In the Forest of Arden.
I
Under the greenwood tree,
Who loves to lie with me,
And turn his merry note
Unto the sweet bird's throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither.
Rosalind had just laid a spray of apple blossoms on the study table.
"Well," I said, "when shall we start?"
"To-morrow."
Rosalind has a habit of swift decision when she has settled a question
in her own mind, and I was not surprised when she replied with a single
decisive word. But she also has a habit of making thorough preparation
for any undertaking, and now she was quietly proposing to go off for
the summer the very next day, and not a trunk was packed, not a seat
secured in any train, not a movement made toward any winding up of
household affairs. I had great faith in her ability to execute her
plans with celerity, but I doubted whether she could be ready to turn
the key in the door, bid farewell to the milkman and the butcher, and
start the very next day for the Forest of Arden. For several past
seasons we had planned this bold excursion into a country which few
persons have seemed to know much about since the day when a poet of
great fame, familiar with many strange climes and peoples, found his
way thither and shared the golden fortune of his journey with all the
world. Winter after winter before the study fire, we had made merry
plans for this trip into the magical forest; we had discussed the best
methods of travelling where no roads led; we had enjoyed in
anticipation the surmises of our neighbours concerning our unexplained
absence, and the delightful mystery which would always linger about us
when we had returned, with memories of a landscape which no eyes but
ours had seen these many years, and of rare and original people whose
voices had been silent in common speech so many generations that only a
few dreamers like ourselves even remembered that they had ever spoken.
We had looked along the library shelves for the books we should take
with us, until we remembered that in that country there were books in
the running streams. Rosalind had gone so far as to lay aside a
certain volume of sermons whose aspiring note had more than once made
music of the momentary discords of her life; but I reminded her that
such a work would be strangely out of place in a forest where there
were sermons in stones. Finally we had decided to leave books behind
and go free-minded as well as free-hearted. It had been a serious
question how much and what apparel we should take with us, and that
point was still unsettled when the apple trees came to their
blossoming. It is a theory of mine that the chief delight of a
vacation from one's usual occupations is freedom from the tyranny of
plans and dates, and thus much Rosalind had conceded to me.
There had been an irresistible charm in the very secrecy which
protected our adventure from the curious and unsympathetic comment of
the world. We found endless pleasure in imagining what this and that
good neighbour of ours would say about the folly of leaving a
comfortable house, good beds, and a well-stocked larder for the hard
fare and uncertain shelter of a strange forest. "For my part," we
gleefully heard Mrs. Grundy declare,--"for my part, I cannot understand
why two people old enough to know better should make tramps of
themselves and go rambling about a piece of woods that nobody ever
heard of in the heat of the midsummer." Poor Mrs. Grundy! We could
well afford to laugh merrily at her scornful expostulations; for while
she was repeating platitudes to overdressed and uninteresting people at
Oldport, we should be making sunny play of life with men and women
whose thoughts were free as the wind, and whose hearts were fresh as
the dew and the stars. And often when our talk had died into silence,
and the wind without whistled to the fire within, we had fallen to
dreaming of those shadowy aisles arched by the mighty trees, and of the
splendid pageant that should make life seem as great and rich as Nature
herself. I confess that all my dreams came to one ending; that I
should suddenly awake in some golden hour and really know Rosalind. Of
course I had been coming through all these years to know something
about Rosalind; but in this busy world, with work to be done, and bills
to be paid, and people to be seen, and journeys to be made, and
friction and worry and fatigue to be borne, how can we really come to
know one another? We may meet the vicissitudes and changes side by
side; we may work together in the long days of toil; our hearts may
repose on a common trust, our thoughts travel a common road; but how
rarely do we come to the hour when the pressure of toil is removed, the
clouds of anxiety melt into blue sky, and in the whole world nothing
remains but the sun on the flower, and the song in the trees, and the
unclouded light of love in the eyes?
I dreamed, too, that in finding Rosalind I should also find myself.
There were times when I had seemed on the very point of making this
discovery, but something had always turned me aside when the quest was
most eager and promising; the world pressed into the seclusion for
which I had struggled, and when I waited to hear its faintest murmur
die in the distance, suddenly the tumult had risen again, and the dream
of self-communion and self-knowledge had vanished. To get out of the
uproar and confusion of things, I had often fancied, would be like
exchanging the dusty midsummer road for the shade of the woods where
the brook calms the day with its pellucid note of effortless flow, and
the hours hide themselves from the glances of the sun. In the forest
of Arden I felt sure I should find the repose, the quietude, the
freedom of thought, which would permit me to know myself. There, too,
I suspected Nature had certain surprises for me; certain secrets which
she has been holding back for the fortunate hour when her spell would
be supreme and unbroken. I even hoped that I might come unaware upon
that ancient and perennial movement of life upon which I seemed always
to happen the very second after it had been suspended; that I might
hear the note of the hermit thrush breaking out of the heart of the
forest; the soulful melody of the nightingale, pathetic with
unappeasable sorrow. In the Forest of Arden, too, there were unspoiled
men and women, as indifferent to the fashion of the world and the folly
of the hour as the stars to the impalpable mist of the clouds; men and
women who spoke the truth, and saw the fact, and lived the right; to
whom love and faith and high hopes were more real than the crowns of
which they had been despoiled and the kingdoms from which they had been
rejected. All this I had dreamed, and I know not how many other brave
and beautiful dreams, and I was dreaming them again when Rosalind laid
the apple blossoms on the study table, and answered, decisively,
"To-morrow."
"To-morrow," I repeated; "to-morrow. But how are you going to get
ready? If you sit up all night you cannot get through with the
packing. You said only yesterday that your summer dressmaking was
shamefully behind. My dear, next week is the earliest possible time
for our going."
Rosalind laughed archly, and pushed the apple blossoms over the wofully
interlined manuscript of my new article on Egypt. There was in her
very attitude a hint of unsuspected buoyancy and strength; there was in
her eyes a light which I have never seen under our uncertain skies.
The breath of the apple blossoms filled the room, and a bobolink,
poised on a branch outside the window, suddenly poured a rapturous song
into the silence of the sweet spring day. I laid down my pen, pushed
my scattered sheets into the portfolio, covered the inkstand, and laid
my hand in hers. "Not to-morrow," I said, "not to-morrow. Let us go
now."
II
Now go we in content
To liberty and not to banishment.
I have sometimes entertained myself by trying to imagine the
impressions which our modern life would make upon some sensitive mind
of a remote age. I have fancied myself rambling about New York with
Montaigne, and taking note of his shrewd, satirical comment. I can
hardly imagine him expressing any feeling of surprise, much less any
sentiment of admiration; but I am confident that under a masque of
ironical self-complacency the old Gascon would find it difficult to
repress his astonishment, and still more difficult to adjust his mind
to evident and impressive changes. I have ventured at times to imagine
myself in the company of another more remote and finely organised
spirit of the past, and pictured to myself the keen, dispassionate
criticism of Pericles on the things of modern habit and creation; I
have listened to his luminous interpretations of the changed conditions
which he saw about him; I have noted his unconcern toward the merely
material advances of society, his penetrative insight into its
intellectual and moral developments. A mind so capacious and open, a
nature so trained and poised, could not be otherwise than
self-contained and calm even in the presence of changes so vast and
manifold as those which have transformed society since the days of the
great Athenian; but even he could not be quite unmoved if brought face
to face with a life so unlike that with which he had been familiar;
there must come, even to one who feels the mastery of the soul over all
conditions, a certain sense of wonder and awe.
It was with some such feeling that Rosalind and I found ourselves in
the Forest of Arden. The journey was so soon accomplished that we had
no time to accustom ourselves to the changes between the country we had
left and that to which we had come. We had always fancied that the
road would be long and hard, and that we should arrive worn and spent
with the fatigues of travel. We were astonished and delighted when we
suddenly discovered that we were within the boundaries of the Forest
long before we had begun to think of the end of our journey. We had
said nothing to each other by the way: our thoughts were so busy that
we had no time for speech. There were no other travellers; everybody
seemed to be going in the opposite direction; and we were left to
undisturbed meditation. The route to the Forest is one of those open
secrets which whosoever would know must learn for himself; it is
impossible to direct those who do not discover for themselves how to
make the journey. The Forest is probably the most accessible place on
the face of the earth, but it is so rarely visited that one may go half
a lifetime without meeting a person who has been there. I have never
been able to explain the fact that those who have spent some time in
the Forest, as well as those who are later to see it, seem to recognise
each other by instinct. Rosalind and I happen to have a large circle
of acquaintances, and it has been our good fortune to meet and
recognise many who were familiar with the Forest and who were able to
tell us much about its localities and charms. It is not generally
known, and it is probably wise not to emphasise the fact, that the
fortunate few who have access to the Forest form a kind of secret
fraternity; a brotherhood of the soul which is secret because those
alone who are qualified for membership by nature can understand either
its language or its aims. It is a very strange thing that the dwellers
in the Forest never make the least attempt at concealment, but that, no
matter how frank and explicit their statements may be, nobody outside
the brotherhood ever understands where the Forest lies or what one
finds when he gets there. One may write what he chooses about life in
the Forest, and only those whom Nature has selected and trained will
understand what he discloses; to all others it will be an idle tale or
a fairy story for the entertainment of people who have no serious
business in hand.
I remember well the first time I ever understood that there is a Forest
of Arden, and that they who choose may wander through its arched aisles
of shade and live at their will in its deep and beautiful solitude; a
solitude in which Nature sits like a friend from whose face the veil
has been withdrawn, and whose strange and foreign utterance has been
exchanged for the most familiar speech. Since that memorable afternoon
under the apple trees I have never been far from the Forest, although
at times I have lost sight of the line which its foliage makes against
the horizon. I have always intended to cross that line some day and to
explore the Forest; perhaps even to make a home for myself there. But
one's dreams must often wait for their realisation, and so it has come
to pass that I have gone all these years without personal familiarity
with these beautiful scenes. I have since learned that one never comes
to the Forest until he is thoroughly prepared in heart and mind, and I
understand now that I could not have come earlier even if I had made
the attempt. As it happened, I concerned myself with other things, and
never approached very near the Forest, although never very far from it.
I was never quite happy unless I caught frequent glimpses of its
distant boughs, and I searched more and more eagerly for those who had
left some record of their journeys to the Forest, and of their life
within its magical boundaries. I discovered, to my great joy, that the
libraries were full of books which had much to say about the delights
of Arden: its enchanting scenery; the music of its brooks; the sweet
and refreshing repose of its recesses; the noble company that frequent
it. I soon found that all the greater poets have been there, and that
their lines had caught the magical radiance of the sky; and many of the
prose writers showed the same familiarity with a country in which they
evidently found whatever was sweetest and best in life. I came to know
at last those whose knowledge of Arden was most complete, and I put
them in a place by themselves; a corner in the study to which Rosalind
and I went for the books we read together. I would gladly give a list
of these works but for the fact I have already hinted--that those who
would understand their references to Arden will come to know them
without aid from me, and that those who would not understand could find
nothing in them even if I should give page and paragraph. It was a
great surprise to me, when I first began to speak of the Forest, to
find that most people scouted the very idea of such a country; many did
not even understand what I meant. Many a time, at sunset, when the
light has lain soft and tender on the distant Forest, I have pointed it
out, only to be told that what I thought was the Forest was a splendid
pile of clouds, a shining mass of mist. I came to understand at last
that Arden exists only for a few, and I ceased to talk about it save to
those who shared my faith. Gradually I came to number among my friends
many who were in the habit of making frequent journeys to the Forest,
and not a few who had spent the greater part of their lives there. I
remember the first time I saw Rosalind I saw the light of the Arden sky
in her eyes, the buoyancy of the Arden air in her step, the purity and
freedom of the Arden life in her nature. We built our home within
sight of the Forest, and there was never a day that we did not talk
about and plan our long-delayed journey thither.
"After all," said Rosalind, on that first glorious morning in Arden,
"as I look back I see that we were always on the way here."
III
Well, this is the Forest of Arden.
The first sensation that comes to one who finds himself at last within
the boundaries of the Forest of Arden is a delicious sense of freedom.
I am not sure that there is not a certain sympathy with outlawry in
that first exhilarating consciousness of having gotten out of the
conventional world--the world whose chief purpose is that all men shall
wear the same coat, eat the same dinner, repeat the same polite
commonplaces, and be forgotten at last under the same epitaph. Forests
have been the natural refuge of outlaws from the earliest time, and
among the most respectable persons there has always been an
ill-concealed liking for Robin Hood and the whole fraternity of the men
of the bow. Truth is above all things characteristic of the dwellers
in Arden, and it must be frankly confessed at the beginning, therefore,
that the Forest is given over entirely to outlaws; those who have
committed some grave offence against the world of conventions, or who
have voluntarily gone into exile out of sheer liking for a freer life.
These persons are not vulgar law-breakers; they have neither blood on
their hands nor ill-gotten gains in their pockets; they are, on the
contrary, people of uncommonly honest bearing and frank speech. Their
offences evidently impose small burden on their conscience, and they
have the air of those who have never known what it is to have the
Furies on one's track. Rosalind was struck with the charming
naturalness and gaiety of every one we met in our first ramble on that
delicious and never-to-be-forgotten morning when we arrived in Arden.
There was neither assumption nor diffidence; there was rather an entire
absence of any kind of self-consciousness. Rosalind had fancied that
we might be quite alone for a time, and we had expected to have a few
days to ourselves. We had even planned in our romantic moments--and
there is always a good deal of romance among the dwellers in Arden--a
continuation of our wedding journey during the first week.
"It will be so much more delightful than before," suggested Rosalind,
"because nobody will stare at us, and we shall have the whole world to
ourselves." In that last phrase I recognised the ideal wedding
journey, and was not at all dismayed at the prospect of having no
society but Rosalind's for a time. But all such anticipations were
dispelled in an hour. It was not that we met many people--it is one of
the delights of the Forest that one finds society enough to take away
the sense of isolation, but not enough to destroy the sweetness of
solitude; it was rather that the few we met made us feel at once that
we had equal claim with themselves on the hospitality of the place.
The Forest was not only free to every comer, but it evidently gave
peculiar pleasure to those who were living in it to convey a sense of
ownership to those who were arriving for the first time. Rosalind
declared that she felt as much at home as if she had been born there;
and she added that she was glad she had brought only the dress she
wore. I was a little puzzled by the last remark; it seemed not
entirely logical. But I saw presently that she was expressing the
fellowship of the place which forbade that one should possess anything
that was not in use, and that, therefore, was not adding constantly to
the common stock of pleasure. Concerning the feeling of having been
born in Arden, I became convinced later that there was good reason for
believing that everybody who loved the place had been born there, and
that this fact explained the home feeling which came to one the instant
he set foot within the Forest. It is, in fact, the only place I have
known which seemed to belong to me and to everybody else at the same
time; in which I felt no alien influence. In our own home I had
something of the same feeling, but when I looked from a window or set
foot from a door I was instantly oppressed with a sense of foreign
ownership. In the great world how little could I call my own! Only a
few feet of soil out of the measureless landscape; only a few trees and
flowers out of all that boundless foliage! I seemed driven out of the
heritage to which I was born; cheated out of my birthright in the
beauty of the field and the mystery of the Forest; put off with the
beggarly portion of a younger son when I ought to have fallen heir to
the kingdom. My chief joy was that from the little space I called my
own I could see the whole heavens; no man could rob me of that splendid
vision.
In Arden, however, the question of ownership never comes into one's
thoughts; that the Forest belongs to you gives you a deep joy, but
there is a deeper joy in the consciousness that it belongs to everybody
else.
The sense of freedom, which comes as strongly to one in Arden as the
smell of the sea to one who has made a long journey from the inland,
hints, I suppose, at the offence which makes the dwellers within its
boundaries outlaws. For one reason or another, they have all revolted
against the rule of the world, and the world has cast them out. They
have offended smug respectability, with its passionless devotion to
deportment; they have outraged conventional usage, that carefully
devised system by which small natures attempt to bring great ones down
to their own dimensions; they have scandalised the orthodoxy which,
like Memnon, has lost the music of its morning, and marvels that the
world no longer listens; they have derided venerable prejudices--those
ugly relics by which some men keep in remembrance their barbarous
ancestry; they have refused to follow flags whose battles were won or
lost ages ago; they have scorned to compromise with untruth, to go with
the crowd, to acquiesce in evil "for the good of the cause," to speak
when they ought to keep silent and to keep silent when they ought to
speak. Truly the lists of sins charged to the account of Arden is a
long one, and were it not that the memory of the world, concerned
chiefly with the things that make for its comfort, is a short one, it
would go ill with the lovers of the Forest. More than once it has
happened that some offender has suffered so long a banishment that he
has taken permanent refuge in Arden, and proved his citizenship there
by some act worthy of its glorious privileges. In the Forest one comes
constantly upon traces of those who, like Dante and Milton, have found
there a refuge from the Philistinism of a world that often hates its
children in exact proportion to their ability to give it light. For
the most part, however, the outlaws who frequent the Forest suffer no
longer banishment than that which they impose on themselves. They come
and go at their own sweet will; and their coming, I suspect, is
generally a matter of their own choosing. The world still loves
darkness more than light; but it rarely nowadays falls upon the
lantern-bearer and beats the life out of him, as in "the good old
times." The world has grown more decent and polite, although still at
heart no doubt the bad old world which stoned the prophets. It sneers
where it once stoned; it rejects and scorns where it once beat and
burned. And so Arden has become a refuge, not so much from persecution
and hatred as from ignorance, indifference, and the small wounds of
small minds bent upon stinging that which they cannot destroy.
IV
. . . Fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the
golden world.
Rosalind and I have always been planning to do a great many pleasant
things when we had more time. During the busy days when we barely
found opportunity to speak to each other we were always thinking of the
better days when we should be able to sit hours together with no knock
at the door and no imperative summons from the kitchen. Some man of
sufficient eminence to give his words currency ought to define life as
a series of interruptions. There are a good many valuable and
inspiring things which can only be done when one is in the mood, and to
secure a mood is not always an easy matter; there are moods which are
as coy as the most high-spirited woman, and must be wooed with as much
patience and tact: and when the illusive prize is gained, one holds it
by the frailest tenure. An interruption diverts the current, cuts the
golden thread, breaks the exquisite harmony. I have often thought that
Dante was far less unfortunate than the world has judged him to be. If
he had been courted and crowned instead of rejected and exiled, it
might have been that his genius would have missed the conditions which
gave it immortal utterance. Left to himself, he had only his own
nature to reckon with; the world passed him by, and left him to the
companionship of his sublime and awful dreams. To be left alone with
one's self is often the highest good fortune. Moreover, I detest being
hurried: it seems to me the most offensive way in which we are reminded
of our mortality; there is time enough if we know how to use it.
People who, like Goethe, never rest and never haste, complete their
work and escape the friction of it.
One of the most delightful things about life in Arden is the absence of
any sense of haste; life is a matter of being rather than of doing, and
one shares the tranquillity of the great trees that silently expand
year by year. The fever and restlessness are gone, the long strain of
nerve and will relaxed; a delicious feeling of having strength and time
enough to live one's life and do one's work fills one with a deep and
enduring sense of repose.
Rosalind, who had been busy about so many things that I sometimes
almost lost sight of her for days together, found time to take long
walks with me, to watch the birds and the clouds, and talk by the hour
about all manner of pleasant trifles. I came to feel after a time that
just what I anticipated would happen in Arden had happened. I was fast
becoming acquainted with her. We spent days together in the most
delightful half-vocal and half-silent fellowship; leaving everything to
the mood of the hour and the place. Our walks took us sometimes into
lovely recesses, where mutual confidences seemed as natural as the air;
sometimes into solitudes where talk seemed an impertinence, and we were
silent under the spell of rustling leaves and thrilling melodies coming
from we knew not what hidden minstrelsy. But whether silent or
speaking, we were fast coming to know each other. I saw many traits in
her, many characteristic habits and movements which I had never noted
before; and I was conscious that she was making similar discoveries in
me. These mutual revelations absorbed us during our first days in the
Forest; and they confirmed the impression which I brought with me that
half the charm of people is lost under the pressure of work and the
irritation of haste. We rarely know our best friends on their best
side; our vision of their noblest selves is constantly obscured by the
mists of preoccupation and weariness.
In Arden life is pitched on the natural key; nobody is ever hurried;
nobody is ever interrupted; nobody carries his work like a pack on his
back instead of leaving it behind him as the sun leaves the earth when
the day is over and the calm stars shine in the unbroken silence of the
sky. Rosalind and I were entirely conscious of the transformation
going on within us, and were not slow to submit ourselves to its
beneficent influence. We felt that Arden would not put all its
resources into our hand until we had shaken off the dust and parted
from the fret of the world we had left behind.
In those first inspiring days we went oftenest to the heart of the
pines, where the moss grew so deep that our movements were noiseless;
where the light fell in subdued and gentle tones among the closely
clustered trees; and where no sound ever reached us save the organ
music of the great boughs when the wind evoked their sublime harmonies.
Many a time, as we have sat silent while the tones of that majestic
symphony rose and fell about us, we seemed to become a part of the
scene itself; we felt the unfathomed depth of a music produced by no
conscious thought, wrought out by no conscious toil, but akin, in its
spontaneity and naturalness, with the fragrance of the flower. And
with these thrilling notes there came to us the thought of the calm,
reposeful, irresistible growth of Nature; never hasting, never at rest;
the silent spreading of the tree, the steady burning of the star, the
noiseless flow of the river! Was not this sublime unconsciousness of
time, this glorious appropriation of eternity, something we had missed
all our lives, and, in missing it, had lost our birthright of quiet
hours, calm thought, sweet fellowship, ripening character? The fever
and tumult of the world we had left were discords in a strain, that had
never yielded its music before.
For nature beats in perfect tune,
And rounds with rhyme her every rune,
Whether she work in land or sea,
Or hide underground her alchemy.
Thou canst not wave thy staff in air,
Or dip thy paddle in the lake,
But it carves the bow of beauty there,
And the ripples in rhymes the oars forsake.
After one of these long, delicious days in the heart of the pines,
Rosalind slipped her hand in mine as we walked slowly homeward.
"This is the first day of my life," she said.
V
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
It was one of those entrancing mornings when the earth seems to have
been made over under cover of night, and one drinks the first draught
of a new experience when he sees it by the light of a new day. Such
mornings are not uncommon in Arden, where the nightly dews work a
perpetual miracle of freshness. On this particular morning we had
strayed long and far, the silence and solitude of the woods luring us
hour after hour with unspoken promises to the imagination. We had come
at length to a place so secluded, so remote from stir and sound, that
one might dream there of the sacredness of ancient oracles and the
revels of ancient gods.
Rosalind had gathered wild flowers along the way, and sat at the base
of a great tree intently disentangling her treasures. With that figure
before me, I thought of nearer and more sacred things than the old
woodland gods that might have strayed that way centuries ago; I had no
need to recall the vanished times and faiths to interpret the spirit of
an hour so far from the commonplaces of human speech, so free from the
passing moods of human life. The sweet unconsciousness of that face,
bent over the mass of wild flowers, and akin to them in its unspoiled
loveliness, was to that hour and place like the illuminated capital in
the old missal; a ray of colour which unlocked the dark mystery of the
text. When one can see the loveliness of a wild flower, and feel the
absorbing charm of its sentiment, one is not far from the kingdom of
Nature.
As these fancies chased one another across my mind, lying there at full
length on the moss, I, too, seemed to lose all consciousness that I had
ever touched life at any point than this, or that any other hour had
ever pressed its cup of experience to my lips. The great world of
which I was once part disappeared out of memory like a mist that
recedes into a faint cloud and lies faint and far on the boundaries of
the day; my own personal life, to which I had been bound by such a
multitude of gossamer threads that when I tried to unloose one I seemed
to weave a hundred in its place, seemed to sink below the surface of
consciousness. I ceased to think, to feel; I was conscious only of the
vast and glorious world of tree and sky which surrounded me. I felt a
thrill of wonder that I should be so placed. I had often lain thus
under other trees, but never in such a mood as this. It was as if I
had detached myself from the hitherto unbroken current of my personal
life, and by some miracle of that marvellous place become part of the
inarticulate life of Nature. Clouds and trees, dim vistas of shadow
and flower-starred space of sunlight, were no longer alien to me; I was
akin with the vast and silent movement of things which encompassed me.
No new sound came to me, no new sight broke on my vision; but I heard
with ears, and I saw with eyes, to which all other sounds and sights
had ceased to be. I cannot translate into words the mystery and the
thrill of that hour when, for the first time, I gave myself wholly into
the keeping of Nature, and she received me as her child. What I felt,
what I saw and heard, belong only to that place; outside the Forest of
Arden they are incomprehensible. It is enough to say that I had parted
with all my limitations, and freed myself from all my bonds of habit
and ignorance and prejudice; I was no longer worn and spent with work
and emotion and impression; I was no longer prisoned within the iron
bars of my own personality. I was as free as the bird; I was as little
bound to the past as the cloud that an hour ago was breathed out of the
heart of the sea; I was as joyous, as unconscious, as wholly given to
the rapture of the hour as if I had come into a world where freedom and
joy were an inalienable and universal possession. I did not speculate
about the great fleecy clouds that moved like galleons in the ethereal
sea above me; I simply felt their celestial beauty, the radiancy of
their unchecked movement, the freedom and splendour of the
inexhaustible play of life of which they were part. I asked no
questions of myself about the great trees that wove the garments of the
magical forest about me; I felt the stir of their ancient life, rooted
in the centuries that had left no record in that place save the added
girth and the discarded leaf; I had no thought about the bird whose
note thrilled the forest save the rapture of pouring out without
measure or thought the joy that was in me; I felt the vast irresistible
movement of life rolling, wave after wave, out of the unseen seas
beyond, obliterating the faint divisions by which, in this working
world, we count the days of our toil, and making all the ages one
unbroken growth; I felt the measureless calm, the sublime repose, of
that uninterrupted expansion of form and beauty, from flower to star
and from bird to cloud; I felt the mighty impulse of that force which
lights the sun in its track and sets the stars to mark the boundaries
of its way. Unbroken repose, unlimited growth, inexhaustible life,
measureless force, unsearchable beauty--who shall feel these things and
not know that there are no words for them! And yet in Arden they are
part of every man's life!
And all the time Rosalind sat weaving her wild flowers into a loose
wreath.
"I must not take them from this place," she said, as she bound them
about the venerable tree, as one would bind the fancy of the hour to
some eternal truth.
"Yesterday," she added, as she sat down again and shook the stray
leaves and petals from her lap--"yesterday was the first day of my
life; to-day is the second."
It is one of the delights of Arden that one does not need to put his
whole thought into words there; half the need of language vanishes when
we say only what we mean, and what we say is heard with sympathy and
intelligence. Rosalind and I were thinking the same thought.
Yesterday we had discovered that an open mind, freedom from work and
care and turmoil, make it possible for people to be their true selves
and to know each other. To-day we had discovered that Nature reveals
herself only to the open mind and heart; to all others she is deaf and
dumb. The worldling who seeks her never sees so much as the hem of her
garment; the egotist, the self-engrossed man, searches in vain for her
counsel and consolation; the over-anxious, fretful soul finds her
indifferent and incommunicable. We may seek her far and wide, with
minds intent upon other things, and she will forever elude us; but on
the morning we open our windows with a free mind, she is there to break
for us the seal of her treasures and to pour out the perfume of her
flowers. She is cold, remote, inaccessible only so long as we close
the doors of our hearts and minds to her. With the drudges and slaves
of mere getting and saving she has nothing in common; but with those
who hold their souls above the price of the world and the bribe of
success she loves to share her repose, her strength, and her beauty.
In Arden Rosalind and I cared as little for the world we had left as
children intent upon daisies care for the dust of the road out of which
they have come into the wide meadows.
VI
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,
The season's difference, as the icy fang
And churlish chiding of the winter wind,
Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say,
This is no flattery: these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.
If the ideal conditions of life, of which most of us dream, could be
realised, the result would be a padded and luxurious existence,
well-housed, well-fed, well-dressed, with all the winds of heaven
tempered to indolence and cowardice. We are saved from absolute shame
by the consciousness that if such a life were possible we should
speedily revolt against the comforts that flattered the body while they
ignored the soul. In Arden there is no such compromise with our
immoral desires to get results without work, to buy without paying for
what we receive. Nature keeps no running accounts and suffers no man
to get in her debt; she deals with us on the principles of immutable
righteousness; she treats us as her equals, and demands from us an
equivalent for every gift or grace of sight or sound she bestows. She
rejects contemptuously the advances of the weaklings who aspire to
become her beneficiaries without having made good their claim by some
service or self-denial; she rewards those only who, like herself, find
music in the tempest as well as in the summer wind; joy in arduous
service as well as in careless ease. A world in which there were no
labours to be accomplished, no burdens to be borne, no storms to be
endured, would be a world without true joy, honest pleasure, or noble
aspiration. It would be a fool's paradise.
The Forest of Arden is not without its changes of weather and season.
Rosalind and I had fancied that it was always summer there, and that
sunlight reigned from year's end to year's end; if we had been told
that storms sometimes over-shadowed it, and that the icy fang of winter
is felt there, we should have doubted the report. We had a good deal
to learn when we first went to Arden; in fact, we still have a great
deal to learn about this wonderful country, in which so many of the
ideals and standards with which we were once familiar are reversed. It
is one of the blessed results of living in the Forest that one is more
and more conscious that he does not know and more and more eager to
learn. There are no shams of any sort in Arden, and all pride in
concealing one's ignorance disappears; one's chief concern is to be
known precisely as he is. We were a little sensitive at first, a
little disposed to be cautious about asking questions that might reveal
our ignorance; but we speedily lost the false shame we had brought with
us from a world where men study to conceal, as a means of protecting,
the things that are most precious to them. When we learned that in the
Forest nobody vulgarises one's affairs by making them matter of common
talk, that all the meannesses of slander and gossip and
misinterpretation are unknown, and that charity, courtesy, and honour
are the unfailing law of intercourse, we threw down our reserves and
experienced the refreshing freedom and sympathy of full knowledge
between man and man.
After a long succession of golden days we awoke one morning to the
familiar sound of rain on the roof; there was no mistake about it; it
was raining in Arden! Rosalind was so incredulous that I could see she
doubted if she were awake; and when she had satisfied herself of that
fact she began to ask herself whether we had been really in the Forest
at all; whether we had not been dreaming in a kind of double
consciousness, and had now come to the awakening which should rob us of
this golden memory. At last we recognised the fact that we were still
in Arden, and that it was raining. It was a melancholy awakening, and
we were silent and depressed at breakfast; for the first time no birds
sang, and no sunlight flickered through the leaves and brought the day
smiling to our very door. The rain fell steadily, and when the wind
swept through the trees a sound like a sob went up from the Forest.
After breakfast, for lack of active occupation, we lighted a few sticks
in the rough fireplace, and found ourselves gradually drawn into the
circle of cheer in the little room. The great world of Nature was for
a moment out of doors, and there seemed no incongruity talking about
our own experiences; we recalled the days in the world we had left
behind; we remembered the faces of our neighbours; we reminded each
other of the incidents of our journey; we retold, in antiphonal
fashion, the story of our stay in the Forest; we grew eloquent as we
described, one after another, the noble persons we had met there; our
hearts kindled as we became conscious of the wonderful enrichment and
enlargement of life that had come to us; and as the varied splendours
of the days and scenes of Arden returned in our memories, the spell of
the Forest came upon us, and the mysterious cadence of the rain,
falling from leaf to leaf, added another and deeper tone to the harmony
of our Forest life. The gloom had gone; we had all the delight of a
new experience in our hearts.
"I am glad it rains," Rosalind said, as she gave the fire one of her
vigorous stirrings; "I am glad it rains: I don't think we should have
realised how lovely it is here if we were not shut in from time to
time. One is played upon by so many impressions that one must escape
from them to understand how beautiful they are. And then I'm not sure
that even dark days and rain have not something which sunshine and
clear skies could not give us." As usual, Rosalind had spoken my
thought before I had made it quite clear to myself; I began to feel the
peculiar delight of our comfort in the heart of that great forest when
the storm was abroad. The monotone of the rain became rhythmic with
some ancient, primeval melody, which the woods sang before their
solitude had been invaded by the eager feet of men always searching for
something which they do not possess. I felt the spell of that mighty
life which includes the tempest and the tumult of winds and waves among
the myriad voices with which it speaks its marvellous secret. Half the
meaning would go out of Nature if no storms ever dimmed the light of
stars or vexed the calm of summer seas. It is the infinite variety of
Nature which fits response to every need and mood, renews forever the
freshness of contact with her, and holds us by a power of which we
never weary because we never exhaust its resources.
"After all, Rosalind," I said, "it was not the storms and the cold
which made our old life hard, and gave Nature an unfriendly aspect; it
was the things in our human experience which gave tempest and winter a
meaning not their own. In a world in which all hearts beat true, and
all hands were helpful, there would be no real hardship in Nature. It
is the loss, sorrow, weariness, and disappointment of life which give
dark days their gloom, and cold its icy edge, and work its bitterness.
The real sorrows of life are not of Nature's making; if faithlessness
and treachery and every sort of baseness were taken out of human lives,
we should find only a healthy and vigorous joy in such hardship as
Nature imposes upon us. Upon men of sound, sweet life, she lays only
such burdens as strength delights to carry, because in so doing it
increases itself."
"That is true," said Rosalind. "The day is dark only when the mind is
dark; all weathers are pleasant when the heart is at rest. There are
rainy days in Arden, but no gloomy ones; there are probably cold days,
but none that chill the soul."
I do not know whether it was Rosalind's smile or the sudden breaking of
the sun through the clouds that made the room brilliant; probably it
was both. Rosalind opened the lattice, and I saw that the rain had
ceased. The drops still hung on every leaf, but the clouds were
breaking into great shining masses, and the blue of the sky was of
unsearchable purity and depth. The sun poured a flood of light into
the heart of the Forest, and suddenly every tiny drop, that a moment
ago might have seemed a symbol of sorrow, held the radiant sun on its
little disk, and every sphere shone as if a universe of fairy creation
had been suddenly breathed into being. And the splendour touched
Rosalind also.
VII
. . . Pray you, if you know,
Where in the purlieus of this forest stands
A sheep-cote fenc'd about with olive trees?
* * * * *
The rank of osiers by the murmuring stream
Left on your right hand, brings you to the place.
But at this hour the house doth keep itself.
Years ago, when we were planning to build a certain modest little
house, Rosalind and I found endless delight in the pleasures of
anticipation. By day and by night our talk came back to the home we
were to make for ourselves. We discussed plan after plan and found
none quite to our mind; we examined critically the houses we visited;
we pored over books; we laid the experience of our friends under
contribution; and when at last we had agreed upon certain essentials we
called an architect to our aid, and fondly imagined that now the
prelude of discussion and delay was over, we should find unalloyed
delight in seeing our imaginary home swiftly take form and become a
thing of reality. Alas for our hopes! Expense followed fast upon
expense and delay upon delay. There were endless troubles with masons
and carpenters and plumbers; and when our dream was at last realised,
the charm of it had somehow vanished; so much anxiety, care, and
vexation had gone into the process of building that the completed
structure seemed to be a monument of our toil rather than a refuge from
the world.
After this sad experience, Rosalind and I contented ourselves with
building castles in Spain; and so great has been our devotion to this
occupation that we are already joint owners of immense possessions in
that remote and beautiful country. It is a singular circumstance that
the dwellers in Arden, almost without exception, are holders of estates
in Spain. I have never seen any of these splendid properties; in fact,
Rosalind and I have never seen our own castles; but I have heard very
full and graphic descriptions of those distant seats. In imagination I
have often seen the great piles crowning the crests of wooded hills,
whence noble parks and vast landscapes lay spread out; I have been
thrilled by the notes of the hunting-horn and discerned from afar the
cavalcade of beautiful women and gallant men winding its way to the
gates of the courtyard; I have seen splendid banners afloat from turret
and casement; I have seen lights flashing at night and heard faint
murmurs of music and laughter. Truly they are fortunate who own
castles in Spain!
In the Forest of Arden there is no such brave show of battlement and
rampart. In all our rambles we never came upon a castle or palace; in
fact, so far as I remember, no one ever spoke of such structures. They
seem to have no place there. Nor is it hard to understand this
singular divergence from the ways of a world whose habits and standards
are continually reversed in the Forest. In castle and palace, the
wealth and splendour of life--everything that gives it grace and beauty
to the eye--are treasured within massive walls and protected from the
common gaze and touch. Every great park, with its reaches of inviting
sward and its groups of noble trees, seems to say to those who pass
along the highway: "We are too rare for your using." Every stately
palace, with its wonderful paintings and hangings, its sculpture and
furnishings, locks its massive gates against the great world without,
as if that which it guards were too precious for common eyes. In Arden
no one dreams of fencing off a lovely bit of open meadow or a cluster
of great trees; private ownership is unknown in the Forest. Those who
dwell there are tenants in common of a grander estate than was ever
conquered by sword, purchased by gold, or bequeathed by the laws of
descent. There are homes for privacy, for the sanctities of love and
friendship; but the wealth of life is common to all. Instead of
elegant houses, and a meagre, inferior public life, as in the great
cities of the world, there are modest homes and a noble common life.
If the houses in our cities were simple and home-like in their
appointments, and all their treasures of art and beauty were lodged in
noble structures, open to every citizen, the world would know something
of the habits of those who find in Arden that satisfying thought of
life which is denied them among men. Moderation, simplicity, frugality
for our private and personal wants; splendid profusion, noble
lavishness, beautiful luxury for that common life which now languishes
because so few recognise its needs. When will the world learn the real
lesson of civilisation, and, for the cheap and ignoble aspect of modern
cities, bring back the stateliness of Rome and the beauty of that
wonderful city whose poetry and art were but the voices of her common
life?
The murmuring stream at our door in Arden whispered to us by day and by
night the sweet secret of the happiness in the Forest, where no man
strives to outshine his neighbour or to encumber the free and joyous
play of his life with those luxuries which are only another name for
care. Our modest little home sheltered but did not enslave us; it held
a door open for all the sweet ministries of affection, but it was
barred against anxiety and care; birds sang at its flower-embowered
windows, and the fragrance of the beautiful days lingered there, but no
sound from the world of those that strive and struggle ever entered.
We were joyous as children in a home which protected our bodies while
it set our spirits at liberty; which gave us the sweetness of rest and
seclusion, while it left us free to use the ample leisure of the Forest
and to drink deep of its rich and healthful life. Vine-covered,
overshadowed by the pine, with the olive standing in friendly
neighbourhood, our home in Arden seemed at the same time part of the
Forest and part of ourselves. If it had grown out of the soil, it
could not have fitted into the landscape with less suggestion of
artifice and construction; indeed, Nature had furnished all the
materials, and when the simple structure was complete she claimed it
again and made it her own with endless device of moss and vine.
Without, it seemed part of the Forest; within, it seemed the visible
history of our life there. Friends came and went through the unlatched
door; morning broke radiant through the latticed window; the seasons
enfolded it with their changing life; our own fellowship of mind and
heart made it unspeakably sacred. Love and loyalty within; noble
friends at the hearthstone; soft or shining heavens above; mystery of
forest and music of stream without: this is home in Arden.
VIII
. . . books in the running brooks.
In the days before we went to Arden, Rosalind and I had often wondered
what books we should find there, and we had anticipated with the
keenest curiosity that in the mere presence or absence of certain books
we should discover at last the final principle of criticism, the
absolute standard of literary art. Many a time as we sat before the
study fire and finished the reading of some volume that had yielded us
unmixed delight, we had said to each other that we should surely find
it in Arden, and read it again in an atmosphere in which the most
delicate and beautiful meanings would become as clear as the exquisite
tracery of frost on the study windows. That we should find all the
classics there we had not the least doubt; who could imagine a
community of intelligent persons without Homer and Dante and
Shakespeare and Wordsworth! How the volumes would be housed we did not
try to divine; but that we should find them there we did not think of
doubting. Our chief thought was of the principle of selection, long
sought after by lovers of books but never yet found, which we were
certain would be easily discovered when we came to look along the
shelves of the libraries in Arden. With what delight we anticipated
the long days when we should read together again, and amid such novel
surroundings, the books we loved! For, although our home contained few
luxuries, it had fed the mind; there was not a great soul in literature
whose name was not on the shelves of our library, and the
companionships of that room made our quiet home more rich in gracious
and noble influences than many a palace.
And yet we had been in the Forest several months before we even thought
of books; so absorbed were we in the noble life of the place, in the
inspiring society about us. There came a morning, however, when, as I
looked out into the shadows of the deep woods, I recalled a wonderful
line of Dante's that must have come to the poet as he passed through
some silent and sombre woodland path. Suddenly I remembered that
months had passed since we had opened a book; we whose most inspiring
hours had once been those in which we read together from some familiar
page. For an instant I felt something akin to remorse; it seemed as if
I had been disloyal to friends who had never failed me in any time of
need. But as I meditated on this strange forgetfulness of mine, I saw
that in Arden books have no place and serve no purpose. Why should one
read a translation when the original work lies open and legible before
him? Why should one watch the reflections in the shadowy surface of
the lake when the heavens shine above him? Why should one linger
before the picturesque landscape which art has imperfectly transferred
to canvas when the scene, with all its elusive play of light and shade,
lies outspread before him? I became conscious that in Arden one lives
habitually in the world which books are always striving to portray and
interpret; that one sees with his own eyes all that the eyes of the
keenest observer have ever seen; that one feels in his own soul all the
greatest soul has ever felt. That which in the outer world most men
know only by report, in Arden each one knows for himself. The stories
of travellers cease to interest us when we are at last within the
borders of the strange, far country.
Books are, at the best, faint and imperfect transcriptions of Nature
and life; when one comes to see Nature as she is with his own eyes, and
to enter into the secrets of life, all transcriptions become
inadequate. He who has heard the mysterious and haunting monotone of
the sea will never rest content with the noblest harmony in which the
composer seeks to blend those deep, elusive tones; he who has sat hour
by hour under the spell of the deep woods will feel that spell shorn of
its magical power in the noblest verse that ever sought to contain and
express it; he who has once looked with clear, unflinching gaze into
the depths of human life will find only vague shadows of the mighty
realities in the greatest drama and fiction. The eternal struggle of
art is to utter these unutterable things; the immortal thirst of the
soul will lead it again and again to these ancient fountains, whence it
will bring back its handful of water in vessels curiously carven by the
hands of imagination. But no cup of man's making will ever hold all
that fountain has to give, and to those who are really athirst these
golden and beautifully wrought vessels are insufficient; they must
drink of the living stream.
In Arden we found these ancient and perennial fountains; and we drank
deep and long. There was that in the mystery of the woods which made
all poetry seem pale and unreal to us; there was that in life, as we
saw it in the noble souls about us, which made all records and
transcriptions in books seem cold and superficial. What need had we of
verse when the things which the greatest poets had seen with vision no
clearer than ours lay clear and unspeakably beautiful before us? What
had fiction or history for us, upon whom the thrilling spell of the
deepest human living was laid! Rosalind and I were hourly meeting
those whose thoughts had fed the world for generations, and whose names
were on all lips, but they never spoke of the books they had written,
the pictures they had painted, the music they had composed. And,
strange to say, it was not because of these splendid works that we were
drawn to them; it was the quality of their natures, the deep,
compelling charm of their minds, which filled us with joy in their
companionship. In Arden it is a small matter that Shakespeare has
written "Hamlet," or Wordsworth the "Ode on Immortality;" not that
which they have accomplished but that which they are in themselves
gives these names a lustre in Arden such as shines from no crown of
fame in the outer world. Rosalind and I had dreamed that we might meet
some of those whose words had been the food of immortal hope to us, but
we almost dreaded that nearer acquaintance which might dispel the
illusion of superiority. How delighted were we to discover that not
only are great souls, really understood, greater than all their works,
but that the works were forgotten and nothing was remembered but the
soul! Not as those who are fed by the bounty of the king, but as kings
ourselves, were we received into this noble company. Were we not born
to the same inheritance? Were not Nature and life ours as truly as
they were Shakespeare's and Wordsworth's? As we sat at rest under the
great arms of the trees, or roamed at will through the woodland paths,
the one thought that was common to us all was, not how nobly these
scenes had been pictured and spoken, but how far above all language of
art they were, and how shallow runs the stream of speech when these
mysterious treasures of feeling and insight are launched upon it!
IX
. . . every day
Men of great worth resorted to this forest.
The friendship of Nature is matched in Arden with human friendships, as
sincere, as void of disguise and flattery, as stimulating and
satisfying. There are times when every sensitive person is wounded by
misunderstanding of motives, by lack of sympathy, by indifference and
coldness; such hours came not infrequently to Rosalind and myself in
the old days before we set out for the Forest. We found unfailing
consolation and strength in our common faith and purpose, but the
frigidity of the atmosphere made us conscious at times of the effort
one puts forth to simply sustain the life of his ideals, the charm and
sweetness of those secret hopes which feed the soul. What must it be
to live among those who are quick to recognise nobility of motive, to
conspire with aspiration, to believe in the best and highest in each
other? It was to taste such a life as this, to feel the consoling
power of mutual faith and the inspiration of a common devotion to the
ideals that were dearest to us, that our thoughts turned so often and
with such longing to Arden. In such moments we opened with delight
certain books which were full of the joy and beauty of the Forest life;
books which brought back the dreams that were fading out and touched us
afresh with the unsearchable charm and beauty of the Ideal. Surely
there could no better fortune befall us than to be able to call these
great ministering spirits our friends.
But, strong as was our longing, we were not without misgivings when we
first found ourselves in Arden. In this commerce of ideas and hopes,
what had we to give in exchange? How could we claim that equality with
those we longed to know which is the only basis of friendship? We were
unconsciously carrying into the Forest the limitations of our old life,
and among all the glad surprises that awaited us, there was none so
joyful as the discovery that our misgivings vanished as soon as we
began to know our neighbours. Neither of us will ever forget the
perfect joy of those earliest meetings; a joy so great that we wondered
if it could endure. There is nothing so satisfying as quick
comprehension of one's hopes, instant sympathy with them, absolute
frankness of speech, and the brilliant and stimulating play of mind
upon mind where there is complete unconsciousness of self and complete
absorption in the idea and the hour. There was something almost
intoxicating in those first wonderful talks in Arden; we seemed
suddenly not only to be perfectly understood by others, but for the
first time to understand ourselves; the horizons of our mental world
seemed to be swiftly receding and new continents of truth were lifted
up into the clear light of consciousness. All that was best in us was
set free; we were confident where we had been uncertain and doubtful;
we were bold where we had been almost cowardly. We spoke our deepest
thought frankly; we drew from their hiding-places our noblest dreams of
the life we hoped to live and the things we hoped to achieve; we
concealed nothing, reserved nothing, evaded nothing; we were desirous
above all things that others should know us as we knew ourselves. It
was especially restful and refreshing to speak of our failures and
weaknesses, of our struggles and defeats; for these experiences of ours
were instantly matched by kindred experiences, and in the common
sympathy and comprehension a new kind of strength came to us. The
humiliation of defeat was shared, we found, by even the greatest; and
that which made these noble souls what they were was not freedom from
failure and weakness, but steadfast struggle to overcome and achieve.
As the life of a new hope filled our hearts, we remembered with a
sudden pain the world out of which we had escaped, where every one
hides his weakness lest it feed a vulgar curiosity, and conceals his
defeats lest they be used to destroy rather than to build him up.
With what delight did we find that in Arden the talk touched only great
themes, in a spirit of beautiful candour and unaffected earnestness!
To have exchanged the small personal talk from which we had often been
unable to escape for this simple, sincere discourse on the things that
were of common interest was like exchanging the cloud-enveloped lowland
for some sunny mountain slope, where every breath was vital and one
mused on half a continent spread out at his feet. There is no food for
the soul but truth, and we were filled with a mighty hunger when we
understood for how long a time we had been but half fed. A new
strength came to us, and with it an openness of mind and a
responsiveness of heart that made life an inexhaustible joy. We were
set free from the weariness of old struggles to make ourselves
understood; we were no longer perplexed with doubts about the reality
of our ideas; we had but to speak the thought that was in us, and to
live fearlessly and joyously in the hour that was before us. Frank
speaking, absolute candour, that would once have wounded, now only
cheered and stimulated; the spirit of entire helpfulness drives out all
morbid self-consciousness. Differences no longer embitter when
courtesy and faith are universal possessions.
There is nothing more sacred than friendship, and it is impossible to
profane it by drawing the veil from its ministries. The charm of a
perfectly noble companionship between two souls is as real as the
perfume of a flower, and as impossible to convey by word or speech;
Nature has made its sanctity inviolable by making it forever impossible
of revelation and transference. I cannot translate into any language
the delicate charm, the inexhaustible variety, the noble fidelity to
truth, the vigour and splendour of thought, the unfailing sympathy, of
our Arden friendships; they are a part of the Forest, and one must seek
them there. It would vulgarise these fellowships to catalogue the
great names, always familiar to us, and yet which gained another and a
better familiarity when they ceased to recall famous persons and became
associated with those who sat at our hearthstone or gathered about our
simple board. Rosalind was sooner at home in this noble company than
I: she had far less to learn; but at last I grew into a familiarity
with my neighbours which was all the sweeter to me because it
registered a change in myself long hoped for, often despaired of, at
last accomplished. To be at one with Nature was a joy which made life
seem rich beyond all earlier thought; but when to this there was added
the fellowship of spirits as true and great as Nature herself, the wine
of life overflowed the exquisite cup into which an invisible hand
poured it. The days passed like a dream as we strayed together through
the woodland paths; sometimes in some deep and shadowy glen silence
laid her finger on our lips, and in a common mood we found ourselves
drawn together without speech. Often at night, when the magic of the
moon has woven all manner of enchantments about us, we have lingered
hour after hour under that supreme spell which is felt only when soul
speaks with soul.
X
. . . there's no clock in the forest.
There were a great many days in Arden when we did absolutely nothing;
we awoke without plans; we fell asleep without memories. This was
especially true of the earlier part of our stay in the Forest; the
stage of intense enjoyment of new-found freedom and repose. There was
a kind of rapture in the possession of our days that was new to us; a
sense of ownership of time of which we had never so much as dreamed
when we lived by the clock. Those tiny ornamental hands on the
delicately painted dial were our taskmasters, disguised under forms so
dainty and fragile that, while we felt their tyranny, we never so much
as suspected their share in our servitude. Silent themselves, they
issued their commands in tones we dared not disregard; fashioned so
cunningly, they ruled us as with iron sceptres; moving within so small
a circle, they sent us hither and yon on every imaginable service.
They severed eternity into minute fragments, and dealt it out to us
minute by minute like a cordial, given drop by drop to the dying; they
marked with relentless exactness the brief periods of our leisure and
indicated the hours of our toil. We could not escape from their
vigilant and inexorable surveillance; day and night they kept silent
record beside us, measuring out the golden light of summer in their
tiny balances, and doling out the pittance of winter sunshine with
niggardly reluctance. They hastened to the end of our joys, and moved
with funereal slowness through the appointed times of our sorrow. They
ruled every season, pervaded every day, recorded every hour, and, like
misers hoarding a treasure, doled out our birthright of leisure second
by second; so that, being rich, we were always impoverished; inheritors
of vast fortune, we were put off with a meagre income; born free, we
were servants of masters who neither ate nor slept, that they might
never for a second surrender their overseership.
There are no clocks in Arden; the sun bestows the day, and no
impertinence of men destroys its charm by calculating its value and
marking it with a price. The only computers of time are the great
trees whose shadows register the unbroken march of light from east to
west. Even the days and nights lost that painful distinctness which
they had for us when they gave us a constant sense of loss, an
incessant apprehension of change and age. Their shining procession
leaves no such records in Arden; they come like the waves whose
ceaseless flow sings of the boundless sea whence they come. They bring
no consciousness of ebbing years and joys and strength; they bring
rather a sense of eternal resource and beneficence. In Arden one never
feels in haste; there is always time enough and to spare; in fact, the
word "time" is never used in the vernacular of the Forest except when
reference is made to the enslaved world without. There were moments at
the beginning when we felt a little bewildered by our freedom, and I
think Rosalind secretly longed for the familiar tones of the cuckoo
clock which had chimed so many years in and out for us in the old days.
One must get accustomed even to good fortune, and after one has been
confined within the narrow limits of a little plot of earth the
possession of a continent confuses and perplexes. But men are born to
good fortune if they but knew it, and we were soon reconciled to the
possession of inexhaustible wealth. We felt the delight of a sudden
exchange of poverty for richness, a swift transition from bondage to
freedom. Eternity was ours, and we ceased to divide it into fragments,
or to set it off into duties and work. We lived in the consciousness
of a vast leisure; a quiet happiness took the place of the old anxiety
to always do at the moment the thing that ought to be done; we accepted
the days as gifts of joy rather than as bringers of care.
It was delightful to fall asleep lulled by the rustle of the leaves,
and to awake, without memory of care or pressure of work, to a day that
had brought nothing more discordant into the Forest than the singing of
birds. We rose exhilarated and buoyant, and breakfasted merrily under
a great oak; sometimes we lingered far on into the morning, yielding
ourselves to the spell of the early day when it no longer proses of
work and duty, but sings of freedom and ease and the strength that
makes a play of life. Often we strayed without plan or purpose, as the
winding paths of the Forest led us; happy and care-free as children
suddenly let loose in fairyland. We discovered moss-grown paths which
led into the very heart of the Forest, and we pressed on silently from
one green recess to another until all memory of the sunnier world faded
out of mind. Sometimes we emerged suddenly into a wide, brilliant
glade; sometimes we came into a sanctuary so overhung with great masses
of foliage, so secluded and silent, that we took the rude pile of
moss-grown stones we found there as an altar to solitude, and our
stillness became part of the universal worship of silence which touched
us with a deep and beautiful solemnity. Wherever we strayed the same
tranquil leisure enfolded us; day followed day in an order unbroken and
peaceful as the unfolding of the flowers and the silent march of the
stars. Time no longer ran like the few sands in a delicate hourglass
held by a fragile human hand, but like a majestic river fed by
fathomless seas. The sky, bare and free from horizon to horizon, was
itself a symbol of eternity, with its infinite depth of colour, its
sublime serenity, its deep silence broken only by the flight and songs
of birds. These were at home in that ethereal sphere, at rest in that
boundless space, and we were not slow to learn the lesson of their
freedom and joy. We gave ourselves up to the sweetness of that
unmeasured life, without thought of yesterday or to-morrow; we drank
the cup which to-day held to our lips, and knew that so long as we were
athirst that draught would not be denied us.
XI
. . . every of this happy number
That have endur'd shrewd nights and days with us,
Shall share the good of our returned fortune,
According to the measure of their states.
There is this great consolation for those who cannot live continually
in the Forest of Arden: that, having once proven one's citizenship
there, one can return at will. Those who have lived in Arden and have
gone back again into the world, are sustained in their loneliness by
the knowledge of their fellowship with a nobler community. Aliens
though they are, they have yet a country to which they are loyal, not
through interest, but through aspiration, imagination, faith, and love.
Rosalind and I found the months in Arden all too brief; our life there
was one long golden day, whose sunset cast a soft and tender light on
our whole past and made it beautiful for us. It is one of the delights
of the Forest that only the noblest aspects of life are visible there;
or, rather, that the hard and bare details of living, seen in the
atmosphere of Arden, yield some truth of character or experience which,
like the rose, makes even the rough calyx which encased it beautiful.
We had sometimes spoken together of our return to the world we had
left, but we put off as long as possible all definite preparations. I
am not sure that I should ever have come back if Rosalind had not taken
the matter into her own hands. She remembered that there was work to
be done which ought not to be longer postponed; that there were duties
to be met which ought not to be longer evaded; and when did Rosalind
fail to be or to do that which the hour and the experience commanded?
We treasured the last days as if the minutes were pure gold; we
lingered in talk with our friends as if we should never again hear such
spoken words; we loitered in the woods as if the spell of that
beautiful silence would never again touch us. And yet we knew that,
once possessed, these things were ours forever; neither care, nor
change, nor time, nor death, could take them from us, for henceforth
they were part of ourselves.
We stood again at length on the little porch, covered with dust, and
turned the key in the unused lock. I think we were both a little
reluctant to enter and begin again the old round of life and work. The
house seemed smaller and less home-like, the furniture had lost its
freshness, the books on the shelves looked dull and faded. Rosalind
ran to a window, opened it, and let in a flood of sunshine. I confess
I was beginning to feel a little heartsick, but when the light fell on
her I remembered the rainy day in Arden, when the first rays after the
storm touched her and dispelled the gloom, and I realised, with a joy
too deep for words or tears, that I had brought the best of Arden with
me. We talked little during those first days of our home-coming, but
we set the house in order, we recalled to the lonely rooms the old
associations, and we quietly took up the cares and burdens we had
dropped. It was not easy at first, and there were days when we were
both heartsore; but we waited and worked and hoped. Our neighbours
found us more silent and absorbed than of old, but neither that change
nor our absence seemed to have made any impression upon them. Indeed,
we even doubted if they knew that we had taken such a journey. Day by
day we stepped into the old places and fell into the old habits, until
all the broken threads of our life were reunited and we were apparently
as much a part of the world as if we had never gone out of it and found
a nobler and happier sphere.
But there came to us gradually a clear consciousness that, though we
were in the world, we were not of it, nor ever again could be. It was
no longer our world; its standards, its thoughts, its pleasures, were
not for us. We were not lonely in it; on the contrary, when the first
impression of strangeness wore off, we were happier than we had ever
been in the old days. Our reputation was no longer in the breath of
men; our fortune was no longer at the mercy of rising or falling
markets; our plans and hopes were no longer subject to chance and
change. We had a possession in the Forest of Arden, and we had friends
and dreams there beyond the empire of time and fate. And when we
compared the security of our fortunes with the vicissitudes to which
the estates of our neighbours were exposed; when we compared our
noble-hearted friends with their meaner companionships; when we
compared the peaceful serenity of our hearts with their perplexities
and anxieties, we were filled with inexpressible sympathy. We no
longer pierced them with the arrows of satire and wit because they
accepted lower standards and found pleasure in things essentially
pleasureless; they had not lived in Arden, and why should we berate
them for not possessing that which had never been within their reach?
We saw that upon those whom an inscrutable fate has led through the
paths of Arden a great and noble duty is laid. They are not to be the
scorners and despisers of those whose eyes are holden that they cannot
see, and whose ears are stopped that they cannot hear, the vision and
the melody of things ideal. They are rather to be eyes to the blind
and ears to the deaf. They are to interpret in unshaken trust and
patience that which has been revealed to them; servants are they of the
Ideal, and their ministry is their exceeding great reward. So long as
they see clearly, it is small matter to them that their message is
rejected, the mighty consolation which they bring refused; their joy
does not hang on acceptance or rejection at the hands of their fellows.
The only real losers are those who will not see nor hear. It is not
the light-bringer who suffers when the torch is torn from his hands; it
is those whose paths he would lighten.
And more and more, as the days went by, Rosalind and I found the life
of the Forest stealing into our old home. The old monotony was gone;
the old weariness and depression crossed our threshold no more. If
work was pressing, we were always looking through and beyond it; we saw
the fine results that were being accomplished in it; we recognised the
high necessity which imposed it. If perplexities and cares sat with us
at the fireside, we received them as friends; for in the light of Arden
had we not seen their harsh masks removed, and behind them the
benignant faces of those who patiently serve and minister, and receive
no reward save fear and avoidance and misconception? In fact, having
lived in Arden, and with the consciousness that we might seek shelter
there as in another and securer home, the world barely touched us, save
to awaken our sympathies and to evoke our help. It had little to give
us; we had much to give it. There was within and about us a peace and
joy which were not for us alone. Our little home was folded within
impalpable walls, and beyond it lay a vision of green foliage and
golden masses of cloud that never faded off the horizon. There were
benignant presences in our rooms visible to no eyes but ours; for our
Arden friends did not forsake us. There were memories between us which
made all our days beautiful with the consciousness of immortal faith
and love; there were hopes which, like celestial beings, looked upon us
with eyes deep with unspeakable prophecy as they waited at the doors of
the future.
It is an autumn afternoon, and the sun lies warm on the ripening vines
that cover the wall, and on the late flowers that bloom by the
roadside. As I write these words I look up from my portfolio, and
Rosalind sits there, work in hand, smiling at me over her flying
needle. My glance rests on her a moment, and a strange uncertainty
comes over me. Have I really been in Arden, or have I dreamed these
things, looking into Rosalind's eyes? It matters little whether I have
travelled or dreamed; where Rosalind is, there, for me at least, lies
the Forest of Arden.
AN UNDISCOVERED ISLAND
Where should this music be? i' the air, or th' earth?
It sounds no more: and, sure, it waits upon
Some god o' the island.