Chapter XXIV
There is something pleasurable about planning a farm or even a garden. Here potatoes will grow, here oats, there wheat. Or if it be a garden, roses, carnations and rhododendron. The planning of a garden is almost like the weaving of a tapestry of perfume and color.
Jethro Trent attacked the task of rehabilitating the Joel farmstead with keen interest. For more than a year the fields had remained fallow, they had not known the touch of hoe or plow. They were overgrown with weeds and wire-grass, a horrible blot upon the well-nourished countryside. No wonder the house looked so forlorn and dejected, so utterly drab and colorless.
First Jethro made a survey of the fields. Linda had walked with him over the land on the preceding evening and he was quite able to remember the boundaries. There was a tree that swayed perilously in the breeze as though in danger of falling at any moment. It had been struck by lightning at some time in the dim past. The trunk had been split from root to top. The branches were as bleak and bare as though it were a tree in winter. No sign of a leaf was there anywhere upon it It was a gaunt ghost-tree, cold, dead. Jethro decided that he would remove it at the first opportunity.
It was pleasant to walk across the fields in the early morning and to think that in a few weeks all this soil would have been broken, under cultivation once again, bending to his will. There is a certain joy in planting, a rare satisfaction.
Down near the South Road he came upon a man who was leaning idly on a fence post, smiling cheerily.
"Good-morning to you, stranger!" he cried. "Do you mind if I pause for a moment to catch a few whiffs of sunshine? Whosoever's idea it was to make the sun rise in splendor over little farms was certainly a great inventor."
Jethro paused. "It is a rather fine morning," he agreed. "Is there anything I can do for you for I see you are a stranger in this locality?"
The man rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Well," he reflected, "'if you truly want to do something for me you might talk with me. I am a chance wayfarer, a gentleman of the road, in more vulgar parlance I might be called a tramp. But I do not admit it. According to established classification a tramp is a worthless fellow. This is not always true. He may take the road because he wishes to be free, not to be tied down by any of the man-made bonds of earth. He loves the out-of-doors, the clear free life of it. The smell of hay with now and then a cottage nestling in a hollow with smoke trailing gracefully up from the chimney like long white fingers beckoning to him. Perhaps hundreds of men who remain slaves to convention, choking all their lives in high collars, are vagabonds at heart, longing to be free. Office slaves. City slaves. Bowing down before their heartless master—Convention. While I who bother not with money have also no cares. I admit of no master but the fields and the sky. I see you are amazed at my manner of speaking, surprised that I do not slur my words and use slang. The explanation is simple. I am a college graduate. Had I confined myself to book-study all might have been well. But I commenced to think deeply in an individual way. I dreamed of the lure of the sea. I heard the call of the open road. The voice of the city was a feeble, nasal thing in comparison. The wanderlust is an insidious thing. It is like opium. If you once succumb to the call of the wild you are lost, or found, depending on one's viewpoint. Sometimes I have thought that Utopia could be easily arrived at if the brain of every man were removed in his youth, a machine put in his head to take its place that could be controlled by a central force. Then all the world could see as one, think as one. Unity would be gained. They could wind back on the spool the white threads of road that amble in and out through the country. They would not be needed. Then everybody would be satisfied."
As he spoke he walked over and threw himself at full-length beneath a maple tree. He raised his arms above his head and stretched luxuriously. Jethro Trent sat down beside him. He was interested in this chance passerby. Who he was, nor where he came from, he did not know nor did he care. It sufficed that he was there, an interesting companion to converse with for awhile by the roadside.
The stranger was tall, he gave the appearance of strength but he was inclined to be thin. His clothes were of the simplest blue-serge material. He wore no hat and his dark brown hair was rather long and curly. His chief distinction lay in his strong bronzed face, a face of intelligence and character, a rather good-natured face and at the same time a trifle sad. There was a suggestion of sadness about his lips even though he was almost always smiling. His eyes had tiny wrinkles about the corners that proclaimed his kindness.
"It is quite easy to get food for the body," went on the stranger. "At almost every farmhouse, no matter how poor, I have been given food. Sometimes I help with the chores to pay for my meals. It is nice to have worked on farms all over the country. I've tramped through Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois and perhaps other states as well for I pay no attention to boundaries. And always I've found it easy to get food for the body but it is not so easy to get food for the soul. That is why I like to pause and chat with anyone who can spare the time to converse with me."
"Well I've got plenty of time," said Jethro. "Guess it's good for every man to stop occasionally to rest."
"You are right," agreed the stranger. "God would not have made the gorgeous country pastorals, the broad murals of the plains, the sky canvases if he did not expect man to pause to drink in their beauty. Why men should want to view stodgy paintings in museums when they can take to the open road I do not know. The other morning I read of a man who had paid a fabulous price for a painting by Corot and I could not help wondering what the same man would have paid for a real meadow in the shadow of purple mountains. Once I viewed an exhibition of paintings by the old Dutch masters. Podgy white faces, thick necks, sullen expressions, putty-like cheeks, sombre backgrounds, ill-fitting clothes that seemed to choke the wearers, a portraitgallery of monstrosities valued at millions. It took me long months to forget those nightmares. It almost spoiled my summer. And I rushed out of the museum and gazed at the sky wherein some small fleecy clouds for all the world like lambs were chasing each other about. What a pity it is that so few people are capable of being appraisers. Most of us scarcely know the value of anything."
For some time they sat in silence. On the other side of the road a cow in a field was mooing contentedly.
"Cows have one advantage over people," said the stranger, "they never have to live in cities. They are unable to comprehend the most enervating of all human weaknesses—worry."
Reluctantly he rose to his feet. "The morning is getting on," he said, "and I must continue my way. A place of rest is spoilt if you tarry too long in it" Thus speaking, he drew a handfull of seed from his pocket and cast it about in the field. "Wherever I go," he said, "I like to sow a bit of seed. It's a whim of mine, perhaps foolish, but then we all have our weaknesses. I like to think that wherever I have passed a bit of grain has grown. I am merely a poor rustic sower to be met and forgotten. I have sown seed in a dozen states, perhaps I shall do so in a dozen countries. My name, my history does not matter but I like to sow seed that men may know that I have sauntered by."
Jethro Trent found himself gazing intently into the face of this casual acquaintance.
"Don't go just yet," he said slowly. "I would like to talk with you a bit longer. It is seldom that one meets a person who so truly understands the soil. A farmer's life is not merely an endless round of work. Always I have been a farmer. There is nothing I would rather be. I have experienced drought, cyclones, blizzards, though always they have passed leaving scarcely any change. Today I am possessed of some measure of wealth although I am no happier than in the years of my youth when I lived with my father in the rudest kind of a house without any convenience or comfort The soil is a good friend because it treats all men alike."
"Yes," said the stranger, "it has many rare gifts to offer. Wise men know their worth. Men gained nothing when they went in droves to live in cities. Universities today teach every conceivable subject, history, economics, psychology, the classics. Yet I do not know of one college that gives a course in the fine art of living. The best of all schools is the soil. Men who study the earth get closer to God. Why do the Mohammedans kneel in prayer, bow their heads in supplication to the very ground if they do not subconsciously stand in awe of the soil?"
So they talked and talked. Jethro found it very easy to speak to this shabby stranger whose vision was so clear. He saw life with all its gingerbread and tinsel torn from it.
"We are all sowers," he said. "As we pass through life we scatter some sort of seed about whether we want to or not. The seed we plant is not always worth the effort. It is not always good wheat."
When at last the stranger left, Jethro Trent stood by the tree and watched him striding briskly down the road. He walked with a slight limp but he was whistling a merry tune.
Jethro felt a surge of contentment flood through him. He had been on the verge of telling the stranger about Scobee, yet something seemed to hold him back. He hated to talk about his boy's blindness.