The Idyl of Twin Fires Part 9

I led her to my new south door, proudly showing my new lawn and the terrace, and telling her where the roses were to be, and the sundial, and dilating on the work my own hands had done. With a silly, boyish enthusiasm, I even displayed the callouses and invited her to feel of them, which she did as one humours a child, while I thrilled quite unchildishly at the touch of her finger tips. Then we peeped through the gla.s.s doors. The low sun was streaming in through the west window and disclosed the old oak beam across the ceiling. Hard Cider had erected the frame of the bookcase and double settle, which would perfectly match the mantels as soon as the molding was on. One side of the settle faced toward one smoky old fireplace, the other toward the second.

"Two fireplaces! What luxury!" she exclaimed.

"You see," said I, "when I get tired of reading philosophy at the east fireplace, I'll just come around the corner and read 'Alice in Wonderland' at the west chimney nook."

"Double fireplaces--twin fireplaces--twin fires! That's it, Twin Fires!

That ought to be the name of your house."

"You're right!" I cried, delighted. "I've never been able to think of a name. That's the inevitable one--that's Flaubert's one right word. You must come to my christening party and break a bottle of wine on the hearth."

She smiled wistfully, as she turned away from the window. "I must surely go to supper," she said. "Good-bye, and thank you for your wonderful concert."

We walked to the road, but to my surprise she did not turn toward the village but toward Bert's. A sudden light came.

"Are you the broken-down boarder?" I cried.

The gurgle welled up, and the blue eyes twinkled, but she made no reply.

"Just for that," said I, "I won't carry back Mrs. Bert's basket."

As we entered the Temple's yard, Mrs. Bert stood in the kitchen door.

"Well, you two seem to have got acquainted," she remarked in a matter-of-fact tone. "Miss Goodwin, this is Mr. Upton I told you about. Mr. Upton, this is Miss Goodwin I told you about."

"Mrs. Temple," said I, "you are another. You didn't tell me."

"Young man," she retorted, "where's my basket?"

"I left it behind--on purpose," said I.

"Then you'll hev ter come home to yer dinner to-morrow," she said.

"Well, I'm willing," I answered.

"I guess you be," said she.

At supper she returned to the theme, which appeared to amuse her endlessly. "Miss Goodwin," she said, "I want ter warn you thet Mr.

Upton's terrible afraid somebody's goin' ter advise him how ter build his garden. He's a regular man."

I replied quickly: "Your warning is too late," said I; "Miss Goodwin has already begun by naming my place."

"You can change the name, you know," the girl smiled.

"How can I?" I answered, with great sternness. "It's the right one."

Whereupon I went up to my work, and listened to the sounds of soft singing in the room across the hall.

Chapter VII

THE GHOST OF ROME IN ROSES

"Stella Goodwin." "It's rather a pretty name," I thought, as I read it on the flyleaf of a volume she had left in Mrs. Bert's sitting-room.

The volume itself amused me--Chamberlain's "Foundations of the Nineteenth Century." Fancy coming to the country for a rest, and reading Chamberlain, most restless because most provocative of books!

I was waiting for breakfast, impatiently, having been at work on my ma.n.u.scripts since five. Mrs. Bert was in the kitchen; Bert was at the barn. The hour was seven-thirty. I was idly turning the leaves of Chamberlain when there was a rustle on the stairs, and Miss Stella Goodwin entered with a cheerful "Good morning."

"See here," said I, "what are you doing with this book, if you are off for a rest? This is no book for a nervous wreck to be reading."

"Who said I was a nervous wreck?" she answered. "I'm just tired, that's all. I guess it's really spring fever. I saw a spear of real gra.s.s in Central Park, and ran away."

"From what?" I asked.

"From the dictionary," she replied.

"The _which?_" said I.

"The dictionary. Would you like me to sing you a song of the things that begin with 'hy'?"

She laughed again, and began to chant in burlesque Gregorian, "Hyopotamus, hyoscapular, hyoscine, Hyoscyameae, hyoscyamine, Hyoscyamus-----"

"Stop!" I cried. "You will have me hypnotized. See, I'm on the 'hy's' myself! Please explain--not sing."

"Well," she laughed, "you see it's this way. I have to eat, drink, and try to be merry, or to-morrow I die, so to postpone to-morrow I am working on a new dictionary. _Somebody_ has to work on dictionaries, you know, and justify the p.r.o.nunciation of America to man. I'm sort of learned, in a mild, harmless, anti-militant way. It isn't fair to keep the truth from you--_I have a degree in philology!_ My doctor's thesis was published by the press of my kind University, at $1.50 per copy, of which as many as seventeen were sold, and I'm still paying up the money I borrowed while preparing it. I stood the dictionary pretty well down to the 'hy's,' and then one day something snapped inside of me, and I began to cry. That wouldn't have been so bad, if I hadn't made the mistake of crying on a sheet of ma.n.u.script by a learned professor, about Hyoscyamus (which is a genus of dicotyledonous gamopetalous plants), and the ink ran. Then I knew I should have to take a rest in the cause of English, pure and well defined. So here I am. The doctor tells me I must live out of doors and saw wood."

"Madam," I cried, "G.o.d has sent you! I shall get my orchard cleaned up at last!"

"Breakfast!" called Mrs. Bert.

"Miss Goodwin," I announced at that meal, "is going to saw up the dead wood in my orchard this morning."

"No, she ain't. The idee!" cried Mrs. Bert. "She's jest goin' ter rest up for the next four weeks, an' grow fat."

"You are both wrong," laughed the young lady. "I'm not going to begin on Mr. Upton's wood pile this morning, but I expect to finish it before I go away."

"If thet's how you feel, _I_ got a wood pile," said Bert.

She refused to come down to Twin Fires with me that morning, so I toiled alone, getting out more of the brush from the orchard--all of the small stuff, in fact, which wasn't fit to save for fuel. In the afternoon she consented to come. As I looked at her hands and then at mine, I realized how pale she was.

"It's wrong for anybody to be so pale as that," I thought, "to _have_ to be so pale as that!"

I was beginning to pity her.

When we reached the farm, I took her around under the kitchen window and showed her my seed beds, where the asters were already growing madly, some other varieties were up, and the weeds were busy, too; but in the present uncertainty of my horticultural knowledge I didn't dare pull up anything. I hadn't realized till that moment that half the fun of having a new place is showing it to somebody else and telling how grand it is going to be.

"And where are you going to put these babies when you set them out?"

she asked.