Dwellers in Arcady: The Story of an Abandoned Farm

I have given the details of this non-smoke device because any one buying and repairing an old house is likely to be smoked out and might not immediately stumble upon the simple remedy. I know when later, at the club, I explained it to an architectural friend, he confessed that the notion had not occurred to him, adding, with some shame, that he had more than once left a considerable crack under a door as an air-supply. Imagine!

So these troubles passed, and others in kind and variety. Those were busy days. We were doing so many things, we hardly had time to enjoy the fall scenery, the second stage of it, as it were, when the goldenrod and queen's-lace-handkerchief were gone, the blue wild asters fading, and leaves beginning to fall, though the hilltops were still ablaze with crimson and gold. Once we stole an afternoon and climbed a ridge that looked across a valley to other ridges swept by the flame of autumn. It was really our first wide vision of the gorgeous fall colorings of New England, and they are not surpassed, I think, anywhere this side of heaven.

We gathered our apples. We had a small orchard of red Baldwins across the brook, and some old, scattering trees such as you will find on every New England farm. These last were very ancient, and of varieties unknown to-day. One, badly broken by the wind, we cut, and its rings gave it one hundred and fifty years. Putnam's soldiers could have hooked apples from that tree, and probably did so, for it was not in plain view of the house.

We put the Baldwins away and made cider of the others, it being now the right moment, when there was a tang of frost in the morning air. We picked up enough to fill both of Uncle Joe's cider-barrels, Westbury and I hauled them to the mill, and the next day Elizabeth was boiling down the sweet juice into apple-butter, which is one of the best things in the world.

There is work about making apple-butter. It is not just a simple matter of putting on some juice and letting it boil. Apples must go into it, too, a great many of them, and those apples must be peeled and sliced, and stirred and stirred eternally. And then you will find that you need more apples, more peeling and slicing, and more stirring and stirring, oh yes, indeed. Elizabeth stirred, I stirred, and Lazarus, our small colored vassal, stirred. I said if I had time I would invent an apple-butter machine, and Elizabeth declared she would never undertake such a job again, never in the world! But that was mere momentary rebellion. When it was all spiced and done and some of it spread on slices of fresh bread and butter, discontent and weariness passed, and next day she and Lazarus were making pickles and catsup and apple jelly, while Old Pop and I were hauling all the flat stones we could find and paving the wide space between the house and the stone curb which already we had built around the well. Oh, there is plenty to do when one has bought an old farm and wants to have all the good things, and the livable things; and October is the time to do them, when the mornings are brisk, and the days are balmy, and evening brings solace by the open fire.

III

Lazarus's downfall was a matter of pigs

It was Lazarus, I think, who most enjoyed the open fire. Stretched full length on the hearth, flat on his stomach, his chin in his hands, baking himself, he might have been one of his own ancestors of the African forest, for he was desperately black, and true to type. A runty little spindle-legged darky of thirteen, Lazarus had come to us second-hand, so to speak, from the county home. A family in the neighborhood was breaking up, and Lazarus's temporary adoption in the household was at an end. He had come on an errand one evening, and our interview then had led to his being transferred to our account.

"I goin' away nex' week," he said.

"Where are you going, Lazarus?"

"Back to de home, where I come from."

"What do you get for your work where you are now?"

"Boa'd and clo's an' whatever dey min' to give."

"What do you do?"

"Bring wood, wash dishes, and whatever dey wants me to."

"How would you like to come up here for a while?"

He had his eye on my target-rifle as he replied, "Yassah, I'd like it – what sort o' gun yo' got?"

I explained my firearm to him and let him handle it. His willingness to come grew.

"Are you a pretty good boy, Lazarus?"

"Oh, yassah – is – is yo' goin' to le' me shoot yo' gun ef I come?"

"Very likely, but never mind that now. What happens if you're not good?"

He eyed me rather furtively. "De rule is yo cain't whip," he said. "You kin only send back to de home."

We agreed on these terms, and Lazarus arrived the day after the auction that closed out his former employers. As an aside I may mention that Old Pop laid off a day to attend the said auction, and bought a pink chenille portière and a Japanese screen.

I want to be fair to Lazarus, and I confess, before going farther, that I think we did not rate him at his worth. He had artistic value – he was good literary material. I feel certain of that now, and I think I vaguely realized it at the time. But I was not at the moment doing anything in color, and for other purposes he was not convincing. His dish-washing was far from brilliant and his sweeping was a mess. Also, his appetite for bringing wood had grown dull. There is an old saying which closely associates a colored person with a wood-pile, but our particular Senegambian was not of that variety. The only time he really cared for wood was when it was blazing in the big fireplace, and the picture he made in front of it was about all that we thought valuable. It is true that he made a good audience and would accompany me to the fuel-heap and openly admire and praise my strength in handling the big logs, but his own gifts lay elsewhere. He approved of my gun and would have spent whole days firing it into the sky or the tree-tops, or at the barn or at birds, or into an expansive random, to the general danger of the neighborhood, if I had let him. He had a taste for jewelry, especially for my scarf-pins. When he saw one loosely lying about he carefully laid it away to prevent accident, using a very private little box he had, as a proper and safe place for it. When he discussed this matter he told me quite casually that he spected something would happen to him some day, as his father and uncle, and I think he said his grandfather, were at the moment in the penitentiary. He was inclined to exaggerate and may have been boasting, but I think his ancestry was of that turn.

Lazarus's own chief treasure was a clock. I do not recall now where he said it came from, but he valued it highly. It was a round tin clock, with an alarm attachment. He kept it by his bed, and the alarm was his especial joy. He loved the sound of it, I do not know why. Perhaps it echoed some shrill, raucous cry of the jungle that had stirred his ancestors, and something hereditary in him still answered to it. He never seemed to realize that it was attached to the clock for any special purpose, such as rousing him to the affairs of the day. To him it was music, inspiration, even solace. When its strident concatenation of sounds smote the morning air Lazarus would let it rave on interminably, probably hugging himself with the fierce joy of it, lulled by its final notes to a relapse of dreams. It did not on any occasion stimulate him to rise and dress. That was a more strenuous matter – one requiring at times physical encouragement on my part. Had his bulk been in proportion to his trance, I should have needed a block and tackle and a derrick to raise this later Lazarus.

Lazarus's downfall was a matter of pigs. We did not expect to embark in pig culture when we settled at Brook Ridge, but Westbury encouraged the notion, and our faith in Westbury was strong. He said that pigs had a passion for dish-water and garbage, and that our kitchen surplus, modestly supplemented with "shorts," would maintain a side-line of two pigs, which would grow into three-hundred-pounders and fill up Uncle Joe's pork and ham barrels by the end of another season.

The idea was alluring. A neighbor had small pigs for sale, and I ordered a pair. There was an old pen near the barn, and I spent a day setting it in order for our guests. I repaired the outlets, swept it, and put in nice clean hay. I built a yard easy of access from the pen, and installed a generous and even handsome trough. Westbury said our preparations were quite complete. I could see that our pigs also approved of it. They capered about, oof-oofing, and enjoyed their trough and contents. True, their manners left something to be desired, but that is often the case with the young.

What round, cunning, funny little things they were! We named them Hans and Gretel, and were tempted to take them into the house, as pets. We might have done so, only that I remembered the story of the Arab who invited his camel to put his head in the tent. I had a dim suspicion that those two pigs would own the house presently, and that we should have no place to go but the pen. Lazarus was fascinated by them. He hung over the side of their private grounds and wanted to carry them refreshments constantly.

"Dem cert'ney make mighty fine shotes by spring," he announced to everybody that came along, "an' by killin'-time dey grow as big as dat barn. I gwine to feed 'em all day an' see how fat dey gits."

"You're elected, Lazarus," I said. "It's your job. You look after Hans and Gretel and we'll look after you."

"Yo' des watch 'em grow," said Lazarus.

For a while we did. We went out nearly every day to look at our prospective ham and bacon supply, and it did seem to be coming along. Then I had some special work which took me away for a fortnight, and concurrently a bad spell of weather set in. Elizabeth, occupied with the hundred supplementary details of getting established, and general domestic duties, could not give Hans and Gretel close personal attention, and they fell as a monopoly to Lazarus. With his passion for pigs, she thought he might overfeed them, but as she had never heard of any fatalities in that direction he was not restrained.

But it may be this idea somehow got hold of Lazarus. I came home one evening and asked about the pigs. Elizabeth was doubtful. She had been out that day to look at them and was not encouraged by their appearance. She thought they had grown somewhat – in length. When I inspected them next morning, I thought so, too. I said that Hans and Gretel were no longer pigs they were turning into ant-eaters. Their bodies appeared to have doubled in length and halved in bulk. Their pudgy noses had become beaks. I was reminded of certain wild, low-bred pigs which I had seen splitting the hazel-brush of the West, the kind that Bill Nye once pictured as outrunning the fast mail. I said I feared our kitchen by-product was not rich enough for Hans and Gretel. Possibly that was true. Still, it would, have been better than nothing, which it appeared was chiefly what those poor porkers had been living on.

Lazarus's love had waned and died. On chilly, stormy evenings it had been easier to fling the contents of his pail and pan out back of the wood-house than to carry them several times farther to the pen, while the supplementary "shorts" had been shortened unduly for Hans and Gretel. The physical evidence was all against Lazarus – the fascinations of the big open fire had won him; he had been untrue to the pigs. When he appeared, they charged him in chorus with his perfidy, and he could frame no adequate reply. Westbury came, and I persuaded him to take them at a reduction, and threw in Uncle Joe's pork and ham barrels. I said we wanted Hans and Gretel to have a good home – that we had not been worthy of them.

They found it at Westbury's. There they were in a sort of heaven. When I saw them at the end of another two weeks they were again unrecognizable – they were once more pigs.

We parted, with Lazarus about the same time. Our régime was not suited to his needs. It was a pity. With his gifts, the right people might have modeled him into a politician, or something, but we couldn't. We had neither the equipment nor the time. Nor, according to agreement, could we administer that discipline which, from our old-fashioned point of view, he sometimes seemed to require. We could only "send back to de home." Perhaps to-day he is "somewhere in France," making a good soldier. I hope so.

IV

Westbury had advised against wheat

But if our venture in pig culture had not been an entire success, our agriculture gave better promise. Our rye and grass seed had come up abundantly, and by November the fields, viewed from a little distance, were a mass of vivid green. There is something approaching a thrill in seeing the seed of your own sowing actually break ground and spring up and wax strong with promise. You seem somehow to have had a hand in the ancient miracle of life.

Our rye had such a sturdy look that I said it was pretty sure to turn out something fancy in the way of grain, and that we could probably sell it as "seed" rye, which always brought a better price than the regular crop. Then, as the idea expanded, I said that with our few acres we could cultivate intensively and raise seed crops entirely. That would be something really aristocratic in the farming line. We would begin with seed rye and wheat, of which latter grain I had put in a modest sowing. Next year we would go in for seed potatoes, oats, corn, and the like. We could have a neat sign on the stone wall in front, announcing our line of goods. Very likely buyers would come from a considerable distance for them – I had myself driven seven miles with Westbury for the seed rye. A business like that would grow. We could go in for new varieties of things, and in time set up a shipping-station, with a packing-house and a bookkeeper. No doubt Henderson and Hiram Sibley and Ferry and those other seed magnates had begun in some such modest way.

I don't think Elizabeth responded entirely to this particular enthusiasm, and I could see that she was doubtful about the sign in front, but on a winy, windless November day, warmed by a mellow sun, all things seem possible, and she graciously admitted that one never could tell – that stranger things had happened. Then we came to our small wheat-field, and the new seed enthusiasm received a slight check. Westbury had advised against wheat. He said it did not do well in that section. This, I had insisted, must be a superstition, and I had gone to considerable expense to have the ground properly prepared, and to obtain the best seed.

The result, as it appeared now, was not promising. Here and there a spindling blade had come through, and some of those seemed about to turn into grass. I do not know why wheat acts like that in Connecticut. I did not follow up the scientific phases of the case, but I confided to Elizabeth that perhaps, after all, we would not announce "Seed Wheat" on the neat sign planned for the outer wall.

Late October winds had changed the aspect of our world. Our woods were no longer deep, vast, and mysterious. We could see straight through them and read their most hidden secrets. We discovered one day, what we had never suspected, that at one place our brook turned and came back almost to the road. All that summer it had supped silently through that brushy corner which for some reason we had never penetrated. We discovered, too, a little to one side of our former excursions, a rocky acclivity, a place of pretty hemlock-trees and seclusion – a spot for a summer tent.

There were not many mushrooms any more, but we gathered gay red berries for decoration, bunches of late fern, sprays of bittersweet; we raked over the leaves for nuts, and sometimes found bits of spicy wintergreen or checkerberry, the kind that always flavored old-fashioned lozenges which our grandmothers bought in little rolls for a penny, on the way to school. You may guess that this was pleasant play to us who for ten years had known only city or suburban life at this season, and not the least pleasant part of it was the quiet noise the leaves made as we strode through them, the fruis-sas-se-ar, as the French of the Provence call it, and the word as they speak it conveys the sound. Astride a stick horse, of which on our new back porch she kept a full stable, the Joy went racing this way and that, kicking high the loose brown drift of summer, stirred to a sort of ecstasy by its pleasant noise and the spicy autumn air.

The November woods had fewer voices than those of the earlier season, but there was more visible life. Many of the birds remained, and they could no longer hide so easily. A hawk or an owl on a bare bough was sharply outlined. Rabbits darted among the trees, or stood erect, staring at us with questioning eyes. Squirrels scampering over the limbs gave exhibitions of acrobatic skill. There were two kinds of squirrels – the fat gray ones, of which there were not many, and the venomous little red ones, of which there seemed an overproduction. They were cute little wretches, but we did not care for them. They were pugnacious pirates; they robbed their unmilitant gray relative and chased him from the premises. Earlier in the season they had thrown down quantities of green nuts to be wasted, and we were told they robbed birds' nests, not only of their eggs, but of their young. Those red rovers had no food value, or they would have been fewer. They were a mere furry skin drawn over a bunch of wires and strings, and not worth a charge of powder.

V

Deer – wild deer – on our own farm!

Animal life is still plentiful in New England – far more so than in the newer states of the Middle West. With the decrease of population in many districts the wild things have wandered back to their old haunts. They are not very persistently hunted, and some of them, like the deer, are protected. Now and again in our walks we saw a fox, wary and silent-footed, and often on sharp nights, on the hill above the house, one barked anxiously at the moon. At least that is the poetic form, though I really think he was barking for the same reason that I often sing when others of the family are not present. The others claim they do not care for it – I often wonder why. I suppose that fox's family was the same way, so he went out there alone in a dark, safe place to enjoy his music unrestrained. Yet no place seems entirely safe when one wants to sing, and I fear something happened to that fox, for by and by we did not hear him any more. Very likely one of his relatives crept up on him with a brick. We were sorry, for we had learned to like his music – it gave us a wild, primeval feeling.

I think there were no wolves or bears in our immediate neighborhood, though there came reports of them, now and then – exaggerated, I dare say – from adjoining ridges. The nearest thing we had to bears were some very fat and friendly woodchucks, who at a little distance, sitting on their haunches, looked very much like small grizzlies. They dug their holes a few yards from the house and sometimes came quite to the back door, probably intending to call, but when we approached them their courage failed and they went "galumphing" back to their houses. There they would sit up for a moment, staring at us, then, if we approached suddenly, would dive to lower recesses. I explained to the Joy that they most likely had cozy little houses down there, with chairs and tables and a nice stove to cook their food things on. She was sure it was all true, except about the stove, which seemed doubtful, because no smoke ever came from their chimneys.

Most of the animals were friendly to us, and I think made our house a sort of center. I remember one pleasant Sunday afternoon, when we were sitting outside, we noticed simultaneously two woodchucks playing in the field just across the road; a red squirrel pursuing a gray one along our stone wall, almost within arm's-reach; a blue heron among the willows by the brook, probably prospecting for trout; some bob-whites running along by the roadside; while in the woods just beyond a partridge was drumming up further recruits for the exhibition.