A FOREST IDYL
"Stranger, if thou hast learned a truth which needs
No school of long experience, that the world
Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen
Enough of all its sorrows, crimes and cares
To tire thee of it, enter this wild wood
And view the haunts of Nature. The calm shade
Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze
That makes the green leaves dance, shall waft a balm
To thy sick heart." --Bryant.
When the sleeper woke, refreshed and rested, in the morning, it was to
take up the routine of duties which were to be only slightly varied for
many months to come.
One after another the great trees succumbed to the blows of his axe and
from their prostrate forms he carefully selected those which were best
adapted to the structure of his cabin, while over the others he piled
the limbs and brush and left them to dry for the conflagration which at
the end of the hot summer should remove them from the clearing.
When the rainy days came he spent his time in the shelter of his little
arbor cutting the "shakes," or shingles, which were to furnish the roof
of Pepeeta's home.
The days and weeks fled by and the opening in the forest grew apace. He
measured it by night with a celestial arithmetic, using the stars for
his triangulations, and as one after another of them became visible
where before they had been obscured by the foliage of the trees, he
smiled, and felt as if he were cutting his farm out of heaven instead of
earth. It was really cut out of both!
His Sundays were spent at the old homestead with his loved ones, and
once every week Pepeeta came with Steven to bring him luxuries which her
own hands had prepared, and to pass the afternoon with him at his work
in the "clearing."
Those were memorable hours, possessing that three-fold
existence with which every hour can be endowed by the soul of
man--anticipation--realization--recollection. In this way a single
moment sometimes becomes almost synchronous with eternity.
It would have been impossible to tell which of the three was happiest,
but Pepeeta was always the center of interest, attention and devotion.
Her whole nature seemed to be aroused and called into play; all her
countless charms were incessantly evoked; her inimitable laughter
resounded through the woods and challenged the emulous birds to
unsuccessful competition. Seriousness alternated with gaiety, coquetry
with gravity. Some of the time she spent in gathering flowers to adorn
her lover's booth, and some in carrying to the rubbish pile such limbs
and branches as her strength would permit her to handle.
Nothing could have been more charming than the immense efforts that she
put forth with such grace, to lift with all her might some branch that
her lover had tossed aside with a single hand! The attitudes into which
these efforts threw her body were as graceful as those into which the
water threw the cresses by its ceaseless flow, or the wind bent the tree
tops by its fitful gusts.
Steven was frantic with delight at the free, open life of the woods. He
chased the squirrels and rabbits, he climbed the trees to gaze into the
nests of the birds, and caught the butterflies in his hat.
David entered into all their pleasures, but with a chastened and
restrained delight, for he could never forget that he was an exile and a
penitent.
There were two days in the season when the regular routine of the
woodsman's work was interrupted by functions which possess a romantic
charm. One was when the Friends and neighbors from a wide region
assembled to help him "raise" the walls of his cabin.
From all sides they appeared, in their picturesque costumes of homespun
or fur. Suddenly, through the ever-open gates of the forest, teams of
horses crashed, drawing after them clanking log chains, and driven by
men who carried saws and "cant hooks" on their broad shoulders. Loud
halloos of greeting, cheerful words of encouragement, an eager and
agreeable bustle of business, filled the clearing.
Log by log the walls rose, as the horses rolled them into place with the
aid of the great chains which the pioneers wrapped around them. It was
only a rude log cabin they built--with a great, wide opening through the
middle, a room on either side, and a picturesque chimney at either end;
but it was not to be despised even for grace, and when warmth and
comfort and adaptability to needs and opportunities are considered,
there have been few buildings erected by the genius of man more justly
entitled to admiration.
When this single day's work was ended there remained nothing for David
to do but chink and daub the walls with mud, cover the rude rafters of
the roof with his shakes, build the chimneys out of short sticks,
cob-house fashion, and cement them on the inside with clay to protect
them from the flames.
The other day was the one on which, at the close of the long and genial
summer, when the mass of timber and brushwood had been thoroughly
seasoned by the hot suns, he set his torches to the carefully
constructed piles.
Steven and Pepeeta were to share with him in the excitement of this
conflagration, and David had postponed it until dusk, in order that they
might enjoy its entire sublimity. He had taken the precaution to plow
many furrows around the cabin and also around the edge of the clearing,
so the flames could neither destroy his house nor devastate the forest.
Such precautions were necessary, for nothing can exceed the ferocity of
fire in the debris which the woodsmen scatter about them. When the dusk
had settled down on this woodland world and long shadows had crept
across the clearing, wrapping themselves round the trees at its edge
and scattering themselves among the thick branches till they were almost
hid from view, David lighted a pine torch and gave it into the hands of
the eager boy, who seized it and like a young Prometheus started forth.
A single touch to the dry tinder was enough. With a dull explosion, the
mass burst into flame. Shouting in his exultation, the little
torch-bearer rushed on, igniting pile after pile, and leaving behind him
almost at every step a mighty conflagration. At each new instant, as the
night advanced, a new outburst of light illumined the darkness, until
ten, twenty, fifty great heaps were roaring and seething with flames!
Great jets spouted up into the midnight heavens as if about to kiss the
very stars, and suddenly expired in the illimitable space above them.
Immense sparks, shot out from these bonfires as from the craters of
volcanoes, went sailing into the void around them and fell hissing into
the water of the brooks or silently into the new-plowed furrows.
The clouds above the heads of the subdued and almost terrified
beholders, for no one is ever altogether prepared for the absolute
awfulness of such a spectacle, were glowing with the fierce light which
the fires threw upon them. Weird illuminations played fantastic tricks
in the foliage from which the startled shadows had vanished. The roar of
the ever-increasing fires became louder and louder, until in very terror
Pepeeta crept into David's arms for protection, while the child who had
fearlessly produced this scene of awful grandeur and destruction shouted
with triumph at his play.
"Thee's a reckless little fire-eater!" said David, watching his figure
as it appeared and disappeared. "How youth trifles with forces whose
powers it can neither measure nor control! It was well that I drew a
furrow around our cabin or it would have been burned."
His gaze was fixed on the little cabin which seemed to dance and
oscillate in the palpitating light; and touched by the analogies and
symbols which his penetrating eye discovered in the simple scenes of
daily life, he continued to soliloquize, saying, "I should have drawn
furrows around my life, before I played with fire!"
"Nay, David," replied Pepeeta, "we should never have played with fire at
all."
"How wise we are--too late!"
"Shall we walk any more cautiously when the next untried pathway opens?"
he added, somewhat sadly, as he recalled the errors of the past.
"We ought to, if experience has any value," said Pepeeta.
"But has it? Or does it only interpret the past, and not point out the
future?"
"Something of both, I think."
"Well we must trust it."
"But not it alone. There is something, better and safer."
"What is that, my love?"
"The path-finding instinct of the soul itself."
"Do you believe there is such an instinct?"
"As much as I believe the carrier pigeon has it. It is the inner light
of which you told me. You see, I remember my lesson like an obedient
child."
"Why, then, are we so often misled?" he asked, tempting her.
"Because we do not wholly trust it!" she said.
"But how can we distinguish the true light from the false, the instinct
from imagination or desire? If the soul has a hundred compasses pointing
in different ways, what compass shall lead the bewildered mariner to
know the true compass?"
"He who will know, can know."
"Are you speaking from your heart, Pepeeta?"
"From its depths."
"And have you no doubts that what you say is true?"
"None, for I learned it from a teacher whom I trust, and have justified
it by my own experience."
"And now the teacher must sit at the feet of the pupil! Oh! beautiful
instructress, keep your faith firm for my sake! I have dark hours
through which I have to pass and often lose my way. The restoration of
my spiritual vision is but slow. How often am I bewildered and lost! My
thoughts brood and brood within me!"
"Put them away," she said, cheerily. "We live by faith and not by sight.
We need not be concerned with the distant future. Let us live in this
dear, divine moment. I am here. You are here! We are together; our
hands touch; our eyes meet; our hearts are one; we love! Let us only be
true to our best selves, and to the light that shines within! Oh! I have
learned so much in these few months, among these people of peace, David!
They know the way of life! We need go no farther to seek it. It lies
before us. Let us follow it!"
"Angel of goodness," he exclaimed, clasping her hand, "it must be that
supreme Love reigns over all the folly and madness of life, or to such a
one as I, a gift so good and beautiful would never have been given!"
She pressed his hand for response, for her lips quivered and her heart
was too full for words.
And now, through the ghastly light which magnified his size portentously
and painted him with grotesque and terrible colors, the child
reappeared, begrimed with smoke and wild with the transports of a power
so vast and an accomplishment so wonderful.
The three figures stood in the bright illumination, fascinated by the
spectacle. The flames, as if satisfied with destruction, had died down,
and fifty great beds of glowing embers lay spread out before them, like
a sort of terrestrial constellation.
The wind, which had been awakened and excited to madness as it rushed in
from the great halls of the forest to fan the fires, now that it was no
longer needed, ceased to blow and sank into silence and repose. Little
birds, returning to their roosts, complained mournfully that their
dreams had been disturbed, and a great owl from the top of a lofty elm
hooted his rage.
It was Saturday night. The labors of the week were over. The time had
come for them to return to the farm house. They turned away reluctantly,
leaving nature to finish the work they had begun.