In some strange deep way there is no experience of my whole pilgrimage
that I look back upon with so much wistful affection as I do upon the
events of the day--the day and the wonderful night--which followed my
long visit with the forlorn Clark family upon their hill farm. At first
I hesitated about including an account of it here because it contains so
little of what may be called thrilling or amusing incident.
“They want only the lively stories of my adventures,” I said to myself,
and I was at the point of pushing my notes to the edge of the table
where (had I let go) they would have fallen into the convenient oblivion
of the waste-basket. But something held me back.
“No,” said I, “I'll tell it; if it means so much to me, it may mean
something to the friends who are following these lines.”
For, after all, it is not what goes on outside of a man, the clash and
clatter of superficial events, that arouses our deepest interest, but
what goes on inside. Consider then that in this narrative I shall open
a little door in my heart and let you look in, if you care to, upon the
experiences of a day and a night in which I was supremely happy.
If you had chanced to be passing, that crisp spring morning, you would
have seen a traveller on foot with a gray bag on his shoulder, swinging
along the country road; and you might have been astonished to see him
lift his hat at you and wish you a good morning. You might have turned
to look back at him, as you passed, and found him turning also to look
back at you--and wishing he might know you. But you would not have known
what he was chanting under his breath as he tramped (how little we know
of a man by the shabby coat he wears), nor how keenly he was enjoying
the light airs and the warm sunshine of that fine spring morning.
After leaving the hill farm he had walked five miles up the valley,
had crossed the ridge at a place called the Little Notch, where all the
world lay stretched before him like the open palm of his hand, and had
come thus to the boundaries of the Undiscovered Country. He had been for
days troubled with the deep problems of other people, and it seemed to
him this morning as though a great stone had been rolled from the door
of his heart, and that he was entering upon a new world--a wonderful,
high, free world. And, as he tramped, certain lines of a stanza long ago
caught up in his memory from some forgotten page came up to his lips,
and these were the words (you did not know as you passed) that he was
chanting under his breath as he tramped, for they seem charged with the
spirit of the hour:
I've bartered my sheets for a starlit bed; I've traded my meat for a
crust of bread; I've changed my book for a sapling cane, And I'm off to
the end of the world again.
In the Undiscovered Country that morning it was wonderful how fresh
the spring woods were, and how the birds sang in the trees, and how the
brook sparkled and murmured at the roadside. The recent rain had washed
the atmosphere until it was as clear and sparkling and heady as new
wine, and the footing was firm and hard. As one tramped he could
scarcely keep from singing or shouting aloud for the very joy of the
day.
“I think,” I said to myself, “I've never been in a better country,” and
it did not seem to me I cared to know where the gray road ran, nor how
far away the blue hills were.
“It is wonderful enough anywhere here,” I said.
And presently I turned from the road and climbed a gently sloping
hillside among oak and chestnut trees. The earth was well carpeted
for my feet, and here and there upon the hillside, where the sun came
through the green roof of foliage, were warm splashes Of yellow light,
and here and there, on shadier slopes, the new ferns were spread upon
the earth like some lacy coverlet. I finally sat down at the foot of
a tree where through a rift in the foliage in the valley below I could
catch a glimpse in the distance of the meadows and the misty blue hills.
I was glad to rest, just rest, for the two previous days of hard labour,
the labour and the tramping, had wearied me, and I sat for a long time
quietly looking about me, scarcely thinking at all, but seeing, hearing,
smelling--feeling the spring morning, and the woods and the hills, and
the patch of sky I could see.
For a long, long time I sat thus, but finally my mind began to flow
again, and I thought how fine it would be if I had some good friend
there with me to enjoy the perfect surroundings--some friend who would
understand. And I thought of the Vedders with whom I had so recently
spent a wonderful day; and I wished that they might be with me; there
were so many things to be said--to be left unsaid. Upon this it occurred
to me, suddenly, whimsically, and I exclaimed aloud:
“Why, I'll just call them up.”
Half turning to the trunk of the tree where I sat, I placed one hand to
my ear and the other to my lips and said:
“Hello, Central, give me Mr. Vedder.”
I waited a moment, smiling a little at my own absurdity and yet quite
captivated by the enterprise.
“Is this Mr. Vedder? Oh, Mrs. Vedder! Well, this is David Grayson.”....
“Yes, the very same. A bad penny, a rolling stone.”....
“Yes. I want you both to come here as quickly as you can. I have the
most important news for you. The mountain laurels are blooming, and
the wild strawberries are setting their fruit. Yes, yes, and in the
fields--all around here, to-day there are wonderful white patches of
daisies, and from where I sit I can see an old meadow as yellow as gold
with buttercups. And the bobolinks are hovering over the low spots. Oh,
but it is fine here--and we are not together!”....
“No; I cannot give exact directions. But take the Long Road and turn at
the turning by the tulip-tree, and you will find me at home. Come right
in without knocking.”
I hung up the receiver. For a single instant it had seemed almost true,
and indeed I believe--I wonder--
Some day, I thought, just a bit sadly, for I shall probably not be here
then--some day, we shall be able to call our friends through space and
time. Some day we shall discover that marvellously simple coherer by
which we may better utilize the mysterious ether of love.
For a time I was sad with thoughts of the unaccomplished future, and
then I reflected that if I could not call up the Vedders so informally
I could at least write down a few paragraphs which would give them some
faint impression of that time and place. But I had no sooner taken
out my note-book and put down a sentence or two than I stuck fast. How
foolish and feeble written words are anyway! With what glib facility
they describe, but how inadequately they convey. A thousand times I have
thought to myself, “If only I could WRITE!”
Not being able to write I turned, as I have so often turned before, to
some good old book, trusting that I might find in the writing of another
man what I lacked in my own. I took out my battered copy of Montaigne
and, opening it at random, as I love to do, came, as luck would have it,
upon a chapter devoted to coaches, in which there is much curious (and
worthless) information, darkened with Latin quotations. This reading had
an unexpected effect upon me.
I could not seem to keep my mind down upon the printed page; it kept
bounding away at the sight of the distant hills, at the sound of a
woodpecker on a dead stub which stood near me, and at the thousand and
one faint rustlings, creepings, murmurings, tappings, which animate
the mystery of the forest. How dull indeed appeared the printed page
in comparison with the book of life, how shut-in its atmosphere, how
tinkling and distant the sound of its voices. Suddenly I shut my book
with a snap.
“Musty coaches and Latin quotations!” I exclaimed. “Montaigne's no
writer for the open air. He belongs at a study fire on a quiet evening!”
I had anticipated, when I started out, many a pleasant hour by the
roadside or in the woods with my books, but this was almost the first
opportunity I had found for reading (as it was almost the last), so full
was the present world of stirring events. As for poor old Montaigne, I
have been out of harmony with him ever since, nor have I wanted him in
the intimate case at my elbow.
After a long time in the forest, and the sun having reached the high
heavens, I gathered up my pack and set forth again along the slope of
the hills--not hurrying, just drifting and enjoying every sight and
sound. And thus walking I came in sight, through the trees, of a
glistening pool of water and made my way straight toward it.
A more charming spot I have rarely seen. In some former time an old
mill had stood at the foot of the little valley, and a ruinous stone
dam still held the water in a deep, quiet pond between two round hills.
Above it a brook ran down through the woods, and below, with a pleasant
musical sound, the water dripped over the mossy stone lips of the dam
and fell into the rocky pool below. Nature had long ago healed the
wounds of men; she had half-covered the ruined mill with verdure, had
softened the stone walls of the dam with mosses and lichens, and had
crept down the steep hillside and was now leaning so far out over the
pool that she could see her reflection in the quiet water.
Near the upper end of the pond I found a clear white sand-bank, where
no doubt a thousand fishermen had stood, half hidden by the willows, to
cast for trout in the pool below. I intended merely to drink and moisten
my face, but as I knelt by the pool and saw my reflection in the clear
water wanted something more than that! In a moment I had thrown aside my
bag and clothes and found myself wading naked into the water.
It was cold! I stood a moment there in the sunny air, the great world
open around me, shuddering, for I dreaded the plunge--and then with a
run, a shout and a splash I took the deep water. Oh, but it was fine!
With long, deep strokes I carried myself fairly to the middle of the
pond. The first chill was succeeded by a tingling glow, and I can convey
no idea whatever of the glorious sense of exhilaration I had. I swam
with the broad front stroke, I swam on my side, head half submerged,
with a deep under stroke, and I rolled over on my back and swam with the
water lapping my chin. Thus I came to the end of the pool near the old
dam, touched my feet on the bottom, gave a primeval whoop, and dove back
into the water again. I have rarely experienced keener physical joy.
After swimming thus boisterously for a time, I quieted down to long,
leisurely strokes, conscious of the water playing across my shoulders
and singing at my ears, and finally, reaching the centre of the pond, I
turned over on my back and, paddling lazily, watched the slow procession
of light clouds across the sunlit openings of the trees above me. Away
up in the sky I could see a hawk slowly swimming about (in his element
as I was in mine), and nearer at hand, indeed fairly in the thicket
about the pond, I could hear a wood-thrush singing.
And so, shaking the water out of my hair and swimming with long and
leisurely strokes, I returned to the sand-bank, and there, standing in a
spot of warm sunshine, I dried myself with the towel from my bag. And I
said to myself:
“Surely it is good to be alive at a time like this!”
Slowly I drew on my clothes, idling there in the sand, and afterward I
found an inviting spot in an old meadow where I threw myself down on the
grass under an apple-tree and looked up into the shadowy places in the
foliage above me. I felt a delicious sense of physical well-being, and I
was pleasantly tired.
So I lay there--and the next thing I knew, I turned over, feeling cold
and stiff, and opened my eyes upon the dusky shadows of late evening. I
had been sleeping for hours!
The next few minutes (or was it an hour or eternity?), I recall as
containing some of the most exciting and, when all is said, amusing
incidents in my whole life. And I got quite a new glimpse of that
sometimes bumptious person known as David Grayson.
The first sensation I had was one of complete panic. What was I to do?
Where was I to go?
Hastily seizing my bag--and before I was half awake--I started rapidly
across the meadow, in my excitement tripping and falling several times
in the first hundred yards. In daylight I have no doubt that I should
easily have seen a gateway or at least an opening from the old meadow,
but in the fast-gathering darkness it seemed to me that the open field
was surrounded on every side by impenetrable forests. Absurd as it
may seem, for no one knows what his mind will do at such a moment,
I recalled vividly a passage from Stanley's story of his search for
Livingstone, in which he relates how he escaped from a difficult place
in the jungle by KEEPING STRAIGHT AHEAD.
I print these words in capitals because they seemed written that night
upon the sky. KEEPING STRAIGHT AHEAD, I entered the forest on one side
of the meadow (with quite a heroic sense of adventure), but scraped my
shin on a fallen log and ran into a tree with bark on it that felt like
a gigantic currycomb--and stopped!
Up to this point I think I was still partly asleep. Now, however, I
waked up.
“All you need,” said I to myself in my most matter-of-fact tone, “is a
little cool sense. Be quiet now and reason it out.”
So I stood there for some moments reasoning it out, with the result that
I turned back and found the meadow again.
“What a fool I've been!” I said. “Isn't it perfectly plain that I should
have gone down to the pond, crossed over the inlet, and reached the road
by the way I came?”
Having thus settled my problem, and congratulating myself on my
perspicacity, I started straight for the mill-pond, but to my utter
amazement, in the few short hours while I had been asleep, that entire
body of water had evaporated, the dam had disappeared, and the stream
had dried up. I must certainly present the facts in this remarkable case
to some learned society.
I then decided to return to the old apple-tree where I had slept, which
now seemed quite like home, but, strange to relate, the apple-tree had
also completely vanished from the enchanted meadow. At that I began to
suspect that in coming out of the forest I had somehow got into another
and somewhat similar old field. I have never had a more confused or
eerie sensation; not fear, but a sort of helplessness in which for
an instant I actually began to doubt whether it was I myself, David
Grayson, who stood there in the dark meadow, or whether I was the victim
of a peculiarly bad dream. I suppose many other people have had these
sensations under similar conditions, but they were new to me.
I turned slowly around and looked for a light; I think I never wanted so
much to see some sign of human habitation as I did at that moment.
What a coddled world we live in, truly. That being out after dark in a
meadow should so disturb the very centre of our being! In all my life,
indeed, and I suppose the same is true of ninety-nine out of a hundred
of the people in America to-day, I had never before found myself where
nothing stood between nature and me, where I had no place to sleep, no
shelter for the night--nor any prospect of finding one. I was infinitely
less resourceful at that moment than a rabbit, or a partridge, or a gray
squirrel.
Presently I sat down on the ground where I had been standing, with a
vague fear (absurd to look back upon) that it, too, in some manner might
slip away from under me. And as I sat there I began to have familiar
gnawings at the pit of my stomach, and I remembered that, save for
a couple of Mrs. Clark's doughnuts eaten while I was sitting on the
hillside, ages ago, I had had nothing since my early breakfast.
With this thought of my predicament--and the glimpse I had of myself
“hungry and homeless”--the humour of the whole situation suddenly came
over me, and, beginning with a chuckle, I wound up, as my mind dwelt
upon my recent adventures, with a long, loud, hearty laugh.
As I laughed--and what a roar it made in that darkness!--I got up on my
feet and looked up at the sky. One bright star shone out over the woods,
and in high heavens I could see dimly the white path of the Milky Way.
And all at once I seemed again to be in command of myself and of the
world. I felt a sudden lift and thrill of the spirits, a warm sense that
this too was part of the great adventure--the Thing Itself.
“This is the light,” I said looking up again at the sky and the single
bright star, “which is set for me to-night. I will make my bed by it.”
I can hope to make no one understand (unless he understands already)
with what joy of adventure I now crept through the meadow toward the
wood. It was an unknown, unexplored world I was in, and I, the fortunate
discoverer, had here to shift for himself, make his home under the
stars! Marquette on the wild shores of the Mississippi, or Stanley in
Africa, had no joy that I did not know at that moment.
I crept along the meadow and came at last to the wood. Here I chose a
somewhat sheltered spot at the foot of a large tree--and yet a spot not
so obscured that I could not look out over the open spaces of the meadow
and see the sky. Here, groping in the darkness, like some primitive
creature, I raked together a pile of leaves with my fingers, and found
dead twigs and branches of trees; but in that moist forest (where the
rain had fallen only the day before) my efforts to kindle a fire were
unavailing. Upon this, I considered using some pages from my notebook,
but another alternative suggested itself:
“Why not Montaigne?”
With that I groped for the familiar volume, and with a curious sensation
of satisfaction I tore out a handful of pages from the back.
“Better Montaigne than Grayson,” I said, with a chuckle. It was amazing
how Montaigne sparkled and crackled when he was well lighted.
“There goes a bundle of quotations from Vergil,” I said, “and there's
his observations on the eating of fish. There are more uses than one for
the classics.”
So I ripped out a good part of another chapter, and thus, by coaxing,
got my fire to going. It was not difficult after that to find enough
fuel to make it blaze up warmly.
I opened my bag and took out the remnants of the luncheon which Mrs.
Clark had given me that morning; and I was surprised and delighted to
find, among the other things, a small bottle of coffee. This suggested
all sorts of pleasing possibilities and, the spirit of invention being
now awakened, I got out my tin cup, split a sapling stick so I could fit
it into the handle, and set the cup, full of coffee, on the coals at the
edge of the fire. It was soon heated, and although I spilled some of it
in getting it off, and although it was well spiced with ashes, I enjoyed
it, with Mrs. Clark's doughnuts and sandwiches (some of which I toasted
with a sapling fork) as thoroughly, I think, as ever I enjoyed any meal.
How little we know--we who dread life--how much there is in life!
My activities around the fire had warmed me to the bone, and after I
was well through with my meal I gathered a plentiful supply of wood and
placed it near at hand, I got out my waterproof cape and put it on, and,
finally piling more sticks on the fire, I sat down comfortably at the
foot of the tree.
I wish I could convey the mystery and the beauty of that night. Did you
ever sit by a campfire and watch the flames dance, and the sparks fly
upward into the cool dark air? Did you ever see the fitful light among
the tree-depths, at one moment opening vast shadowy vistas into the
forest, at the next dying downward and leaving it all in sombre mystery?
It came to me that night with the wonderful vividness of a fresh
experience.
And what a friendly and companionable thing a campfire is! How generous
and outright it is! It plays for you when you wish so be lively, and it
glows for you when you wish to be reflective.
After a while, for I did not feel in the least sleepy, I stepped out
of the woods to the edge of the pasture. All around me lay the dark and
silent earth, and above the blue bowl of the sky, all glorious with
the blaze of a million worlds. Sometimes I have been oppressed by this
spectacle of utter space, of infinite distance, of forces too great for
me to grasp or understand, but that night it came upon me with fresh
wonder and power, and with a sense of great humility that I belonged
here too, that I was a part of it all--and would not be neglected or
forgotten. It seemed to me I never had a moment of greater faith than
that.
And so, with a sense of satisfaction and peace, I returned to my fire.
As I sat there I could hear the curious noises of the woods, the little
droppings, cracklings, rustlings which seemed to make all the world
alive. I even fancied I could see small bright eyes looking out at my
fire, and once or twice I was almost sure I heard voices--whispering--,
perhaps the voices of the woods.
Occasionally I added, with some amusement, a few dry pages of Montaigne
to the fire, and watched the cheerful blaze that followed.
“No,” said I, “Montaigne is not for the open spaces and the stars.
Without a roof over his head Montaigne would--well, die of sneezing.”
So I sat all night long there by the tree. Occasionally I dropped into a
light sleep, and then, as my fire died down, I grew chilly and awakened,
to build up the fire and doze again. I saw the first faint gray streaks
of dawn above the trees, I saw the pink glow in the east before the
sunrise, and I watched the sun himself rise upon a new day--
When I walked out into the meadow by daylight and looked about me
curiously, I saw, not forty rods away, the back of a barn.
“Be you the fellow that was daown in my cowpasture all night?” asked the
sturdy farmer.
“I'm that fellow,” I said.
“Why didn't you come right up to the house?”
“Well--” I said, and then paused.
“Well...” said I.