The Friendly Road [17]
"I will come," I said, "and buy a little garden next them, and bring Harriet, and we will live here always. What's a farm compared with a friend?"
But with that I thought of the Scotch preacher, and of Horace, and Mr. and Mrs. Starkweather, and I knew I could never leave the friends at home.
"It's astonishing how many fine people there are in this world," I said aloud; "one can't escape them!"
"Good morning, David Grayson," I heard some one saying, and glancing up I saw Mrs. Vedder at the doorway. "Are you hungry?"
"I am always hungry," I said.
Mr. Vedder came out and linking his arm in mine and pointing out various spireas and Japanese barberries, of which he was very proud, we walked into the house together.
I did not think of it especially at time--Harriet says I never see anything really worth while, by which she means dishes, dresses, doilies, and such like but as I remembered afterward the table that Mrs. Vedder set was wonderfully dainty--dainty not merely with flowers (with which it was loaded), but with the quality of the china and silver. It was plainly the table of no ordinary gardener or caretaker--but this conclusion did not come to me until afterward, for as I remember it, we were in a deep discussion of fertilizers.
Mrs. Vedder cooked and served breakfast herself, and did it with a skill almost equal to Harriet's--so skillfully that the talk went on and we never once heard the machinery of service.
After breakfast we all went out into the garden, Mrs. Vedder in an old straw hat and a big apron, and Mr. Vedder in a pair of old brown overalls. Two men had appeared from somewhere, and were digging in the vegetable garden. After giving them certain directions Mr. Vedder and I both found five-tined forks and went into the rose garden and began turning over the rich soil, while Mrs. Vedder, with pruning-shears, kept near us, cutting out the dead wood.
It was one of the charming forenoons of my life. This pleasant work, spiced with the most interesting conversation and interrupted by a hundred little excursions into other parts of the garden, to see this or that wonder of vegetation, brought us to dinner-time before we fairly knew it.
About the middle of the afternoon I made the next discovery. I heard first the choking cough of a big motor-car in the country road, and a moment later it stopped at our gate. I thought I saw the Vedders exchanging significant glances. A number of merry young people tumbled out, and an especially pretty girl of about twenty came running through the garden.
"Mother," she exclaimed, "you MUST come with us!"
"I can't, I can't," said Mrs. Vedder, "the roses MUST be pruned--and see! The azaleas are coming into bloom."
With that she presented me to her daughter.
And, then, shortly, for it could no longer be concealed, I learned that Mr. and Mrs. Vedder were not the caretakers but the owners of the estate and of the great house I had seen on the hill. That evening, with an air almost of apology, they explained to me how it all came about.
"We first came out here," said Mrs. Vedder, "nearly twenty years ago, and built the big house on the hill. But the more we came to know of country life the more we wanted to get down into it. We found it impossible up there--so many unnecessary things to see to and care for--and we couldn't--we didn't see--"
"The fact is," Mr. Vedder put in, "we were losing touch with each other."
"There is nothing like a big house," said Mrs. Vedder, "to separate a man and his wife."
"So we came down here," said Mr. Vedder, "built this little cottage, and developed this garden mostly with our own hands. We would have sold the big house long ago if it hadn't been for our friends. They like it."
"I have never heard a more truly romantic story," said I.
And it WAS romantic: these fine people escaping from too many possessions, too much property, to the peace and quietude of a garden where they could be lovers again.
"It seems, sometimes," said Mrs. Vedder, "that I never really believed in God until we came down