The Smiling Hill-Top Part 4

There was a thicket of bamboos close to my window, and every night all the young mocking-birds gathered there to try out their voices. It was partly elocutionary and partly vocal, but almost entirely exercises--rarely did they favor me with a real song. This would go on for some time, then just as I dared to hope that lessons were over, another burst of ill-a.s.sorted trills and shrills would rouse me to fury.

I kept three pairs of boots in a convenient place, and hurled them into the bamboos, paying the boys a small reward for retrieving them each morning. Sometimes, if my aim was good, a kind of wondering silence lasted long enough for me to fall asleep. There is an old song--we all know it--that runs:

"She's sleeping in the valley, etc., etc., And the mocking-bird is singing where she lies."

That, of course, would be impossible if the poor little thing hadn't been dead.

By day I really enjoyed them. To sit in the garden, which smelled like a perpetual wedding, reading Lafcadio Hearn and listening to mocking-birds and linnets, would have undermined my New England upbringing very quickly, had I had time to indulge often in such a lotus-eating existence.

Then there was "Boost." He was a small bantam rooster, beloved of our landlady, which really proves nothing because she was such a tender-hearted person that she loved every dumb creature that wandered to her door. Had Boost been dumb I might have loved him too. He had a voice like the noise a small boy can make with a tin can and a resined string. He had a malevolent eye and knew that I detested him, so that he took especial pains to crow under my windows, generally about an hour after the mocking-birds stopped. I think living with a lot of big hens and roosters told on his nervous system, and he took it out on me. Great self-restraint did I exercise in not wringing his neck, when help came from an unexpected quarter. Boost had spirit--I grant him that--and one day he evidently forgot that he wasn't a full-sized bird, and was reproved by the Sultan of the poultry-yard in such a way that he was found almost dead of his wounds. Dear Miss W----'s heart was quite broken. She fed him brandy and anointed him with healing lotions, but to no avail. He died. I had felt much torn and rather doublefaced in my inquiries for the sufferer, because I was so terribly afraid he might get well, so it was a great relief when he was safely buried in the back lot.

Though I love animals I have had bloodthirsty moments of feeling that the only possible way to enjoy pets was to have them like those wooden j.a.panese eggs which fit into each other. If you have white mice or a canary, have a cat to contain the canary, and a dog to reckon with the cat. Further up in the scale the matter is more difficult, of course.

One of our "best seller" manufacturers, in his early original days, wrote a delightful tale. In it he said: "A Cheetah is a yellow streak full of people's pet dogs," so perhaps that is the answer. The ultimate cheetah would, of course, have to be shot and stuffed, as it would hardly be possible to have a wild-cat lounging about the place. I think the idea has possibilities. So many of our plans are determined by pets.

"No, we can't close the house and go motoring for a week, because there is no one with whom to leave the puppies." "Yes, we rented our house to Mrs. S---- for less than we expected to get for it, because she is so fond of cats and promised to take good care of Pom Pom"--which recalls to my mind a dear little girl who had a white kitten that she was entrusting to a neighbor. The neighbor, a busy person with eight children, received the kitten without demonstration of any kind. Little Lydia looked at her for a few moments and then said, "Mrs. F----, that kitten must be loved." That is really the trouble, not only must they be loved, but they are loved and then the pull on your heart-strings begins. We have a pair of twin silver-haired Yorks.h.i.+re terriers, who are an intimate part of our family circle. I sometimes feel like a friend of mine in San Francisco, who has a marvellous Chinese cook, and says she hopes she will die before Li does. I hope "Rags" and "Tags" will live as long as I do--and yet they are a perfect pest. If they are outdoors they want to come in, or vice versa. It is practically impossible to sneak off in the motor without their escort and they bark at my best callers.

Since they made substantial sums of money begging for the Red Cross, they have added a taste for publicity to their other insistent qualities and come into the drawing-room, and sit up in front of whoever may be calling, with a view to sugar and petting. And the worst of it is I can't maintain discipline at all. Rags has had to be anointed with a salve compounded of tar and sulphur. It is an indignity and quite crushes his spirit, so that after it has been put on he wishes to sit close to me for comfort. The result is that I become like a winter overcoat just emerging from moth-b.a.l.l.s rather than hurt his feelings. Of course it makes some difference whether the pet that is annoying you belongs to you or a neighbor. I doubt whether I could have loved Boost, however, even if I had known him from the sh.e.l.l.

In spite of these various drawbacks we led a most happy life. It was so easy. The bungalow was so attractively furnished; our own oranges and limes grew at the door. There was just room for us with nothing to spare, that had to be kept in order, and our landlady was as different from the cold-hearted ones we had known as the bankers and real-estate men. She seemed to be always trying to think of what we might need, and to provide it. Dear Miss W----, she will never be a good business woman from the world's point of view; she is too generous and too unselfis.h.!.+

We all loved her. Many were the hours I inveigled her into wasting while we sat on bales of the goats' hay and discussed life and the affairs of the country--but mostly life with its curious twists and turns--its generosities and its stinginesses. The boys spent their time in the goat-pen making friends of the little kids, whose various advents added so much interest to the spring, and learning much from Miss W----, whose att.i.tude towards life was so sane and wholesome for them to know.

"Buckaboo," the only buck on the ranch when we came, was a das.h.i.+ng young creature, prancing about and kicking up his heels for the pure joy of living. Joedy informed J---- that he reminded him of him, "only in a goat way, father"--a tribute to the light-heartedness that California had already brought to at least one member of the family.

If our Sabine Farm's vocation was goats, its avocation was surely roses.

We were literally smothered in them. A Cecil Brunner with its perfect little buds, so heavily perfumed, covered one corner of the house. The Lady Banks.h.i.+re, with its delicate yellow blossoms, roofed our porch, and the glorious Gold of Ophir, so th.o.r.n.y and with little fragrance, concealed our laundry from the road. There was a garden of bush roses of all kinds to cut for the house, and the crowning glory of all was a hedge of "Tausend Schon," growing luxuriantly, and a blaze of bloom in May. After years of illness and worry, it was good to feel life coming back joyously in a kind of haven--or heaven--of roses.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

THE LAND OF WHYNOT

When Alice stepped through the looking-gla.s.s and ran out into that most alluring garden, she must have felt much as I did long ago when I stepped off the Santa Fe Limited and found myself in Southern California for the first time! It isn't just the palm trees and the suns.h.i.+ne, though they are part of the charm. It isn't even the mocking-birds and the orange blossoms altogether. It is something you can't really put your finger on, that lures you from your old habits and a.s.sociations. At first you are simply glad that you have left the cold and snow behind you, and that the earth is so sweet with flowers, and then you begin to find a new world of possibilities. There are all sorts of little garden gates with golden keys on gla.s.s tables, and you set about growing shorter or taller, as the case may be, to make yourself a proper height to reach the key and slip through the door. You don't even need to hurry, if you are firm about not grasping the hand of any Red Queen that may come your way, and yet it isn't a land of manana; it's a land of "Why Not?" The magic has nothing to do with one's age; I feel it now even more than I did twenty years ago, and Grandmother felt it at eighty just as I did at eighteen. Ulysses could have himself lashed to the mast and snap his fingers at the Sirens, but I know of no protection against the Southwest except to somehow close the shutters of your imagination.

However, let me not be a Calvinist; because it is enchanting, why should I fear it?

I shall never forget my first experience of the spell. I was invited by my Grandmother to go to California for several months. There were four of us, and we were all tired, for one reason or another; Grandmother because she was eighty, and it's a strenuous matter to live eighty years; my Aunt because she had been desperately ill; C. C. because she had nursed my Aunt back to comparative health, and I because I had been a debutante that winter, and every one knows that that is the hardest work of all. We went as far south as the train would take us, and settled ourselves at Coronado to bask in the suns.h.i.+ne until the tiredness was gone and we became a band of explorers, with the world before us! A pair of buggies drawn by nags of unblemished reputation for sagacity and decorum, driven by C. C. and me, carried us over many a picturesque and rough road. It invariably took us all day to get anywhere and back, irrespective of what the distance was supposed to be.

The outfit was so old that I often had to draw up my steed and mend the harness with a safety-pin. Trailing Ramona was our favorite game.

Fortunately for that part of the country, she and Allessandro managed to be born, or sleep, or marry, or die in pretty nearly every little settlement, ranch, or mission in San Diego County, and it's a great boon to the country. Now, of course, with a motor you can cover the ground in a day, but then, with a guaranteed horse and a safety-pinned harness, Ramona was good for weeks.

We usually took a picnic lunch, and it was on one of these trips that I first saw the Smiling Hill-Top and knew it not for my later love. How often that happens! Jogging home, with the reins slack on the placid mare's back, Grandmother liked me to sing "Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms" and "Araby's Daughter," showing that she was a good deal under the spell of the palm trees and the sunset, for I have the voice of a lost kitten. It also shows the perfect self-control of the horse, for no accidents occurred.

It was a very different Coronado from the present day, with its motors on earth and water, and in air. I liked ours better and hated to leave it, but after six weeks of its glory of suns.h.i.+ne I was deputed to go north to Pasadena to rent a bungalow for two months. It was my first attempt of the kind, and aided by a cousin into whose care I had been confided, I succeeded in reducing the rent twenty-five dollars a month for a pretty cottage smothered in roses and heliotropes and well supplied with orange and lemon trees. I was rather pleased with myself as a business woman. Not so Grandmother. She was thoroughly indignant and announced her firm intention of paying the original rent asked, a phenomenon that so surprised our landlord, when I told him, that he insisted on scrubbing the kitchen floor personally, the day of her arrival. Thus did Raleigh lay down his cloak for the Queen!

Everything was lovely. It only rained once that spring--the morning after we had gone up Mount Lowe to see the sun rise, to be sure, but it would be a carping creature who would complain when only one expedition had been dampened. For twenty years I cherished the illusion that this was a land of endless suns.h.i.+ne. I don't know where I thought the moisture came from that produces the almost tropical luxuriance of the gardens and the groves. I know better now and, strange to say, I have come to love a rain in its proper time and place, if it isn't too boisterous. We discovered a veteran of the Civil War turned liveryman, who for a paltry consideration in cash was ours every afternoon, and showed us something new each day, from racing horses on the Lucky Baldwin Ranch to the shadow of a spread eagle on a rock. Grandmother's favorite excursion was to a picturesque winery set in vineyards and shaded by eucalyptus trees. She was what I should call a wine-jelly, plum-pudding prohibitionist, and she included tastes of port and fruit cordials as part of the sight-seeing to be done. You can be pretty at eighty, which is consoling to know. Grandmother, with a little curl over each ear and the pink born of these "tastes" proved it, and she wouldn't let us tease her about it either. It was an easy life, and so fascinating that I even said to myself, "Why not learn to play the guitar?" for nothing seemed impossible. It shows how thoroughly drugged I was by this time, for my Creator wholly omitted to supply me with a musical ear. I always had to have my instrument tuned by the young man next door, but I learned to play "My Old Kentucky Home" so that every one recognized it. Now, if years had not taught me some fundamental facts about my limitations, I should probably render twilight hideous with a ukelele, for a ukelele goes a guitar one better, and Aloha oee wailed languorously on that instrument would make even a Quaker relax.

It was in the late spring that the Great Idea came to Aunty and me. I don't know which of us was really responsible for it, and there was a time when neither of us would own it. A course in small "Why Nots?" made it come quite naturally at the last. Why shouldn't we drive into the Yosemite Valley before we went home? By the end of May it would be at its loveliest, with the melted snows from the mountains filling its streams and making a rus.h.i.+ng, spraying glory of its falls. It did seem a pity to be so near one of the loveliest places on earth and to miss seeing it. Aunty and I discussed the matter dispa.s.sionately under a palm tree in the back yard. We honestly concluded that it wouldn't hurt Grandmother a bit, that it might even do her good, so we began to put out a few conversational feelers, and the next thing we knew she was claiming the idea as her own and inviting us to accompany her! In her early married life she was once heard to say to Grandfather, "Edwin, I have made up our minds." So you can see that Aunty and I were as clay in her hands! Where we made our great mistake was in writing to the rest of the family about our plans until after we had started. They became quite abusive in their excitement. Were we crazy? Had we forgotten Grandmother's age? What was C. C., a trained nurse, about, to let a little delicate old lady take such a trip? They were much shocked. We had to admit her age, but Aunty and I weren't so sure about her delicacy, and anyway her mind was made up, so we burned their telegrams and packed the bags.

It happened twenty years ago, but I can see her sitting in a rocking-chair on the piazza of Leidig's Hotel in Raymond, surrounded by miners, all courteously editing their conversation and chewing tobacco as placidly as a herd of cows, while Grandmother, the only person whose feet were not elevated to the railing, rocked gently and smiled. Of course we planned to make the trip as easy as possible, and had engaged a spring wagon so that we could take more time than the stage, which naturally had to live up to a Bret Harte standard. We made an early start from Raymond after a rather troubled night at Leidig's Hotel. You hear strange sounds in a mining camp after dark. Every one in town saw us off, as Grandmother was already popular, and looked on as rather a sporting character. Al Stevens, who drove us, was a bitter disappointment to me, not looking in the least romantic or like the hero of a Western story. I shan't even describe him, except to say that he smoked most evil-smelling cigars, the bouquet of which blew back into our faces and spoiled the pure mountain air, but we didn't dare say a word, for fear that he might lash his horses round some hair-pin curve and scare us to death, even if we didn't actually go over the edge. I don't think he would really have rushed to extremes, for he turned out to be distinctly amiable, and our picnic lunches, eaten near some mountain spring, were partaken of most sociably and Al Stevens didn't always smoke. How good everything tasted! I don't believe I have ever really enjoyed apple pie with a fork as I enjoyed it sitting on a log with a generous wedge in one hand and a hearty morsel of mouse-trap cheese in the other.

We spent three days driving into the valley, staying at delightful inns over night, and stopping when we pleased, to pick flowers, for wonderful ones grow beside the road; Mariposa tulips with their spotted b.u.t.terfly wings, fairy lanterns, all the shades of blue lupin, and on our detour to see the big trees I found a snow-plant, which looks like a blossom carved out of watermelon--pink and luscious! It is hard to realize how big the big trees are! Like St. Peter's, they are so wonderfully proportioned you can't appreciate their height, but I do know that they would be just a little more than my tree-climbing sons would care to tackle. Stevens was a good driver and approved of our appreciation of "his" scenery, and I think he was proud of Grandmother, who really stood the trip wonderfully well. At last came the great moment when a bend in the road would disclose the valley with its silver peaks, its golden-brown river, and its rainbow-spanned falls. We had never suspected it, but Stevens was an epicure in beauty. He insisted on our closing our eyes till we came to just the spot where the view was most perfect, and then he drew in his horses, gave the word, and we looked on a valley as lovely as a dream. I am glad that we saw it as we did, after a long prelude of shaded roads and sentinel trees. Nowadays you rush to it madly by train and motor. Then it was a dear secret hidden away in the heart of the forest.

We spent five days at the hotel by the Merced River, feasting on beauty and mountain trout, and lulled by the murmur of that gentle stream.

Moonlight illumined the whiteness of the Yosemite Falls in full view of the hotel verandah as it makes the double leap down a dark gorge. We could see a great deal with very little effort, but after a day or two I began to look longingly upward toward the mountain trails. At last a chance came, and "Why Not" led me to embrace it. A wholesale milliner from Los Angeles invited me to join his party. We had seen him at various places along our way, so that it was not entirely out of a clear sky. He was wall-eyed--if that is the opposite of cross-eyed--which gave him so decidedly rakish a look that it was some time before I could persuade my conservative relatives that it would be safe for me to accept the invitation, but as the party numbered ten, mostly female, they finally gave me their blessing. Being the last comer, and the mules being all occupied, I had to take a horse, which I was sorry for, as they aren't supposed to be quite as sure-footed on the trail. The party all urged me to be cautious, with such emphasis that I began to wonder if I had been wise to come, when Charley, our guide, told me not to pay any attention to them, that I had the best mount of the whole train.

Charley, by the way, was all that Al Stevens was not, and added the note of picturesqueness and romance which my soul had been craving. He was young, blond, and dressed for the part, and would have entranced a moving-picture company! The wholesale milliner called me "Miss Black Eyes," and was so genial in manner that I joined Charley at the end of the parade and heard stories of his life which may or may not have been true. Every now and then Jesse James, an especially independent mule, would pause, and with deliberation and vigor kick at an inaccessible fly on the hinder parts of his person, while his rider shrieked loudly for help, and the procession halted till calm was restored. At last we reached the end of the trail. Somewhere I have a snap-shot of myself standing on Glacier Point, that rock that juts out over the valley, clinging to Charley's hand, for I found that standing there with the snow falling, looking down thousands of feet, made me crave a hand to keep the snowflakes from drawing me down. The wholesale milliner and the rest considered me a reckless soul, and many were the falsetto shrieks they emitted if I went within ten feet of the edge of the precipice.

They did not realize the insurance and a.s.surance of Charley's hand.

Of course I endured the anguish of a first horseback ride for the next day or two, but it was worth it, and by the time we were ready to start for home I could sit down quite comfortably. The trip was accomplished without a jolt or jog sufficient to disarrange Grandmother's curls.

Aunty and I were always so thankful that we defied the family and let her have her last adventure, for soon afterward her mind began to grow dim. For myself, I treasure the memory both for her sake, and because I can't climb trails myself any more, and that is something I didn't miss. Was it Schopenhauer or George Ade who said, "What you've had you've got"?

Twenty years later another party of four, consisting of a husband and two boys, were led by a lady Moses into the promised land, and were met by an old friend, the Civil War veteran, with a motor instead of his pair of black horses! He was too old to drive, but he had come to welcome me back. Billie and Joedy were thrilled. They adored the tales of his twelve battles and the hole in his knee, even more than their mother had before them, being younger and boys. It was as lovely a land as I had remembered it, only, of course, there were changes. The motor showed that. I should not say that the tempo of life had been quickened so much as that its radius had been widened, or that the focus was different; the old spell was the same. To reconcile the past and the present, I have thought of a beautiful compromise. Why not a motor van?

The family jeered at me when I first suggested that we spend J----'s next vacation meandering up the coast in one. Of course, the boys adored the idea at first, but sober second thoughts for mother made them pause.

Billie: "But, Muvs, you'd hate it, you couldn't have a box spring!"

Joedy: "And you don't like to wash dishes."

Quite true. I had thought of all that myself. I don't like to wash dishes, but we use far more than we really need to use, and anyway I had rather decided that I wouldn't wash them. As to the bed-spring, I could have an air mattress, for while it's a little like sleeping on a captive balloon, it doesn't irritate your bones like a camp cot.

The family distrust of me, as a vagabond, dates from a camping trip last August to celebrate Billie's twelfth birthday. It lasted only one night, so "trip" is a large word to apply to it, but I will say that for one night it had all the time there could be squeezed into it. We selected a site on the beach almost within hallooing distance of the Smiling Hill-Top, borrowed a tent and made camp. I loved the fire and frying the bacon and the beat of the waves, but I did not like the smell of the tent. It was stuffy. I had been generously given that shelter for my own, while the male members of the party slept by a log (not like one, J---- confessed to me) under a tarpaulin--I mean "tarp"--with stars above them except when obscured by fog. My cot was short and low and I am not, so that I spent the night tucking in the blankets. The puppies enjoyed it all thoroughly. Though they must have been surprised by the sudden democratic intimacy of the situation, they are opportunists and curled themselves in, on, and about my softer portions, so that I had to push them out every time I wanted to turn over, which was frequently. I urged them to join the rest of the party under the "tarp," but they were firm, as they weren't minding the hardness of the cot, and they don't care especially about ventilation. I greeted the dawn with heartfelt thanksgiving, and yet I'm as keen about my vacation idea as ever. I have simply learned what to do and what not to do, and it won't matter to me in the least whether my ways are those of a tenderfoot or not. Why not be comfortable physically as well as spiritually? Think of the independence of it! To be able to sit at the feet of any view that you fancy till you are ready to move on! Doesn't that amount to "free will"?

Yes, I am resolved to try it out and Billie says if I make up my mind to something I generally get my way (being descended from Grandmother probably accounts for it), so if you should see a rather fat, lazy green van with "Why not?" painted over the back door, you may know that two grown vagabonds, two young vagabonds, and two vagabond pups, are on the trail following the gypsy patteran.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

WHERE THE TRADE WIND BLOWS

Mr. Jones meets his friend, Mr. Brown:

"Surprised to see that your house is for sale, Brown."

"Oh--er--yes" replies Brown; "that is, I don't know. I keep that sign up on the lawn." Then with a burst of confidence: "Mrs. Brown meets so many nice people that way, don't you know!"

So it is that we have a reputation for being willing to sell anything in California, even our souls. Of course, it isn't at all necessary to have a sign displaying "For Sale" to have constant inquiries as to the price of your place. After the days of "The Sabine Farm" were only a lovely memory, we bought a bungalow in Pasadena, or, rather, we are buying it on the instalment plan. It is really an adorable little place with a very flowery garden, surrounded by arbors covered with roses, wistaria, and jasmine (I think I should say we have been very fortunate in our dwelling-places since we emigrated), and pa.s.sers-by usually stop and comment favorably. Young men bring their girls and show them the sort of little place they'd like to own, and often they ring the door-bell for further inquiries. Driven to bay, I have put a price of half a million on our tiny estate. When I mention this, the investigators usually retreat hastily, looking anxiously over their shoulders to see if my keeper is anywhere in sight. As to the real-estate men, they are more in number than the sands of the sea, and the compet.i.tion is razor-edged. If you have the dimmest idea of ever buying a lot or house, or if you are comfortably without principle, you won't need to keep a motor at all.

The real-estate men will see that you get lots of fresh air, and they are most obliging about letting you do your marketing on the way home.

We have an especial friend in the business. He never loses hope, or his temper. It was he that originally found us "The Sabine Farm." He let us live there in peace till we were rested, for which we are eternally grateful, and then he began to throw out unsettling remarks. The boys ought to have a place to call home where they could grow up with a.s.sociations. Wasn't it foolish to pay rent when we might be applying that money toward the purchase of a house? Of course it told on us in time and we began to look about. "The Sabine Farm" would not do, as it was too far from J----'s business, and the lotus-flower existence of our first two years was ours no longer. Every lot we looked at had irresistible attractions, and insurmountable objections. At last, however, we settled on a piece of land looking toward the mountains, with orange trees on either hand, paid a part of the price, and supposed it was ours for better or worse. Just then the war darkened and we felt panicky, but heaven helped us, for there was a flaw in the t.i.tle, and our money came trotting back to us, wagging its tail. It was after this that we stumbled on the arbored bungalow, and bought it in fifteen minutes. I asked Mr. W---- if he liked ba.s.s fis.h.i.+ng, and whether he'd ever found one gamier to land than our family. He will probably let us live quietly for a little while, and then he will undoubtedly tell us that this place is too small for us. I know him!

In case of death or bankruptcy the situation is much more intense. Every mouse hole has its alert whiskered watcher, and after a delay of a few days for decency, such pressure is brought to bear that surviving relatives rarely have the courage to stand pat. Probably a change of surroundings _is_ good for them.

If people can't be induced to sell, often they will rent. There is an eccentric old woman in town who owns a most lovely lot, beautifully planted, that is the hope and snare of every real-estate man, but, though poor, she will not part with it. She has a house, however, that she rents in the season. One day some Eastern people were looking at it, and timidly said that one bath-room seemed rather scant for so large a house.

"Oh, do you think so?" said Mrs. Riddle. "It is enough for us. Mr.

Riddle and I aren't what you'd call bathers. In fact, Mr. Riddle doesn't bathe at all; I sponge!"

Real estate isn't the only interest of the West. We all read the advertising page of the local paper just as eagerly as we do the foreign news. If I feel at all lonely or bored I generally advertise for something. Once I wanted a high-school boy to drive the motor three afternoons a week. The paper was still moist from the press when my applicants began to telephone. I took their names and gave them appointments at ten-minute intervals all the following morning, only plugging the telephone when J---- and I felt we must have some sleep. In the morning, forgetting the little wad of paper we had placed in the bell, I took down the receiver to call the market, when a tired voice started as if I had pressed a b.u.t.ton:

"I saw your 'ad' in the paper last night, etc." When they arrived they ranged in age from sixteen to sixty. The latter was a retired clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Bain, who said he drove for his wife, but (here he fitted his finger-tips together, and worked them back and forth in a manner that was a blend of jauntiness and cordiality) he thought he could fit us both in!