PANTHEA. Look, sister, where a troop of spirits gather
Like flocks of cloud in spring’s delightful weather,
Thronging in the blue air!
IONE. And see! More come.
Like fountain-vapours when the winds are dumb,
That climb up the ravines in scattered lines.
And hark! Is it the music of the pines?
Is it the lake? Is it the waterfall?
PANTHEA. ’Tis something sadder, sweeter far than all.
_Prometheus Unbound._
‘It’s all very well for you two to play at being trees,’ the voice of
Joan was heard to object, ‘but I should like to know what part I——’
‘Hush! Hush! I hear them coming,’ Nixie said quickly with a new
excitement.
She had apparently floated up higher into the ilex to the place vacated
by Jonah. Her voice had a ring of the sky in it.
‘Come up to where I am, and we can _all_ see. They’re rising already——’
‘Who—what’s rising?’ called Joan from below; ‘I’m not!’
‘There’s something up, I expect,’ said Paul quickly. ‘I’ll help you.’ He
knew by the child’s voice there was aventure afoot. ‘Give me your hand,
Joan. And put your feet where I tell you. We’re all in the Crack,
remember, so everything’s possible.’
‘Undoubtedly something’s up, but it’s not _me_, I’m afraid,’ she
laughed.
‘Hush! Hush! Hush!’ Nixie’s voice reached them from the higher branches.
‘Talk in whispers, please, or you’ll frighten them. And be quick.
They’re rising everywhere. Any minute now they may be off and you’ll
miss them——’
Joan and Paul obeyed; though in his record of the aventure he never
described the details of their ascent. A few minutes later they were
perched beside the child near the rounded top of the ilex.
‘It’s fearfully rickety,’ Joan said breathlessly.
‘But there’s no danger,’ whispered Nixie, ‘because this is an evergreen
tree, and it doesn’t go with the others.’
‘How—“Go with the others?”’ asked the two in the same breath.
‘Trees,’ answered the child. ‘They’re emigrating. Look! Listen!’
‘Migrating,’ suggested Paul.
‘Of course,’ Nixie said, poking her head higher to see into the sky.
‘Trees go away south in the autumn just like birds—the real trees; their
insides, I mean——’
‘Their spirits,’ Paul explained in his lowest whisper to Joan.
‘That’s why they lose their leaves. And in the spring they come back
with all their new blossoms and things. If they find nicer places in the
south, they stay, that’s all. They—die. Listen—you can hear them going!’
High up in that still autumn sky there ran a sweet and curious sound,
difficult to describe. Joan thought it was like the rustle of countless
leaves falling: the tiny tapping noise made by a dying leaf as it
settles on the ground—multiplied enormously; but to Paul it seemed that
sudden, dream-like whirr of a host of birds when they wheel sharply in
mid-air—heard at a distance. There was no question about the distance at
any rate.
‘Are they just the trees of our woods, then?’ asked Joan in a whisper
that held delight and awe, ‘or——’
The child laughed under her breath. ‘Oh, no,’ was the reply, ‘all the
South of England below a certain line meets here. This is one of the
great starting-places. It’s just like swallows collecting on the wires.
Some big tree, higher than the rest, gives a sign one night—and then all
the other woods flock in by thousands. Uncle Paul knew _that_!’ There
was a touch in her voice of something between scorn and surprise.
‘Did you, Uncle Paul?’ Joan asked.
He fidgeted in his precarious perch. ‘I write the Record of it all, so I
ought to,’ he answered evasively.
And high up in the autumn sky, now darkening, ran on that curious sweet
sound. Across the heavens, silvery in the coming moonlight, they saw
long feathery clouds drawn thinly from north to south, known commonly as
mares’ tails.
‘Those are the tracks they follow,’ whispered Nixie. ‘Look! Now you can
see them—some of them!’
Her voice was so thrilled that it startled them. But for the fact that
they were in the Crack where nothing can be ever ‘lost,’ both Paul and
Joan might have lost their hold and their seats—to say nothing of their
lives—and crashed downwards through the branches of that astonished ilex
tree. Instead, they turned their eyes upwards and stared.
They looked out over the world of tree-tops. On all sides rose Something
in a silent tempest, almost too delicate for words—something that
touched the air with a Presence, swift and wonderful—then was gone. With
it went the faint music as of myriad wheeling birds, too small for
sight. And through the sky ran a vast fluttering of green. They saw the
coming stars, as it were, through immense transparencies of green,
stained here and there with the washed splendours of wet and dying
leaves—the greens, yellows, aye, and the reds too, of autumn. For a few
passing seconds the night was positively robed with the spirit-hues of
the dying year, rising rapidly in the sheets of their dim glory.
‘They’re off!’ murmured Nixie. ‘It’s the first flight. We _are_ lucky!’
Far overhead the pathways of fleecy cloud were tinged with pale yellow
as when the moon looks sometimes mistily upon the earth—tinged, then
suddenly white and silvery as before.
They collect—Paul drew upon the child’s account for his Record—far
over-seas upon some lonely strand or headland, and then swarm inland,
sometimes following their companions, the birds, sometimes leading them.
In countless thousands they go, yet for all their numbers never causing
more than a passing tremble of the air. Their armies add, perhaps, a
shadow to the night, a new tint to the clouds that veil the moon; or, if
owing to stress of autumn weather, they start with the daylight, then
the sunset gains a strange new wonder that puzzles the heart with its
beauty, and makes unimaginative people write foolish letters to the
newspapers. Their speed makes it difficult to catch even the slightest
indication of their flight; the sky is touched with glory, there is a
reflection in the river or the sea—and they are gone! Or, perhaps, from
the evergreens that stay behind, often fringing the coast, the wind
bears a message of farewell, wondrous sweet; or some late birds,
delaying their own departure, wake in the branches and sing in little
bursts of passion the joy of their own approaching escape.
And when they return, each tree in the order of its leaving, and
according to its times and needs, they bring with them all the essential
glory of southern climes, and the magic of spring is due as much to the
tales and memories they have collected to talk about, as to the clear
brilliance of the new dresses with which they come to clothe their old
bodies at home.
The Record of the Aventure, as Paul wrote it faithfully from the child’s
description, makes curious and instructive reading, and the loneliness
of the stalwart evergreens who remain behind to face the winter brought
a pathos into the tale that all lovers of trees will readily appreciate,
and may be read by them in the published account.
Yet to Paul and Joan, to each according to temperament and cast of mind,
the little Aventure brought thoughts of a more practical bearing. To
him, especially, in the escape of the tree-spirits—of their ‘insides,’
as Nixie intuitively phrased it—he divined an allegory of the temporary
escape of the little army of city waifs. Those boys, old in face as they
were cramped in body, had enjoyed, too, a migration that clothed them
for a time, outwardly and inwardly, with some passing beauty which they
could take back to London with them just as the trees come back with the
freshness of the spring.
And this thought led necessarily to others. The little migration of
their bodies from town was important enough; but what of their minds and
souls? What chance of escape was there for these?
The conclusions are obvious enough; they need no elaboration. He had
already learned from Joan of their sufferings. His heart burned within
him. It was all mixed up in his queer poetic mind with the swift vision
of the Tree-Spirits, and with the picture of Joan, Nixie, and the other
children perched like big berries in that astonished ilex tree. In due
season both berries and dreams must ripen. He was beginning to see the
way.
‘They’re gone already,’ Nixie interrupted his long reverie in a whisper;
‘and to-night there’ll be great rains to wash away all the signs.
To-morrow morning, you’ll see, half the trees will be bare.’
And high in the heavens, incredibly high and faint it seemed, ran the
curious sweet sound, driven farther and farther into the reaches of the
night, till at last it died away altogether.
‘Gone,’ murmured Joan, ‘gone!’ The beauty of it touched her voice with
sadness. ‘I wish we could go like that—as beautifully, as quietly, as
easily!’
‘Perhaps we do,’ Paul thought to himself.
‘I think we do,’ Nixie said aloud. ‘Daddy did, I’m sure. I shall, too, I
think—and then come back in the spring, p’rhaps.’