I laughed.
“That reminds me of a family of squirrels that lives in an oak tree on my hill,” I said. “I am never tired of watching them. In the fall they work desperately, stealing all the hickory nuts and chestnuts on my neighbour Horace's back pastures, five times as many as they need, and then they forget, half the time, where they've hidden them. We're all more or less in the squirrel stage of civilization.”
“Yes,” she responded. “There are my books! I gathered up books for years, just squirrel fashion, until I forgot what I had or where I put them. You cannot know what joy I'm going to have in selecting just the essential books, the ones I want by me for daily companions. All the others, I see now, are temporary rubbish.”
“And you've made your selections?”
“No, but I'm making them. You'll laugh when you come next time and I show them to you. Oh, I am going to be stern with myself. I'm not going to put a single book in that case for show, nor a single one to give the impression that I'm profoundly interested in Egypt or Maeterlinck or woman suffrage, when I'm positively not.”
“It's terribly risky,” I said.
“And I'm terribly reckless,” she responded.
As I went onward toward the town I looked back from the hilltop beyond the big house for a last glimpse of the reconstructed barn, and with a curious warm sense of having been admitted to a new adventure. Here was life changing under my eyes! Here was a human being struggling with one of the deep common problems that come to all of us. The revolt from things! The struggle with superfluities!
And yet as I walked along the cool aisles of the woods with the quiet fields opening here and there to the low hill ridges, and saw the cattle feeding, and heard a thrush singing in a thicket, I found myself letting go—how can I explain it?—relaxing! I had been keyed up to a high pitch there in that extraordinary room, Yes, it was beautiful—and yet as I thought of the sharp little green gate, the new gable, the hard, clean mantel with the cloisonne vase, it wanted something....
As I was gathering the rowen crop of after-enjoyment which rewards us when we reflect freshly upon our adventures, whom should I meet but Richard Starkweather himself in his battered machine. The two boys, one of whom was driving, and the little girl, were with him.
“How are you, David?” he called out. “Whoa, there! Draw up, Jamie.”
We looked at each other for a moment with that quizzical, half-humorous look that so often conveys, better than any spoken words, the sympathetic greeting of friends. I like Richard Starkweather.
He had come up from the city looking rather worn, for the weather had been trying. He has blue, honest, direct-gazing eyes with small humour wrinkles at the corners. I never knew a man with fewer theories, or with a simpler devotion to the thing at hand, whatever it may be. At everything else he smiles, not cynically, for he is too modest in his regard for his own knowledge; he smiles at everything else because it doesn't seem quite real to him.
“Been up to see Mary's new house?” he asked.
“Yes,” And for the life of me I couldn't help smiling in response.
“It's a wonder isn't it?”
He thought his wife a very extraordinary woman. I remember his saying to me once, “David, she's got the soul of a poet and the brain of a general.”
“It is a wonder,” I responded.
“I can't decide yet what chair to sit in, nor just what she wants the kids to do.”
I still smiled.
“I expect she hasn't determined yet,” he went drawling on, “in what chair I will look most decorative.”
He ruminated.
“You know, she's got the idea that there's too much of everything. I guess there is, too—and that she ought to select only those things that an essential. I've been wondering, if she had more than one husband whether or not she'd select me——”
The restless young Jamie was now starting the machine, and Richard Starkweather leaned out and said to me in parting:
“isn't she a wonder! Did all the planning herself—wouldn't have an architect—wouldn't have a decorator—all I could do—”
As he turned around I saw him throw one arm carelessly about the shoulders of the sturdy younger boy who sat next him.
When I got home I told Harriet all about what I had seen and heard. I think I must feel when I am retailing such fascinating neighbourhood events to Harriet—how she does enjoy them!—I must feel very much as she does when she is urging me to have just a little more of the new gingerbread.
In the next few months I watched with indescribable interest the unfolding of the drama of Mary Starkweather. I saw her from time to time that summer and she seemed, and I think she was, happier than ever she had been before in her whole life. Making over her garden, selecting the “essential books,” choosing the best pictures for her rooms, even reforming the clothing of the boys, all with an emphasis upon perfect simplicity—her mind was completely absorbed. Occasionally Richard appeared upon the stage, a kind of absurd Greek chorus of one, who remarked what a wonderful woman this was and poked fun at himself and at the new house, and asserted that Mary could be as simple as ever she liked, he insisted on thick soup for dinner and would not sacrifice his beloved old smoking jacket upon the altar of any new idea.
“She's a wonder, David,” he'd wind up: “but this simple life is getting more complicated every day.”
It was in December, about the middle of the month, as I remember, that I had a note one day from Mary Starkweather.
“The next time you go to town,” it ran, “stop in and see me. I've made a discovery.”
With such a note as that us my hand it appeared imperative that I go to town at once. I discovered, to Harriet's astonishment, that we were running out of all sorts of necessaries.
“Now, David,” she said, “you know perfectly well that you're just making up to call on Mary Starkweather.”
“That,” I said, “relieves my conscience of a great burden.”
As I went out of the door I heard her saying: “Why Mary Starkweather should care to live in her barn....”
It was a sparkling cold day, sun on the snow and the track crunching under one's feet, and I walked swiftly and with a warm sense of coming adventure.
To my surprise there was no smoke in the cottage chimney, and when I reached the door I found a card pinned upon it:
PLEASE CALL AT THE HOUSE
Mary Starkweather herself opened the door—she had seen me coming—and took me into the big comfortable old living-room, the big, cluttered, overfurnished living-room, with the two worn upholstered chairs at the fireplace, in which a bright log fire was now burning. There was a pleasant litter of books and magazines, and a work basket on the table, and in the bay window an ugly but cheerful green rubber plant in a tub.
“Well!” I exclaimed.
“Don't smile—not yet.”
As I looked at her I felt not at all like smiling.
“I know,” she was saying, “it does have a humorous side. I can see that. Dick has seen it all along. Do you know, although Dick pretends to pooh-pooh everything intellectual, he has a really penetrating mind.”
I had a sudden vision of Dick in his old smoking jacket, standing in the midst of the immaculate cottage that was once a barn, holding his pipe with one finger crooked around the stem just in front of his nose in the way he had, and smiling across at me.
“Have you deserted the cottage entirely?”
“Oh, we may possibly go back in the spring———” She paused and looked into the fire, her fine, strong face a little sad in composure, full of thought.
“I am trying to be honest with myself David. Honest above everything else. That's fundamental. It seems to me I have wanted most of all to learn how to live my life more freely and finely.... I thought I was getting myself free of things when, as a matter of fact, I was devoting more time to them than ever before-and, besides that, making life more or less uncomfortable for Dick and the children. So I've taken my courage squarely in my hands and come back here into this blessed old home, this blessed, ugly, stuffy old home—I've learned that lesson.”
At this, she glanced up at me with that rare smile which sometimes shines out of her very nature: the smile that is herself.
“I found,” she said, “that when I had finished the work of becoming simple—there was nothing else left to do.”
I laughed outright, for I couldn't help it, and she joined me. How we do like people who can laugh at themselves.
“But,” I said, “there was sound sense in a great deal that you were trying to do.”
“The fireplace smoked; and the kitchen sink froze up; and the cook left because we couldn't keep her room warm.”
“But you were right,” I interrupted, “and I am not going to be put off by smoking fireplaces or chilly cooks; you were right. We do have too much, we are smothered in things, we don't enjoy what we do have—”
I paused.
“And you were making a beautiful thing, a beautiful house.”
“The trouble with making a beautiful thing,” she replied, “is that when you have got it done you must straightway make another. Now I don't want to keep on building houses or furnishing rooms. I am not after beauty—I mean primarily—what I want is to live, live simply, live greatly.”
She was desperately in earnest.
“Perhaps,” I said, feeling as though I were treading on dangerous ground, “you were trying to be simple for the sake of being simple. I wonder if true simplicity is ever any thing but a by-product. If we aim directly for it, it eludes us: but if we are on fire with some great interest that absorbs on lives to the uttermost, we forget ourselves into simplicity, Everything falls into simple lines around us, like a worn garment.”
I had the rather uncomfortable feeling on the way home that I had been preachy; and the moment you became preachy begin to build up barriers between yourself and your friends: but that's a defect of character I've never been able, quite, to overcome. I keep thinking I've got the better of it, but along will come a beautiful temptation and down I go—and come out as remorseful as I was that afternoon on the way home from Mary Starkweather's.
A week or two later I happened to meet Richard Starkweather on the street in Hempfield. He was on his way home.
“Yes,” he said, “we're in the old house again until spring, anyway. I haven't been so comfortable in a year. And, say,” here he looked at me quizzically, “Mary has joined the new cemetery association; you know they're trying to improve the resting places of the forefathers, and, by George, if they didn't elect her chairman at the first meeting. She's a wonder!”
CHAPTER XIII. HIS MAJESTY—BILL RICHARDS
Well, I have just been having an amusing and delightful adventure and have come to know a Great Common Person. His name is Bill Richards, and he is one of the hereditary monarchs of America. He belongs to our ruling dynasty.
I first saw Bill about two weeks ago, and while I was strongly interested in him I had no idea, at the time, that I should ever come to know him well. It was a fine June day, and I was riding on the new trolley line that crosses the hills to Hewlett—a charming trip through a charming country—and there in the open car just in front of me sat Bill himself. One huge bare forearm rested on the back of the seat, the rich red blood showing through the weathered brown of the skin. His clean brown neck rose strongly from the loose collar of his shirt, which covered but could not hide the powerful lines of his shoulders. He wore blue denim and khaki, and a small round felt hat tipped up jauntily at the back. He had crisp, coarse light hair rather thin—not by age, but by nature—so that the ruddy scalp could be seen through it, and strong jaws and large firm features, and if the beard was two days old, his face was so brown, so full of youthful health, that it gave no ill impression.
He could not sit still for the very life that was in him. He seemed to have some grand secret with the conductor and frequently looked around at him, his eyes full of careless laughter, and once or twice he called out—some jocose remark. He helped the conductor, in pantomime, to pull the cord and stop or start the car, and he watched with the liveliest interest each passenger getting on or getting off. A rather mincing young girl with a flaring red ribbon at her throat was to him the finest comedy in the world, so that he had to wink a telegram to the conductor about her. An old woman with a basket of vegetables who delayed the car was exquisitely funny.
I set him down as being about twenty-two years old and some kind of outdoor workman, not a farmer.
When he got off, which was before the car stopped, so that he had to jump and run with it, he gave a wild flourish with both arms, grimaced at the conductor, and went off down the road whistling for all he was worth. How I enjoyed the sight of him! He was so charged with youthful energy, so overflowing with the joy of life, that he could scarcely contain himself. What a fine place the world was to him! And what comical and interesting people it contained! I was sorry when he got off.
Two or three days later I was on my way up the town road north of my farm when I was astonished and delighted to see Bill for the second time. He was coming down the road pulling a wire over the crosspiece of a tall telephone pole (the company is rebuilding and enlarging its system through our town). He was holding the wire close drawn over his right shoulder, his strong hands gripped and pressed upon his breast. The veins stood out in his brown neck where the burlap shoulder pad he wore was drawn aside by the wire. He leaned forward, stepping first on his toe, which he dug into the earth and then, heavily letting down his heel, he drew the other foot forward somewhat stiffly. The muscles stood out in his powerful shoulders and thighs. His legs were double-strapped with climbing spurs. He was a master lineman.
As I came alongside he turned a good-humoured sweaty face toward me.
“It's dang hot,” said he.
“It is,” said I.
There is something indescribably fascinating about the sight of a strong workman in the full swing of his work, something—yes, beautiful! A hard pull of a job, with a strong man doing it joyfully, what could be finer to see? And he gave such a jaunty sense of youth and easy strength!
I watched him for some time, curiously interested, and thought I should like well to know him, but could not see just how to go about it.
The man astride the cross-arm who was heaving the wire forward from the spool on the distant truck suddenly cried out:
“Ease up there, Bill, she's caught.”
So Bill eased up and drew his arm across his dripping face.
“How many wires are you putting up?” I asked, fencing for some opening.
