October Vagabonds — Chapters 5-8

CHAPTER V THE GREEN FRIEND

Though we had received such unmistakable notice to quit, we still lingered on in our solitude, after the manner of defiant tenants whom nothing short of corporal ejection can dislodge.

The North wind began to roar in the tree-tops and shake the doors and windows of the shack, like an angry landlord, but we paid no heed to him.

Yet, all the time, both of us, in our several ways, were saying our farewells, and packing up our memories for departure.

There was an old elm-tree which Colin had taken for his Summer god, and which he was never tired of painting.

He must make the one perfect study of that before we pulled up stakes.

So, each day, after our morning adoration of the sun, we would separate about our different ways and business.

The woods were already beginning to wear a wistful, dejected look.

There was a feeling of departure everywhere, a sense that the year's excitements were over.

The procession had gone by, and there was an empty, purposeless air of waiting-about upon things, a sort of despairing longing for something else to happen--and a sure sense that nothing more could happen till next year.

Every event in the floral calendar had taken place with immemorial punctuality and tragic rapidity.

All the full-blooded flowers of Summer had long since come and gone, with their magic faces and their souls of perfume.

Gone were the banners of blossom from the great trees.

The locust and the chestnut, those spendthrifts of the woods, that went the pace so gorgeously in June, are now sober-coated enough, and growing even threadbare.

All the hum and the honey and breathless bosom-beat of things is over.

The birds sing no more, but only chatter about time-tables.

The bee keeps to his hive, and the bewildered butterfly, in tattered ball-dress, wonders what has become of his flowery partners.

The great cricket factory has shut down.

Not a wheel is heard whirring.

The squirrel has lost his playful air, and has an anxious manner, as though there were no time to waste before stocking his granary.

Everywhere berries have taken the place of buds, and bearded grasses the place of flowers.

Even the goldenrod has fallen to rust, and the stars of the aster are already tarnished.

Only along the edges of the wood the dry little paper immortelles spread long shrouds and wreaths in the shade.

Suddenly you feel lonely in the woods, which had seemed so companionable all Summer.

What is it--_Who_ is it--that has gone?

Though quite alone, there was some one with you all Summer, an invisible being filling the woods with his presence, and always at your side, or somewhere near by.

But to-day, through all the green halls and chambers of the wood, you seek him in vain.

You call, but there is no answer.

You wait, but he does not come.

He has gone.

The wood is an empty palace.

The prince went away secretly in the night.

The wood is a deserted temple.

The god has betaken himself to some secret abode.

Everywhere you come upon chill, abandoned altars, littered debris of Summer sacrifices.

Maybe he is dead, and perchance, deeper in the wood, you may come upon his marble form in a winding-sheet of drifting leaves.

Not a god, maybe, you have pictured him, not a prince, but surely as a friend--the mysterious Green Friend of the green silence and the golden hush of Summer noons.

The mysterious Green Friend of the woods!

So strangely by our side all Summer, so strangely gone away.

It is in vain to await him under our morning sycamore, nor under the great maples shall we find him walking, nor amid the alder thickets discover him, nor yet in the little ravine beneath the pines.

No!

he has surely gone away, and his great house seems empty without him, desolate, filled with lamentation, all its doors and windows open to the Winter snows.

But the Green Friend had left me a message.

I found it at the roots of some violets.

"_I shall be back again next year_" he said.

CHAPTER VI IN THE WAKE OF SUMMER

Yes, it was time to be going, and the thought was much on both our minds.

We had as yet, however, made no plans, had not indeed discussed any; but one afternoon, late in September, driven indoors by a sudden squall of rain, I came to Colin with an idea.

The night before we had had the first real storm of the season.

"Ah!

This will do their business," Colin had said, referring to the trees, as we heard the wind and rain tearing and splashing through the pitch-dark woods.

"It will be a different world in the morning."

And indeed it was.

Cruel was the work of dismantling that had gone on during the night.

The roof of the wood had fallen in in a score of places, letting in the sky through unfamiliar windows; and the distant prospect showed through the torn tapestry of the trees with a startling sense of disclosure.

The dishevelled world wore the distressed look of a nymph caught _déshabillée. _ The expression, "the naked woods," occurred to one with almost a sense of impropriety.

At least there was a cynical indecorum in this violent disrobing of the landscape.

"Colin," I said, coming to him with my idea.

"We've got to go, of course, but I've been thinking--don't you hate the idea of being hurled along in a train, and suddenly shot into the city again, like a package through a tube?"

"Hate it?

Don't ask me," said Colin.

"If only it could be more gradual," I went on.

"Suppose, for instance, instead of taking the train, we should walk it!"

"Walk to New York?"

said Colin, with a surprised whistle.

"Yes!

Why not?"

"Something of a walk, old man."

"All the better.

We shall be all the longer getting there.

But, listen.

To go by train would be almost too sudden a shock.

I don't believe we could stand it.

To be here to-day, breathing this God's fresh air, living the lives of natural men in a natural world, and to-morrow--Broadway, the horrible crowds, the hustle, the dirt, the smells, the uproar."

For answer Colin watched the clean rain fleeting through the trees, and groaned aloud.

"But now if we walked, we would, so to say, let ourselves down lightly, inure ourselves by gradual approach to the thought of life once more with our fellows.

Besides, we should be walking in the wake of the Summer.

She has only moved a little East as yet.

We might catch her up on her way to New York, and thus move with the moving season, keeping in step with the Zodiac.

Then, at last, ...

how much more fitting our entry into New York, not by way of some sordid and clangorous depot, but through the spacious corridors of the Highlands and the lordly gates of the Hudson!"

When I had thus attained my crescendo, Colin rose impressively, and embraced me with true French effusion.

"Old man," he said, "that's just great.

It's an inspiration from on high.

It makes me feel better already.

Gee!

but that's bully."

French as was his blood, it will be observed that Colin's expletives were thoroughly American.

Of course, he should have said _sacré mille cochons_ or _nom de Dieu de nom de Dieu_; but, though in appearance, so to say, an embodied "_sacré"_ he seemed to find the American vernacular sufficiently expressive.

"Is it a go, then?"

said I. "It's a go," said Colin, once more in American.

And we shook on it.

CHAPTER VII MAPS AND FAREWELLS

It was wonderful what a change our new plan wrought in our spirits.

Our melancholy was immediately dispersed, and its place taken by active anticipations of our journey.

The North wind in the trees, instead of blustering dismissal, sounded to our ears like the fluttering of the blue-peter at the masthead of our voyage.

Strange heart of man!

A day back we were in tears at the thought of going.

Now we are all smiles to think of it, all impatience to be gone.

We quote Whitman a dozen times in the hour, and it is all "afoot and light-hearted" with us, and "the open road."

But there were some farewells to make to people as well as to trees.

There were friends at Elim to bid adieu, and also there were maps to be consulted, and knapsacks to be packed--exhilarating preparations.

Our friends looked at us, when we had unfolded our project, with a mixture of surprise and pity.

"Amiable lunatics" was the first comment of their countenances, and--"There never was any telling what the artistic temperament would do next!"

Had we announced an air-ship voyage to the moon, they would have regarded us as comparatively reasonable, but to walk--_to walk_--some four or five hundred miles in America, of all countries, a country of palace cars and, lightning limited expresses, not to mention homicidal touring automobiles, seemed like--what shall I say?

--well, as though one should start out for New Zealand in a row-boat, or make the trip to St. Petersburg in a sedan-chair.

But there were others--especially the women--who understood, felt as we did, and longed to go with us.

I have never met a woman yet whose face did not light up at the thought of a walking tour, and in her heart long to don Rosalind clothes and set forth in search of adventures.

We thus had the advantage, in planning our route, of several prettily coiffed heads bending over our maps and guide-books with us.

"Four hundred and thirty miles," said one of these Rosalinds, whose pretty head was full of pictures of romantic European travel.

"Think what one could do with four hundred and thirty miles in Europe.

Let us try, for the fun of it."

And turning to a map of Europe, and measuring out four hundred and thirty miles by scale on a slip of paper, she tried it up and down the map from point to point.

"Look at funny little England!"

she said.

"Why, you will practically be walking from one end of England to the other.

See," and she fitted her scale to the map, "it would bring you easily from Portsmouth to Aberdeen.

"And now let us try France.

Why, see again--you will be walking from Calais to Marseilles--think of it!

walking through France, all vineyards and beautiful names.

Now Italy--see!

you will be walking from Florence to Mount Etna--Florence, Rome, Naples, Palermo."

And so in imagination our fair friend sketched out fanciful pilgrimages for us.

"You could walk from Gibraltar to the Pyrenees," she went on.

"You could walk from Venice to Berlin; from Brussels to Copenhagen; you could walk from Munich to Budapest; you could walk right across Turkey, from Constantinople to the Adriatic Sea.

And Greece--see!

you could walk from Sparta to the Danube.

To think of the romantic use you could make of your four-hundred-odd-miles, and how different it sounds--Buffalo to New York!"

And again she repeated, luxuriating in the romantic sound of the words: "Constantinople to the Adriatic!

Sparta to the Danube!

--Buffalo to New York!"

There was not wanting to the party the whole-souled, my-country-'tis-of-thee American, who somewhat resented these European comparisons, and declared that America was good enough for her, clearly intimating that a certain lack of patriotism, even a certain immorality, attached to the admiration of foreign countries.

She also told us somewhat severely that the same stars, if not better, shone over America as over any other country, and that American scenery was the finest in the world--not to speak of the American climate.

To all of which we bowed our heads in silence--but the frivolous, European-minded Rosalind who had got us into this trouble retorted with a grave face: "Wouldn't you just love, dear Miss----, to walk from Hackensack to Omaha?"

Another voice was kind enough to explain for our encouragement that the traveller found in a place exactly what he brought there, and that romance was a personal gift, all in the personal point of view.

"A sort of cosmetic you apply to the face of Nature," footnoted our irrepressible friend.

Still another reminded us that "to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive," and still another strongly advised us to carry revolvers.

So, taking with us our maps and much good advice, we bade farewell to our friends, and walked back to our camp under the stars--the same stars that were shining over Constantinople.

The next day, when all our preparations were complete, the shack swept and garnished, and our knapsacks bulging in readiness for the road, Colin took his brushes, and in a few minutes had decorated one of the walls with an Autumn sunset--a sort of memorial tablet to our Summer, he explained.

"Can't you think up a verse to put underneath?"

he asked.

Then underneath he lettered: _Two lovers of the Sun and of the Moon, Lovers of Tree and Grass and Bug and Bird, Spent here the Summer days, then all too soon Upon the homeward track reluctant fared.

Sun-up, October 1, 1908. _ Some apples remained over from our larder.

We carefully laid them outside for the squirrels; then, slinging our knapsacks, we took a last look round the little place, and locked the door.

Our way lay up the hill, across the pasture and through the beeches, toward the sky-line.

We stood still a moment, gazing at the well-loved landscape.

Then we turned and breasted the hill.

"_Allons_!"

cried Colin.

"_Allons_!"

I answered.

"_Allons_!

To New York!"

CHAPTER VIII THE AMERICAN BLUEBIRD AND ITS SONG

I wish I could convey the singular feeling of freedom and adventure that possessed us as Colin and I grasped our sticks and struck up the green hill--for New York.

It was a feeling of exhilaration and romantic expectancy, blent with an absurd sense of our being entirely on our own resources, vagrants shifting for ourselves, independent of civilization;

which, of course, the actual circumstances in no way warranted.

A

delightful boyish illusion of entering on untrodden paths and facing unknown dangers thrilled through us.

"Well, we're off!"

we said simultaneously, smiling interrogatively at each other.

"Yes!

we're in for it."

So men start out manfully for the North Pole.

Our little enterprise gave us an imaginative realization of the solidarity, the interdependence, of the world; and we saw, as in a vision, its four corners knit together by a vast network of paths connecting one with the other; footpaths, byways, cart-tracks, bride-paths, lovers' lanes, highroads, all sensitively linked in one vast nervous system of human communication.

This field whose green sod we were treading connected with another field, that with another, and that again with another--all the way to New York--all the way to Cape Horn!

No break anywhere.

All we had to do was to go on putting one foot before the other, and we could arrive anywhere.

So the worn old phrase, "All roads lead to Rome," lit up with a new meaning, the meaning that had originally made it.

Yes!

the loneliest of lovers' lanes, all silence and wild flowers, was on the way to the Metropolitan Opera House; or, vice versa, the Flat Iron Building was on the way to the depths of the forest.

"Suppose we stop here, Colin," I said, pointing to a solitary, forgotten-looking little farmhouse, surrounded by giant wind-worn poplars that looked older than America, "and ask the way to Versailles?"

"And I shouldn't be surprised," answered Colin, "if we struck some bright little American schoolgirl who could tell us."

Although we as yet knew every foot of the ground we were treading, it already began to wear an unfamiliar houseless and homeless look, an air of foreign travel, and though the shack was but a few yards behind us, it seemed already miles away, wrapped in lonely distance, wistfully forsaken.

Everything we looked at seemed to have gained a new importance and significance; every tree and bush seemed to say, "So many miles to New York," and we unconsciously looked at and remarked on the most trifling objects with the eye of explorers, and took as minute an interest in the usual bird and wayside weed as though we were engaged in some "flora and fauna" survey of untrodden regions.

"That's a bluebird," said Colin, as a faint pee-weeing came with a thin melancholy note from a telegraph wire.

And we both listened attentively, with a learned air, as though making a mental note for some ornithological society in New York.

"Bluebird seen in Erie County, October 1, 1908!"

So might Sir John Mandeville have noted the occurrence of birds of paradise in the domains of Prester John.

"That's a silo," said Colin, pointing to a cylindrical tower at the end of a group of barns, from which came the sound of an engine surrounded by a group of men, occupied in feeding it with trusses of corn from a high-piled wagon.

"They are laying in fodder for the Winter."

Interesting agricultural observation!

In the surrounding fields the pumpkins, globes of golden orange, lay scattered among the wintry-looking corn-stalks.

"Bully subject for a picture!"

said Colin.

Before we had gone very far, we did stop at a cottage standing at a puzzling corner of cross-roads, and asked the way, not to Versailles, indeed, but to--Dutch Hollow.

We were answered by a good-humoured German voice belonging to an old dame, who seemed glad to have the lonely afternoon silence broken by human speech; and we were then, as often afterward, reminded that we were not so far away from Europe, after all;

but that, indeed, in no small degree the American continent was the map of Europe bodily transported across the sea.

For the present our way lay through Germany.

Dutch Hollow!

The name told its own story, and it had appealed to our imaginations as we had come upon it on the map.

We had thought we should like to see how it looked written in trees and rocks and human habitations on the page of the landscape.

And I may say that it was such fanciful considerations as this, rather than any more business-like manner of travel, that frequently determined the route of our essentially sentimental journey.

If our way admitted of a choice of direction, we usually decided by the sound of the name of village or town.

Thus the sound of "Wales Center" had taken us, we were told, a mile or two out of our way; but what of that?

We were not walking for a record, nor were we road-surveying, or following the automobile route to New York.

In fact, we had deliberately avoided the gasoline route, choosing to be led by more rustic odours; and thus our wayward wayfaring cannot be offered in any sense as a guide for pedestrians who may come after us.

Any one following our guidance would be as liable to arrive at the moon as at New York.

In fact, we not infrequently inquired our way of a bird, or some friendly little dog that would come out to bark a companionable good day to us from a wayside porch.

As a matter of fact, I had inquired the way of the bluebird mentioned a little while back, and it may be of interest--to ornithological societies--to transcribe his answer: _The way of dreams--the bluebird sang-- Is never hard to find So soon as you have really left The grown-up world behind;

So soon as you have come to see That what the others call Realities, for such as you, Are never real at all;

So soon as you have ceased to care What others say or do, And understand that they are they, And you--thank God--are you.

Then is your foot upon the path, Your journey well begun, And safe the road for you to tread, Moonlight or morning sun.

Pence of this world you shall not take, Yea!

no provision heed;

A wild-rose gathered in the wood Will buy you all you need.

Hungry, the birds shall bring you food, The bees their honey bring;

And, thirsty, you the crystal drink Of an immortal spring.

For sleep, behold how deep and soft With moss the earth is spread, And all the trees of all the world Shall curtain round your bed.

Enchanted journey!

that begins Nowhere, and nowhere ends, Seeking an ever-changing goal, Nowhither winds and wends.

For destination yonder flower, For business yonder bird;

Aught better worth the travelling to I never saw or heard.

O long dream-travel of the soul!

First the green earth to tread-- And still yon other starry track To travel when you're dead_.

CHAPTER IX