CHAPTER XXVIII. THE PATH TO ARCADY
October that year gathered up all the spilled sunshine of the summer andclad herself in it as in a garment. The Story Girl had asked us totry to make the last month together beautiful, and Nature seconded ourefforts, giving us that most beautiful of beautiful things--a graciousand perfect moon of falling leaves. There was not in all that vanishedOctober one day that did not come in with auroral splendour and go outattended by a fair galaxy of evening stars--not a day when there werenot golden lights in the wide pastures and purple hazes in the ripeneddistances. Never was anything so gorgeous as the maple trees that year.Maples are trees that have primeval fire in their souls. It glows out alittle in their early youth, before the leaves open, in the redness androsy-yellowness of their blossoms, but in summer it is carefully hiddenunder a demure, silver-lined greenness. Then when autumn comes, themaples give up trying to be sober and flame out in all the barbaricsplendour and gorgeousness of their real nature, making of the hillsthings out of an Arabian Nights dream in the golden prime of good HarounAlraschid.
You may never know what scarlet and crimson really are until you seethem in their perfection on an October hillside, under the unfathomableblue of an autumn sky. All the glow and radiance and joy at earth'sheart seem to have broken loose in a splendid determination to expressitself for once before the frost of winter chills her beating pulses. Itis the year's carnival ere the dull Lenten days of leafless valleys andpenitential mists come.
The time of apple-picking had come around once more and we workedjoyously. Uncle Blair picked apples with us, and between him and theStory Girl it was an October never to be forgotten.
"Will you go far afield for a walk with me to-day?" he said to her andme, one idle afternoon of opal skies, pied meadows and misty hills.
It was Saturday and Peter had gone home; Felix and Dan were helpingUncle Alec top turnips; Cecily and Felicity were making cookies forSunday, so the Story Girl and I were alone in Uncle Stephen's Walk.
We liked to be alone together that last month, to think the long, longthoughts of youth and talk about our futures. There had grown up betweenus that summer a bond of sympathy that did not exist between us and theothers. We were older than they--the Story Girl was fifteen and I wasnearly that; and all at once it seemed as if we were immeasurably olderthan the rest, and possessed of dreams and visions and forward-reachinghopes which they could not possibly share or understand. At times wewere still children, still interested in childish things. But there camehours when we seemed to our two selves very grown up and old, andin those hours we talked our dreams and visions and hopes, vague andsplendid, as all such are, over together, and so began to build up, outof the rainbow fragments of our childhood's companionship, that rareand beautiful friendship which was to last all our lives, enriching andenstarring them. For there is no bond more lasting than that formed bythe mutual confidences of that magic time when youth is slipping fromthe sheath of childhood and beginning to wonder what lies for it beyondthose misty hills that bound the golden road.
"Where are you going?" asked the Story Girl.
"To 'the woods that belt the gray hillside'--ay, and overflow beyond itinto many a valley purple-folded in immemorial peace," answered UncleBlair. "I have a fancy for one more ramble in Prince Edward Island woodsbefore I leave Canada again. But I would not go alone. So come, you twogay youthful things to whom all life is yet fair and good, and we willseek the path to Arcady. There will be many little things along ourway to make us glad. Joyful sounds will 'come ringing down the wind;' awealth of gypsy gold will be ours for the gathering; we will learn thepotent, unutterable charm of a dim spruce wood and the grace of flexilemountain ashes fringing a lonely glen; we will tryst with the folk offur and feather; we'll hearken to the music of gray old firs. Come, andyou'll have a ramble and an afternoon that you will both remember allyour lives."
We did have it; never has its remembrance faded; that idyllic afternoonof roving in the old Carlisle woods with the Story Girl and Uncle Blairgleams in my book of years, a page of living beauty. Yet it was buta few hours of simplest pleasure; we wandered pathlessly through thesylvan calm of those dear places which seemed that day to be full ofa great friendliness; Uncle Blair sauntered along behind us, whistlingsoftly; sometimes he talked to himself; we delighted in those briefreveries of his; Uncle Blair was the only man I have ever known whocould, when he so willed, "talk like a book," and do it without seemingridiculous; perhaps it was because he had the knack of choosing "fitaudience, though few," and the proper time to appeal to that audience.
We went across the fields, intending to skirt the woods at the back ofUncle Alec's farm and find a lane that cut through Uncle Roger's woods;but before we came to it we stumbled on a sly, winding little path quiteby accident--if, indeed, there can be such a thing as accident in thewoods, where I am tempted to think we are led by the Good People alongsuch of their fairy ways as they have a mind for us to walk in.
"Go to, let us explore this," said Uncle Blair. "It always dragsterribly at my heart to go past a wood lane if I can make any excuse atall for traversing it: for it is the by-ways that lead to the heart ofthe woods and we must follow them if we would know the forest and beknown of it. When we can really feel its wild heart beating against oursits subtle life will steal into our veins and make us its own for ever,so that no matter where we go or how wide we wander in the noisy ways ofcities or over the lone ways of the sea, we shall yet be drawn back tothe forest to find our most enduring kinship."
"I always feel so SATISFIED in the woods," said the Story Girl dreamily,as we turned in under the low-swinging fir boughs. "Trees seem suchfriendly things."
"They are the most friendly things in God's good creation," said UncleBlair emphatically. "And it is so easy to live with them. To holdconverse with pines, to whisper secrets with the poplars, to listen tothe tales of old romance that beeches have to tell, to walk in eloquentsilence with self-contained firs, is to learn what real companionshipis. Besides, trees are the same all over the world. A beech tree on theslopes of the Pyrenees is just what a beech tree here in these Carlislewoods is; and there used to be an old pine hereabouts whose twin brotherI was well acquainted with in a dell among the Apennines. Listen tothose squirrels, will you, chattering over yonder. Did you ever hearsuch a fuss over nothing? Squirrels are the gossips and busybodies ofthe woods; they haven't learned the fine reserve of its other denizens.But after all, there is a certain shrill friendliness in theirgreeting."
"They seem to be scolding us," I said, laughing.
"Oh, they are not half such scolds as they sound," answered Uncle Blairgaily. "If they would but 'tak a thought and mend' their shrew-like waysthey would be dear, lovable creatures enough."
"If I had to be an animal I think I'd like to be a squirrel," said theStory Girl. "It must be next best thing to flying."
"Just see what a spring that fellow gave," laughed Uncle Blair. "And nowlisten to his song of triumph! I suppose that chasm he cleared seemed aswide and deep to him as Niagara Gorge would to us if we leaped overit. Well, the wood people are a happy folk and very well satisfied withthemselves."
Those who have followed a dim, winding, balsamic path to the unexpectedhollow where a wood-spring lies have found the rarest secret the forestcan reveal. Such was our good fortune that day. At the end of our pathwe found it, under the pines, a crystal-clear thing with lips unkissedby so much as a stray sunbeam.
"It is easy to dream that this is one of the haunted springs of oldromance," said Uncle Blair. "'Tis an enchanted spot this, I am verysure, and we should go softly, speaking low, lest we disturb the restof a white, wet naiad, or break some spell that has cost long years ofmystic weaving."
"It's so easy to believe things in the woods," said the Story Girl,shaping a cup from a bit of golden-brown birch bark and filling it atthe spring.
"Drink a toast in that water, Sara," said Uncle Blair. "There's not adoubt that it has some potent quality of magic in it and the wish youw
ish over it will come true."
The Story Girl lifted her golden-hued flagon to her red lips. Her hazeleyes laughed at us over the brim.
"Here's to our futures," she cried, "I wish that every day of our livesmay be better than the one that went before."
"An extravagant wish--a very wish of youth," commented Uncle Blair, "andyet in spite of its extravagance, a wish that will come true if you aretrue to yourselves. In that case, every day WILL be better than all thatwent before--but there will be many days, dear lad and lass, when youwill not believe it."
We did not understand him, but we knew Uncle Blair never explained hismeaning. When asked it he was wont to answer with a smile, "Some dayyou'll grow to it. Wait for that." So we addressed ourselves to followthe brook that stole away from the spring in its windings and doublingsand tricky surprises.
"A brook," quoth Uncle Blair, "is the most changeful, bewitching,lovable thing in the world. It is never in the same mind or mood twominutes. Here it is sighing and murmuring as if its heart were broken.But listen--yonder by the birches it is laughing as if it were enjoyingsome capital joke all by itself."
It was indeed a changeful brook; here it would make a pool, dark andbrooding and still, where we bent to look at our mirrored faces; then itgrew communicative and gossiped shallowly over a broken pebble bed wherethere was a diamond dance of sunbeams and no troutling or minnow couldglide through without being seen. Sometimes its banks were high andsteep, hung with slender ashes and birches; again they were mere, lowmargins, green with delicate mosses, shelving out of the wood. Onceit came to a little precipice and flung itself over undauntedly in anindignation of foam, gathering itself up rather dizzily among the mossystones below. It was some time before it got over its vexation; it wentboiling and muttering along, fighting with the rotten logs that lieacross it, and making far more fuss than was necessary over every rootthat interfered with it. We were getting tired of its ill-humour andtalked of leaving it, when it suddenly grew sweet-tempered again,swooped around a curve--and presto, we were in fairyland.
It was a little dell far in the heart of the woods. A row of birchesfringed the brook, and each birch seemed more exquisitely gracefuland golden than her sisters. The woods receded from it on every hand,leaving it lying in a pool of amber sunshine. The yellow trees weremirrored in the placid stream, with now and then a leaf falling on thewater, mayhap to drift away and be used, as Uncle Blair suggested, bysome adventurous wood sprite who had it in mind to fare forth to somefar-off, legendary region where all the brooks ran into the sea.
"Oh, what a lovely place!" I exclaimed, looking around me with delight.
"A spell of eternity is woven over it, surely," murmured Uncle Blair."Winter may not touch it, or spring ever revisit it. It should be likethis for ever."
"Let us never come here again," said the Story Girl softly, "never,no matter how often we may be in Carlisle. Then we will never see itchanged or different. We can always remember it just as we see it now,and it will be like this for ever for us."
"I'm going to sketch it," said Uncle Blair.
While he sketched it the Story Girl and I sat on the banks of the brookand she told me the story of the Sighing Reed. It was a very simplelittle story, that of the slender brown reed which grew by the forestpool and always was sad and sighing because it could not utter musiclike the brook and the birds and the winds. All the bright, beautifulthings around it mocked it and laughed at it for its folly. Who wouldever look for music in it, a plain, brown, unbeautiful thing? But oneday a youth came through the wood; he was as beautiful as the spring; hecut the brown reed and fashioned it according to his liking; and then heput it to his lips and breathed on it; and, oh, the music that floatedthrough the forest! It was so entrancing that everything--brooks andbirds and winds--grew silent to listen to it. Never had anything solovely been heard; it was the music that had for so long been shut up inthe soul of the sighing reed and was set free at last through its painand suffering.
I had heard the Story Girl tell many a more dramatic tale; but that onestands out for me in memory above them all, partly, perhaps, because ofthe spot in which she told it, partly because it was the last one I wasto hear her tell for many years--the last one she was ever to tell me onthe golden road.
When Uncle Blair had finished his sketch the shafts of sunshine wereturning crimson and growing more and more remote; the early autumntwilight was falling over the woods. We left our dell, saying good-byeto it for ever, as the Story Girl had suggested, and we went slowlyhomeward through the fir woods, where a haunting, indescribable odourstole out to meet us.
"There is magic in the scent of dying fir," Uncle Blair was saying aloudto himself, as if forgetting he was not quite alone. "It gets intoour blood like some rare, subtly-compounded wine, and thrills us withunutterable sweetnesses, as of recollections from some other fairerlife, lived in some happier star. Compared to it, all other scents seemheavy and earth-born, luring to the valleys instead of the heights. Butthe tang of the fir summons onward and upward to some 'far-off, divineevent'--some spiritual peak of attainment whence we shall see withunfaltering, unclouded vision the spires of some aerial City Beautiful,or the fulfilment of some fair, fadeless land of promise."
He was silent for a moment, then added in a lower tone,
"Felicity, you loved the scent of dying fir. If you were here tonightwith me--Felicity--Felicity!"
Something in his voice made me suddenly sad. I was comforted when I feltthe Story Girl slip her hand into mine. So we walked out of the woodsinto the autumn dusk.
We were in a little valley. Half-way up the opposite slope a brush firewas burning clearly and steadily in a maple grove. There was somethingindescribably alluring in that fire, glowing so redly against the darkbackground of forest and twilit hill.
"Let us go to it," cried Uncle Blair, gaily, casting aside his sorrowfulmood and catching our hands. "A wood fire at night has a fascination notto be resisted by those of mortal race. Hasten--we must not lose time."
"Oh, it will burn a long time yet," I gasped, for Uncle Blair waswhisking us up the hill at a merciless rate.
"You can't be sure. It may have been lighted by some good, honestfarmer-man, bent on tidying up his sugar orchard, but it may also, foranything we know, have been kindled by no earthly woodman as a beacon orsummons to the tribes of fairyland, and may vanish away if we tarry."
It did not vanish and presently we found ourselves in the grove. It wasvery beautiful; the fire burned with a clear, steady glow and a softcrackle; the long arcades beneath the trees were illuminated with arosy radiance, beyond which lurked companies of gray and purple shadows.Everything was very still and dreamy and remote.
"It is impossible that out there, just over the hill, lies a village ofmen, where tame household lamps are shining," said Uncle Blair.
"I feel as if we must be thousands of miles away from everything we'veever known," murmured the Story Girl.
"So you are!" said Uncle Blair emphatically. "You're back in the youthof the race--back in the beguilement of the young world. Everythingis in this hour--the beauty of classic myths, the primal charm of thesilent and the open, the lure of mystery. Why, it's a time and placewhen and where everything might come true--when the men in green mightcreep out to join hands and dance around the fire, or dryads steal fromtheir trees to warm their white limbs, grown chilly in October frosts,by the blaze. I wouldn't be much surprised if we should see somethingof the kind. Isn't that the flash of an ivory shoulder through yondergloom? And didn't you see a queer little elfin face peering at us aroundthat twisted gray trunk? But one can't be sure. Mortal eyesight is tooslow and clumsy a thing to match against the flicker of a pixy-littenfire."
Hand in hand we wandered through that enchanted place, seeking the folkof elf-land, "and heard their mystic voices calling, from fairy knolland haunted hill." Not till the fire died down into ashes did we leavethe grove. Then we found that the full moon was gleaming lustrously froma cloudless sky across the valley. Bet
ween us and her stretched up atall pine, wondrously straight and slender and branchless to its verytop, where it overflowed in a crest of dark boughs against the silverysplendour behind it. Beyond, the hill farms were lying in a suave, whiteradiance.
"Doesn't it seem a long, long time to you since we left home thisafternoon?" asked the Story Girl. "And yet it is only a few hours."
Only a few hours--true; yet such hours were worth a cycle of commonyears untouched by the glory and the dream.