Among the branches of the ilex tree, whose thick foliage rose like a
giant swarm of bees at the end of the lawn, there were three dark spots
visible that might have puzzled the most expert botanist until he came
close enough to examine them in detail. The fact that the birds avoided
the tree at this particular hour of the evening, when they might
otherwise have loved to perch and sing, hidden among the dense shiny
leaves, would very likely have furnished a clue, and have suggested to
him—if he were a really intelligent man of science—that these dark spots
were of human origin.
In the order in which they rose from the ground towards the top they
were, in fact, Toby, Joan Nicholson, Paul, Nixie and, highest of all,
Jonah. Paul felt safer in the big fork, Joan in the wide seat with the
back. In the upper branches Jonah perched, singing and chattering. Toby
hummed to herself happily nearer the ground, and Nixie, her legs
swinging dizzily over a serpentine branch immediately above Paul’s head,
was really the safest of the lot, though she looked ready to drop at any
moment.
They were all at rest, these wingless human birds, in the tree where
Paul had long ago made seats and staircases and bell-ropes.
‘I wish the wind would come,’ said Nixie. ‘It would make us all swing
about.’
‘And Jonah would lose his balance and bring the lot of us down like ripe
fruit,’ said Paul.
‘On the top of Toby at the bottom,’ added Joan.
‘But my house is well built,’ Paul objected, ‘or it would never have
held such a lot of visitors as it did yesterday.’
‘Look out! I’m slipping!’ cried Jonah suddenly overhead. ‘No! I’m all
right again now,’ he added a second later, having thoroughly alarmed the
lodgers on the lower floors, and sent down a shower of bark and twigs.
‘It’s certainly more solid than your “Scaffolding of Night,”’ Joan
observed mischievously as soon as the shower was past; ‘though, perhaps,
not quite as beautiful.’ And presently she added, ‘I think I never saw
boys enjoy themselves so much in my life. They’ll remember it as long as
they live.’
‘It was your idea,’ he said.
‘But you carried it out for me!’
They were resting after prolonged labours that had been, at the same
time, a prolonged delight. At three o’clock that afternoon, after
twenty-four hours of sunshine among woods and fields, the party of
twenty urchins had been seen safely off the premises into the London
train. Two large brakes had carried them to the station, and the gardens
of the grey house under the hill were dropping back again into their
wonted peace and quiet.
There is nothing unusual—happily—in the sight of poor town-children
enjoying an afternoon in the country; but there was something about this
particular outing that singled it out from the majority of its kind.
Paul had entered heart and soul into it, and the combination of woods,
fields, and running water had made possible certain details that are not
usually feasible.
Margaret had given Paul and her cousin _carte blanche_. They had planned
the whole affair as generals plan a battle. The children had proved able
lieutenants; and the weather had furnished the sun by day and the moon
by night, to show that it thoroughly approved. For it was Paul’s idea
that the entire company of boys should camp out, cook their meals over
wood fires in the open, bathe in the pools he had contrived long ago by
damming up the stream, and that not a single minute of the twenty-four
hours should they be indoors or under cover.
With a big barn close at hand in case of necessity, and with four tents
large enough to hold five apiece, erected at the far end of the Gwyle
woods, where the stream ran wide and full, he had no difficulty in
providing for all contingencies. Each boy had brought a little parcel
with his things for the night; and blankets, bedding of hay and pillows
of selected pine branches—oh, he knew all the tricks for making
comfortable sleeping-quarters in the woods!—were ready and waiting when
the party of urchins came upon the scene.
And every astonished ragamuffin had a number pinned on to his coat the
moment he arrived, and the same number was to be found at the head of
his place in the tent. Each tent, moreover, was under the care of a
particular boy who was responsible for order; while, midway in the camp,
by the ashes of the fire where they had roasted potatoes and told
stories till the moonlight shamed them into sleep, Paul himself lay all
night in his sleeping-bag, the happiest of the lot, sentinel and
guardian of the troop.
The place for the main fire, where meals were cooked, had been carefully
chosen beforehand, and wood collected by the busy hands of Nixie & Co.
The boys sat round it in a large ring; and Paul in the middle, stirring
the stew he had learned to make most deliciously in his backwoods life,
ladled it out into the tin plates of each in turn, while Joan saw to the
bread and cake, and watched the huge kettle of boiling water for tea
that swung slowly from the iron tripod near by.
And that circle of happy urchin faces, seen through the blue smoke
against the background of crowding tree stems, flushed with the hours of
sunshine, the mystery of happiness in all their eyes, remained a picture
in Paul’s memory to the end of his life. The boys, certainly, were not
all good, but they were at least all merry. They forgot for the time the
heat of airless brick lanes and the clatter of noisy traffic. The
perfumes of the wood banished the odour of ill-ventilated rooms. Dark
shadows of the streets gave place to veils of a very different kind, as
the rising moon dropped upon their faces the tracery of pine branches.
And, instead of the roar of a city that for them meant hardship, often
cruelty, they heard the singing of birds, the rustle of trees, and the
murmur of the stream at their very feet.
And Paul, as he paced to and fro softly between the sleeping crew, the
tents all ghostly among the trees, had long, long thoughts that went
with him into his sleeping-bag later and mingled with dreams that were
more inspired than he knew, and destined to bear a great harvest in due
course....
The branches of big forest trees shifted noiselessly forwards from the
scenery that lay ever in the background of his mind, and pressed his
eyelids gently into sleep. With feathery dark fingers they brushed the
surface of his thoughts, leaving the perfume of their own large dreams
about his pillow. The shadowy figures that haunt all ancient woods
peered at him from behind a million stems and, while they peered,
beckoned; whispering to his soul the secrets of the wilderness, and
renewing in him the sources of strength, simplicity, and joy they had
erstwhile taught him.
All that afternoon he had spent with the romping boys, organising their
play, seeing to it that they enjoyed utter freedom, yet did no mischief.
Joan seconded him everywhere, and Nixie flitted constantly between the
camp and the source of supplies in the kitchen. And, to see their play,
came as a revelation to him in many ways. While the majority were
content to shout and tumble headlong with excess of animal spirits let
loose, here and there he watched one or two apart, all aghast at the
beauty they saw at close quarters for the first time; dreaming;
apparently stunned; drinking it all in with eyes and ears and lips;
feeling the moss and branches as others feel jewels and costly lace; and
on some of the little faces an expression of grave wonder, and of joy
too deep for laughter.
‘This ain’t always ’ere, is it, Guv’nor?’ one had asked. And another,
whom Paul watched fingering a common fern for a long time, looked up
presently and inquired if it was real—‘because it isn’t ’arf as pretty
as what _we_ use!’ He was the son of a sceneshifter at an East End
theatre.
And a detail that made peculiarly keen appeal to his heart, a detail not
witnessed by Joan or the children, was the morning ablutions in the
stream, when the occupants of each tent in turn, went into the water
soon after sunrise, their pinched bodies streaked by the shadow and
sunlight of the dawn, their laughter and splashing filling the wood with
unwonted sounds. Soap, towels, and water in plenty! Water perfumed from
the hills! Faces flushed and almost rosy after the sleep in the open,
and the inexhaustible draughts of air to fan them dry again!
And then the eager circle for breakfast, hatless, eyes all fixed upon
the great stew-pot where he mixed the jorum of porridge! And the
noise—for noise, it must be confessed, there was—as they smothered it in
their tin plates with quarts of milk hot from the cow, and busily
swallowed it.
‘You took them straight into the Crack, you know,’ Joan said from her
seat below.
‘Everything came true,’ Nixie’s voice was heard overhead among the
branches.
Jonah clattered down past them and scampered across the lawn with Toby
at his heels, for their bedtime was close at hand. The other three lay
there, half hidden, a little longer, while the shadows crept down from
the hills and gathered underneath. They could no longer see each other
properly. For a time there was silence, stirred only by the faint rustle
of the ilex leaves. Each was thinking long, deep thoughts.
‘Next week,’ said Joan quietly, as though to herself, ‘the other lot
will come. Your sister’s as good as gold about it all.’
Then, after a pause, Nixie’s voice dropped down to them again:
‘And had some of them really never seen a wood before?’ she asked.
‘Fancy that! When I grow up I shall have a big wood made specially for
them—the “Wood for Lost Children” I shall call it. And you’ll see about
the tents and cooking, won’t you, Uncle Paul? Or, perhaps,’ she added,
‘by that time I shall know how to make a real proper stew and porridge,
and be able to tell them stories round the fire as you did. Don’t you
think so?’
‘I think you know most of it already,’ he answered gently. ‘It seems to
me somehow that you have always known all the important things like
that.’
‘Oh, do you really? How splendid if I really did!’ There was a slight
break in her voice—ever so slight. ‘I should so dreadfully like to
help—if I could. It’s so slow getting old enough to do anything.’
Paul turned his head up to her. It was too dim to see her body lying
along the bough, but he could just make out her eyes peering down
between the dark of the leaves, a yellow mist where her hair was, and
all the rest hidden. Very eerie, very suggestive it was, to hear this
little voice amid the dusk of the branches, putting his own thoughts
into words. Were those tears that glistened in the round pools of blue,
or was it the reflection of sunset and the coming stars that filtered
past her through the thinning tree-top? Again he thought of that silver
birch standing under the protection of the shaggy pine.
‘Sing us something, Nixie,’ rose the voice of Joan from below.
‘What shall I sing?’
‘That thing about the two trees Uncle Paul made up.’
‘But he hasn’t given me the tune yet!’
‘The tune’s still lost,’ murmured the deep voice from the shadows of the
big fork. ‘I must go into the Crack and find it. That’s where I found
the words, at least——’ The sound of his voice melted away.
‘Of course,’ Joan was heard to say faintly, ‘all lost things are in
there, aren’t they?’
And then something queer happened that was never explained. Perhaps they
all slipped through the Crack together; or perhaps Nixie’s funny little
singing voice floated down to them through such a filter of listening
leaves that both words and tune were changed on the way into something
sweeter than they actually were in themselves.
Who told the Silver Birch tree
The stories that we made?
And how can she remember
The very games we played?
Who told her heart of silver
That, almost from her birth,
The roots of that old Pine tree
Had sought hers under earth?
For always when the wind blows
Her hair about the wood,
It blows across my eyes too
Her pictured solitude.
And then Aventures gather
On little hidden feet,
And mystery and laughter
The magic things repeat.
For, O my Silver Birch tree,
Full half the ‘things’ we do,
We did—or e’er you sweetened
The starlight and the dew!
They stood there, all in order,
Ready and waiting even,
Before the sunlight kissed you,
Or you, the winds of heaven.
Who told you, then, O Birch Tree,
The ’Ventures that we play?
And how can you remember
The wonder—and the Way?