WE wanted Cherry to play, but we did not feel that we ought to ask her to do it; she would be tired, after her journey, and piano playing to her was no novelty.
But when, after dinner, while passing through the sitting room, on our way to the veranda she ran a harmony enticing hand over the keys as she walked by the piano, I could not help saying,
“Don’t you feel like following that up with the other hand?”
She laughed, and sitting down at the piano she said, “Why, certainly. What shall it be?”
“Oh, we leave that to you,” said Ethel. “Play what you like and you’ll play what we like.”
“Is Grieg getting old fashioned?” I asked.
“I never inquired,” said Cherry. “I don’t believe in fashions in arts. I liked Grieg, and Schumann, and Beethoven, and Mendelssohn, and Wagner, and Johann Strauss when I was a child, and so I’ll always like them. And Grieg is always fresh. What shall I play—‘Anitra’s Dance’?”
“Yes, do,” said Ethel. “I never hear that without thinking of Seidl and Brighton Beach and the throngs of doting Brooklyn women who didn’t go to hear the music, but to see Seidl. But it was beautiful music—when the roar of the surf didn’t drown it.”
Cherry found the piano stool at just the right height, and without any airs or graces beyond those which were part of her endowment, she started in to play. The windows were open and the music and the moonlight, and the hum of the insects, and the landscape became indissolubly blended, and I blessed Minerva once more for the truly “Puss-in-boots” service she had rendered to the “Marquis of Carabas.”
The dance ended, Cherry turned around on the piano stool and said,
“Minerva chose a very nice piano.”
There was a sound of steps on the porch and the shadow of a man fell across the square hallway. There was also a subdued rap on the door post.
I stepped to the door and found a tramp standing there. He was the typical tramp of the comic papers; unshaven, dusty, blear-eyed, unkempt, stoop shouldered, ragged, un-prepossessing.
“What do you wish?” said I, irritated at the interruption.
He hesitated a moment.
“I’d like a glass of milk,” said he, huskily.
“Well, go around to the back door and the girl will give you one. Don’t you want some meat?”
“Thanks; I don’t care if I do,” said he, wiping his mouth as if my invitation had been a bibulous one.
He went around, and I returned to the sitting room, where Cherry had started another piece.
“Do you have many tramps?” asked she when she had finished.
“Not many. They are too lazy to climb the hills. I think he is only the third one this summer. He was awful looking. Did you see him?”
“No,” said Ethel and Cherry together.
“What a life! Probably not a wish in the world but for food and drink.”
My moralizing was cut short by the return of the tramp. In his right hand he held a sandwich and with his left he was wiping milk from his moustache.
As he passed the window he beckoned to me, who was sitting by it.
I supposed that he wanted money, and went out.
“Say, boss,” said he, “I’m pretty far gone, but you didn’t set the dog on me, and I want you to ask that young lady in there a favour.”
“What is it?”
“Ask her to play the ‘Dance of the Dwarfs’ in the same suite—‘Peer Gint.’”
“Sit down,” said I, and felt as if I needed a seat myself.
The oafish tramp sat down on the porch seat, and I went in and told Cherry what the tramp would like to hear.
Surprise showed in her face, but quite as a matter of course she went to the piano and began the lumbering, humourous dance.
In the middle of it I could hear the tramp laughing gutturally, and when she had finished it he clapped his hands and said,
“Beg pardon, but I’m much obliged. That’s one of the funniest pieces of music that was ever composed. Say, boss, will you step out a minute.”
I stepped out. He had risen and was evidently going.
“Boss, I used to be one of the second violins in Seidl’s orchestra, but—well,—that’s how. I was go’n’ by here, for I had had som’n’ to eat at the last house, but when I heard ‘Anitra’s Dance,’ gee! it brought back the good old days when I was doing the only thing I ever cared for, fiddling; and I thought I’d ask for some more, and then I didn’t dare until I’d been around to the kitchen and braced up. Thank the young lady for me.”
He shuffled out to the road.
“You wronged him, Philip,” said Ethel when I returned. “Think of his knowing ‘Peer Gint.’”
Cherry wiped her eyes and broke into a chorus from “Iolanthe.”
SUNDAY it rained until late in the afternoon, but at that time a westerly wind sprang up which rapidly dried things, and enabled us to go out for a sunset walk.
“This is a place in which to do nothing but be happy,” said Cherry to Ethel as we stood on top of our favorite rock and looked up the valley for miles and miles, watching belated and feathery clouds fly across it, trying to catch up with the rain clouds that had all day long swept by.
“That’s what I felt when I first came up,” said Ethel, “but I’m beginning to feel so strong now that Philip has sent for a lawn tennis set, and James is going to mark a court, and you and I can play against Philip.”
“Yes, and while we’re waiting for it to come,” said I, “we’ll have to pitch in and give our next-door neighbour a spell of work at hay-making.”
“What’s a spell of work?” asked Cherry.
“Why, it’s falling to, and helping your neighbour this week, and next week he falls to, and helps you.”
“Oh, how delicious. And do you know how to make hay?”
“Anyone can learn how in a single morning. First you cut it, then you toss it, and then you gather it. It’s as easy as lying.”
“I’m afraid I’ll never learn it,” said Cherry demurely.
“I was reading somewhere,” said I, “that in Germany, where they learn to be economical from the beginning, the navy is supported—or else it’s the army is supported entirely on the hay that Americans would leave in the corners and the by-ways. I’ve no doubt that the Emperor William commands his people in a heaven-sent message to get out their nail scissors and cut the little blades in the remote corners that nothing be lost, and as ‘mony a mickle maks a muckle,’ he pays for his army out of the hay crop that would become withered grass with us. Now to-morrow, when we go over to help the Windhams, you must remember to account each blade of grass as equal in value to any other blade.”
“What will Mr. Windham say to women working?”
“Well, the idea! Ethel. Did any Yankee farmer ever object to women working? And isn’t it better to work out-of-doors than to work indoors? I’d rather you lifted forkfuls of hay than have you lift heavy mattresses and furniture and things, and it’s better to rake hay than to sweep floors.”
“When Philip gets on a topic like that, the best thing to do is to just let him talk it out,” said Ethel. “Don’t say a word, and he’ll burn up for lack of fuel.”
“Which is a logical remark,” said I.
“But it will be too perfectly delightful to go out like Boaz and glean.”
“You may possibly mean Ruth,” said I.
“I do. I always mix them up. Boaz seems like a woman’s name. Do you think it will rain to-morrow?”
“To-morrow,” said I, with a glance at the west where the sun, a red ball, was disappearing in a cloudless sky, “will be a good hay day.”
And to-morrow was. We rose and breakfasted early and found when we looked at the thermometer that it was already 78, but there was a west wind blowing to temper the heat.
“They’re already at work, aren’t they?” said Cherry as we started out, the women clad in walking skirts and shirt-waists and broad-brimmed hats, and I bare headed and outing shirted.
“My dear child, they have been at work for the last four hours.”
I had told Windham what to expect, and when he saw us coming he said, “That’s right. The more the merrier. You’ll find rakes there by the fence.”
I told him that I would mow a little, as I had done it when a boy.
“Good work,” said he, and let me take his own scythe while he drove a loaded wagon home.
I started in at a field that they had not intended to attack until after lunch, but Windham said it would make no difference. Ethel and Cherry raked as if they were sweeping, and I am not sure that their money value could have been represented by any undue use of figures. I vaulted the fence and began my fell work, taking care to keep close to the edge and demolishing every last blade of grass. I also found that my method of attack spared a little mouthful of grass at each stroke, and when I had gone down the length of the field and had stuck the point of the scythe in the earth twice, and had cut the end off of a stone, and had lunged into the fence, I determined to rest a minute and try to recall the proper way in which to hold the scythe.
The way back was easier, as I was now one remove from the fence. I poised the scythe in such a manner that I reaped what I had before spared, but found, upon looking back over the path by which I had come, that I had spared a few inches in each swathe. I seemed to be unable to make a long, clean sweep. And my back felt like breaking and I was sweating in a manner unbecoming a gentleman.
That, however, did not worry me at all, as I reflected that on my father’s side I was the first gentleman that had appeared in America for nine generations—all the rest had been of the bone and sinew of the nation.
When people talk about pride of ancestry in my hearing, and their pride of ancestry is based on the fact that they have had fine blood in their veins for generations, I inflate my chest and tell them about my maternal ancestors, the Durbans. Not a man did a stroke of work for eight generations, and they lived in cities and looked down on country folk in a manner that was as aristocratic as could be. When my mother married my father, who had been born and bred a country boy, all the Durbans held up their hands in holy horror and said that my mother would never draw a happy breath again.
Yet she went on drawing one happy breath after another, until she died, and my father knew his first unhappiness when she departed.
But when I meet people who laugh at lineage and genealogy, I do not speak of the Durbans at all. I say, “Yes, pride of lineage is foolish. The Vernons have been plain country folk ever since they came over in 1639, and not one of them was ever celebrated for anything—not even for his wickedness. They’ve just been Yankee countrymen, and so, of course, pride of ancestry is a foolish thing.”
Whenever you hear a man laughing at pride of ancestry, you may be sure that his ancestors were no better than my fathers were. But if he is always talking about his ancestry, depend upon it, he has something back of him as good as the Durbans, and his forbears looked down on farmers.
We worked until the whistles at Egerton blew for noon, and I had by that time devastated quite a patch of grass.
Windham had been busy in other places all the morning, and when he came to look at what I had done he made no reference to the thrift of the Germans. He looked at the regular patches of spared blades that were holding their heads high amidst the blades that had fallen so bravely, and said,
“How would you like to drive the rake this afternoon?”
I blushed and said that I believed that would be a change of work.
I did not laugh at the somewhat amateur raking of Ethel and Cherry. Hay-making is an art, and beginners learn better by encouragement than by ridicule.
We had brought our lunch, and we picnicked under the spreading branches of an oak, and found that we were feeling “pretty good.” And we had six red arms to our credit—four of them pretty.
THE week passed so quickly, with our hay-making and our getting over our hay-making and our pleasant walks—we did not attempt to drive out again behind “th’ ould scut”,—and the attractive meals that Minerva cooked and the pleasant music that Cherry found within the piano, that when Friday came, and Cherry asked me if I had found a team to carry her down, Ethel said,
“It’s all nonsense, your thinking of going back. Philip, she says that she hasn’t made any plans at all, beyond thinking of going to Bar Harbor in September to visit her aunt.”
“Well, then, Cherry, it will be downright unkind in you to ask me to hunt up a team yet awhile. Just stay on until the haying season is over, and we can go down behind a real horse.”
“Well, of course I’m having a perfectly delicious time,” said Cherry, putting her arms around Ethel’s shoulders affectionately, “and I’d much rather stay than go, but it seems like—”
“It doesn’t seem like anything at all,” said Ethel, “except that we want you to stay. And, besides, we want you to meet Ellery Sibthorp.”
“Ellery Sibthorp,” said Cherry with a laugh. “Is that his real name?”
“That’s his real name, the one he writes under, and Philip asked me to ask him up. He’s all alone in the world and is struggling to make a name for himself.”
“Mercy, I should think he had one ready made. Ellery Sibthorp. It’s as valuable as Rudyard Kipling.”
“Wait till you see him,” said I. “He’s poor as a church mouse and as clean as a whistle, and as good as gold.”
“Oh, I’m simply dying to see him. When does he come? And how will you get him up?”
“Egerton livery, this time. And he’s coming Monday. So you see, if you were to go to-morrow, you wouldn’t see him.”
“Tell me something about him. Of course I’ll stay. How old is he? Is he married?”
“Oh, no. I guess he’s about twenty-eight, and he’s one of the great unrecognized. Good, but different, so he’s got to wait.”
“Hasn’t he had anything accepted?”
“Oh, a few things, but not enough to make him hopeless of success.”
“Oh, is he that type?”
“A little. If he finally takes the world by storm, he won’t be among those who are surprised.”
“And what do you think of him?”
“I? Oh, I think he’s young and can afford to wait, but I guess he’s one of the real ones. It won’t do him any harm to wait.”
“That always sounds so merciless,” said Ethel. She and Cherry were sitting on a settee under a maple. She turned to her friend. “Half the time he lives on next to nothing, and yet Philip says that it will do him no harm to wait. He may starve before the world finds him out.”
“Even if he does, he’ll be the happier in the world to come,” said I. “But don’t look for a sad-eyed, posing, long-haired, hollow-cheeked poet. Sibthorp sticks to prose, and he has a sense of humour that keeps him sane and satisfied and hopeful. I really think that if he were to be tremendously successful now that life would lose something of its savour. He feels in a vague way that he belongs to the line of those who have had to toil and wait before recognition came, and the thought is not distasteful.”
“Will he read to us, or will he be like you, and never read anything of his own?”
“Oh, he’ll read, if you press him—”
Just then we heard moans that we had supposed were never to be heard again, and Minerva came running out of the house.
“Oh, Mist. Vernon, Miss Pussy has fell down the well.”
“Not really?” said Ethel, jumping up from the settee. “Oh, Philip, you must get her out at once. We never can drink the water again.”
“Are you sure she’s there, Minerva?”
“’Deed I am. I had the top off to fix that chain that got unhooked agin, an’ she must have jumped up awn the edge and then fell in. She’ll be drowned, sure.”
“Where’s James?” said I, hurrying through the house.
“He’s gone home.”
“Well, you go get him. I’ll fish for the cat, but he’d be more likely to get her if he went down. Hurry!”
Our drinking water was pumped out of the well, that was under the kitchen, by means of an endless chain furnished with rubber buckets, and while the well was some thirty feet deep, it would not be much of a job for a man used to it to go down and rescue the cat, supposing that its nine lives held out until he came. I did not think of going down, because I cannot swim, and a single false step would have meant drowning for me, and the husband who throws away his life for a cat has a false sense of values.
Minerva rushed out to within bawling distance of James, and I lighted a candle and lowered it by means of a clothes line for about ten feet.
“I see her! She’s swimming!” I exclaimed, and then the candle went out and I drew it up.
I then tied an eight-quart pail on the line and lowered that, and when I felt it hitting water I called to the cat reassuringly, hoping that it would have sense enough to get inside of the pail. I pulled and felt the weight of the cat.
“I’ve got her,” said I to Ethel and Cherry, who stood, interested spectators, at the kitchen door.
“Oh, how fortunate,” said Ethel.
“Yes, Minerva needn’t have called James. My, the cat must be water logged. She’s heavy.”
I pulled hand over hand, and at last the pail was near enough for me to reach down and taking it’s bail, pull it over the edge.
It was full to overflowing—with water.
“Where’s the cat?” said Ethel in astonishment.
“Cat’s gone back.”
I lowered the bucket again, although I felt that it was time thrown away. While I was trying to attract Miss Pussy’s attention Cherry, looking out into the moonlight, said,
“Here comes James.”
And a minute later he came in. He had not quite reached home when he heard Minerva’s agonized calls, and came in obedience to them.
“Think you can get her, James?” said I.
“I guess so. Light the lantern, Minerva,” said he, and Minerva sprang to the cellar stairs and brought out a lantern which she lighted promptly.
“Think she’s drowned, James?”
“No, sir, cats hate water, but they can swim all right.”
He stepped into the woodshed and came back in a minute with a coil of new clothes line. This he doubled and then tied it around his waist, asking me to hold on to the end of it.
The lantern he fastened to the other rope’s end.
“Keep yourself braced,” said he. “I wont fall, for I’ve often been down there to clean it, but if I do, you can pull me up.”
“Try not to go, James,” said I, looking at his two hundred pounds, and at the slender rope.
We wrenched off the case of the pump, and stepping down he was lost to sight almost immediately.
I lowered the lantern and he made his way to the water.
“Do you suppose the cat slipped?” I asked Minerva.
“I reckon she was thirsty.”
“Well, she won’t be thirsty when she comes out. What do you find, James?”
“A scrubbing brush.”
“Ooh,” said Ethel, and “Ugh,” said Cherry, but Minerva said,
“Lawdy, I wondered what I had done with that.”
“Where’s the cat, James?”
“I’m afraid she’s sunk. She ain’t here. That’s certain.”
“That’s too bad. Coming up?”
“Yes, sir. No use looking any more. She’s gone down.”
I began to pull in the rope, and James began to ascend. Suddenly there was a splash and simultaneously I was pulled forward, and almost went into the well myself.
Minerva shrieked and so did Ethel and Cherry, but James’s voice rose assuringly.
“All right. Missed my footing. My, but this water’s cold.”
We could hear him spluttering.
“Here, lend a hand, all of you, at this rope,” said I, and we all began to pull.
Of course it meant that next day James would have to pump the well dry and get the poor little body of the poor little cat. What a lot of excitement and suspense and labour over one smallish cat. Indeed, what a risk of life, for James might easily have hit his head when he fell.
We hung back on the rope like sailors, and James climbed higher and higher, and at last his black hand came up and grasped the edge of the curb, and a moment later, dripping and shivering, he stood upon the floor.
And then we heard the voice of a cat. I rushed to the well and looked in, but the sounds did not come from there. They came from out of doors.
“That sounds like her,” said James.
“It’s her ghost,” said Minerva. “She’s comin’ to ha’nt me.”
Illogically enough we all pictured the cat standing outside of the door dripping water.
I opened the door and in walked Miss Pussy, as dry as a bone, and began to rub against Minerva’s skirts.
“Why, she’s dry,” said Ethel.
Minerva burst out laughing. “My, I clean forgot. I shut her out doors before I began moppin’.”
WE were sitting at dinner Monday night, all of us wondering why Ellery Sibthorp had not come. We had heard the whistle of the train on which he was to have come, and we had allowed more than time for the livery team to come up, but it was now seven, and we had given him up.
“I’m afraid he missed the train in New York. I wish I’d walked down to the station.”
“Will you please tell me,” said Ethel, “how your going down to Egerton would have prevented his missing the train in New York?”
“Well, I was thinking that perhaps he missed the hackman at Egerton.”
“It’s too perfectly awful of him,” said Cherry, “seeing that I stayed over just to meet him.”
“The disappointment will be his when he sees you,” said I, and at this both of them asked me what was the matter with my wits.
“Have you had an infusion of Irish blood?” asked Ethel.
“I’m thinking of how inhospitable I was not to go down to the train.”
There was a knock at the kitchen door, and Minerva, who had been removing the soup plates, went out to open it.
A light-keyed, pleasant voice said to her,
“Can you tell me where the Vernons live?”
“Right here, sir. Come in won’t yer?”
In through the kitchen came a light step, following Minerva’s heavy one, and as she opened the door into the dining room she said to us informally,
“I guess this is the man you was lookin’ for.”
“Oh, I didn’t know you had company,” said Sibthorp, setting down his grip and removing, or trying to remove his hat. His hand hit it and it fell to the floor, and when he stooped to pick it up he felt flustered, and put it on again, his face turning the colour of a peony.
Ethel rose from her seat and said,
“Mr. Sibthorp, you surely haven’t walked up? May I present you to Miss Paxton?”
“Certainly,” said the poor fellow. “That is, I did, and I’m happy to meet everybody.”
He had taken off his hat again, and I now found his hand and gave it a hearty shake.
“This is your house for the time being, Ellery, old man,” said I, “and Miss Paxton is one of the family, also. We call her Cherry, but it isn’t obligatory. Now hang your hat up in the hall, and I’ll show you where you can find a pitcher and basin, and nobody’s the least bit stiff in this house, so you can feel as happy as if you were by yourself.”
I led him out of the room, and by the time he had explained how he had not seen any hack, and had come up by a short-cut that a farmer told him about, he was feeling more in command of himself. It is really a tax on a man’s self possession to be shown through the kitchen and brought face to face with a strange and exceedingly pretty young woman, and I would not care to have anyone think that Sibthorp was one of those hopelessly diffident fellows, whose every contact with their fellow beings is agony.
When he came back to the table he went over and shook hands with Ethel, and sat down in his seat quite himself.
He was a good-looking fellow, reminding one a little of the pictures of Robert Schumann. His eyes were deep-set and his lips full, and if he had been born twenty years earlier his hair would have been long. The spirit of the times is against excessive hair.
The cow boy had it and stuck to it and—the cow boy is going. Whether artists and literary men pondered on the fate of the cow boy, and in order to save themselves, cut their hair, or not, I am not prepared to say, but it is a fact that if all the hair that is not in these United States were to be placed end to end it would encircle the earth time and time again—which beautiful thought I dedicate to the statisticians.
“What bracing air you have up here,” said Sibthorp. “Why, I came up the hills like a streak, and I was getting so that a short walk in the city tired me. Isn’t it a great place?”
“You’re inoculated soon,” said Cherry. “There’s something in the spirit of this place that makes people stay on and on. I was only invited for a week, and now they can’t get me to go. It’ll be the same with you.”
“Ellery,” said I, “the motto of this place is going to be ‘All hope (of getting away) abandon ye who enter here.’ You see, Ethel and I were getting mortally tired of our honeymoon, which had lasted four years, and so we began to invite people up here to relieve our ennui.”
“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, to say that?” said Cherry; but Ethel only laughed.
“It’s a fact. At first Minerva (she’s the lady that ushered you in) contributed daily to our amusement and excitement, but now she’s getting to be semi-occasional, and so we’re thinking of our friends who don’t hate the country, and you may be in quite a congested community before you have a chance to go. You play tennis, don’t you?”
“I used to when I was a boy.”
“Oh, don’t say that. We’re all boys and girls up here. We expect to set up a court to-morrow and there’ll be four of us to play.”
“Have you written much lately?” asked Ethel.
It was curious to see the extra animation that came into Sibthorp’s face at her question. Tennis had left him cold, but the mention of the works of Sibthorp roused him.
It is the fashion to laugh at this tendency in writers, but I have a dim suspicion that the engineer is roused to greater interest at mention of some engineering problem he has solved, than he is at the ordinary topics of the day, and so it is with all.
“Had something accepted last week,” said he. “It had been everywhere, and if it had come back again, I would have burned it up, but the Atlantic took it, and the only reason I didn’t send there at first was because I thought it wasn’t good enough.”
“How proud we must be.”
“Well, it’s funny, but as soon as the Atlantic took it, I went and got my carbon copy and read it, and I thought it was pretty good, and when it had come back time before, I had read it, and thought it was rotten.”
“And when it’s printed, there’ll be as many opinions of it as it has readers. But you’re progressing if the Atlantic takes you up. Doesn’t it make you feel sorry to see the goal?”
“No, sir. Now I won’t be happy until I’ve written a serial for the Atlantic, or some one of the big magazines.”
“Is that the way it works?” laughed Cherry. “The more one gets, the more one wants?”
“That’s the way ambition is built up,” said I, “acceptance by acceptance.”
“What a place to work in this must be,” said Sibthorp, as he allowed Ethel to replenish his plate.
Cherry laughed. “Yes, you ought to see the way Mr. Vernon works. A poem in the morning, a short story in the afternoon, and an essay in the evening.”
Sibthorp turned his glowing eyes on me. “Good boy. Are you really working?”
“Miss Paxton sees fit to jest,” said I. “I’m afraid I haven’t done as much as I might.”
“You couldn’t do less, Philip, seeing you haven’t done a thing since you came up,” said Ethel.
“All the better for winter. But don’t let my example influence you, Sibthorp. I’ll turn you loose with pens and paper, or my typewriter, and you can enrich the literature of this country every minute, if you want to. Only, if you take my advice, you’ll give literachure the go by, and stay out doors for a week or so.”
“I’ll work out doors, but I must work,” said he, his eyes shining.
Ethel laughed. “A night up here will cure that. You’ll be content to loll by to-morrow.”
“Why, I wrote on the way up,” said he.
“Really!” said Cherry. “What did you do with it? Hand it to the conductor by mistake, for your ticket?” she added saucily.
“No, but do you know, whenever I ride any distance, I feel that I must write something because money spent on tickets seems money thrown away.”
“Dear me, is it a poet speaking or a thrifty Yankee.”
Cherry spoke to him as if she had known him all her life. I did not know but he would take offence, but he was looking at her when she spoke, and that made all the difference in the world. Ethel said one day that Cherry’s eyes apologised for whatever daring might be in her words.
“I’m very thrifty. I have need to be,” said Sibthorp earnestly, and as I knew that his income for the preceding year had been something in the neighbourhood of four hundred dollars, I flashed a warning signal to Cherry, and asked him to do the thing that would make him the happiest.
“After dinner suppose you read us the stuff you’ve been writing.”
“How disrespectful,” said Cherry. “Stuff!”
“Why, if it wouldn’t bore you?” said he, smiling at Cherry.
“Lovely! Perfectly delicious!” said Cherry, and Ethel said,
“It’ll make me think I’m living in a literary atmosphere once more. Since Philip won that prize, he’s simply vegetated. I don’t like it a bit. What’s your story about?”
“It’s a sort of fable. I call it the ‘Two Altruists.’”
We had coffee served out under the maple, and while we were drinking it Sibthorp, after apologising for not being a better reader, began it.
“Once upon a time—”
“Wait a minute,” said I, “Here comes Minerva. She doesn’t want to listen, but it’ll go better if we wait until she has gone.”
She had come for the cups and saucers, and she took Ellery’s coffee before he had had a chance to touch it, but no one noticed, he least of all, intent as he was upon disburdening his mind of his fable.
I make no bones of producing it, because we all liked it so well that it seems as if a larger audience might be pleased at its whimsical tone.
“‘Once upon a time,’” he began again, “‘there was a man whose chief happiness came from seeing others happy. He was indeed an absolute altruist.
“‘Now it so fell about that this altruist was a professional writer, and wove tales for the magazines, and one day, being in a happy mood, caused by his having given his last crust and his last shirt to a professional beggar, he wove a story for a competition and was so fortunate as to receive the capital prize of $1,000.00.’”
(“I was thinking of you, Philip, when I wrote that,” said he.)
“‘For a time his joy was unbounded, but after a while the thought came to him of those in this world to whom the money would mean so much more than it did to him, and he essayed to put the thousand dollar bill into his side pocket and walked along the highway, pondering upon the best disposition to make of it.
“‘And in his abstraction he missed his side pocket altogether and the thousand dollar bill fluttered through the air and fell to earth, where it lay in plain sight, if the man had but looked behind him.
“‘Now after the altruist had gone the space of a mile he put his hand into his pocket that he might pull out the bill, and feeling its tangibility, plan its disposition with more concreteness.
“‘And the bill was gone!
“‘Then the altruist fell to skipping and jumping in great joy. “For,” said he to himself, “no matter who finds that bill it must perforce make him happy; therefore I have added a happiness to some fellow mortal, a happiness that is scarce ever vouchsafed to one on this world of ours where money is not to be had for the mere picking up.” And he ran along the highway full of the joy of others’ lives and stirred to seraphic emotions by his altruistic temperament.
“‘Now in that same town there lived another altruist, whom Howells or Tolstoi would have loved with exceeding ardour. His form of altruism was not so much sharing his joys with others as taking from them their sorrows. As the former added to the joys of life, so he subtracted from the sorrows of existence or converted them into his personal joys, and he always went about looking for those with long faces that he might foreshorten them.
“‘And it happened that he, walking along the highway, came upon the thousand dollar bill.
“‘Now, it was a time of roominess in his pocket, which had scarce felt the weight of a minor coin for many days. And a thousand dollars would have brought luxuries to his house for a twelve month, he being unwedded.
“‘But when he picked up the bill and saw its denomination he fell into loud lamentation and raised his voice to its highest pitch, saying,
“‘“Woe is me, for in this town some poor fellow is mourning this night at the loss of what may have been his all.”
“‘And this second altruist had a voice of penetrating quality, for in his younger days he had been an auctioneer, and his words went through the stillness of the night and came to the ears of the other altruist, walking his happy way to his home.
“‘And at once the first altruist turned about and hastened to where the voice came out of the night, saying,
“‘“Weep no more, brother, for I am coming to comfort thee. It matters not what has happened to thee, I have words at my tongue’s end that cannot fail to give thee good cheer.”
“‘And after a time he came upon the second altruist swaying and moaning and waving the bill in the air, and he said to him,
“‘“Brother, what calamity has descended upon thee? Hast lost thine all?”
“‘And the second altruist said,
“?∑‘“No, but one of my brothers in this world has lost this great piece of money, and I cannot sleep this night for grief a?∑t the thought of his sorrow.”
“‘And the first altruist stared at him in wonder, and said,
“‘“What condition of affairs is this and what is the constitution of man? For I had attained to perfect joy at the thought that you (or another) had found my money, while you have been rendered miserable at the thought that I (or another) had lost it. In what way can we be happy together?”
“‘And even as they held converse a robber came along, and snatching the thousand dollar bill made off with it.
“‘“Ah,” cried both together, raising their voices in joy, “now we can be happy again, for beyond peradventure this robber who took the money needed it, else he would not have taken it, and while we do not condone his dishonesty, we rejoice at his prosperity.”’”
He finished and looked around for an approbation that was freely given him.
“How did you ever think of such an idea?” said Cherry, and I could see that he had impressed her.
He looked at her and began to explain very seriously how the idea had come to him, and she listened just as seriously.
“It’s another edition of you,” said Ethel to me with a smile, and I recalled certain conversations that we had had in years gone by, when she was deeply interested in the “how” of “literary endeavour.”
She flashed a signal to me that I could not mistake. I looked at the handsome pair seated under the maple, he full of the animation of self interest, she animated by a sympathy that might well become something greater, and instantly I began to look ahead and foretell what propinquity would do quite as if they were characters in a story of mine, and I intended that they should fall in love with each other.
He had four hundred a year or less, and ambition, but she had beauty and—enough to support two comfortably while ambition was becoming fruition.
A new interest had been added to life at Clover Lodge.
THE next day we were all awakened by one of Minerva’s morning songs, but it was such a morning—the air was so bracing and fragrant, the sun so mellow, and yet not too hot, that not one of us felt that the song was out of place, and all four met on the porch a good half hour before breakfast.
“Well, Ellery, this is a great day to work. How would an epic do and we’ll delay luncheon a half hour, so that you can finish it.”
Ellery looked over the waving, billowing meadows. Then he looked at Cherry, rosy and vibrant with animation.
“I believe it’s going to do me more good if I lay off for a few days and get charged with some of this air.”
We all shrieked gaily at him.
“We could have told you so last night,” said Ethel.
“I did tell him so,” said I. “Here’s where you store up mental energy, but you might as well try to write at sea as to try to write up here. Let’s go put up the tennis net.”
“Oh, all right,” said Ellery. “I was going to ask Miss Paxton if she wouldn’t show me around the place a little. Have we time before breakfast?”
“Yes,” said Ethel, “but don’t go too far. Minerva’s going to have griddle cakes and real maple syrup and they need to be eaten hot.”
When the two had sauntered off I said to Ethel,
“You’re a romantic soul with your griddle cakes. Don’t you see those two? In the language of the day, Ellery is stung.”
“Imagine him married.”
“It would be the finest thing for him that ever happened. He might amount to something with a wife to look after him.”
“It doesn’t always work,” said Ethel, saucily.
“Better four hundred a year where love is—” I began.
“Than a stalled ox and hatred therewith,” concluded Ethel.
“Something like that. Four hundred a year with love is a large order. She’d better wait until Ellery is famous. But perhaps we’d better not hurry them along. She’s interested in him because he has talent and is unrecognized, and he’s interested in her because he has talent and she recognized it, but I don’t believe but that you could buy him off with a mess of pottage—”
“Or some griddle cakes. There’s the bell now. You call them.”
I called “Breakfast’s ready,” although the two were out of sight, and my call was answered by an “Arl right. I’m just in time.”
“Who was that?” said Ethel in some dismay.
“Sounded something like ‘th’ ould scut,’” said I, for by that name our friend Casey had come to be known.
It proved to be he, bare-footed and hatless, coming to us across the fields.
“Good marnin’, ’tis a hell of a fine day.”
“Yes, it is,” said I, “although your language is somewhat strong.”
“No harrum intindid,” said he, looking at Ethel with a pleasant smile. “Ye can’t make an insult out of a hell or two a day like this. I t’harght that perhaps your woman would like some blue berries for breakfast th’ day, an’ I brarght them up. They’re picked this marnin’, an’ the dew is yit on them.” He held out an eight-quart pail filled to the top with tempting berries.
“How much are they, Pat,” said I, putting my hand into my pocket.
“Who’s insultin’ now?” said he, with a growling laugh. “I’ll sell no prisints this yair. ’Twas a hell of a bad ride ye had th’ other night, an’ I tould me ould woman I’d git square wid ye one way or another, an’ this is the way. They’re dam fine.”
“They certainly are,” said Ethel, unconsciously seconding his oath.
She went into the house to get a bowl to put them into and just then Ellery and Cherry came up.
“The top of the marnin’ to ye,” said Pat, bowing to Cherry, as he had bowed to Ethel. “It’s easy to tell why it’s a fine day.”
Cherry was unconscious enough to ask him why.
“Sure, wid you out how could’t help ut.”
“Now will you be good, Cherry?” said I.
“You’ve kissed the blarney stone,” said she, with a lovely blush.
“Sure I have, but I knew beauty before that.”
His tone was not offensive nor did Cherry take offence. It was truth buttered with flattery and that’s as good as cake.
Ethel now came out with the bowl, and the big “bloomy” berries, damp with dew, were poured into it.
“It’s glad I am you’re up here,” said Pat, as he walked down the path. “Neighbours is neighbours, an’ phwin you’re passin’ an’ need restin’ it’s fine buttermilk me ould woman’ll give ye, an’ glad of the chance. Good marnin’ to yez.”
“Good morning, Mr. Casey, and thank you very much for the berries. They’re the best I’ve seen,” said Ethel.
“They’re dam fine, that’s a fact,” said he. “But none too good for the likes of youse.”
We all went in to the griddle cakes, but before Minerva began to fry them we had heaping plates of blue berries and even as the burglar had been impressed by them so were Cherry and Ellery.
“I thought,” said Ellery, “that your New Englander was always on the make.”
“Well, in the first place, Pat is not, strictly speaking, a New Englander,” said Ethel, “and in the second place, they’re not always on the make by any means, as we’ve often found out since we came here. Neighbourliness is never sold and there’s lots of neighbourliness here.”
“The very fact that neighbourliness is not sold makes it the more necessary for country people to get a good price for the things they do sell,” said I, sententiously.
“It’s a great place,” said Ellery, with enthusiasm. “I believe I will try tennis this morning,” he added, somewhat irrelevantly, although in justice to him it should be said that his eyes had rested on Cherry’s exuberant beauty before he said it.
“I’m a good deal of a duffer at it. I imagine you play a strong game, Miss Paxton. Will you be my partner in a four-handed game?”
“Dee-lighted,” said Cherry, showing her pretty teeth.
“The writing of the epic is indefinitely postponed,” said Ethel. “You are all alike, you men.”
“Wait till next winter, Mrs. Vernon,” said Ellery. “I’m going to make myself a storehouse of energy and I dare say Vernon’s doing the same thing.”
“Well, you’ll need some of it this morning,” said I. “At tennis Mrs. Vernon and I are the strongest up here.” He looked doubtful. “It’s a fact—we are introducing the game.”
“Mr. Sibthorp and I expect to make a pretty strong team,” said Cherry.
Ethel’s eyes sought mine. And found them.
ETHEL was reading a letter, Ellery and Cherry having brought the mail up from the post-office. Ellery had now been at Clover Lodge a fortnight and during that time we had fished (for bull heads this time), had gone on long tramps, had read to each other, and had played many a game of tennis, and while we could not say that Ellery was in a fair way to propose to Cherry, he was hard hit.
The glamour of the place had appealed to him and neither he nor Cherry had any intention of going back until we went in September.
Minerva had shown signs of homesickness, and one day we had let her and James go to Springfield to spend the day, and after her return she had said,
“City ain’t what it was,” which we had taken to be a most encouraging sign. Nearly three months out of New York and still happy. Who would have predicted it?
Ethel dropped the letter in her lap and said, “What are we going to do, Philip? This letter is from Madge Warden, and she and Tom are going to a place in Vermont to try it on the recommendation of a friend, and Madge asks if it would be convenient to stop off on the way up instead of on the way back. She says that if we could find a shack for them here, Tom wouldn’t care to go to Vermont.”
“Well, of course, have ’em come.”
“Yes, but she wants to come this Friday for over Sunday, and we’ve invited the Benedicts for over Sunday.”
I thought a minute.
“It would be great to have them all here, because they are so congenial, but unless you and I gave up our room and slept in hammocks—”
“Why couldn’t you and Ellery sleep in hammocks and then I could let Madge share my room with me and give the Benedicts the spare room?”
“And what would become of Tom?”
“Oh, that’s so,” said Ethel. “I’m afraid we can’t do it.”
“They’s a sofa in the woodshed,” said Minerva, who had been dusting the sitting room and always interested in household problems, had stopped at the open window outside of which we were sitting.
“So there is. Good for you, Minerva,” said I, in spite of a warning look from Ethel, who says that at times I am too colloquial with Minerva.
Ethel and I went around to the woodshed to look at it. It was across two rafters, but with help from James, who was busy in the vicinity, I got it down.
“So I’m to write and tell them all to come? Isn’t this going to be a good deal of a drain on your pocketbook, Philip?”
“We can’t do worse than go home broke and then I’ll begin again.”
“‘Easy come, easy go,’” quoted Ethel, with a half sigh.
“Don’t you want ’em to come? Will it be too hard on you?”
“No, no, we’ll make them understand it’s a picnic, but you will have to hustle in the fall.”
“Well, hustling never killed anybody, and we’ll have a summer to remember. It’s a lucky thing that James is so handy. He can help in the kitchen.”
And so the sofa was brought into the house and dusted, and the Wardens were implored to come up and told to take the same train that the Benedicts were coming on, and the haying season being practically over, we were able to engage Bert’s double team and his three-seated wagon, and Friday afternoon we all went down to meet them.
No, not all. We left Minerva behind. She and James had to prepare a dinner for eight.
There was no accident on the way down, and we arrived at the station several minutes before the arrival of the train.
At last we heard the whistle below the bridge and then it steamed in and we took up our station around the parlour car and prepared to greet our guests.
But the only one to get off was a well-setup young fellow in irreproachable apparel, and he did not belong to us.
“Why, of course, they never would have taken a parlour car. The Benedicts might, but the Wardens wouldn’t,” said Ethel, and we looked down the platform to see whether they had alighted. But they had not. Our guests had not come.
“Isn’t it too provoking,” said Cherry, sympathetically to Ethel.
“It really is,” said Ethel. “That dinner will be stone cold if we wait for the next train.”
“When is the next train?” asked Ellery.
“In two hours,” I replied. “They won’t come to-night, though. Something happened to Tom at the last minute and he asked the rest to wait and they waited. We’ll get a telegram saying so. Everybody obeys his will always.”
The irreproachable stranger had been walking around as if he was looking for somebody. He now approached me with uplifted hat.
“Would you be so good as to tell me whether Mr. Vernon lives near here?”
“I am Mr. Vernon.”
He coloured, stammered and said,
“I am Talcott Hepburn, and I am afraid that I’ve been led into an unpardonably rude act.”
“Are you the son of Talcott Hepburn, the art collector?” said I.
“Yes,—oh, you know him then,” said he, relieved. “My friend Tom Warden took the liberty of bringing me along with him—only”—here he paused. “He has missed the train.”
I understood in a minute. Tom Warden is an artist, and he is the soul of hospitality. He knows Ethel and me as well as he knows his father and mother, and it never had occurred to his simple but executive soul that there was anything unusual in his asking a friend to come along without letting us know.
Of course, if we could accommodate eight we could accommodate nine. But now it looked as if we would have but five.
I presented Mr. Hepburn to the rest of the “family.” He was about twenty-four or five, good looking, smooth shaven, of course, with a sober expression that might have hidden a humorous temperament, but did not. It evidently did not strike him that there was anything whimsical in his having arrived ahead of the man who had invited him to be the guest of a stranger. He did see, however, that the act itself was one that might be misconstrued, and he began to explain the case to Ethel, who said at once,
“Why, Mr. Hepburn, Tom’s friends are our friends, and the more the merrier. I’m only sorry they missed the train.”
“He was busy with a picture that some one had bought and which he wasn’t satisfied with, and I dare say he missed it on that account. He was coming with a Mr. and Mrs. Benedict, and I was to meet him on the train. I was a little late myself, and just had time to step aboard, and they missed it.”
While he was talking I was looking at the telegraph office intending to step over there—it lay just across the track—to enquire whether there was a telegram for me. A messenger boy came out, mounted a wheel, and started across the track, bound for the road that leads up to Clover Lodge.
I ran and intercepted him.
“Have you a telegram for Philip Vernon?” said I.
“Yes, sir,” said he, dismounting and pulling the telegram out of his side pocket. “I was just go’n’ up to your place.”
“Saved me a dollar, didn’t it?” said I.
“Yes, sir, and lost me ten cents.”
“Here’s the ten cents,” said I, as I signed for the telegram.
“It’s collect, sir,” said he; “forty-five cents.” I paid him and I opened the envelope.
“All missed confounded train. Be good to Hepburn if he caught it. Will come on next train. Wait for us. Tom.”
A most characteristic telegram in every way. It’s superfluity of expression, its thought of Hepburn and its command to wait, were all as like Tom Warden as they could be.
“There’s nothing to do but wait,” said I when I had shown the telegram to the others.
“The dinner will be spoiled,” said Ethel ruefully.
“Let me walk up and tell Minerva to wait,” said Cherry, and Ellery enthusiastically seconded her motion.
“Why, it seems too bad,” began Ethel.
“Not at all. We’re just going to take a walk,” said Cherry, and they started, well pleased at the turn of affairs.
I knew young Hepburn to be a millionaire in his own right and I knew that Ethel would worry at having him see the make shifts to which we resorted, but I was rather amused at the prospect myself. We had already shown the simple life to two New Yorkers and now we would show it to some more.
We asked him if he would not like to ride around Egerton and see a typical Massachusetts town and he said he would.
“Do you know,” said he to Ethel, “I held back about coming up in such a very unconventional way, but you know how compelling Tom is, and he said he would explain it all before I was even presented, and so I came. And then to have him miss the train. It was awkward.”
“Simply one on Tom, Mr. Hepburn,” said I. “Our house is one of those affairs that can be stretched to accommodate any number of people if they themselves are accommodating.”
“Well, you know,” said Mr. Hepburn, “I might find a room at the hotel.” Perhaps he had thought he was not accommodating.
I knew that Ethel was wishing that he would find a room at a hotel, but there was no hotel. She was beginning to think how much less a sofa would be than the bed he was accustomed to sleep in when he was at home. But when you are picnicking the only thing to do is to have a good time and forget that there is such a proverb as “Other times, other manners.”
Our ride was pleasant and it did not seem anything like two hours when we heard the whistle of the train at South Egerton, and drove rapidly to the station.
Hepburn offered to stay in the carriage and mind the horses, and I accepted his offer, although I knew that Ethel thought it making a very free use of a millionaire. Not that Ethel is snobbish, but she has never used millionaires much.
The train came in and this time I took up my place by the ordinary cars, and soon saw the quartette moving along the aisle.
Tom looked out of the window and saw Hepburn sitting erect in the front seat of the picnic wagon holding the unmistakably farm horses, and he exploded into laughter that we outside plainly heard.
“Hello,” said he as soon as he emerged. “Broken him in already. Well, here we are. Better late than never. You know the Benedicts?”
“What a question,” said Ethel, kissing in turn Madge and Mrs. Benedict.
“But we didn’t know Mr. Hepburn,” said she saucily.
“Oh, well, he’s harmless and I’ll bet he came out of it all right. Hello, Cr?sus. Stole a march on us, eh?”
“Cr?sus” raised his derby, but good driver that he was, kept his eyes on the horses.
“WELL, Philip, my boy,” said Tom, slapping me on the knee when we were all in our seats, and I had relieved “Cr?sus” of the reins, “I suppose it was an unpardonable piece of assurance for me to invite a man you had never seen without letting you know he was coming. And then to let him come up first! That was certainly rubbing it in, but the poor boy doesn’t have a chance to get out much. Sort of a fresh air charity on your part.”
He roared with laughter at this sally of his, and Hepburn smiled faintly.
“This poor boy has always had to do the society act, Philip, and he’s fitted for better things. Hope you haven’t any hops up at your house. Have you any hops?”
“Not a hop,” said I.
“Nor a cotillion?”
“Nor a cotillon. In fact, I’m afraid it may be rather dull for one who is accustomed to do something all the time.”
“I’m sure I’ll have a delightful time,” said Hepburn from the second seat. “I’m rather tired. It’ll be a jolly good thing for me.”
“By George, isn’t this a paintable country?” broke in Tom. “If a man could only get the fragrance of this air into his pictures it would be no trouble to get rid of them.”
“Inoculated already,” laughed Ethel.
“Oh, I always get inoculated as soon as I come to this kind of country. I was born on prairie country and I never saw a hill until I was eighteen, and then I wondered how I had lived without ’em.” He turned ’way round. “Pity you don’t paint, Benedict.”
Benedict, on the back seat, said, “Oh, I don’t have to do anything to enjoy this. Just to be alive is enough in air like this. Isn’t it, Alice?”
And Alice agreed with him and the horses bore us higher and higher, slower and slower, and at last we arrived and Ellery and Cherry greeted us.
James came out to relieve the guests of their suit cases and I invited all hands to go to their rooms and remove the evidences of their smoky ride.
When Ethel and Madge had come down from our room I said to Ethel,
“No dressing, I suppose?”
“No, I suppose not,” said she, and there was a little note of regret in her voice.
I went up and washed and put on a cutaway and in a few minutes I came down and walked back and forth on the veranda.
In about a quarter of an hour the three men who were using Ellery’s chamber as a dressing room came down the front stairs. I caught a glimpse of them and lo, two were in Tuxedos, and Hepburn was in full evening clothes.
Quick as a wink, and before they saw me, I whisked around to the back of the house, and finding Ethel in the kitchen, where she was superintending some salad arrangement, I said,
“They’re all dressed. Me to my evening clothes.”
“Good,” said she.
I saw Ellery within calling distance. He was in a sack coat. I hailed him and he came up.
“Don’t want to make ’em feel foolish. They’re all dressed. Run up and put on your Tuxedo or whatever you have. Come into my room to dress and we can help each other.”
He got his clothes and we hastened to my room, where we made as quick changes as we could.
“Funny about Ethel,” said I. “She likes simplicity, but she also likes evening clothes. Says a man looks better. I won’t wear a Tuxedo and look like a bob-tailed cat, so I’ve got to go the whole thing. When she sees five immaculate shirt fronts she’ll be just about happy.”
“Well, it does look nice,” said Ellery.
“Oh, I don’t mind once I’m in them.”
At last we were ready all but our ties, and none too soon, for we heard Ethel come into the front hall and say, “Dinner’s ready. Where are the men?”
And then Madge said, “Oh, they had to run up stairs at the last minute to get something. Here they come.”
Ethel called up to me, “Hurry down, dear. We’ll go in informally.”
“That’s right. We’ll be right down,” said I.
We heard the tramp of the other three, and I would have run down on account of the stranger within my gates, but Ellery asked me to tie his cravat, and I made a botchy tie of it, and finally Ethel called up from the dining room. “We’re all waiting, dear.”
Then we both went down in our evening clothes, and entered the dining room. Around it stood the ladies and the three men, and when we saw them and they saw us a happy shout arose. The men were not in evening dress.
They had seen me when they first came down, and, as Tom explained afterward, Hepburn, seeing that I was not in evening clothes, had suggested that they all change back, which Tom was very glad to do, “as he hated the durned things.”
So there they stood in sacks and cutaway and we were the only ones in evening dress.
“Well, I won’t change back again,” said I, “but after this let’s give our city clothes a rest and just be comfortable.”
“But I contend,” said Benedict, “that evening clothes are just as comfortable.”
“Yes,” said Tom, “but it’s harder to get into ’em, and if we go out walking after dinner it’s ridiculous to be dressed so stiffly in a wild flower country.”
It was a jolly dinner and no one did more to make it jolly than Tom. His humour is elemental, but it is genuine, and his appreciation of it is also genuine and his tremendous reverberating laugh is infectious.
Many times during the progress of the meal I found Hepburn’s placid eyes resting on Cherry.
“Two of them,” thought I, and after dinner Ethel and I compared notes and we agreed that Cherry could have her choice.
Perhaps we jumped to conclusions, but to see Cherry was to love her, and Ethel told me that she was glad that Cherry was only a little girl when I first met her or “you might have been Mr. Paxton.”
“Phil, do you know who it would do good to have up here?” said Tom, after a burst of enthusiasm concerning the country. “Jack Manton. Jack Manton and Billy Edson. They’re both stone broke and they’re getting their country by taking walks out of New York, and this scenery would just about kill ’em both dead. Why don’t you ask ’em up?”
A roar followed this question.
“Let ’em sleep in the chimney,” I suggested, at which innocent remark Minerva, who was waiting on table, gave a suppressed giggle that set Cherry off and she was followed first by Ellery and then—of all the people in the world, by Mr. Hepburn. Probably Minerva’s act itself was so unheard of that it struck him as being humourous. A maid laughing at table.
But it was a lucky thing that Minerva was in the room. That is lucky for Jack and Billy.
“Kin I say sump’n?” said she to Ethel, and Ethel, rather astonished, said, “What is it?”
“They’s a lot of boards out in the woodshed, an’ James could build a place for those gen’lemen.”
“The very thing,” said Tom. “That’s it. That’s IT. Just ask ’em up and save their lives.”
“But you said it would kill ’em dead to come up,” said Cherry.
“Oh, they wouldn’t stay dead five minutes in this air,” said he. “Come on. If I hadn’t been an artist I would have been a carpenter. Send for ’em. I’ll help build the shack.”
I looked at Minerva. Her face was beaming.
She loved company.
“What do you think, Ethel?”
“Why, the more the merrier,” said she. “Are they congenial?”
“Congenial’s no name for it,” said Tom. “Both of ’em starving. Neither has sold a picture in six months, and the night before I came away they dropped in at my studio, and when I told ’em where I was coming they were as happy as if they were coming themselves, and were going to share in it. Two nice, promising boys, and perhaps this would be their salvation.”
“Have them come by all means,” said Ethel.
And Minerva went out to tell James the good news.
IT was a hot, clear moonlit night.
Our newly arrived guests, after an evening given up to piano music and song, had retired to their various cubby holes.
But peace did not lie upon the house, for it was the hottest night of the season and mosquitoes—hitherto an undreaded foe, attracted by the unwonted light and the music, had descended upon us and as, of course, screens were not dreamed of in a place where the mosquito rivals the tramp in scarceness, they had entered the house and were singing their infernal songs in the ears of people fresh from a mosquitoless city.
I was mortified. It seemed a breach of hospitality to invite people up to a place where every prospect pleases and man is not so vile, and then to let loose a horde of mosquitoes upon them.
It was between three and four in the morning, and soon the first signs of dawn would be upon us.
I was trying to be comfortable in a hammock slung under the boughs of the maple, and Ellery was trying to be comfortable in another hammock slung under other boughs, but neither of us was making a success of it, although he was fitfully sleeping. There is something unmistakably enticing in the thought of depending, cool and free from a leafy arbour while the summer moon watches over one’s slumbers, and the lulling breezes croon one to unconsciousness, but loyal as I am to Clover Lodge and its vicinity, I am more loyal to truth, and that night was a night to be remembered for years even as the blizzard is remembered—but for opposite reasons.
The air was still, but the mosquitoes were not and neither were my guests. I could hear them stirring and slapping and I feared that some of them were cursing, and I longed for dawn with all my heart. Dawn and the hot day that would follow in its wake, for at least we could escape to some lofty point, where the mosquitoes would not follow us.
I knew that Tom and Benedict were used to all sorts of experiences, and I knew their wives too well to think for a moment that they would hold me responsible for the night and the winged pests, but Hepburn—
Hepburn had been raised in the lap of luxury, and when I thought of his tall form accommodating itself to the ornate but contracted sofa, I felt so uncomfortable that I thought of going in and asking him to swap couches with me—and change discomfort.
I fell into a doze, from which I was awakened by hearing a step on the gravelled path.
I was wide awake in an instant.
Between me and the moon was outlined the tall form of Hepburn, fully clothed and smoking a cigar.
“Is that you, Mr. Hepburn?” said I.
“Yes,” said he, softly, so as to awaken no one else. “Did I wake you? Pardon me.”
“Oh, that’s all right. But why are you up and dressed?”
“Why,” said he, very glibly, “the night is so beautiful and bright that it seems a sin to sleep, don’t you know. I thought I’d stroll about a bit.”
My conscience smote me.
“It was that sofa, wasn’t it?”
“Don’t say a word. Sofa’s awfully jolly, but I think I drank too much coffee.”
“What’s the matter?” said Ellery, waking up.
“What do you say to a swim?” said I.
“When?” said Ellery, sleepily.
“Why, now. How does it strike you, Mr. Hepburn?”
“Great.”
Ellery, still half asleep, rubbed his eyes and then saw Hepburn for the first time.
“Why, is it as early as that?” said he.
“Earlier,” said Hepburn, which was not so bad.
I had sat up in the hammock, and setting my feet in my slippers, I rose to my pajamaed height and said,
“This is the hottest ever. I’ll get the other fellows and we’ll go over to Marsh’s Pond and have a swim at sunrise.”
I tiptoed up to the hot box that contained Tom and Benedict and whispered to them, “Are you awake?”
Tom answered, “Oh, no, we’re sound asleep and dreaming of icebergs.”
Then I could hear him shaking the bed with suppressed laughter.
“Well, come along for a swim. Get into your old clothes and don’t make a noise.”
In a few minutes we were all ready. We passed under Minerva’s window, and although we stepped lightly we waked her and we heard her heavy feet coming down on the floor of her room.
I knew that a yawp was due, so I said in a voice loud enough to reach her, “Don’t be frightened, Minerva. It isn’t burglars. It’s Mr. Vernon going for a walk.”
“Lawdy, I thought it was more burglars,” said she, and heaved a sigh of relief.
Other voices were now heard and from the window of the spare room was thrust the head of Madge, who demanded what was the trouble.
“Lack of sleep,” said Tom. “We’re going for a swim. Down to the old swimmin’ hole, my dear.”
“What won’t men do?” said Madge, and retired to envy us our privileges.
“Might as well tell Ethel what we’re doing. She may be worried,” said I, and we walked under her window.
“Give ’em a song,” said Benedict, who was a fine baritone, and he began it, “‘Sleep no more, ladies, sleep no more.’”
He sang it as a solo as none of us knew the setting he used, but as an injunction it was needless. The ladies were not calculating on sleeping any more.
“Where are you going?” asked Ethel from somewhere out of sight.
“Oh, only down to the old swimmin’ hole,” said Tom.
“Why, there’s no swimming hole anywhere’s near,” said she.
“Marsh’s Pond, my dear,” said I. “This is a record-breaker for heat and we’re going to break the record for swimming at an unseasonable hour. We’ll be back for breakfast. Good night.”
“How far is it?” asked Tom.
“Oh, only a couple of miles or so,” said I. “We’ll take it easy there and back.”
“Please may I be excused,” said Benedict. “I’m not in training for such a walk on an empty stomach.”
“That’s easily remedied. We’ll fill up on cold lamb.”
And we did fill up, and then we started, and in spite of the heat, we enjoyed the walk. It was after three and it would need the pencil of a poet and artist combined to tell of the wonders and the beauties of that walk with the delicate indications of the coming dawn filling the east with rosy promise.
Marsh’s Pond is about two miles long and a half a mile wide, and it has at one point a sandy beach. Around it are cottages and bathing houses, most of them bearing the idyllic names that lake dwellers love to bestow upon their houses. We passed “The Inglenook” and “The Ingleside” and “Inglewild,” and “Tramp’s Rest,” and many another bearing equally felicitous titles, and at last we came to the sandy beach just as the sun cast its first golden beams on the foliage of the woods across the lake.
“Hepburn, you’re a brick for waking up so early,” said Tom. “If only I had thought to bring along my little flask. It’s just the thing before a morning swim.”
“If you don’t mind Scotch,” said Hepburn, producing a cunning little silver flask.
Ellery was on the water wagon, but the rest of us drank to the rising sun and then plunged in and were cool.
“It was worth the walk,” said Benedict, as he dove and emerged twenty feet beyond. “Why don’t people do this every day?”
With the sun had come a gentle breeze that was several degrees cooler than the surrounding atmosphere had been, and we spent a pleasant half hour admiring the coming of day from our watery vantage.
After we had come out we went into the bathing house, which went by the name of Tramp’s Rest. It was a roomy affair, and had been left open all winter, or we would have been unable to enter it.
“We’ll put up a shack like that,” said Tom, “and Jack and Billy can bunk in it.”
“I’m afraid we haven’t lumber enough,” said I.
When we were ready to go home Hepburn and Ellery said they were going back by what is called the upper road, which is a half mile farther, but we chose the lower road, and were home a good half hour ahead of them.
It was after six and we were ravenous. A west wind was blowing and it had blown the crazy horde of mosquitoes away, and it was much cooler, and I am thankful to say that not again that summer did we have such a visitation. Mosquitoes might always be found in the long grass, but it was easy to avoid them.
Minerva prepared an early breakfast, and just as we sat down to it Ellery and Hepburn arrived.
“How do you like it as far as you’ve got, Talcott?” asked Tom, as we all sat down.
“Well, do you know I read this ‘Simple Life,’ that the President recommended, and I didn’t see such an awful lot in it, but if this is it, it’s all right. I don’t think I ever had such an appetite for breakfast before.”
“After being awake all night you ought to have,” said I, in an apologetic tone. “You see the Wheelocks had two young children and they did not entertain and as we took the house furnished we were not prepared as we should have been.”
“But it’s nice to have the house full all the time,” said Ethel, who evidently thought my remark ungracious.
“No question of its having been filled last night,” said Tom, rubbing his cheek, “Filled with mosquitoes. I thought they never came up here.”
“You might say they never do. Last night was an exception,” said I.
“Dear, dear, how like Jersey that sounds. Jersey nights are made up of exceptions,” said Tom.
Minerva appeared at the door, not with her hand raised, but in an attitude that said “Please, may I speak,” and Ethel, with a hasty look at Hepburn, said, “What is it, Minerva?”
“Now James wanted to know where’s he’s to build that lean-to.”
“The what?” said Ethel.
“That’s all right,” said Tom, grasping the situation. “You tell James to wait until after breakfast and I’ll come out and show him.”
Minerva shut the door and Tom said, “She believes in free speech.”
“I must speak to her,” said Ethel.
But there was a general chorus of objections, Hepburn expressing his opinion by saying, “It strikes me as awfully quaint, you know.”
After breakfast Tom took me aside and said,
“Now, see here, Phil, this deluge wasn’t expected by you, but I don’t see any indication of the waters subsiding. We all want to stay. Now hospitality is hospitality, but we’re not paupers and we’re not rich enough to feel that we can live on you all summer without a murmur. You understand? Now, I’ve forced Billy and Jack on you, and I’ve been talking with Hepburn and Benedict, and we’re going to form a pool to cover expenses. Don’t want you to make a cent out of us, but we don’t want you to be out of pocket, and so if you’ll let us pay our share of the bills when they come in we’ll stay. Otherwise we all go back to-morrow. Yes, sir, we all go back to-morrow. I’m in earnest.”
Tom was a curious mixture of simplicity and worldly wisdom, and I could not help laughing at him.
“Well, go home,” said I, “and leave us to ourselves.”
He put his arm around my shoulder.
“Now, you don’t mean that at all, old man. You were both glad to see us and you want us to stay. Hepburn’s having the time of his life.”
“With his midnight walks?”
“That’s all right. It was part of the fun. Now, I’m going to see about getting some cot beds because Hepburn is too long for that sofa. Where can I get a wagon?”
I told him about Bert, and he went on to see James about the lean-to.
Later I met Hepburn. He came up as if he wanted to speak about something that was weighing on his mind, and I expected to have him tell me that he had just received a telegram calling him home at once, but I was mistaken.
“It’s no end jolly up here,” said he, “but I can see that we’re a good deal of a household for Mrs. Vernon. She doesn’t look strong. Now, isn’t there some place near by where we could arrange to stay, don’t you know, and come over here for tennis and all that sort of thing? I’d like to come up again.”
“Why, you’re not going?”
“Why, I really ought to, you know. So unexpected my coming and all that sort of thing.”
Ethel had heard us talking and she came out of the house.
“We don’t want you to think of going, Mr. Hepburn, if you can be comfortable. I’ll be able to borrow a bed to-night and if Mr. Warden builds that temporary shed, in such weather as this you’ll be comfortable sort of camping out.”
“Oh, I’m all right. The mosquitoes were a bit annoying, but everything else is all right. I’m feeling very fit this morning, I assure you.”
“Then don’t think of going,” said I.
And then Cherry came out with the tennis net and Hepburn relieved her of it immediately and went with her to put it up, and Ellery and Mrs. Benedict came out a minute later and announced that they were going for a little walk.
Ethel, with a suggestive glance at me, that seemed to imply that all was not right between Cherry and Ellery, went into the house to invite “Jack” and “Billy,” while I went down to James’s house to see about engaging James’s little sister to help Minerva. If we were going to be a hotel we would need more help.
As I passed the woodshed I saw Tom in his shirt sleeves sawing planks, while Benedict and James were acting as willing helpers.
The only one who was doing nothing was Madge, so I hunted her up and invited her to go with me to the house of James.
And thus continued the day begun so early in the morning.
TOM had discontinued work on the lean-to for some untold reason, and just after lunch he and Hepburn had gone over to Bert’s to get the horse and go for the cots.
The rest of us broke up into convenient groups and tennised or walked, but by the middle of the afternoon a drowsiness came over us, superinduced by our sleepless night, and with the exception of Ethel and Mrs. Benedict, who were helping prepare dinner, we all slept, some in hammocks, one on the ornate sofa and the rest in the three bedrooms.
And then, just before dinner, Tom and Hepburn not having come, we all went out to look for them.
It ought not to have taken them long to buy two cot beds and bring them up, and they had been gone four hours at least.
We walked upwards of a mile toward town, and at last came to a rock, from the top of which we could command a view of the rest of the road to Egerton, but there was no sign of Bert’s wagon.
“Well,” said Ethel, “we’d better be starting back, for dinner ought to be ready soon.”
And so we sauntered back, expecting every minute to be overtaken by the cot bringers.
We arrived at the house and all entered by the south door, attracted thereto by the recumbent figures of our truants. Each one was reclining gracefully upon a cot reading, and smoking excellent cigars.
“Here, here,” said Tom, when he saw us. “This will never do. Dinner’s ready this ten minutes, and Hepburn and I are starving.”
As soon as Hepburn had seen us he had risen from his couch, but Tom continued to lie there blocking the doorway.
“What about that lean-to,” said I.
Tom rose and folded up his cot as an Arab is supposed to fold his tent. Then he set it up against the side of the house and said oracularly:
“The lean-to is indefinitely postponed. We know more than we did this morning.”
“Well, but where have you been? We walked half way to town and didn’t see you,” said Ethel.
“Exploring the country. Haven’t we, Talcott.”
“It’s a beautiful country,” said Talcott, laughing.
All through dinner those two seemed to have a secret, and as near as we could make out, Minerva was in it, because every time she came into the room and looked at Tom she smothered chuckles.
After dinner Tom said, “Mrs. Vernon, what do you say to our taking our coffee in the summer house?”
“In the summer house,” said Ethel, “why, there isn’t any summer house.”
“Well, whatever you call it, then. Minerva, you bring it to us there.”
Minerva broke out into childlike laughter.
“All right, sir, I will.”
Then she looked at her mistress and said, “Kin I do it, ma’am.”
Ethel shook her head at Tom and said,
“You’re a bad boy. All this is subversive of discipline.” But she told Minerva to do as Mr. Warden wished, and, Tom leading the way, we all went out of the house feeling that we were on the verge of a surprise.
Out the front door and north of the house we went and then around to the lesser orchard at the back of it and there, between two apple trees, stood a “summer house,” over the dilapidated door of which was a sign reading “Tramp’s Rest.”
We who had bathed that morning recognized in it the bath house in which we had dressed.
“How did you get that here?” said several of us at once.
“If you don’t mind having it on your land,” said Hepburn, “I’d like to make you a present of it. I took a fancy to it this morning and this afternoon Tom and I drove over there on our way from town and brought it back.”
“Yes, but who said you could take it?” said Benedict.
“Oh, I bought it this morning. Mr. Sibthorp and I found out the owner and he was willing to sell it for a song.”
“But how did you get it here on that wagon?”
“Oh, we didn’t. We had this—er—Bert’s horses—but an Irishman of the name of Casey loaned us his hay wagon and he felt insulted when I offered to pay him for the use of it. He really became violently abusive, don’t you know, and used highly colored language, but we could see that he meant well. Really I thought him something of a character. Didn’t you think him a character, Mr. Sibthorp?”
“He certainly was,” said Sibthorp. “He had no opinion at all of Bert’s horses. Said he had an—ould—ould—”
“Ould scut,” I suggested.
“That’s it. Said he had an ould scut of a horse that would walk right away from Bert’s pair, and that any time we wanted to take the young ladies out for a ride to come and take him right out of the stall, whether he was there or not. His language was ornamented with picturesque oaths that wouldn’t sound well here, but they were awfully funny.”
“I guess he said nothing that he wouldn’t say before anyone,” said Ethel.
Sibthorp gave her a whimsical look. “Excuse me,” said he, “but I guess that when you’ve heard him talk he has repressed his vocabulary.”
“Why,” said Ethel, “you know he came with berries the morning after you came.”
“Oh,” said Ellery, “he had sworn off that morning. You ought to have heard him to-day.”
“Perfectly willing to let it go at imagining,” said Ethel.
And then Minerva came out with the lilting walk that was hers when she was happy. She bore a tray and set it down on a rustic table that I remembered to have seen in the furniture store at Egerton the week before.
“Here’s to the ‘Tramp’s Rest,’” said Tom when we had all been provided with coffee. “I boney a cot in this house to-night. You fellows can sleep in rooms if you want. For me the stars through the cracks.”
THE latter part of the week Ethel received a letter from Billy, saying that he and Jack would be delighted to come up.
Billy’s letter was characteristic. It ran:
“My Dear Mrs. Vernon:
“You are a kind, good lady. Jack agrees with me in this. You have saved our lives. It has been a long time since we sold any pictures, and we have forgotten the address of our bank, so we were not thinking of going to any summer resort this summer, but your invitation could not be refused without insulting you.
“It is not entirely as if we were strangers, however, because we know Tom (oh, don’t we know him) and we know your husband. Tom has brought him to the Olla Podrida Club more than once and has made him smoke the club cigars which we thought unkind. So we have a certain sympathy with your husband and are prepared to like him better the more we know him.
“Will you please ask Tom to tell us what train to take, and also to do any other things that are necessary. He will understand.
“Please give my regards to Miss Paxton. You mentioned her as part of your ‘party,’ and she must be a large part, unless she has changed. I used to know her before I came to New York, when she was a little girl (three years ago).
“Jack wants me to tell you that whatever I think of you he thinks also, and that you do not know how much you have done for ART IN AMERICA by making it possible for us to set down on canvas the beauties of your state. (I’m not sure whether that should be a capital S or not.)
“Yours cordially,
“William Edson.”
When we showed the letter to Tom and asked him what Mr. Edson meant by saying, “ask Tom to do any other things that are necessary,” he burst into a roar of laughter.
“That means in plain English that the dear boys are stone broke, and that they will need money before they can buy their tickets. I will telegraph them ten dollars.”
“Do you mean to say,” said Benedict, “that those young men are going to borrow the money to come up here?”
“Yes, why not?” said Tom with just a suspicion of heat in his tone.
“Why, nothing,” said Benedict, “only I’d stay in the city all summer before I’d borrow money to go away. I’d be too independent.”
“Independent, poppycock,” said Tom. “We’re told to let independence be our boast, but we’re also told that it’s wrong to boast. So it’s wrong to boast of independence. No man can be independent in this world. He relies on one man to bring him into the world and on another to bury him, and all the time he’s here he’s relying on one person or another. The only thing is for him to accept help and be willing to help. That’s all,” Tom laughed. “Sermon’s over. Collection will now be taken up to bring those two babes to the place where they can make bread for next winter. No, sir. You, Phil, can not contribute. This hard-as-nails Benedict, who thinks he’s made his own way, and who has been helped all along by our free institutions, will chip in, and so will old Cr?sus when he comes back from his horseback ride with Cherry.” He paused. “Sibthorp ought to learn to ride.”
Benedict’s hand went down into his pocket and brought out a bill.
“Now, see here,” said Tom. “I don’t want you to have the idea that you’re doing a charitable act, for you’re not. Those boys are going to give us a couple of sketches before they go back, and we’ll sell them for more than ten dollars and refund pro rata. Will that satisfy your sordid business soul?”
Benedict drew off and gave Tom a friendly punch. They were always insulting each other, having been friends for years, and both of them members of the Olla Podrida Club, which, by the way, is an association of artists and men interested in art. Benedict buys a picture once in a while and, according to Tom, when he relies on the advice of an artist friend, he gets a good one. When he relies on his own judgment he gets something that provides no end of amusement to all the artists except the one who painted the picture.
“I want none of your impudence, Tom,” said he, and then Minerva interrupted.
It seems as if Minerva were always interrupting and generally with a shriek.
“Oh, Lawdy! Lawdy! there’s a big worm in the kitchen!” cried she as she came running out of the sitting room to where we were standing.
“Worms can’t hurt you, Minerva,” said Tom. “Go get a bird and see him catch the worm.”
“Oh, my! but this worm would eat any bird I ever saw. It’s that long.”
She showed how long it was, and Tom said,
“Why, it must be a snake.”
We men ran into the kitchen, and there, sure enough, was a little green snake about a foot long and frightened in every inch.
Tom picked up the mop, and carefully aiming at the little creature, he brought it down about three feet away from it. For the snake had eluded him.
Minerva’s curiosity was greater than her fear, and she came to the door of the kitchen to watch us.
Benedict picked up a broom and made a swipe at the snake that upset a pitcher of milk, but missed the snake which coiled its pretty green length in the middle of the floor raised its pretty head and darted out a needle-like and beautifully red tongue at us in a way that reminded me of the Morse alphabet.
I cannot explain why I was thus reminded, and probably such a reminder was far from the snake’s intention.
I could not help feeling sorry for the little fellow. They say that snakes love milk. Here was a place flowing with milk, but he could not stop to drink it because three huge beings threatened his very life.
“Can he jump?” said Minerva, preparing to jump herself.
“No, Minerva, he is perfectly harmless,” said I, resolved to save his life. “Say, you fellows, stop whacking at him and capture him alive. I want to show Minerva that these snakes haven’t a vicious thought in their heads.”
I took the mop from Tom, and watching my chance, I brought it down on the snake in such a way as to pin it, wriggling. Then I picked it up by the neck.
“Oh, Lawdy!” cried Minerva, and stepping backward trod on the tail of Miss Pussy who happened to be coming into the kitchen.
Miss Pussy emitted a yell that Minerva firmly believed to come from the mouth of the snake, and clapping both her hands to her ears she rushed through the dining room and met Ethel coming in.
Ethel and she met on their foreheads, and Minerva was not hurt at all. Ethel, however, was hard hit, and, infected with Minerva’s panic, she turned and ran through the sitting room into the arms of Madge, who had come to see what was happening.
Madge was almost bowled over, but managed to withstand the shock, and brought the chain of concussions to an end.
I am perhaps a crank on the subject of snakes, but I do object to the senseless panic that seizes on some people when they see one. Now, if it were a mouse, it would be different. A mouse has cluttering little feet and a method of approach that reminds one of happenings in a previous state of existence, and I confess that a mouse in a room will spoil my peace of mind, but a snake is generally good to look upon, and it is graceful beyond measure, and it is nearly always harmless and perfectly willing to leave you most of the world for your inheritance.
So I kept hold of the snake, and after Ethel had assured me that she was not seriously hurt by the impact of Minerva’s splendidly built skull, I told her that I wanted to give Minerva a little lesson in natural history.
There is one thing about Minerva. She is a reasonable being. Her fear of cows vanished after we had assured her that cows were for the most part friendly, and as there were no rattle-snakes in the vicinity, I knew I was safe in calming her fears in regard to the snake. So I asked her and the rest to come out of doors and I would show her what a perfectly innocuous thing our little green friend was.
“Nearly everything we meet out doors, Minerva,” said I, “is disposed to leave us alone if we will leave it alone. This little green snake, that looks as if it were fresh from Ireland, is only anxious now to get away from me and rejoin its little ones. If you kept the kitchen full of snakes there would never be any flies there, because snakes love flies. Come and stroke him. I give you my word he will neither sting nor bite.”
Minerva came up with confidence, and amid shrieks from all the women she patted the little green head, and the little red tongue came out and spelled a message of love to her.
“See there, Minerva! He wants to show you that he is perfectly friendly.”
“My, aint he clean!”
“Of course he’s clean. Snakes are all the while washing themselves with their tongues.” I caught Ethel’s eye, and felt that my natural history was shaky, but I wanted to make an interesting story for Minerva, and who cares for facts in natural history, so long as you have something that will be read?
“I dare say that at one time snakes and cats belonged to the same family. When you see a cat crouched down and creeping along after a bird, it looks like a snake. Its head is flattened and its ears are laid back and its tail looks just like a snake in itself. Probably snakes once had fur—”
“And they rubbed it all off creepin’ ’round.”
“Exactly. Now, take this little snake and be kind to him and overcome your antipathy to him—”
As I said this I loosened my hold on him, preparatory to handing him to Minerva.
But instead of going to Minerva, he turned and made his way swiftly up my arm and around my neck.
Ugh. I never felt anything so creepy in my life. I flung him from me (with a wild cry, Ethel says, although I think she is mistaken). At any rate I tossed the snake far from me, and he made his sinuous, chilly, gliding, repulsive way to his waiting family. And probably wrote a book on the bad habits of human beings from his short and superficial observation of them.
There is a certain rooted antipathy to snakes that lies deep at the base of our being. I cannot explain it, but I know it’s there. I am no snake charmer.
Minerva might have said something, but she knew her place, and refrained. She merely went out to the kitchen and guffawed all by herself, while I, ignoring the remarks of my friends, went upstairs to wash the feeling of cold snake from my neck.