THE GARDEN OF EDEN
But the Saco all this time was meditating of its surprises. The snappingcold weather and the depth to which the water was frozen were aiding itin its preparation for the greatest event of the season. On a certaingray Saturday in March, after a week of mild temperature, it began torain as if, after months of snowing, it really enjoyed a new form ofentertainment. Sunday dawned with the very flood-gates of heavenopening, so it seemed. All day long the river was rising under its milesof unbroken ice, rising at the threatening rate of four inches an hour.
Edgewood went to bed as usual that night, for the bridge at that pointwas set too high to be carried away by freshets, but at other villageswhose bridges were in less secure position there was little sleep andmuch anxiety.
At midnight a cry was heard from the men watching at Milliken's Mills.The great ice jam had parted from Rolfe's Island and was swinging outinto the open, pushing everything before it. All the able-bodied men inthe village turned out of bed, and with lanterns in hand began to clearthe stores and mills, for it seemed that everything near the river banksmust go before that avalanche of ice.
Stephen and Rufus were there helping to save the property of theirfriends and neighbors; Rose and Mite Shapley had stayed the night with afriend, and all three girls were shivering with fear and excitement asthey stood near the bridge, watching the never-to-be-forgotten sight. Itis needless to say that the Crambry family was on hand, for whateverinstincts they may have lacked, the instinct for being on the spot whenanything was happening, was present in them to the most remarkableextent. The town was supporting them in modest winter quarters somewhatnearer than Killick to the centre of civilization, and the first alarmbrought them promptly to the scene, Mrs. Crambry remarking at intervals:"If I'd known there'd be so many out I'd ought to have worn my bunnit;but I ain't got no bunnit, an' if I had they say I ain't got no head towear it on!"
By the time the jam neared the falls it had grown with itsaccumulations, until it was made up of tier after tier of huge icecakes, piled side by side and one upon another, with heaps of trees andbranches and drifting lumber holding them in place. Some of the blocksstood erect and towered like icebergs, and these, glittering in thelights of the twinkling lanterns, pushed solemnly forward, cracking,crushing, and cutting everything in their way. When the great massneared the planing mill on the east shore the girls covered their eyes,expecting to hear the crash of the falling building; but, impelled bythe force of some mysterious current, it shook itself ponderously, andthen, with one magnificent movement, slid up the river bank, tierfollowing tier in grand confusion. This left a water way for the maindrift; the ice broke in every direction, and down, down, down, fromBonnie Eagle and Moderation swept the harvest of the winter freezing. Itcame thundering over the dam, bringing boats, farming implements, posts,supports, and every sort of floating lumber with it; and cutting underthe flour mill, tipped it cleverly over on its side and went crashing onits way down river. At Edgewood it pushed colossal blocks of ice up thebanks into the roadway, piling them end upon end ten feet in air. Then,tearing and rumbling and booming through the narrows, it covered theintervale at Pleasant Point and made a huge ice bridge below UnionFalls, a bridge so solid that it stood there for days, a sight for allthe neighboring villages.
This exciting event would have forever set apart this winter from allothers in Stephen's memory, even had it not been also the winter when hewas building a house for his future wife. But afterwards, in lookingback on the wild night of the ice freshet, Stephen remembered thatRose's manner was strained and cold and evasive, and that when he hadseen her talking with Claude Merrill, it had seemed to him that thatwhippersnapper had looked at her as no honorable man in Edgewood everlooked at an engaged girl. He recalled his throb of gratitude thatClaude lived at a safe distance, and his subsequent pang of remorse atdoubting, for an instant, Rose's fidelity.
So at length April came, the Saco was still high, turbid, and angry, andthe boys were waiting at Limington Falls for the "Ossipee drive" tobegin. Stephen joined them there, for he was restless, and the rivercalled him, as it did every spring. Each stubborn log that heencountered gave him new courage and power of overcoming. The rush ofthe water, the noise and roar and dash, the exposure and danger, allmade the blood run in his veins like new wine. When he came back to thefarm, all the cobwebs had been blown from his brain, and his firstinterview with Rose was so intoxicating that he went immediately toPortland, and bought, in a kind of secret penitence for his formerfears, a pale pink-flowered wall-paper for the bedroom in the new home.It had once been voted down by the entire advisory committee. Mrs. Wileysaid pink was foolish and was always sure to fade; and the border, beinga mass of solid roses, was five cents a yard, virtually a prohibitiveprice. Mr. Wiley said he "should hate to hev a spell of sickness an' layabed in a room where there was things growin' all over the place." Hethought "rough-plastered walls, where you could lay an' count the spotswhere the roof leaked, was the most entertainin' in sickness." Rose hadlonged for the lovely pattern, but had sided dutifully with the prudentmajority, so that it was with a feeling of unauthorized and illegitimatejoy that Stephen papered the room at night, a few strips at a time.
On the third evening, when he had removed all signs of his work, helighted two kerosene lamps and two candles, finding the effect, underthis illumination, almost too brilliant and beautiful for belief. Roseshould never see it now, he determined, until the furniture was inplace. They had already chosen the kitchen and bedroom things, thoughthey would not be needed for some months; but the rest was to wait untilsummer, when there would be the hay-money to spend.
Stephen did not go back to the River Farm till one o'clock that night;the pink bedroom held him in fetters too powerful to break. It lookedlike the garden of Eden, he thought. To be sure, it was only fifteenfeet square; Eden might have been a little larger, possibly, butotherwise the pink bedroom had every advantage. The pattern of rosesgrowing on a trellis was brighter than any flower-bed in June; and theborder--well, if the border had been five dollars a foot Stephen wouldnot have grudged the money when he saw the twenty running yards of rosybloom rioting under the white ceiling.
Before he blew out the last light he raised it high above his head andtook one fond, final look. "It's the only place I ever saw," he thought,"that is pretty enough for her. She will look just as if she was growinghere with all the other flowers, and I shall always think of it as thegarden of Eden. I wonder, if I got the license and the ring and took herby surprise, whether she'd be married in June instead of August? Icould be all ready if I could only persuade her."
At this moment Stephen touched the summit of happiness; and it is acurious coincidence that as he was dreaming in his garden of Eden, theserpent, having just arrived at Edgewood, was sleeping peacefully at thehouse of Mrs. Brooks.
It was the serpent's fourth visit that season, and he explained toinquiring friends that his former employer had sold the business, andthat the new management, while reorganizing, had determined to enlargethe premises, the three clerks who had been retained having two weeks'vacation with half pay.
It is extraordinary how frequently "wise serpents" are retained by themanagement on half, or even full, salary, while the services of the"harmless doves" are dispensed with, and they are set free to flutterwhere they will.