Part 83 (1/2)
”Here are the dear children, Edmund,” Mrs. Hale said. ”What do you think! They want to buy the Madrono Ranch. They've been three years searching for it--I forgot to tell them we had searched ten years for Trillium Covert. Tell them all about it. Surely Mr. Naismith is still of a mind to sell!”
They seated themselves in simple ma.s.sive chairs, and Mrs. Hale took the tiny rattan beside the big Mission rocker, her slender hand curled like a tendril in Edmund's. And while Saxon listened to the talk, her eyes took in the grave rooms lined with books. She began to realize how a mere structure of wood and stone may express the spirit of him who conceives and makes it. Those gentle hands had made all this--the very furniture, she guessed as her eyes roved from desk to chair, from work table to reading stand beside the bed in the other room, where stood a green-shaded lamp and orderly piles of magazines and books.
As for the matter of Madrono Ranch, it was easy enough he was saying.
Naismith would sell. Had desired to sell for the past five years, ever since he had engaged in the enterprise of bottling mineral water at the springs lower down the valley. It was fortunate that he was the owner, for about all the rest of the surrounding land was owned by a Frenchman--an early settler. He would not part with a foot of it. He was a peasant, with all the peasant's love of the soil, which, in him, had become an obsession, a disease. He was a land-miser. With no business capacity, old and opinionated, he was land poor, and it was an open question which would arrive first, his death or bankruptcy.
As for Madrono Ranch, Naismith owned it and had set the price at fifty dollars an acre. That would be one thousand dollars, for there were twenty acres. As a farming investment, using old-fas.h.i.+oned methods, it was not worth it. As a business investment, yes; for the virtues of the valley were on the eve of being discovered by the outside world, and no better location for a summer home could be found. As a happiness investment in joy of beauty and climate, it was worth a thousand times the price asked. And he knew Naismith would allow time on most of the amount. Edmund's suggestion was that they take a two years' lease, with option to buy, the rent to apply to the purchase if they took it up.
Naismith had done that once with a Swiss, who had paid a monthly rental of ten dollars. But the man's wife had died, and he had gone away.
Edmund soon divined Billy's renunciation, though not the nature of it; and several questions brought it forth--the old pioneer dream of land s.p.a.ciousness; of cattle on a hundred hills; one hundred and sixty acres of land the smallest thinkable division.
”But you don't need all that land, dear lad,” Edmund said softly. ”I see you understand intensive farming. Have you thought about intensive horse-raising?”
Billy's jaw dropped at the smas.h.i.+ng newness of the idea. He considered it, but could see no similarity in the two processes. Unbelief leaped into his eyes.
”You gotta show me!” he cried.
The elder man smiled gently.
”Let us see. In the first place, you don't need those twenty acres except for beauty. There are five acres in the meadow. You don't need more than two of them to make your living at selling vegetables. In fact, you and your wife, working from daylight to dark, cannot properly farm those two acres. Remains three acres. You have plenty of water for it from the springs. Don't be satisfied with one crop a year, like the rest of the old-fas.h.i.+oned farmers in this valley. Farm it like your vegetable plot, intensively, all the year, in crops that make horse-feed, irrigating, fertilizing, rotating your crops. Those three acres will feed as many horses as heaven knows how huge an area of unseeded, uncared for, wasted pasture would feed. Think it over. I'll lend you books on the subject. I don't know how large your crops will be, nor do I know how much a horse eats; that's your business. But I am certain, with a hired man to take your place helping your wife on her two acres of vegetables, that by the time you own the horses your three acres will feed, you will have all you can attend to. Then it will be time to get more land, for more horses, for more riches, if that way happiness lie.”
Billy understood. In his enthusiasm he dashed out:
”You're some farmer.”
Edmund smiled and glanced toward his wife.
”Give him your opinion of that, Annette.”
Her blue eyes twinkled as she complied.
”Why, the dear, he never farms. He has never farmed. But he knows.” She waved her hand about the booklined walls. ”He is a student of good. He studies all good things done by good men under the sun. His pleasure is in books and wood-working.”
”Don't forget Dulcie,” Edmund gently protested.
”Yes, and Dulcie.” Annette laughed. ”Dulcie is our cow. It is a great question with Jack Hastings whether Edmund dotes more on Dulcie, or Dulcie dotes more on Edmund. When he goes to San Francisco Dulcie is miserable. So is Edmund, until he hastens back. Oh, Dulcie has given me no few jealous pangs. But I have to confess he understands her as no one else does.”
”That is the one practical subject I know by experience,” Edmund confirmed. ”I am an authority on Jersey cows. Call upon me any time for counsel.”
He stood up and went toward his book-shelves; and they saw how magnificently large a man he was. He paused a book in his hand, to answer a question from Saxon. No; there were no mosquitoes, although, one summer when the south wind blew for ten days--an unprecedented thing--a few mosquitoes had been carried up from San Pablo Bay. As for fog, it was the making of the valley. And where they were situated, sheltered behind Sonoma Mountain, the fogs were almost invariably high fogs. Sweeping in from the ocean forty miles away, they were deflected by Sonoma Mountain and shunted high into the air. Another thing, Trillium Covert and Madrono Ranch were happily situated in a narrow thermal belt, so that in the frosty mornings of winter the temperature was always several degrees higher than in the rest of the valley. In fact, frost was very rare in the thermal belt, as was proved by the successful cultivation of certain orange and lemon trees.
Edmund continued reading t.i.tles and selecting books until he had drawn out quite a number. He opened the top one, Bolton Hall's ”Three Acres and Liberty,” and read to them of a man who walked six hundred and fifty miles a year in cultivating, by old-fas.h.i.+oned methods, twenty acres, from which he harvested three thousand bushels of poor potatoes; and of another man, a ”new” farmer, who cultivated only five acres, walked two hundred miles, and produced three thousand bushels of potatoes, early and choice, which he sold at many times the price received by the first man.
Saxon received the books from Edmund, and, as she heaped them in Billy's arms, read the t.i.tles. They were: Wickson's ”California Fruits,”
Wickson's ”California Vegetables,” Brooks' ”Fertilizers,” Watson's ”Farm Poultry,” King's ”Irrigation and Drainage,” Kropotkin's ”Fields, Factories and Workshops,” and Farmer's Bulletin No. 22 on ”The Feeding of Farm Animals.”
”Come for more any time you want them,” Edmund invited. ”I have hundreds of volumes on farming, and all the Agricultural Bulletins... . And you must come and get acquainted with Dulcie your first spare time,” he called after them out the door.
CHAPTER XIX
Mrs. Mortimer arrived with seed catalogs and farm books, to find Saxon immersed in the farm books borrowed from Edmund. Saxon showed her around, and she was delighted with everything, including the terms of the lease and its option to buy.