THE MYSTERY OF THE LITTLE WOOD
August was a blazing month this year, and Philip, settled in his
charming bungalow, found work almost impossible. Davis made iced coffee
“enough to swim a ship,” he averred. But even with this stimulant,
Philip found that ideas would not flow. He tried a new plan. He would
lie in a hammock all day and doze and sleep by turns, and work all
night.
The first night of this experiment proved a failure. He sat down to
his American roll-desk (a gift from Uncle Robert), and spread out his
sheets of manuscript. He would read over what he had done, and see if
ideas would flow on. But his mind appeared to be a blank.
In desperation he got up and went out. It was near midnight, and a big
moon rode serenely in the night-blue vault above.
His feet carried him, without mental consciousness of the fact, across
the field that led to the White House.
When he was close to the little wood he heard a clicking sound, which
arrested his attention. Curiosity caused him to seek for the cause.
The house was in total darkness, but within the wood was a faint light
as from a stable lantern.
Philip crept round to the edge of the wood that faced Pickett’s Farm,
and through the trees saw a man in shirt and trousers laying bricks.
He watched, fascinated.
He had been right in his idea that the light he had noted came from
a lantern. One of unusual size stood upon a brick wall, which was in
progress of construction. By its aid he recognized the features of
Thomas Alvin. He was working with a vigor truly Canadian.
What could he be building? and why did he work at night? Philip
resolved to pay other nocturnal visits to watch this extraordinary
thing.
But he was destined to see no more on this particular night, for Thomas
Alvin struck work with some abruptness and disappeared, having put out
his lantern.
The incident served to set the novelist’s brain working, as small
incidents not infrequently do.
He would go back and write chapter eight, which had so worried him. He
could do it now.
And no thought of the girl who so strangely resembled his lost love
crossed his mind, though he was so close to her.
Philip had a way of being very keen in pursuit of a thing until some
obstacle blocked his path.
It was not his plan to walk over the obstacle, but to turn back. He had
been very keen to find Eweretta’s half-sister and befriend her for the
sake of his first love. The prosaic and large Thomas Alvin had proved
an obstacle. Philip did not consciously abandon his idea of being
of use to Aimée, but he abandoned it all the same. That he gave no
thought to the girl on this evening was an indication that his romantic
intentions were done with.
It was a curious trait in Philip’s character that he never knew the
precise moment when he abandoned a course or an idea. He always had a
sense of shock in discovering that he had done so. He believed himself
the most consistent and unchangeable of mortals, and every change
of front that he discovered in himself shocked him, as a remarkable
deviation from his normal steadfastness.
Eweretta had (so he believed) been dead a year, and his heart lay
buried with her. He had wept genuine tears upon her grave. He had vowed
himself to bachelorhood for her sake.
Yet had Philip been other than he was, had he in any way been a critic
of the workings of that complex machine which was his personality,
he would have discovered that it was but an intermittent, uncertain
light which now remained of the flame of love called up by the pretty
Canadian girl. He would have found it out by the fact that the actual
sight of his love’s living image (though he had believed it to be only
Aimée) had not moved him more. He had not had any urgent desire to see
Aimée again because she was like Eweretta.
He would have found it out in his keen interest in life about him, in
his work, in his active resentment of his mother’s possible remarriage.
A dead heart is apathetic.
Philip walked back across the field with a sense of elation, because
the spirit of his work was active once more.
His eyes wandered happily over the moonlit cornfields at Pickett’s
Farm, where the shocks stood like miniature tents of a soldier’s camp.
Waiting for the morrow were these tent-like shocks, for the wagons
would be coming at dawn to carry them away to be stacked.
At dawn Philip would go to bed, leaving a pile of fair manuscript upon
the desk in that cosy room--half dining-, half sitting-room.
Philip had said to himself that within this room he could sit and nurse
his sorrow after work was over. As yet here he had seldom thought upon
it, and had sometimes quite forgotten it.
Yet, had anyone dared to tell this young man that he was getting over
his loss with surprising rapidity, he would have been indignant.
As a matter of fact, no one did think this. That he did not speak of
Eweretta only made his friends and associates admire the stoic heroism
which hid a mortal wound. So few wounds are mortal!
Philip entered the wicket gate which enclosed his estate, as he called
it; noted that the carnations smelt deliciously, and that his stable
was nearly completed; then went into his bungalow, pausing at the
kitchen door, where Davis was “clearing-up” prior to going to bed.
Davis made a point of clearing up at night, ready for the morning. He
was late to-night, for his master had allowed him to go to the Ridge
Farm, where the Cinque Ports Territorials were camping.
“Had a good time, Davis?” inquired Philip cheerfully.
Davis saluted.
“Yes, sir, I had a good look round,” he said.
“Visited the canteen, I suppose?” said Philip.
“Yes, sir, I looked in and sampled the beer. It was like old times
to be in the camp, and see the rows of officers’ baths outside their
tents, and to smell the joints cooking. Going to work all night, sir?”
“Yes, I am in a vein now,” answered Philip. “You have remembered the
coffee, my nose tells me.”
“Yes, sir.”
Philip’s desk was close to an open window that looked across the
verandah and over the garden hedge to the fir plantation on the other
side of the white road.
A shaded lamp filled the room with shadows.
Philip, taking stock of scattered mental store, his pen poised between
his fingers, feels the restfulness of the quiet night scene, which his
eyes unconsciously record.
Then with a flash comes the first sentence, and words flow in a steady,
unruffled current. The work becomes then a joy, almost an intoxication,
and there is no thought of the battle to be fought later with the
printed page.
The grandfather clock, bought in the High Street in the Old Town,
strikes hour after hour. Still Philip’s pen flies over the paper, and
sheet after sheet of manuscript is tossed on the growing pile, till
at last dawn comes, and the pen is dropped, and Philip, with a weary
smile, puts out his lamp and throws himself dressed upon his bed, to
fall into a deep sleep.
And through this night Eweretta has lain sleepless, thinking of him,
sure of his everlasting love, hoping with that hope which comes
mercifully to the young to carry them with wings over the rough places
in life’s road to the lands that always look so fair far off.