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Page 90
The boys escorted us to the front of the house, which I hadn't yet seen; in
farm-houses, somehow, life comes and goes by the back door. The roof was
so steep that the eaves were not much above the forest of tall hollyhocks,
now brown and in seed. Through July, Antonia said, the house was buried in
them; the Bohemians, I remembered, always planted hollyhocks. The front
yard was enclosed by a thorny locust hedge, and at the gate grew two
silvery, mothlike trees of the mimosa family. From here one looked down
over the cattle-yards, with their two long ponds, and over a wide stretch
of stubble which they told me was a ryefield in summer.
At some distance behind the house were an ash grove and two orchards: a
cherry orchard, with gooseberry and currant bushes between the rows, and an
apple orchard, sheltered by a high hedge from the hot winds. The older
children turned back when we reached the hedge, but Jan and Nina and Lucie
crept through it by a hole known only to themselves and hid under the
low-branching mulberry bushes.
As we walked through the apple orchard, grown up in tall bluegrass, Antonia
kept stopping to tell me about one tree and another. `I love them as if
they were people,' she said, rubbing her hand over the bark. `There wasn't
a tree here when we first came. We planted every one, and used to carry
water for them, too--after we'd been working in the fields all day. Anton,
he was a city man, and he used to get discouraged. But I couldn't feel so
tired that I wouldn't fret about these trees when there was a dry time.
They were on my mind like children. Many a night after he was asleep I've
got up and come out and carried water to the poor things. And now, you
see, we have the good of them. My man worked in the orange groves in
Florida, and he knows all about grafting. There ain't one of our
neighbours has an orchard that bears like ours.'
In the middle of the orchard we came upon a grape arbour, with seats built
along the sides and a warped plank table. The three children were waiting
for us there. They looked up at me bashfully and made some request of
their mother.
`They want me to tell you how the teacher has the school picnic here every
year. These don't go to school yet, so they think it's all like the
picnic.'
After I had admired the arbour sufficiently, the youngsters ran away to an
open place where there was a rough jungle of French pinks, and squatted
down among them, crawling about and measuring with a string.
`Jan wants to bury his dog there,' Antonia explained. `I had to tell him
he could. He's kind of like Nina Harling; you remember how hard she used
to take little things? He has funny notions, like her.'
We sat down and watched them. Antonia leaned her elbows on the table.
There was the deepest peace in that orchard. It was surrounded by a triple
enclosure; the wire fence, then the hedge of thorny locusts, then the
mulberry hedge which kept out the hot winds of summer and held fast to the
protecting snows of winter. The hedges were so tall that we could see
nothing but the blue sky above them, neither the barn roof nor the
windmill. The afternoon sun poured down on us through the drying grape
leaves. The orchard seemed full of sun, like a cup, and we could smell the
ripe apples on the trees. The crabs hung on the branches as thick as beads
on a string, purple-red, with a thin silvery glaze over them. Some hens
and ducks had crept through the hedge and were pecking at the fallen
apples. The drakes were handsome fellows, with pinkish grey bodies, their
heads and necks covered with iridescent green feathers which grew close and
full, changing to blue like a peacock's neck. Antonia said they always
reminded her of soldiers--some uniform she had seen in the old country,
when she was a child.
`Are there any quail left now?' I asked. I reminded her how she used to
go hunting with me the last summer before we moved to town. `You weren't a
bad shot, Tony. Do you remember how you used to want to run away and go
for ducks with Charley Harling and me?'
`I know, but I'm afraid to look at a gun now.' She picked up one of the
drakes and ruffled his green capote with her fingers. `Ever since I've had
children, I don't like to kill anything. It makes me kind of faint to
wring an old goose's neck. Ain't that strange, Jim?'
`I don't know. The young Queen of Italy said the same thing once, to a
friend of mine. She used to be a great huntswoman, but now she feels as
you do, and only shoots clay pigeons.'
`Then I'm sure she's a good mother,' Antonia said warmly.
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