The Garden Doctor 



Chapter XXII 



BUT CLARKY would insist that 

 cows were an essential part of rural 

 life. "No well equipped farm could 

 exist without them, and did I not 

 think the Holstein-Friesian a better all- 

 xound cow than the Jersey, which was too 

 liable to tuberculosis? " Clarky had gotten 

 amazingly interested in farming and live- 

 stock; she even proposed hens — for next 

 year. She seemed to have lost interest in 

 my garden now that the manual training 

 stage had passed and the carpenter work 

 was lacking. But all along she had rather 

 regarded it as a safe amusement and a 

 hygienic one rather than the serious work 

 it was. She woke up a little when Richard 

 Protheroe sent a box of bulbs, and showed 

 me how to plant them properly and set 

 each on a cushion of sand. 



"It prevents a kind of rheumatism," 

 said she. 



We planted Darwin tulips and, down 

 below the old roses, poet's narcissus; and, 

 thick in the grass under the apple trees 

 and beside the doorstep and at the foot 

 of the big lilac, crocuses and snowdrops. 

 These might bloom, I knew, before I 

 could come back, but they would keep 

 the little house company until the lilac 

 bush broke into bloom. 



We had delightful evenings, clear and cool, 

 with the crackling fire indoors for company 

 and the chirping of the crickets outside. 

 Sometimes we would be off on the hills 

 and not come back until long after the dusk 

 had fallen and the moon came up past the 

 pines and made the familiar path won- 

 derful with a strange, unreal beauty. 



But Clarky was too full of rural problems 

 to take these loafing rambles restfully 

 enough. She wanted to reform the old 

 orchards that we passed and, in her mind, 

 stopped and pruned them so that they 

 should bear fruit and be useful instead of 

 abandoning themselves to the busy, rest- 

 less swarm of insect life and bird life that 

 to me they seemed contentedly mother- 

 ing. Clarky talked rural sanitation and 

 instruction in cooking and nursing and 

 handicraft — useful indeed, I admit, but 

 too stimulating — and I had grown in love 

 with loafing. Besides, had I not a right? 

 Was I not a sure-enough invalid perfectly 

 entitled to months of convalescence? I 

 had had the discomforts of illness, now I 

 proposed to have the joys, whereof an al- 

 most infantine freedom from a sense of 

 responsibility is the chief. 



Concluded from page 152, November number 



So I let Clarky write her plans of parish 

 reform to Richard Protheroe and I went 

 up the hill with Stephen to fetch pine- 

 needles for my garden's winter bedding, 

 and we brought down cones for the fire- 

 place; all of which was eminently useful, 

 quite as useful, to my mind, as arranging 

 the lives and digestions for a community 

 who really seemed quite content without 

 such aid. 



Stephen, apparently, had another at- 

 tack of pressing business up the hill, like 

 the one which sent him logging in the 

 spring just when the hill was loveliest. 

 We would go up the hill with the horses, 

 then leave them, and walk across through 

 the woods. I had gotten stronger by now, 

 and could walk mile after mile through 

 the golden woods, if I had the "lift" up 

 the hill. Stephen was painting a bit of 

 the forest he loved with a color and feeling 

 which it seemed should make the beauty 

 of it visible to any but the blind. 



It was now October, and the gold and 

 purple had left the open and withdrawn 

 to the hills; the woods were all golden, 

 clear and still, the air fine and sharp and 

 went to one's head like wine; the leaves 

 were crisp underfoot and the feathery 

 young hemlocks seemed awake and alive 

 as never before. 



In my forest, the level beechwoods 

 where the thrushes lived, was a carpet of 

 coppery beech leaves, and high overhead 

 a few dark pines mingled their tops with 

 the slow, dull, magnificent crimson of the 

 great oak trees. 



In October Madame Nature seems to 

 take a wicked, mischievous delight in 

 trying to stir the senses of the New Eng- 

 lander with a sudden, almost shameless 

 flaunting of her gorgeous beauty — up 

 and down his hills, round and about, 

 under his feet and over his head, as if she 

 were trying to wake a bit of passion for 

 herself in his chill and unresponsive breast. 

 But for the most part, he remains a very 

 St. Anthony! 



Stephen McLeod and I made long ex- 

 cursions through the woods, walking mile 

 after mile in a silence that was broken only 

 by the crackling of twigs underfoot — 

 under my foot usually, for Stephen walked 

 with the silence and sureness of an Indian. 

 Again and again we would come on one 

 of those wonderful garden spots, odd little 

 sheltered places, curiously warm, where 

 the summer lingers as if by enchantment 

 — now a rock side with moss as green 

 and dripping as if it were May and the 



189 



courageous little herb Robert snatching 

 a scant foothold and blossoming as if 

 there had been no such thing as frost to 

 turn the goldenrod to ashes and snap 

 the maple leaves. Sometimes we came 

 so close to a partridge that I could see its 

 markings as plainly as if it had been a 

 barnyard fowl, and the quick, sensitive 

 head, which never a barnyard fowl possess- 

 es and makes one wonder if domestication 

 had really improved — except in the mat- 

 ter of flesh. 



Then we would have a Robinson Crusoe 

 luncheon of beechnuts and some curious 

 flat pine kernels and coffee made over an 

 incredibly small fire that was carefully 

 extinguished before we "broke camp." 



Then down the hill we would come, the 

 wagon piled with bags of needles and cones 

 for the fire, facing a sunset that flamed 

 crimson through the dark pine trunks. 



Often Stephen would stay for supper, 

 sit and smoke by the fire with the kitten 

 curled on his knee and Clarky, being in- 

 dustrious, would sew. She was making 

 some big nurse's aprons. I suppose, if 

 I had been a creditable specimen of woman- 

 kind I would have sewed also, but I had 

 watched the cows too long. Besides, no 

 one can loaf like an active person who 

 once gets the habit, and I was recovering 

 from the vice of over-industry. 



Sometimes Stephen would pull a book 

 out of his pocket and read. Keats or 

 Shelley he would be likely to have in the 

 big pocket of that canvas coat or some of 

 "Paradise Lost." He liked the grandeur 

 of the slow-moving lines, very much as he 

 liked his mountain. But he never read 

 any of these to Clarky. I think the rural 

 sanitation alarmed him for his favorites, 

 although Shelley, surely, would have been 

 interested in the subject. Instead, he 

 read John Woolman, that curiously prac- 

 tical idealist, or else the charming "Letters 

 of an American Farmer," an out-of-print, 

 before-the-Revolution book. It was easy 

 to understand why he liked it, for Hector 

 St. John de Crevecceur must have been 

 a farmer after Stephen's own heart, with 

 his keen sense of the color and beauty and 

 his care, not only to feed the quail, but to 

 strew chaff, on winter mornings, that 

 their feet might not become chilled while 

 breakfasting. 



The wild pigeon, which, in Crevecceur 's 

 time, were evidently as abundant as Eng- 

 lish sparrows in town, have disappeared 

 completely. What a pity we must always 

 bring a trail of slaughter and destruction! 



