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THE IDYL OF TWIN FIRES




[Illustration: "So that is why you wanted my brook to come from the
spring!"]




THE IDYL OF TWIN FIRES

BY

WALTER PRICHARD EATON

Illustrated by Thomas Fogarty

GROSSET & DUNLAP

Publishers : : New York




Copyright, 1914, 1915, by Doubleday, Page & Company

All rights reserved, including that of translation
into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian




CONTENTS

       I. I Buy a Farm on Sight                                  3
      II. My Money Goes and My Farmer Comes                     19
     III. New Joy in an Old Orchard                             34
      IV. I Pump up a Ghost                                     47
       V. I Am Humbled by a Drag Scraper                        66
      VI. The Hermit Sings at Twilight                          77
     VII. The Ghost of Rome in Roses                            88
    VIII. I Pick Paint and a Quarrel                           102
      IX. We Seat Thoreau in the Chimney Nook, and I
          Write a Sonnet                                       113
       X. We Climb a Hill Together                             130
      XI. Actaeon and Diana                                     143
     XII. Shopping as a Dissipation                            155
    XIII. The Advent of the Pilligs                            164
     XIV. The First Lemon Pie                                  177
      XV. A Pagan Thrush                                       192
     XVI. I Go to New York for a Purpose                       204
    XVII. I Do Not Return Alone                                220
   XVIII. We Build a Pool                                      227
     XIX. The Nice Other Things                                237
      XX. Callers                                              245
     XXI. Autumn in the Garden                                 252
    XXII. In Praise of Country Winter                          264
   XXIII. Spring in the Garden                                 275
    XXIV. Some Rural Problems                                  282
     XXV. _Horas Non Numero Nisi Serenas_                      297




ILLUSTRATIONS

  "So that is why you wanted my brook to come from
  the spring!"                                       _Frontispiece_
  She was sitting with a closed book on her knee,
  gazing into the fire                                         124
  "Well, well, you've got yourself a bookay,"
  she said                                                     174
  "We are your neighbours... you are very
  fortunate to have us for neighbours"                         246




THE IDYL OF TWIN FIRES




Chapter I

I BUY A FARM ON SIGHT


I was sitting at a late hour in my room above the college Yard,
correcting daily themes. I had sat at a late hour in my room above
the college Yard, correcting daily themes, for it seemed an interminable
number of years--was it six or seven? I had no great love for it,
certainly. Some men who go into teaching, and of course all men who
become great teachers, do have a genuine love for their work. But I am
afraid I was one of those unfortunates who take up teaching as a
stop-gap, a means of livelihood while awaiting "wider opportunities."
These opportunities in my case were to be the authorship of an
epoch-making novel, or a great drama, or some similar masterpiece. I
had been accredited with "brilliant promise" in my undergraduate days,
and the college had taken me into the English department upon graduation.

Well, that was seven years ago. I was still correcting daily themes.

It was a warm night in early April. I had a touch of spring fever, and
wrote vicious, sarcastic comments on the poor undergraduate pages of
unexpressiveness before me, as through my open windows drifted up from
the Yard a snatch of song from some returning theatre party. Most of
these themes were hopeless. Your average man has no sense of literature.
Moreover, by the time he reaches college it is too late to teach him
even common, idiomatic expressiveness. That ought to be done in the
secondary schools--and isn't. I toiled on. Near the bottom of the
pile came the signature, James Robinson. I opened the sheet with relief.
He was one of the few in the class with the real literary instinct--a
lad from some nearby New England village who went home over Sunday and
brought back unconscious records of his changing life there. I enjoyed
the little drama, for I, too, had come from a suburban village, and knew
the first bitter awakening to its narrowness.

I opened the theme, and this is what I read:

    "The April sun has come at last, and the first warmth of it
    lays a benediction on the spirit, even as it tints the earth
    with green. Our barn door, standing open, framed a picture
    this morning between walls of golden hay--the soft rolling
    fields, the fringe of woodland beyond veiled with a haze of
    budding life, and then the far line of the hills. A horse
    stamped in the shadows; a hen strolled out upon the floor,
    cooting softly; there was a warm, earthy smell in the air, the
    distant church bell sounded pleasantly over the fields, and
    up the road I heard the rattle of Uncle Amos's carryall,
    bearing the family to meeting. The strife of learning, the
    pride of the intellect, the academic urge--where were they? I
    found myself wandering out from the barnyard into the fields,
    filled with a great longing to hold a plow in the furrow till
    tired out, and then to lie on my back in the sun and watch
    the lazy clouds."

So Robinson had spring fever, too! How it makes us turn back home! I
made some flattering comment or other on the paper (especially, I recall,
starring the verb _coot_ as good hen lore), and put it with the rest.
Then I fell to dreaming. Home! I, John Upton, academic bachelor, had
no home, no parents, no kith nor kin. I had my study lined with books,
my little monastic bedroom behind it, my college position, and a shabby
remnant of my old ambitions. The soft "coot, coot" of a hen picking up
grain on the old barn floor! I closed my eyes in delicious memory--memory
of my grandfather's farm down in Essex County. The sweet call of the
village church bell came back to me, the drone of the preacher, the
smell of lilacs outside, the stamp of an impatient horse in the horse
sheds where liniment for man and beast was advertised on tin posters!

"Why don't I go back to it, and give up this grind?" I thought. Then,
being an English instructor, I added learnedly, "and be a disciple of
Rousseau!"

It was a warm April night, and I was foolish with spring fever. I began
to play with the idea. I got up and opened my tin box, to investigate
the visible paper tokens of my little fortune. There was, in all, about
$30,000, the result of my legacy from my parents and my slender savings
from my slender salary, for I had never had any extravagances except
books and golf balls. I had heard of farms being bought for $1,500. That
would still leave me more than $1,200 a year. Perhaps, with the freedom
from this college grind, I could write some of those masterpieces at
last--even a best seller! I grew as rosy with hope as an undergraduate.
I looked at myself in the glass--not yet bald, face smooth, rather
academic, shoulders good, thanks to daily rowing. Hands hard, too! I
sought for a copy of the _Transcript_, and ran over the real estate
ads. Here was a gentleman's estate, with two butler's pantries and a
concrete garage--_that_ would hardly do! No, I should have to consult
somebody