MAKING A LIVING
“There won’t be any litigation and chicanery to help you out, young man. I’ve fixed that. Here are the title deeds of your precious country-place; you can sit in that hand-made hut of yours and make poetry and crazy inventions the rest of your life! The water’s good—and I guess you can live on the chestnuts!”
“Yes, sir,” said Arnold Blake, rubbing his long chin dubiously. “I guess I can.”
His father surveyed him with entire disgust. “If you had wit enough you might rebuild that old saw-mill and make a living off it!”
“Yes, sir,” said Arnold again. “I had thought of that.”
“You had, had you?” sneered his father. “Thought of it because it rhymed, I bet you! Hill and mill, eh? Hut and nut, trees and breeze, waterfall—beat-’em-all? I’m something of a poet myself, you see! Well,—there’s your property. And with what your Mother left you will buy books and writing paper! As for my property—that’s going to Jack. I’ve got the papers for that too. Not being an idiot I’ve saved out enough for myself—no Lear business for mine! Well, boy—I’m sorry you’re a fool. But you’ve got what you seem to like best.”
“Yes, sir,” said Arnold once more. “I have, and I’m really much obliged to you, Father, for not trying to make me take the business.”
Then young John Blake, pattern and image of his father, came into possession of large assets and began to use them in the only correct way; to increase and multiply without end.
Then old John Blake, gazing with pride on his younger son, whose acumen almost compensated him for the bitter disappointment of being father to a poet; set forth for a season of rest and change.
“I’m going to see the world! I never had time before!” quoth he; and started off for Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Then Arnold Blake, whose eyes were the eyes of a poet, but whose mouth had a touch of resemblance to his father’s, betook himself to his Hill.
But the night before they separated, he and his brother both proposed to Ella Sutherland. John because he had made up his mind that it was the proper time for him to marry, and this was the proper woman; and Arnold because he couldn’t help it.
John got to work first. He was really very fond of Ella, and made hot love to her. It was a painful surprise to him to be refused. He argued with her. He told her how much he loved her.
“There are others!” said Miss Ella.
He told her how rich he was.
“That isn’t the point,” said Ella.
He told her how rich he was going to be.
“I’m not for sale!” said Ella, “even on futures!”
Then he got angry and criticised her judgement.
“It’s a pity, isn’t it,” she said, “for me to have such poor judgment—and for you to have to abide by it!”
“I won’t take your decision,” said John. “You’re only a child yet. In two years’ time you’ll be wiser. I’ll ask you again then.”
“All right,” said Ella. “I’ll answer you again then.”
John went away, angry, but determined.
Arnold was less categorical.
“I’ve no right to say a word,” he began, and then said it. Mostly he dilated on her beauty and goodness and his overmastering affection for her.
“Are you offering marriage?” she inquired, rather quizzically.
“Why yes—of course!” said he, “only—only I’ve nothing to offer.”
“There’s you!” said Ella.
“But that’s so little!” said Arnold. “O! if you will wait for me!—I will work!—”
“What will you work at?” said Ella.
Arnold laughed. Ella laughed. “I love to camp out!” said she.
“Will you wait for me a year?” said Arnold.
“Ye-es,” said Ella. I’ll even wait two—if I have to. But no longer!”
“What will you do then?” asked Arnold miserably.
“Marry you,” said Ella.
So Arnold went off to his Hill.
What was one hill among so many? There they arose about him, far green, farther blue, farthest purple, rolling away to the real peaks of the Catskills. This one had been part of his mother’s father’s land; a big stretch, coming down to them from an old Dutch grant. It ran out like a promontory into the winding valley below; the valley that had been a real river when the Catskills were real mountains. There was some river there yet, a little sulky stream, fretting most of the year in its sunken stony bed, and losing its temper altogether when the spring floods came.
Arnold did not care much for the river—he had a brook of his own; an ideal brook, beginning with an over-flowing spring; and giving him three waterfalls and a lake on his own land. It was a very little lake and handmade. In one place his brook ran through a narrow valley or valleyette—so small it was; and a few weeks of sturdy work had damned the exit and made a lovely pool. Arnold did that years ago, when he was a great hulking brooding boy, and used to come up there with his mother in summer; while his father stuck to the office and John went to Bar Harbor with his chums. Arnold could work hard even if he was a poet.
He quarried stone from his hill—as everyone did in those regions; and built a small solid house, adding to it from year to year; that was a growing joy as long as the dear mother lived.
This was high up, near the dark, clear pool of the spring; he had piped the water into the house—for his mother’s comfort. It stood on a level terrace, fronting south-westward; and every season he did more to make it lovely. There was a fine smooth lawn there now and flowering vines and bushes; every pretty wild thing that would grow and bloom of itself in that region, he collected about him.
That dear mother had delighted in all the plants and trees; she studied about them and made observations, while he enjoyed them—and made poems. The chestnuts were their common pride. This hill stood out among all the others in the flowering time, like a great pompon, and the odor of it was by no means attractive—unless you happened to like it, as they did.
The chestnut crop was tremendous; and when Arnold found that not only neighboring boys, but business expeditions from the city made a practice of rifling his mountain garden, he raged for one season and acted the next. When the first frost dropped the great burrs, he was on hand, with a posse of strong young fellows from the farms about. They beat and shook and harvested, and sack upon sack of glossy brown nuts were piled on wagons and sent to market by the owner instead of the depredator.
Then he and his mother made great plans, the eager boy full of ambition. He studied forestry and arboriculture; and grafted the big fat foreign chestnut on his sturdy native stocks, while his father sneered and scolded because he would not go into the office.
Now he was left to himself with his plans and hopes. The dear mother was gone, but the hill was there—and Ella might come some day; there was a chance.
“What do you think of it?” he said to Patsy. Patsy was not Irish. He was an Italian from Tuscany; a farmer and forester by birth and breeding, a soldier by compulsion, an American citizen by choice.
“Fine!” said Patsy. “Fine. Ver’ good. You do well.”
They went over the ground together. “Could you build a little house here?” said Arnold. “Could you bring your wife? Could she attend to my house up there?—and could you keep hens and a cow and raise vegetables on this patch here—enough for all of us?—you to own the house and land—only you cannot sell it except to me?”
Then Patsy thanked his long neglected saints, imported his wife and little ones, took his eldest daughter out of the box factory, and his eldest son out of the printing office; and by the end of the summer they were comfortably established and ready to attend to the chestnut crop.
Arnold worked as hard as his man. Temporarily he hired other sturdy Italians, mechanics of experience; and spent his little store of capital in a way that would have made his father swear and his brother jeer at him.
When the year was over he had not much money left, but he had by his second waterfall a small electrical plant, with a printing office attached; and by the third a solid little mill, its turbine wheel running merrily in the ceaseless pour. Millstones cost more money than he thought, but there they were—brought up by night from the Hudson River—that his neighbors might not laugh too soon. Over the mill were large light rooms, pleasant to work in; with the shade of mighty trees upon the roof; and the sound of falling water in the sun.
By next summer this work was done, and the extra workmen gone. Whereat our poet refreshed himself with a visit to his Ella, putting in some lazy weeks with her at Gloucester, happy and hopeful, but silent.
“How’s the chestnut crop?” she asked him.
“Fine. Ver’ good,” he answered. “That’s what Patsy says—and Patsy knows.”
She pursued her inquiries. “Who cooks for you? Who keeps your camp in order? Who washes your clothes?”
“Mrs. Patsy,” said he. “She’s as good a cook as anybody need want.”
“And how is the prospect?” asked Ella.
Arnold turned lazily over, where he lay on the sand at her feet, and looked at her long and hungrily. “The prospect,” said he, “is divine.”
Ella blushed and laughed and said he was a goose; but he kept on looking.
He wouldn’t tell her much, though. “Don’t, dear,” he said when she urged for information. “It’s too serious. If I should fail—”
“You won’t fail!” she protested. “You can’t fail! And if you do—why—as I told you before, I like to camp out!”
But when he tried to take some natural advantage of her friendliness she teased him—said he was growing to look just like his father! Which made them both laugh.
Arnold returned and settled down to business. He purchased stores of pasteboard, of paper, of printers ink, and a little machine to fold cartons. Thus equipped he retired to his fastness, and set dark-eyed Caterlina to work in a little box factory of his own; while clever Guiseppe ran the printing press, and Mafalda pasted. Cartons, piled flat, do not take up much room, even in thousands.
Then Arnold loafed deliberately.
“Why not your Mr. Blake work no more?” inquired Mrs. Patsy of her spouse.
“O he work—he work hard,” replied Patsy. “You women—you not understand work!”
Mrs. Patsy tossed her head and answered in fluent Italian, so that her husband presently preferred out of doors occupation; but in truth Arnold Blake did not seem to do much that summer. He loafed under his great trees, regarding them lovingly; he loafed by his lonely upper waterfall, with happy dreaming eyes; he loafed in his little blue lake—floating face to the sky, care free and happy as a child. And if he scribbled a great deal—at any sudden moment when the fit seized him, why that was only his weakness as a poet.
Toward the end of September, he invited an old college friend up to see him; now a newspaper man—in the advertising department. These two seemed to have merry times together. They fished and walked and climbed, they talked much; and at night were heard roaring with laughter by their hickory fire.
“Have you got any money left?” demanded his friend.
“About a thou—” said Arnold. “And that’s got to last me till next spring, you know.”
“Blow it in—blow in every cent—it’ll pay you. You can live through the winter somehow. How about transportation?”
“Got a nice electric dray—light and strong. Runs down hill with the load to tidewater, you see, and there’s the old motorboat to take it down. Brings back supplies.”
“Great!—It’s simply great! Now, you save enough to eat till spring and give me the rest. Send me your stuff, all of it! and as soon as you get in a cent above expenses—send me that—I’ll ‘tend to the advertising!”
He did. He had only $800 to begin with. When the first profits began to come in he used them better; and as they rolled up he still spent them. Arnold began to feel anxious, to want to save money; but his friend replied: “You furnish the meal—I’ll furnish the market!” And he did.
He began it in the subway in New York; that place of misery where eyes, ears, nose, and common self-respect are all offended, and even an advertisement is some relief.
“Hill” said the first hundred dollars, on a big blank space for a week.
“Mill” said the second. “Hill Mill Meal,” said the third.
The fourth was more explicit.
“When tired of every cereal
Try our new material—
Hill Mill Meal.”
The fifth—
“Ask your grocer if you feel
An interest in Hill Mill Meal.
Samples free.”
The sixth—
“A paradox! Surprising! True!
Made of chestnuts but brand new!
Hill Mill Meal.”
And the seventh—
“Solomon said it couldn’t be done,
There wasn’t a new thing under the sun—
He never ate Hill Mill Meal!”
Seven hundred dollars went in this one method only; and meanwhile diligent young men in automobiles were making arrangements and leaving circulars and samples with the grocer. Anybody will take free samples and everybody likes chestnuts. Are they not the crown of luxury in turkey stuffing? The gem of the confection as marron glaces? The sure profit of the corner-merchant with his little charcoal stove, even when they are half scorched and half cold? Do we not all love them, roast, or boiled—only they are so messy to peel.
Arnold’s only secret was his process; but his permanent advantage was in the fine quality of his nuts, and his exquisite care in manufacture. In dainty, neat, easily opened cartons (easily shut too, so they were not left gaping to gather dust), he put upon the market a sort of samp, chestnuts perfectly shelled and husked, roasted and ground, both coarse and fine. Good? You stood and ate half a package out of your hand, just tasting of it. Then you sat down and ate the other half.
He made pocket-size cartons, filled with whole ones, crafty man! And they became “The Business Man’s Lunch” forthwith. A pocketful of roast chestnuts—and no mess nor trouble! And when they were boiled—well, we all know how good boiled chestnuts are. As to the meal, a new variety of mush appeared, and gems, muffins, and pancakes that made old epicures feel young again in the joys of a fresh taste, and gave America new standing in the eyes of France.
The orders rolled in and the poetry rolled out. The market for a new food is as wide as the world; and Jim Chamberlin was mad to conquer it, but Arnold explained to him that his total output was only so many bushels a year.
“Nonsense!” said Jim. “You’re a—a—well, a poet! Come! Use your imagination! Look at these hills about you—they could grow chestnuts to the horizon! Look at this valley, that rattling river, a bunch of mills could run here! You can support a fine population—a whole village of people—there’s no end to it, I tell you!”
“And where would my privacy be then and the beauty of the place?” asked Arnold, “I love this green island of chestnut trees, and the winding empty valley, just freckled with a few farms. I’d hate to support a village!”
“But you can be a Millionaire!” said Jim.
“I don’t want to be a Millionaire,” Arnold cheerfully replied.
Jim gazed at him, opening and shutting his mouth in silence.
“You—confounded old—poet!” he burst forth at last.
“I can’t help that,” said Arnold.
“You’d better ask Miss Sutherland about it, I think,” his friend drily suggested.
“To be sure! I had forgotten that—I will,” the poet replied.
Then he invited her to come up and visit his Hill, met her at the train with the smooth, swift, noiseless, smell-less electric car, and held her hand in blissful silence as they rolled up the valley road. They wound more slowly up his graded avenue, green-arched by chestnut boughs.
He showed her the bit of meadowy inlet where the mill stood, by the heavy lower fall; the broad bright packing rooms above, where the busy Italian boys and girls chattered gaily as they worked. He showed her the second fall, with his little low-humming electric plant; a bluestone building, vine-covered, lovely, a tiny temple to the flower-god.
“It does our printing,” said Arnold, “gives us light, heat and telephones. And runs the cars.”
Then he showed her the shaded reaches of his lake, still, starred with lilies, lying dark under the curving boughs of water maples, doubling the sheer height of flower-crowned cliffs.
She held his hand tighter as they wound upward, circling the crown of the hill that she might see the splendid range of outlook; and swinging smoothly down a little and out on the green stretch before the house.
Ella gasped with delight. Gray, rough and harmonious, hung with woodbine and wildgrape, broad-porched and wide-windowed, it faced the setting sun. She stood looking, looking, over the green miles of tumbling hills, to the blue billowy far-off peaks swimming in soft light.
“There’s the house,” said Arnold, “furnished—there’s a view room built on—for you, dear; I did it myself. There’s the hill—and the little lake and one waterfall all for us! And the spring, and the garden, and some very nice Italians. And it will earn—my Hill and Mill, about three or four thousand dollars a year—above all expenses!”
“How perfectly splendid!” said Ella. “But there’s one thing you’ve left out!”
“What’s that?” he asked, a little dashed.
“You!” she answered. “Arnold Blake! My Poet!”
“Oh, I forgot,” he added, after some long still moments. “I ought to ask you about this first. Jim Chamberlain says I can cover all these hills with chestnuts, fill this valley with people, string that little river with a row of mills, make breakfast for all the world—and be a Millionaire. Shall I?”
“For goodness sake—No!” said Ella. “Millionaire, indeed? And spoil the most perfect piece of living I ever saw or heard of!”
Then there was a period of bliss, indeed there was enough to last indefinitely.
But one pleasure they missed. They never saw even the astonished face, much less the highly irritated mind, of old John Blake, when he first returned from his two years of travel. The worst of it was he had eaten the stuff all the way home-and liked it! They told him it was Chestnut Meal—but that meant nothing to him. Then he began to find the jingling advertisements in every magazine; things that ran in his head and annoyed him.
“When corn or rice no more are nice,
When oatmeal seems to pall,
When cream of wheat’s no longer sweet
And you abhor them all—”
“I do abhor them all!” the old man would vow, and take up a newspaper, only to read:
“Better than any food that grows
Upon or in the ground,
Strong, pure and sweet
And good to eat
Our tree-born nuts are found.”
“Bah!” said Mr. Blake, and tried another, which only showed him:
“Good for mother, good for brother,
Good for child;
As for father—well, rather!
He’s just wild.”
He was. But the truth never dawned upon him till he came to this one:
"About my hut
There grew a nut
Nutritious;
I could but feel
'Twould make a meal
Delicious.
I had a Hill,
I built a Mill
Upon it.
And hour by hour
I sought for power
To run it.
To burn my trees
Or try the breeze
Seemed crazy;
To use my arm
Had little charm—
I'm lazy!
The nuts are here,
But coal!—Quite dear
We find it!
We have the stuff.
Where's power enough
To grind it?
What force to find
My nuts to grind?
I've found it!
The Water-fall
Could beat 'em all—
And ground it!
PETER POETICUS.”
“Confound your impudence!” he wrote to his son. “And confound your poetic stupidity in not making a Big Business now you’ve got a start! But I understand you do make a living, and I’m thankful for that.”
*
Arnold and Ella, watching the sunset from their hammock, laughed softly together, and lived.