Part 103 (1/2)
THE EARTH'S ENTAIL
No matter how we cultivate the land, Taming the forest and the prairie free; No matter how we irrigate the sand, Making the desert blossom at command, We must always leave the borders of the sea; The immeasureable reaches Of the windy wave-wet beaches, The million-mile-long margin of the sea.
No matter how the engineers may toil, Nature's barriers and bulwarks to defy; No matter how we excavate and spoil, De-forest and denude and waste the soil, We must always leave the mountains looming high; No human effort changes, The horizon-rolling ranges Where the high hills heave and shoulder to the sky.
When a child may wander safely, east or west, When the peaceful nations gossip and agree.
When our homes are set in gardens all at rest, And happy lives are long in work loved best, We can leave our labor and go free; Free to go and stand alone in, Free for each to find his own in.
In the everlasting mountains and the sea.
THE COTTAGETTE
”Why not?” said Mr. Mathews ”It is far too small for a house, too pretty for a hut, too--unusual--for a cottage.”
”Cottagette, by all means,” said Lois, seating herself on a porch chair.
”But it is larger than it looks, Mr. Mathews. How do you like it, Malda?”
I was delighted with it. More than delighted. Here this tiny sh.e.l.l of fresh unpainted wood peeped out from under the trees, the only house in sight except the distant white specks on far off farms, and the little wandering village in the river-threaded valley. It sat right on the turf,--no road, no path even, and the dark woods shadowed the back windows.
”How about meals?” asked Lois.
”Not two minutes walk,” he a.s.sured her, and showed us a little furtive path between the trees to the place where meals were furnished.
We discussed and examined and exclaimed, Lois holding her pongee skirts close about her--she needn't have been so careful, there wasn't a speck of dust,--and presently decided to take it.
Never did I know the real joy and peace of living, before that blessed summer at ”High Court.” It was a mountain place, easy enough to get to, but strangely big and still and far away when you were there.
The working basis of the establishment was an eccentric woman named Caswell, a sort of musical enthusiast, who had a summer school of music and the ”higher things.” Malicious persons, not able to obtain accommodations there, called the place ”High C.”
I liked the music very well, and kept my thoughts to myself, both high and low, but ”The Cottagette” I loved unreservedly. It was so little and new and clean, smelling only of its fresh-planed boards--they hadn't even stained it.
There was one big room and two little ones in the tiny thing, though from the outside you wouldn't have believed it, it looked so small; but small as it was it harbored a miracle--a real bathroom with water piped from mountain springs. Our windows opened into the green shadiness, the soft brownness, the bird-inhabited quiet flower-starred woods. But in front we looked across whole counties--over a far-off river-into another state. Off and down and away--it was like sitting on the roof of something--something very big.
The gra.s.s swept up to the door-step, to the walls--only it wasn't just gra.s.s of course, but such a procession of flowers as I had never imagined could grow in one place.
You had to go quite a way through the meadow, wearing your own narrow faintly marked streak in the gra.s.s, to reach the town-connecting road below. But in the woods was a little path, clear and wide, by which we went to meals.
For we ate with the highly thoughtful musicians, and highly musical thinkers, in their central boarding-house nearby. They didn't call it a boarding-house, which is neither high nor musical; they called it ”The Calceolaria.” There was plenty of that growing about, and I didn't mind what they called it so long as the food was good--which it was, and the prices reasonable--which they were.
The people were extremely interesting--some of them at least; and all of them were better than the average of summer boarders.
But if there hadn't been any interesting ones it didn't matter while Ford Mathews was there. He was a newspaper man, or rather an ex-newspaper man, then becoming a writer for magazines, with books ahead.
He had friends at High Court--he liked music--he liked the place--and he liked us. Lois liked him too, as was quite natural. I'm sure I did.
He used to come up evenings and sit on the porch and talk.