The Abandoned Farm and Its Future — IV

The Abandoned Farm and Its Future — IV

By Helen Campbell

THIS is the tale of a house so thoroughly abandoned as to be almost past reconstruction; yet in which, for three summer months, happiness so abounded that the seed sown means a plentiful crop in prospect for another year. It stood on the hillside, a quarter mile perhaps from the home described in our last number; a square, old-fashioned, comfortable house once owned by a prosperous farmer whose sons made for the West, followed by the entire family.

The hillside at the back of the house was chiefly sheep pasture. The farm itself lay in the valley and deserves a paper all its own, since it had been bought by an energetic young woman who believed that farming, even in New England, could be made to pay, and proved it to the mingled amazement and disapproval of her critical neighbors. With capital enough to dare experiment, each step had been so carefully taken that her acres responded in a quality of crop such as even the rich valley land had never yielded. “A man’s farming after all,” the old farmers said, wagging their heads, since it had gone about that she took frequent counsel with a thoroughly trained and enthusiastic believer in New England possibilities, a graduate of an agricultural college and a prover of his theories, on a show farm in the next county.

It was the mistress of this farm, who, as she looked up to the old house still habitable in spite of wandering Kanucks and their methods during temporary possession, remembered the Working Girls’ Club, one of her dearest interests in the big city from which she had fled, and wished that some of its members might taste some little portion of her own content. Thought and action had never been far apart with her, and soon a plan began to shape.

A model country rest for working girls? Not in the least. There was neither time nor money at present for any elaborate experiment, certainly none for endowment. But a continuous three-months’ picnic was perfectly possible, since friends on whom she could confidently rely in these directions would pay the larger part of the bills. The creamery man who took her milk guaranteed to supply all the skim milk needed in cooking, and she herself would furnish the unskimmed for drinking. Eggs, vegetables, and the rest abounded. The commissary department was the least of the difficulties. A resident somebody must be had, however, not as duenna, but as general overseer of the home. And while she pondered this most essential and most difficult question it answered itself. A maiden aunt who had just come up for a summer’s rest, after a winter of dissipation in a social settlement, decided that rest came most decidedly in change of occupation, and that this was an unequaled opportunity for proving her theory.

She proved it. When the house had been cleaned,—and silence must cover the appalling nature of this process, natural decay and Kanuck methods having made a problem which is not to be described,—the carpenter patched where patching must be, the stove man put up a vast old-fashioned cooking stove, and the crockery man who “hired out” sets to the camp meeting by the river consented to the same plan for the girls.

Last, and an even more beneficent loan, came three Aladdin ovens from a city friend, to be returned for winter use in a Mission Cooking school, and thus the battle with the old stove was reduced to its simplest terms. The furniture man succumbed to a power he had never before faced, and thus dining room and kitchen had their quota of chairs and tables, and bedrooms had cots and washstands with drawers. Then followed a descent upon the sewing society, and the astonished sewers for Home Mission barrels found themselves stitching unnumbered yards of muslin for sash curtains.

“It is Home Mission work just the same,” the maiden aunt said cheerfully, “only a little nearer home.” And this thought so wrought upon a stout and comfortable widow of forty, that she agreed then and there to provide part of the home-made bread, and to loan her own parlor organ for three months.

“It’ll be a mercy to the neighbors,” she said. “Jared always said I never got anything but groans out of it, and it does seem to wheeze with me the worst way. Maybe it won't with the girls.”

It was at this Union sewing society that the wide-awake minister of what he called the “Everyday Church,” suggested a three-months’ loan exhibition of sitting room furniture, selected from the wish-we-could-get-rid-of-it stock common to most houses. His plan worked successfully, barring the fact of an extraordinary number of little tables so small and so feeble on their legs that they fell over at a look, as it were. But they served a turn as very unreliable bedside tables, while only solid approval met the other contributions.

One, an enormous old rosewood sofa, was covered with faded red velvet and bulging with carved fruits and flowers unknown in either horti- or flori-culture. There were armchairs to match, numbers of wicker rockers, and deep-seated chairs that brought things down to the present generation. Some good process prints, a few bowls and vases for flowers, a big jute rug for the center of the room, the border a width of matting, completed the comfortable and most inviting sitting room, the final touch being the laying of the fire in the open chimney place, a garnishing of asparagus boughs in a ginger jar occupying the foreground.

The Shaker community, some miles away, provided eight small rockers, eight being the number of inmates fixed upon as the largest that could well be handled, and on the city side great expectation filled the souls of the club as they realized that a dream had come true, and that “Picnic House” was making ready for them.

“Not another thing,” the maiden aunt said smilingly but decisively to a deputation from the sewing society offering more of everything. “It’s a picnic, and they must meet picnic conditions. I want to find out what stuff they are really made of, and the less there is to fuss with in the house, the more they can be out of doors—and that is the main thing. Each will have a certain duty, but first of all comes getting all the rest and all the fun that can be had. You will all see chances for helping them along. And if there are more than we plan for now, we will fall back for beds on cases stuffed with hay. I have slept on them many a time in summer camps, and they are almost as sweet as hemlock sprays, and distinctly more comfortable.”

Thus it was that this abandoned farm-house came suddenly into new life. That the neighbors counted it haunted, made only another fascination, and the strange and unaccountable sounds of an old house,—sighs and moans and sudden creaks of boards,—strange rustlings and scrapings and tappings, meant sudden, startled squeals, and small shrieks and wild scampers through narrow passages, and over sagging floors as the girls flew before the wraiths they half seemed to see.

As to the housekeeping side, the stout widow declared that she had always supposed city folks had poor appetites, but that if country ones matched them, as she found them, she should say the world was on the way to the poorhouse. The Aladdin ovens she had eyed with suspicion and scorn, converted her, however, the first day, as she saw the results of the cooking accomplished while all slept; the perfect oatmeal, jelly-like in consistency, and delicious in flavor; the great pots of baked beans, deep-colored and savory, and the brown bread that went with them.

“If every farm had one of them,” she murmured meditatively, “the women would live out their appointed time, a good deal surer than they do now.”

If this were a cooking article it would be in order to write of many ways with this treasure of treasures, as yet beyond the means of too many buyers. It suffices to say that to go to bed, peacefully certain that breakfast takes care of itself, and will be ready when the eaters thereof are ready, is an experience that opened the eyes of forty-eight girls as to how, even now, life might be made far easier. For forty-eight girls it was in all who came and went in the dilapidated, leaky, creaky, but always beloved old house—beloved even at its mustiest. Musty it was in rainy days, because the cellar had been for a generation or more the dumping ground for vegetable refuse, and even chloride of lime at every turn barely suppressed it. But for the most part the summer sun shone warm and sweet, each leaf of the great elms danced on its own account, as the soft wind came and went, and each detachment of the forty-eight danced with it. And in the hammock between two old apple trees, a pale little invalid, given over by doctors, lay quietly drinking in air and sunshine, creeping slowly back to health and imploring, as strength came, that some work might be found for her in this wonderful country, every inch of which held beauty and marvel.

As to the sewing society which had a Home Mission interest in the matter, it found unceasing subject for conversation. These keen, quick, intelligent girls, each one a practiced earner, had slight kinship with the usual summer boarder, a creature often making infinite trouble and always wanting something different. These girls, taught by years of organization as well as by their work, seemed able to turn their hands to anything.

“It’s the fruit of the classes and all the work we have spent on them,” said the maiden aunt, with pride, and she was right. An accomplished little milliner, the prize pupil of the winter class, reconstructed a series of bonnets and hats, the stout widow’s, notably, presenting so charming an appearance that a widower, even stouter, was observed in church to have his eyes fixed upon her, and went home with her after the evening service, with the later results naturally to be expected. Impromptu cooking classes went on daily, since the Aladdin ovens gave a great chance for new knowledge. And down in the valley two or three studied the farm ways, and the bees and poultry, and settled that here was another way, and a happy one, of earning if only they might all work together. In the mean time, charades and dumb crambo, and, for one party, a little play, made mirth in the creaking old house, creaking louder, and shaking and swaying as late September winds swept up the valley, and chill fog lay along the little river.

The summer was over. The old house had fulfilled its final mission, an unexpected one, and now the last set of girls went from room to room,—a last good-by, it seemed, for how could it stand through another winter?

“Oh, if it were only ours and we could fix it up enough to make it do for summers,” they said.

The maiden aunt looked thoughtful, and said nothing. A plan was in her mind, but after a summer of absolutely violent exertion, not only in the continuous journeys to the farm for vegetables and back again, but in tussles with the woodpile, and the big stove, and the mammoth dish-pan, at which each girl took turns—this was no time to mention plans.

The old stage crawled up the hill. The last eight scrambled in, waving handkerchiefs and giving the club cry to which the driver, well used to club ways, added his own hurrah!

The maiden aunt turned back and sat down musingly on the big red sofa. They would come for it presently—for all the furnishings indeed, and the old house would return to innocuous desuetude. Suppose—

But what she supposed, and part of what happened, bides its time for record.