder is not all of a paper-hanger's gifts. When I matched that piece of paper at the ceiling and started down with it, I realized presently that it was not going in the direction of the floor. At least not directly. It was slanting off at a bias to the southeast, leaving a long, lean, wedge-shaped gap between it and the last strip. I pulled it off and started again, shifting the angle. But I overdid the thing. This time it went biasing off in the other direction and left an untidy smudge of paste on Westbury's nice, clean strip. I reflected that this would probably dry out – if not, I would hang a picture over it. Then I gave the strip I was hanging a little twitch, being a trifle annoyed, perhaps, by this time, and was pained to see that an irregular patch of it remained on the wall, while the rest of it fell sloppily into my hands. It appeared that wall-paper became tender with damp paste on it and should not be jerked about in that nervous way. In seeking to remove the ragged piece from the plaster, holding up the mutilated strip meanwhile, something else occurred, I don't quite know what, but I suddenly felt a damp and gluey mess on my face, and then it was around my neck, and then I discovered that a portion of it had in some way got tangled up with my legs, upon which I think I became rather positive, for I seem to have wadded up several gooey balls of chintzy decoration and hurled them through the open window, far out upon the sun-flecked yard.

I went below and washed up, and for a time sat under the maple shade and smoked. When more calm I said: "This is nothing – it is only a first lesson. Paper-hanging requires probationary study and experiment. It is not a natural gift, an extempore thing like authorship and song. I have paper enough to afford another lesson. This time I shall consider deeply and use great care."

I went back and prepared another strip, humbly and without any attempt at style. This time, too, I did not consider the line of the ceiling, but conformed to the vertical edge of Westbury's final strip, allowing my loose section to dangle like a plumb-line several moments before permitting it to get its death-grip on the wall. I will not say that this second attempt was an entire success, but it was a step in that direction. With a little smudging, a slight wrinkle or two, and a small torn place, it would do, and I was really quite pleased with myself when I observed it from across the room and imagined a kindly bureau just about in that spot.