repeat your question; I may be losing my hearing or I may be losing my
mind. You asked me--?"
Webster, in the same deliberate tone, repeated his question:
"Did you ever see the Kentucky warbler?"
Webster's father looked over his spectacles at Webster's mother as with
the air of an appeal for guidance:
"My dear, your son asks me, if I understand him, whether I have ever
seen a Kentucky wooden war horse?"
He was not above fun-making and it seemed to him that the occasion
called for it.
Webster's mother explained:
"One of the professors from the University lectured to them in April
about birds. His head has been full of birds ever since: I shouldn't
wonder if his dreams have been full of them." She looked at Webster not
without ineradicable tenderness and pride; she could not quite have
explained the pride, she could have explained the tenderness.
Now the truth of the matter was that since that memorable morning
of the April talk at high school, she had been hearing from Webster
repeatedly on that subject. He had told her of the lecture immediately
upon reaching home; she had never seen him so wrought up. And from that
time he had upon occasion plied her with questions: as to what she knew
of birds when she lived in the country. She had to tell him that she
knew very little; everybody identified the several species that preyed
upon fruit and berries and young chickens; she named these readily
enough. She had never heard of a bird called the Kentucky warbler. And
she had never heard of Alexander Wilson.
All this she had duly narrated to Webster's father--greatly to his
dejection. A bank officer with a solitary son, now graduated from high
school, going after bird-nests--that was a prospect before such a
father! He had shaken his head in silence that more than spoke.
"I told him," Webster's mother had concluded, "that the only Wilsons
worth knowing in Kentucky were the horse-people Wilsons: of course we
know _them_. It has been amusing to watch Elinor. Whenever Webster has
begun about birds, if she has overheard him, she has made it convenient
to settle somewhere near and listen. She would break in and stop his
questions, but then there would be no more entertainment for her. She
has been a study."
Thus Webster's father was not so ill-informed as he now appeared. In
return for the information from Webster's mother, apparently for the
first time imparted, he looked at his son with an expression which
plainly meant that as a speculation the latter was becoming a graver
risk.
"No, my son," he said, "I have never met your forest friend. I am
merely a Kentucky bank warbler. One who did his warbling years ago.
There is some _war_ left in me. I suppose there will always be _war_
left in me, but there isn't any _war_-ble. I warbled one distant
solitary spring to your mother. She replied beautifully in kind and
lavishly in degree. We made a nest and had a hatching. Since then
the male bird has been trying--not to escape the consequences of his
song--but to meet his notes like a man. I have never stumbled upon your
forest friend."
Webster ate in silence for a few moments and then remarked, as though
it were a matter of vital importance:
"His notes are:
"'_Tweedle tweedle tweedle, Tweedle tweedle tweedle_,' Wilson described
them that way a hundred and six years ago."
"I don't doubt it, my son. I am not questioning your word--nor Mr.
Wilson's. But I don't see anything very remarkable in that: if you come
to the bank any day, you can hear men say the same thing. They come in
and say, 'Tweedle.' And they go out."
Webster continued:
"Audubon described the notes as '_Turdle turdle turdle_.'"
Deeper silence at the table. Webster continued in the face of the
silence;
"A living naturalist says the notes may be:
"'_Toodle toodle toodle._'"
Silence at the table still more deep. Webster broke it:
"Another naturalist describes the bird as saying:
"'_Ter-wheeter wheeter wheeter wheeter wheeter._'"
The silence! Webster continued:
"Another naturalist thinks the song is:
"'_Che che che peery peery peery._'"
Webster's father raised his eyebrows--he had no hair to raise--at
Webster's mother: a sign that their graduate was beginning to celebrate
his vacation.
"My son," he said, "when I was a little fellow in school, one of the
reading lessons was a poem called 'Try, Try Again.' Perhaps the bird
is working along that line."
"Thomas Jefferson followed a bird for hours in the woods," said
Webster, with dignity: he somehow felt rebuked. "And for twenty years
he tried to catch sight of another."
"Don't let me come between you and Thomas Jefferson," said Webster's
father, waving his hand toward his son in protest. "God forbid that I
should come between any two such persons as Daniel Webster and Thomas
Jefferson!"
"The government at Washington," observed Webster stoutly, "is behind
the Kentucky warbler."
"Then, my son, I advise you to get behind the Government."
The rusty bell at the little front door went off with a sound like
the whirr of a frightened prairie chicken. The breakfast maid, also
the cook, also the maid of all work, also a unit of the standardised
population of disservice and discontent, entered and pushed a bill at
Webster's father.
"The butcher," she announced with sullen gratification, "He's waiting."
As Webster's father left the table, he tapped his son affectionately
on the head with his paper: "You follow the bird, my boy; and follow
Thomas Jefferson, if you can. The butcher follows me."
Webster's mother sat watching him. He had begun to get his lunch ready.
He held the bottom-half of a long, slender roll, which might have
served as a miniature model for an old-time Kentucky river-ark; and
with his knife, grasped like an oar, he was lining the inside with some
highly specialised yellow substance. She deplored his awkwardness and
fought his independence.
"Let me put up your lunch for you, my son!"
"I'll put it up."
He was not to be cheated out of that fresh sensation of pleasure which
comes to the male, young or old, who tries to cook in camp, to fry, to
boil, to season, or to serve things edible.
Webster pulled out of his pocket a crumpled piece of brown paper and
smoothed it out on the table cloth. It showed butcher stains.
Webster's mother protested.
"My son! Take a napkin! Take this clean napkin for your lunch!"
"I like this paper."
The idea of being in the forest and unrolling his lunch from a napkin:
what would Wilson have thought? Elinor, being "nice," always rolled her
lunch in a napkin.
"But you will be hungry: let me get you some preserves!"
"Not anything sweet." Elinor always had preserves. He rolled his lunch
roughly and thrust it, butcher-stains and all, into his pocket. His
mother was exasperated and distressed.
"My son, your lunch will come loose in your pocket: I'll get you a
string."
"I don't want a string." Elinor tied everything. Girls tied; boys
buttoned. The difference between men and women was strings.
"But you'll get the grease on you, Webster! It will run down your
legs!"
"Very well, then, I'll have greasy legs. Why not?"
She followed him out to the porch. Her character lacked capacity
of initiative. She waited for him to be old enough to take some
initiative; then she would stand by him.
"Don't go too far," she said tenderly, "and you ought to have some of
your friends to go with you, some of the boys from school."
"They can't go today. Nobody can go today. Anybody would be in the way
today."
He said this to himself.
She watched him from the porch and called: "Don't stay too late."
Webster walked quickly to the main corner of the block--Jenny's
corner. On this first morning of being through with school and of
feeling more like a man free to do as he pleased, Jenny for that reason
became more important--he must see her before starting. Heretofore the
pleasure of being with Jenny had definitely depended upon what Jenny
might do; this morning the idea was beginning to be Jenny herself.
She was in her trumpet-vine arbour, the roof of which was already
sun-dried. The shaded sides were still dew-wet. She bounded across to
him, very exquisite in her light blue frock with broad, fresh white
ribbons in her light-brown hair: healthy, docile, joyous, with innocent
blue eyes and the complexion of apple blossoms.
"Where are you going?" she asked in a voice which implied that the day
would be as pleasant, no matter where he went: nevertheless she had no
thought of appearing indifferent to him.
He told her.
"What are you going into the woods for?" she inquired, with little
dancing movements of her feet on the yard grass in irrepressible health
and joy and with no especial interest in his reply.
He told her.
"Could _you_ go?" He very well knew she could not and merely yielded to
an impulse to express himself: he was offering to ruin the day for her.
"They wouldn't let me," said Jenny, apparently not disappointed at
being thus kept at home.
He sought to make the best of his disappointment.
"Even if you could go, I am afraid you never would be quiet, Jenny."
"I'm afraid I wouldn't," Jenny replied, responsive to every suggestion.
He lingered, tenderly disturbed by her: the roots of the future were
growing in him this morning. He was changing, he was changing _her_:
there was an outreaching of his nature to draw her into the future
alongside him.
Jenny suddenly stopped dancing and came closer to the fence, having
all at once become more conscious of Webster, standing there as he had
never stood before, looking at her as he had never looked. Her nature
was of yielding sweetness, clasping trust. She glanced around the
cottage windows: the situation was very exposed. Webster glanced at the
cottage windows: the situation did not appear in the least exposed.
Her eyes became more round with an idea:
"Are you coming back this way?"
"I _will_ come back this way."
Jenny danced away from the fence, laughing excitedly: "Will it be late?"
"I can _make_ it late?"
* * * * *
Webster climbed the fence of the forest under the foliage of a big
tree of some unknown kind and descended waist-deep into the foliage
of a weed with a leaf as big as an elephant's ear: it had a beautiful
trumpet-shaped white and purple flower. He wished he knew what it was:
on the very edge of the forest, at his very first step, he had sunk
waist-deep into ignorance. Then he waded through the rank nightshade
and stepped out upon the grass of the woods--the green carpet of thick
turf, Kentucky bluegrass.
At last he was there under those softly waving trees which summer after
summer he had watched from the porch and windows: long they had called
to him and now he had answered their call.
But the disappointment! As he had looked at the forest across the
distance, the tree-tops had made an unbroken billowy line of green
along the blue horizon, continuous like the waves of the sea as he
imagined the sea. Somewhere under that forest roof he had taken it
for granted that there would be thick undergrowth, wild spots for shy
singing nesting birds. The disappointment! The trees stood ten or
twenty or thirty feet apart. The longest boughs barely touched each
other, their lowest sometimes hung forty or fifty feet in the air. He
did not see a tree whose branches he could reach with his upstretched
arm. The sun shone everywhere under them every bright day and the grass
grew thick up to their trunks.
Another disappointment! The wood was small. He walked to the middle of
it and from there could see to its edge on each of its four sides. On
one side was a field of yellow grain--what the grain was he did not
know--ignorance again. On the side opposite this was a field of green
grain--what he did not know. Straight ahead of him as he looked through
the trees, he could see an open paddock on which the sunlight fell in
a blazing sheen; it turned to silver the white flanks of some calves
and made soft gold of the coats of grazing thoroughbreds. Beyond the
paddock he could see stables and sheds and beyond these a farmhouse: he
could faintly hear the cackle of barnyard poultry.
He stood in bluegrass pasture--once Kentucky wilderness. It was like an
exquisite natural park. As he had skirmished toward the country along
turnpikes with school-mates or other friends during his life, often his
eyes had been drawn toward these world-famous bluegrass pastures. Now
he was in one; and it was here that he had come to look for the warbler
which haunts the secret forest solitudes!
He sat down under a big tree with a feeling of how foolish he had
been. This was again followed by an overwhelming sense of his
ignorance.
He did not know the kind of tree he sat under nor of any other that
stood far or near. These were such as sugar maple and red oak and
white oak and black ash and white ash and black walnut and white
walnut--rarely white walnut--and hickory and locust and elm and a few
haws: he did recognise a locust tree but then a locust tree grew in
Jenny's yard! All around him weeds and wild flowers and other grasses
sprang up out of the bluegrass: he did not know them.
There was one tree he curiously looked around for, positive that he
should not be blind to it if fortunate enough to set his eyes on
one--the coffee tree. That is, he felt sure he'd recognise it if it
yielded coffee ready to drink, of which never in his life had they
given him enough. Not once throughout his long troubled experience as
to being fed had he been allowed as much coffee as he craved. Once,
when younger, he had heard some one say that the only tree in all the
American forest that bore the name of Kentucky was the Kentucky coffee
tree; and he had instantly conceived a desire to pay a visit in secret
to that corner of the woods. To take his cup and a few lumps of sugar
and sit under the boughs and catch the coffee as it dripped down.... No
one to hold him back ... as much as he wanted at last ...! The Kentucky
coffee tree--his favourite in Nature!
He said to himself, looking all round him, that he had the outdoor
loneliness and blindness of Silas Marner this wonderful morning.
Propped against the tree he sat still a while, thinking of the long day
before him and of how he should spend it in this thin empty pasture,
abandoned by the wild creatures. But as he deliberated, suddenly and
then more and more he awoke to things going on around him.
A few feet away and on a level with his eyes a little fellow descended
from high over-head. A little green gymnast trying to reach the ground
by means of his own rope which he manufactured out of his body as he
came down. How could he do it? How had he learned the very first time
to make the rope strong enough to bear his weight instead of its
giving way and letting him drop? Something seized one of Webster's
ankles with a pair of small jaws like pincers and reminded him that his
foot was in the way: it had better move on. A black ant suddenly rushed
angrily over his knee. A cricket leaped in the grass. One autumn one
of them had started its song behind the wainscoting, Elinor had pushed
her toe against the woodwork and silenced it. A few feet away a bunch
of white clover blossomed: a honey bee was searching it. Webster found
on the back of one of his hands, which was pressed against the grass, a
tiny crimson coach--a mere dot of a crimson coach being moved along he
could not see how. The colour was most gorgeous and the material of the
finest velvet. He let it go on its way across his hand withersoever it
might be journeying. Directly opposite his eyes, some forty feet from
the ground, was a round hole in a rotten tree-trunk. Webster wondered
whether a bird ever pecked a square hole in anything. Suddenly from
behind him a red-headed bird flew to the dead tree-trunk and alighted
near the hole: he recognised the wood-pecker. And he remembered that
this was the first bird Wilson had killed that first day he entered the
American forest: he was glad that it was the first _he_ encountered!
No sooner had the wood-pecker alighted than the head of another bird
appeared at the hole and the wood-pecker took to his heels--to his
wings. Webster wished he had known what this other bird was: it had
a black band across its chest and wore a speckled jacket and a dull
reddish cap on the back of its head. A disturbance reached him from
a nearby treetop, a wailing voice, a gulping sound, as if something
up there were sick and full of suffering and were trying to take its
medicine. He watched the spot and presently a crow flew out of the
thick leaves: the crow's family seemed not in good health. A ground
squirrel jumped to the end of a rotting log some yards away but at
sight of him shrieked and darted in again. The whole pasture was alive.
Webster had all this time become conscious that another sound had been
reaching his ear at regular intervals from the high branches of the
trees, first in one place and then in another. His eyes had followed
the voice but he could see no bird. The sound was like this:
_Se--u--re?_
That was the first half of the song--a question. A few moments later
the other half followed, perhaps from another tree--the answer:
_Se--u--u._
Here was a mystery: what was the bird? Could it be the bluebird!--his
ignorance again, the comicality of his ignorance! Webster had never
seen or heard a bluebird. He recalled what the professor had told
them--that Alexander Wilson had written the first poem on the American
bluebird, perhaps still the best poem; and he had given them the poem
to memorise if they liked, saying that they might not think it good
poetry, but at least it was the poetry of a man who thought he could
criticise Robert Burns! Webster had memorised the verses and as he now
searched the forest boughs for this invisible bluebird, he repeated to
himself some of Wilson's lines:
"When all the gay scenes of summer are o'er
And autumn slow enters so silent and sallow
And millions of warblers that charmed us before
Have fled in the train of the sun-seeking swallow;
The bluebird, forsaken, but true to his home
Still lingers and looks for a milder tomorrow
Till forced by the horrors of winter to roam,
He sings his adieu in a lone note of sorrow."
Again that long fine strain cast far out upon the air like a silken
reel:
_Se--u--re? Se--u--u._
Or could it be a woodcock?
He got up by and bye and walked toward the field of yellow grain on one
side of the pasture. Before he was halfway he stopped, arrested by a
wonderful sound: from the top rail of the fence before him, separating
the pasture from the grain, came a loud ringing whistle. It was
Bobwhite! Boys at school sometimes whistled "bobwhite." He knew this
bird because he had seen him hanging amid snow and ice and holly boughs
outside meat shops about Christmas time. Here now was the summer song:
in it the green of the woods, the gold of the grain, the far brave
clearness of the June sky.
He tipped forward, not because his feet made any noise. Once again,
nearer, that marvellous music rang past him, echoing on into the woods.
Then it ceased; and as Webster approached the field fence what he saw
was a rabbit watching him over the grass tops until with long soft
leaps it escaped through the fence to the safety of the field.
For a while he remained leaning on this fence and looking out across
the coming harvest. Twenty yards away a clump of alders was in bloom:
some bird was singing out there joyously. It made a _che che che_
sound, also; but its colour was brown.
The idea occurred to Webster that he would recross the pasture to the
field on the other side and go on to the turnpike: one ran there, for
he heard vehicles passing. He would make inquiry about some piece of
forest further from the city. He remembered again what the professor
told them:
"Some of you this summer during your vacation may go out to some
nearby strip of woods--what little is left of the old forest--in quest
of the warbler. Seek the wildest spots you can find. The Kentucky
bluegrass landscape is thin and tame now, but there are places of thick
undergrowth where the bird still spends his Kentucky summer. Shall I
give you my own experience as to where I found him when a boy half a
century ago? On my father's farm there was a woodland pasture. The
land dipped there into a marshy hollow. In this hollow was a stock
pond. Around the edges of the pond grew young cane. It was always low
because the cattle browsed it. The highest stalks were scarcely five
feet. On the edge of the canebrake a thicket of papaw and blackberry
vines added rankness and forest secrecy. It was here I discovered him.
The pale green and yellow of his plumage blent with the pale green and
yellow of the leaves and stalks. But it was many years before I knew
that the bird I had found was the Kentucky warbler. If I had only known
it when I was a boy!"
* * * * *
When Webster reached the turnpike and looked up and down, no one was in
sight. He sat on the fence and waited. By and bye, coming in from the
country, a spring wagon appeared. Curious projections stuck out from
the top and sides of boxes in the wagon. When it drew nearer Webster
saw poultry being taken to market. He looked at the driver but let him
pass unaccosted: there would be little use in applying for information
about warblers at headquarters for broilers.
Next from the direction of the city he saw coming a splendid open
carriage drawn by a splendid horse and driven by a very pompous
coloured coachman in livery. An aristocratic old lady sat in the
carriage, shielding her face from the dazzling sunlight with a rich
parasol. She leaned out and looked curiously at Webster.
"Suydam," she called out to her coachman with a voice that had the
faded sweetness of faded rose leaves, "did you notice that remarkable
boy? He looked as though he would have liked to drive with me out into
the country. I wish I had invited him to do so."
A milk cart followed with a great noise of tin cans. With milk carts
Webster felt somewhat at home: it was often his business to receive
the family milk. As the cart was passing, he motioned for the milkman
to stop. Perhaps all milkmen stop at any sign: there may be an order:
Webster called out with a good deal of hesitation:
"Do you know of a woods further out full of bushes and thickets?"
The milkman gave a little flap of the rein to his horse:
"What's the matter with _you_?" he said with patient forbearance:
Finally Webster saw creeping down the turnpike toward him an empty
wagon-bed drawn by a yoke of oxen. A good-natured young negro man sat
sideways on the wagon-tongue, smoking. Webster halted him by a gesture
and a voice of command:
"Do you know of a bushy woods further out?"
Any negro enjoys being questioned because he enjoys not answering
questions. Most of all he enjoys any puzzling exercise of his mother
wit.
"A bushy woods?"
"Yes, a bushy woods."
"What do you want with a bushy woods?"
"I want to find where there is one."
The negro hesitated: "there's a bushy woods about four miles out."
"Is it on the pike?"
"On the pike! Did you ever see a bushy woods on the pike? It's _beside_
the pike."
"Right side or left side?"
"Depends which way you're going. Right side if you are going out, left
side if you're coming in."
"You say it's four miles out?"
"You pass the three mile post and then you go a little further."
"Are there any birds in it?"
"Birds? There's owls in it. There's coons in it."
"Do you know a young canebrake when you see one?"
"I know an old hempbrake when I see one."
Webster enjoyed his new authority in holding up his negro and
questioning him about a forest. And it seemed to him that the moment
had come when it was right to use money if you had it, horns or no
horns. He pulled out a dime. The negro, too surprised to speak,
came across and received it. He declined to express thanks but felt
disposed to show that he had earned the money by repeating a piece of
information:
"It's four miles out."
"Is there much of it?"
"Much of it? Much as you want."
"Do you live in it?"
"No, I don't live in it: I live in a house."
He had retaken his seat on the wagon-tongue.
"What kind of pipe stem is that you are using?"
"What kind? It's a cane pipe stem."
"Where did you get the cane?"
"Where did I get it? I got it in the woods."
"Then there _is_ young cane growing in the woods?"
"Who said there wasn't?"
Webster, beginning this morning to use his eyes, took notice of
something which greatly interested him as the wagon moved slowly off
down the pike: strands of hemp clung to it here and there like a dry
hanging moss. The geologist had told them that his own boyhood lay
far back in the era of great Kentucky hemp-raising. Much of the hemp
was broken in March, the month of high winds. As the hemp-breakers
busily shook out their handfuls while separating the fibre from the
shard, strands were carried away on the roaring gales, lodging against
stubble and stumps and fences of the fields or blown further on into
the pastures. Later when it was baled and hauled in, other filaments
were caught on the rafters and shingles of hemp-houses and barns. Thus
when in April the northward migration of birds reached Kentucky, this
material was everywhere ready and plentiful, and the Baltimore orioles
on the bluegrass plateau built their long hanging nests of Kentucky
hemp.
Webster, sitting on the fence and thinking of this, meantime laid his
plans for the larger adventure of the following day: the clue he sought
had unexpectedly been found: he would go out to the place where young
cane grew: there he might have a real chance at the warbler.
This being settled to his satisfaction, he hurried impatiently back to
his woodland pasture. It had seemed empty of living creatures when he
entered it; soon it had revealed itself as a whole teeming world. The
mere green carpet of the woods was one vast birthplace and nursery,
concert hall, playground, battlefield, slaughter-pen, cemetery.
"But my ignorance!" he complained. "I have good strong eyes, but all
these years they have been required to look at dead maps, dead books,
dead pencils and figures, dead everything: not once in all that time
have they been trained upon the study of a living object."
His ears were as ignorant as his eyes: he had not been educated to hear
and to know what he heard. Innumerable strange sounds high and low beat
incessantly on them--wave upon wave of louder and fainter melodies,
the summer music of the intent and earnest earth. And everywhere what
fragrances! The tonic woody smells! Each deep breath he drew laved
his lungs with sun-clean, leaf-sweet atmosphere. Hour after hour of
this until his whole body and being--sight, smell, hearing, mind and
spirit--became steeped in the forest joyousness.
* * * * *
Now it was alone in the June woods that long bright afternoon that
Webster took final account of the last wonderful things the geologist
had told them that memorable morning. He pondered those sayings as best
he could, made out of them what he could:
"_I am not afraid to trust you, the young, with big ideas which will
lift your minds as on strong wings and carry them swiftly and far
through time and space. If you are taught to look for great things
early in life, you will early learn how to find great things; and the
things you love to find will be the things you will desire and try to
do. I wish not to give you a single trivial, mean weak thought._"
* * * * *
"_The Kentucky warbler for over a hundred years has worn the name of
the State and has carried it all over the world--leading the students
of bird life to form some image of a far country and to fix their
thoughts at least for some brief moment on this same beautiful spot
of the world's surface. As long as he remains in the forests of the
earth, he will keep the name of Kentucky alive though all else it once
meant shall have perished and been forgotten. He is thus, as nearly as
anything in Nature can be, its winged worldwide emblem, ever young as
each spring is young, as the green of the woods is young._"
* * * * *
"_Study the warbler while you may: how long he will inhabit the
Kentucky forest no one can tell. As civilisation advances upon the
forest, the wild species retreat; when the forest falls, the wild
species are gone. Every human generation during these centuries has a
last look at many things in Nature. No one will ever see them again:
Nature can never find what she has once lost: if it is gone, it is
gone forever. What Wilson records he saw of bird life in Kentucky a
hundred years ago reads to us now as fables of the marvellous, of the
incredible. Were he the sole witness, some of us might think him to be
a lying witness. Let me tell you that I in my boyhood--half a century
later than Wilson's visit to Kentucky--beheld things that you will
hardly believe. The vast oak forest of Kentucky was what attracted
the passenger pigeon. In the autumn when acorns were ripe but not
yet fallen, the pigeons filled the trees at times and places, eating
them from the cups. Walking quietly some sunny afternoon through the
bluegrass pastures, you might approach an oak and see nothing but the
tree itself, thick boughs with the afternoon sunlight sparkling on the
leaves along one side. As you drew nearer, all at once, as if some
violent explosion had taken place within the tree, a blue smoke-like
cloud burst out all around the treetop--the simultaneous explosive
flight of the frightened pigeons. Or all night long there might be
wind and rain and the swishing of boughs and the tapping of loosened
leaves against the window panes; and when you stepped out of doors
next morning, it had suddenly become clear and cold. Walking out into
the open and looking up at the clear sky you might see this: an arch
of pigeons breast by breast, wing-tip to wing-tip, high up in the air
as the wild geese fly, slowly moving southward. You could not see the
end of the arch on one horizon or the other: the whole firmament was
spanned by that mighty arch of pigeons flying south from the sudden
cold. Not all the forces in Nature can ever restore that morning sunlit
arch of pigeons flying south. The distant time may come, or a nearer,
when the Kentucky warbler will have vanished like the wild pigeon:
then any story of him will be as one of the ancient fables of bird
life._"
* * * * *
"_The rocks of the earth are the one flooring on which every thing
develops its story, then either disappears upon the stillness of the
earth's atmosphere or sinks toward the silence of its rocks. Of the
myriad forms of life on the earth the bird has always been the one
thing nearest to what we call the higher life of the human species._
"_It is the form and flight of the bird alone that has given man at
last the mastery of the atmosphere. Without the bird as a living model
we have not the slightest reason to believe that he could have ever
learned the mechanism of flight. Now it is the flight of the bird,
studied under the American sky, that has given the_ nations the war
engine that will perhaps rule the destiny of the human race henceforth.
_The form of the bird will fly before our autumn-brown American armies
as they cross the sea--leading them as the symbol of their victory.
When they lie along the trenches of France as thick as fallen brown
autumn leaves in woodland hollows, it will be the flight of bird-like
emblems of destruction that will guide them like hurricane-rushing
leaves as they sweep toward their evil enemy._"
* * * * *
"_Through all ages the flight of the bird alone has been the
interpreter of the human spirit. The living, standing on the earth and
seeing the souls of their dead pass beyond their knowledge, have fixed
upon the bird as the symbol of their faith. When you are old enough,
if not already, to know your Shakespeare, you will find in one line of
one of his plays the whole vast human farewell of the living to the
dead: they are the words of Horatio to Hamlet, his dying prince: 'the
flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.'_"
* * * * *
"_As far as we geologists know, this is the morning of the planet. Not
its dawn but somewhere near its sunrise. The bird music we hear in
these human ages are morning songs. Back of that morning stretches the
earth's long dawn; and the rocks tell us that thrushes were singing
in the green forests of the earth millions of years before man had
been moulded of the dust and had awakened and begun to listen to them.
Thus bird music which seems to us so fresh is the oldest music of the
earth--millions of years older than man's. And yet all this is still
but a morning song. The earth is young, the birds are young, man is
young--all young together at the morning of the earth's geologic day.
What the evening will be we do not know. It is possible that the birds
will be singing their evening song to the earth and man already have
vanished millions of years before._"
"_Many questions vex us: all others lead to one: when man vanishes,
does he pass into the stillness of the earth's atmosphere and sink
toward the stillness of its rocks like every other species? He answers
with his faith: that his spirit is here he knows not why, but takes
flight from it he knows not how or whither. Only, faith discloses to
him one picture: the snowy pinion folded and at rest in the Final
Places._"
* * * * *
That long sunny afternoon in the June woods! The shadows of the trees
slowly lengthened eastward. The sun sank below the forest boughs and
shot its long lances against the tree trunks. It made a straight path
of gold, deeper gold, across the yellow grain. The sounds of life died
away, the atmosphere grew sweeter with the odours of leaves and grasses
and blossoms.
Webster recrossed the woods as he had entered it, waded through the
nightshade and climbed the fence under the dark tree.
It was twilight when he entered the City.
As he passed her yard, Jenny bounded across to him joyous, innocent,
tender, in a white frock with fresh blue ribbons in her brown hair.
"Did you find him?" she asked, her happiness not depending on his
answer.
"It was not the right place. Tomorrow I am going out further into the
country to a better place."
"The humming-bird has been here," Jenny announced with an air of saying
that she had been more successful as a naturalist.
He made no reply: as the veteran observer of a day, he had somewhat
outgrown the trumpet-vine arbour and the ruby-throat.
He lingered close to the fence. Jenny lingered. He moved off,
disappointed but devoid of speech.
"Come back!" Jenny whispered, with reproach and vexation.
It was the first invitation. It was the first acceptance of an
invitation. There would have been a second acceptance but the
invitation was not there to accept.
When Webster turned in at his home gate, everything was just as he
had foreseen: his father sat on one side of the porch, smoking the
one daily cigar; his mother faced him from the opposite side, slowly
rocking. Elinor crouched on the top step between them: he would have to
walk around her or over her.
His father laughed heartily as he sauntered up.
"Well, my son, where is your game bag? What have you brought us for
breakfast?"
Webster looked crestfallen: he returned empty-handed but not
empty-minded: he had had a great rich day; they thought it an idle
wasted one.
"Some of the boys have been here for you," said his mother. "They left
word you must be certain to meet them, in the morning for the game.
Freshen yourself up and I'll give you your supper."
Elinor said nothing--a bad sign with her. She sat with her sharp little
chin resting on her palms and with her eyes on him with calculating
secrecy. He stepped around her.
His room had never seemed so cramped after those hours in the woods
under the open sky. The whole cottage seemed so unnatural, everything
in the City so unnatural, after that day in the forest.
At supper he had not much to say; his mother talked to him:
"I put my berries away to eat with you for company." They ate their
berries together.
He felt tired and said he would go to bed. His room was darkened when
he returned to it; he felt sure he had left his lamp burning; someone
had been in it. He lighted his lamp again.
As he started toward his window to close the shutters, his eye caught
sight of an object hanging from the window sash. A paper was pinned
around it. The handwriting was Elinor's. It was a bluejay, brought
down by a lucky stone from some cottager's hand. Webster read Elinor's
message for him:
"Your favourite Kentucky Warbler,
From your old friend,
Thomas Jefferson."
He sat on the side of his bed. The sights and sounds and fragrances of
the pasture were all through him; the sunlight warmed his blood still,
the young blood of perfect health.
He turned in for the night and sleep drew him away at once from
reality. And some time during the night he awoke out of his sleep to
the reality of a great dream.
[Illustration: chapter III--end decoration]
[Illustration: chapter IV--title decoration]
IV
THE BIRD
It was in the depths of a wonderful forest, green with summer and hoary
with age. He was sitting on the ground in a small open space. No path
led to this or away from it, but all around him grew grasses and plants
which would be natural coverts for wild creatures. No human tread had
ever crushed those plants.
The soft vivid light resting on the woods was not morning-light nor
evening-light: it was clear light without the hours. Yet the time must
have been near noonday; for as Webster looked straight up toward the
unseen sky, barred from his eyes by the forest roof of leaves, slender
beams of sunlight filtered perpendicularly down, growing mistier as
they descended until they could be traced no longer even as luminous
vapour; no palest radiance from them reached the grass.
He could not see far in any direction. At the edge of the open
space where he sat, fallen rotten trees lay amid the standing live
ones--parents, grandparents, great-grandparents of the rising forest,
passing back into the soil of the planet toward the rocks.
Strange as was the spot, stranger was Webster to himself and did
not know what had changed him. It seemed that for the first time
in his life his eyes were fully opened; never had he seen with such
vision; and his feeling was so deep, so intense. The whole scene was
enchantment. It was more than reality. _He_ was more than reality.
The singing of birds far away--it was so crystal sweet, yet he could
see none. A few yards from him a rivulet made its way from somewhere
to somewhere. He could trace its course by the growth of plants which
crowded its banks and covered it with their leaves.
Expectancy weighed heavily on him. He was there for a purpose but could
not say what the purpose was.
All at once as his eyes were fixed on the low, green thicket opposite
him, he saw that it was shaken; something was on its way to him. He
watched the top of the thicket being parted to the right and to the
left. With a great leaping of his heart he waited, motionless where
he sat on the grass. What creature could be coming? Then he saw just
within the edge of the thicket a curious piece of head-gear--he had no
knowledge of any such hat. Then he saw a gun barrel. Then the hand and
forearm of a man was thrust forward and it pushed the underbrush aside;
and then there stepped forth into the open the figure of a hunter,
lean, vigorous, tall, athletic. The hunter stepped out with a bold
stride or two and stopped and glanced eagerly around with an air of
one in a search; he discovered Webster and with a look of relief stood
still and smiled.
There could be no mistake. Webster held imprinted on memory from a
picture those features, those all-seeing eyes; it was Wilson--weaver
lad of Paisley, wandering peddler youth of the grey Scotch mountains,
violinist, flutist, the poet who had burned his poem standing in the
public cross, the exile, the school teacher for whom the boy caught the
mouse, the failure who sent the drawing to Thomas Jefferson, the bold
figure in the skiff drifting down the Ohio--the naturalist plunging
into the Kentucky wilderness and walking to Lexington and shivering in
White's garret--the great American ornithologist, the immortal man.
There he stood: how could it be? It was reality yet more than reality.
The hunter walked straight toward him with the light of recognition in
his eyes. He came and stood before Webster and looked down at him with
a smile:
"Have you found him, Webster?"
Webster strangely heard his own voice:
"I have not found him."
"You have looked long?"
"I have looked everywhere and I cannot find him."
The hunter sat down and laid on the grass beside him his fowling piece,
his game bag holding new species of birds, and his portfolio of fresh
drawings. Then he turned upon Webster a searching look as if to draw
the inmost truth out of him and asked:
"Why do you look for the Kentucky Warbler?"
Webster hesitated long:
"I do not know," he faltered.
"Something in you makes you seek him, but you do not know what that
something is?"
"No, I do not know what it is: I know I wish to find him."
"Not him alone but many other things?"
"Yes, many other things."
"The whole wild life of the forest?"
"Yes, all the wild things in the forest--and the wild forest itself."
"You wish to know about these things--you wish to know them?"
"I wish to know them."
The hunter searched Webster's countenance more keenly, more severely:
"Are you sure?"
There was silence. The forest was becoming more wonderful. The singing
of the unseen birds more silvery sweet. It was beyond all reality.
Webster answered:
"I am sure."
The hunter hurled questions now with no pity:
"Would you be afraid to stay here all night alone?"
"I would not."
"If, during the night, a storm should pass over the forest with thunder
deafening you and lightning flashing close to your eyes and trees
falling everywhere, you would fear for your life and that would be
natural and wise; but would you come again?"
"I would."
"If it were winter and the forest were bowed deep with ice and snow
and you were alone in it, having lost your way, would you cry enough?
Would you hunt for a fireside and never return?"
"I would not."
"You can stand cold and hunger and danger and fatigue; can you be
patient and can you be persevering?"
"I can."
"Look long and not find what you look for and still not give up?"
"I can."
There was silence for a little while: the mood of the hunter seemed to
soften:
"Do you know where you are, Webster?"
"I do not know where I am."
"You did not know then, that this is the wilderness of your
forefathers--the Kentucky pioneers. You have wandered back to it."
"I did not know."
"Have you read their great story?"
"Not much of it."
"Are you beginning to realise what it means to be sprung from such men
and women?"
"I cannot say."
"But you want to do great things?"
"If I loved them."
The hunter stood up and gathered his belongings together. His questions
had become more kind as though he were satisfied. He struck Webster on
his shoulder.
"_Come_," he said, as with high trust, "_I will show you the Kentucky
warbler._"
He looked around and his eyes fell upon the forest brook. He walked
over to it, to discover in what direction it ran and beckoned.
"We'll follow this stream up: the spring may not be far away." He
glanced at the tree-tops: "It is nearly noon: the bird will come to the
spring to drink and to bathe."
Webster followed the hunter as he threaded his way through the forest
toward the source of the brook.
Not many yards off his guide turned:
"There is the spring," he said, pointing to a green bank out of which
bubbled the cool current.
"Let us sit here. Make no movement and make no noise."
How tense the stillness! They waited and listened. Finally the hunter
spoke in an undertone:
"Did you hear that?"
Away off in the forest Webster heard the song of a bird. Presently
it came nearer. Now it was nearer still. It sounded at last within
the thicket just above the spring, clear, sweet, bold, emphatic notes
distinctly repeated at short intervals. And then--
_There he was--the Kentucky Warbler!_
Webster could see every mark of identification. The bird had come
out of the dense growth and showed himself on the bough of a sapling
about twenty feet from the earth, in his grace and shapeliness and
manly character. With a swift, gliding flight downward he lighted on
a sweeping limb of a tree still nearer, within a few inches of the
ground. Then he dropped to the ground and moved about, turning over
dead leaves. He was only several yards away and Webster could plainly
trace the yellow line over his eye, the blackish crown and black sides
of the throat, the underparts all of solid yellowish gold, the upper
parts of olive green. An instant later the bird was on the wing again,
hither, thither, up and down, continually in motion. No white in the
wings, none in the tail feathers. Once he stopped and poured out his
loud, musical song--unlike any other warbler's. A moment later he was
on the ground again, with a manner of self-possession, dignity--as on
his namesake soil, Kentucky.
Webster had sat bent over toward him, forgetful of everything else. At
last drawing a deep breath, he looked around gratefully, remembering
his guide.
No one was near him. Webster saw the hunter on the edge of the thicket
yards away; he stood looking back, his figure dim, fading. Webster,
forgetful of the bird, cried out with quick pain:
"Are you going away? Am I never to see you again?"
The voice that reached him seemed scarcely a voice; it was more like an
echo, close to his ear, of a voice lost forever:
"_If you ever wish to see me, enter the forest of your own heart._"
[Illustration: chapter IV--end decoration]
[Illustration: chapter V--title decoration]
V
THE ROAD
Webster sprang to his feet in the depths of the strange summer-dark
forest: that is to say, he awoke with a violent start and found himself
sitting on his bed with his feet hanging over one side.
It was late to be getting up. The sun already soared above the roof of
the cottage opposite his window and the light slanted in full blaze
against his shutters. Shafts penetrated some weather-loosened slats and
fell on his head and shoulders and on the wall behind him. Breakfast
must be nearly ready. Fresh cooking odours--coffee odour, meat odour,
bread odour--filled the little bathroom-bedroom. Feet were hurrying,
scurrying, in the kitchen. Quieter footsteps approached his door along
the narrow hall outside and there came a tap:
"Breakfast, Webster!"
It was his mother's voice, indulgent, peaceful, sweet. He suddenly
thought that never before had he fully realised how sweet it was, had
always been, notwithstanding he disappointed her.
He got up and went across to open his shutters and had taken hold of
the catch, when he was arrested in his movement. At night he tilted
the shutters, so that the morning sun might not enter crevices and
shine in his face and awaken him. Now looking down through the slats,
he discovered something going on in the yard beneath his window.
Elinor had come tipping around the corner of the cottage. She held one
dark little witch-like finger unconsciously pressed against her tense
lips. Her dark eyes were brimming with a secret, mischievous purpose.
A ribbon which looked like a huge, crumpled purple morning-glory was
knotted into the peak of her ravenish hair. Her fresh little gown,
too, suggested the colours of the purple morning-glory and her whole
presence, with a freshness as of dew-drops formed amid moonbeams at
midnight, somehow symbolised that flower which surprises us at dawn as
having matured its unfolding in the dark: half sinister, half innocent.
With cautious, delicate steps, which could not possibly have made any
noise in the grass, she approached the window and stopped and lifted
the notched pole which was used to hold up the clothes-line in the
back yard. Setting the pole on end and planting herself beside it, she
pushed it with all her slight but concentrated strength against the
window shutters. It struck violently and fell over to the grass in one
direction as Elinor, with the silence of a light wind, fled in the
other.
Webster stood looking down at it all: he understood now: that was the
crashing sound which had awakened him.
It had been Elinor who had ended his dream.
But his dream was not ended. It would never end. It was in him to stay
and it was doing its work. The feeling which had surprised him as to
the sweetness of his mother's voice but marked the deeper awakening
that had taken place in his sleep, an unfolding, his natural growth. It
was this growth that now animated him as he smiled at Elinor's flying
figure. Her prank had not irritated him: no intrigue of hers would
ever annoy him again. Instead, the idea struck him that Elinor must
be thinking of him a great deal, if so much of her life--incessantly
active as it was with the other children of the cottages--were
devoted to plans to worry him. She must often have him in mind quite
to herself, he reflected; and this fresh picture of Elinor's secret
brooding about him somehow for the first time touched him tenderly and
finely.
He turned back from the window shutters without opening them and sat
on the edge of his bed. He could not shake off his dream. How could it
possibly be true that there was no such forest as he had wandered into
in his dream--that Kentucky wilderness of the old heroic days? Could
anything destroy in him the certainty that with wildly beating heart he
had seen the living colours and heard the actual notes and watched the
characteristic movements of the warbler? Then, though these things were
not real, still they were true and would remain true always.
Thus, often and to many of us, between closing the curtains of the
eyes upon the outer world at night and drawing them wide in the
morning, within that closed theatre a stage has been erected and we
have stepped forth and spoken some solitary part or played a rĂ´le in a
drama that leaves us changed for the rest of our days. Yesterday an old
self, today a new self. We have been shifted completely away from our
last foot-prints and our steps move off in another direction, taking a
truer course.
Beyond all else a high, solemn sense subdued Webster with the thought,
that in his sleep he had come near as to unearthly things. The
long-dead hunter, who had appeared to him, spoke as though he lived
elsewhere than on the earth and lived more nobly; his accents, the
majesty of his countenance, were moulded as by higher wisdom and
goodness. Webster was overwhelmed with the feeling that he had been
brought near the mystery of life and death and as from an immortal
spirit had received his consecration to the forest.
... He got down on his knees at his bedside, after a while, though
little used to prayer....
When he walked into the breakfast-room with a fresh step and freshened
countenance, probably all were not slow to notice the change. Families
whose lives run along the groove of familiar routine quickly observe
the slightest departure from the customary, whether in voice or
behaviour, of any member. There was response soon after his entrance
to something in him obviously unusual.
"My son," said his father, who had laid down his paper to help him to
the slice which had been put aside, "the woods must agree with you";
and he even scraped the dish for a little extra gravy. Ordinarily, when
deeply interested in his paper or occasionally when conscious of some
disappointment as to his son, he forgot, or was indifferent about, the
gravy.
"They do agree with me!" Webster replied, laughing and in fresh tones.
He held out his plate hungrily for his slice and he waited for all the
gravy that might be coming to him.
"One of the boys has already been here this morning," said his mother,
handing him his cup. "They want you to be sure to meet them this
afternoon, not to fail. You must have been dead asleep, for I called
you at three different times."
"Did you knock three times?"
Webster asked his question with a sinking of the heart; what if his
mother's first knock had awakened him? He might never have finished his
dream, might never have dreamed at all. How different the morning might
have been, how different the world--if his mother had awakened him
before his dream!
He received his cup from her and smiled at her:
"I was dreaming," he said, and he smiled also at the safety of his
vision.
Elinor, sitting opposite him, had said nothing. She had finished her
breakfast before he had come in and plainly lingered till he should
enter. Since his entrance she had sat restless in her chair, toying
with her fork or her napkin, and humming significantly to herself. She
had this habit. "You must not sing at the table, Elinor," her mother
had once said. "I am _not_ singing," Elinor had replied, "I am humming
to myself, and _no_ one is supposed to listen." Meantime this morning,
her quickly shifting eyes would sweep his face questioningly; she must
have been waiting for some sign as to what had been the effect of the
Thomas Jefferson bluejay the night before and of the repeated attack on
his window shutters.
Often when out of humour with her he had declined to notice her at
table; now once, when he caught her searching glance, he smiled.
Dubiously, half with disbelief and half with amazement, she looked
steadily back at him for an instant; then she slipped confusedly from
her seat and was gone. Webster laughed within himself: "what will she
be up to next?" he thought.
It was quiet now at the table: his father had gone back to his paper,
his mother was eating the last of her breakfast fruit, and perhaps,
thinking that out in the country things were getting ripe. After an
interval Webster broke the silence: he was white with emotion.
"Father," he said quietly, "I have decided what I'd like to do."
Webster's father dropped his paper: Webster's mother's eyes were on
him. The years had waited for this moment, the future depended upon it.
"If you and mother do not need me for anything else just yet, I'd
like to work my way through the University. But if there's something
different you'd rather I'd do, or if you both want me in any other way,
I am here."
"My son," exclaimed his father, rudely with the back of his hand
brushing away a tear that rolled down his cheek--a tear perhaps started
by something in his son's words that brought back his own hard boyhood,
"your father is here to work for you as long as he is alive and able.
Your mother and I are glad--!" but he, got no further: his eyes had
filled and his voice choked him.
Webster's mother stood beside him, her hand on his head, her
handkerchief pressed to her eyes.
* * * * *
When he had made his preparations for the glad day's adventure and
stepped out on the front porch, his father had gone to the bank, his
mother was in the kitchen. Elinor was sitting on the top step. Her
back was turned. Her sharp little elbows rested on her knees and her
face was propped in her palms. Her figure again suggested a crumpled,
purple morning-glory--fragile, not threatened by any human violence but
imperilled by nature.
She did not look around as he stepped out or move as he passed down.
He felt a new wish to say something pleasant but could not quite so
conquer himself. As he laid his hand on the yard gate, he was stopped
by these words, reaching his ears from the porch:
"Take me with you!"
He could not believe his ears. Could this be Elinor, his tease, his
torment? This wounded appeal, timid pleading--could it proceed from
Elinor? He was thrown off his balance and too surprised to act. The
words were repeated more beseechingly, wistfully:
"Take me with you, will you, Webster?"
For now that she had given herself away to him, he might as well see
everything: that at last she was openly begging that she be admitted to
a share in his plans and pleasures, that he no longer disdain to play
with her.
He spoke with rough embarrassment over his shoulder:
"You can't go today. Nobody can go today. I'm going miles out into the
country to the woods."
"But some day will you take me over into the woods yonder?"
After a while he turned toward her:
"Yes, I will."
"Thank you very much. Thank you very much, indeed, Webster!"
The tide of feeling began to rush toward her:
"There are some wild violets over there, Elinor, wild blue violets and
wild white violets--thick beds of them in the shade."
"Oh, how lovely!" She clasped her hands and knotted them tensely under
her chin and kept her eyes fixed more hopefully on him.
"There is a flock of the funniest little fairies dancing under one of
the big forest trees, each carrying the queerest little green parasol."
"How perfectly, perfectly lovely!"
"And I found one little cedar tree. If they'll let us, I'll dig it up
and bring it home and plant it in the front yard. It will be your own
cedar tree, Elinor."
"Oh, Webster! Could anything be more lovely of you?"
"You and I and Jenny will go some day soon--"
"No, no, no!" cried Elinor, stamping her feet fiercely and wringing her
hands. "I don't want Jenny to go! I won't have Jenny! Just you and I!
Not Jenny! Just you and I!"
"Then just you and I," he said, smiling at her and moving away.
"_Wait!_"
She darted down the steps and ran to him and drew his face over and
laid her cheek against his cheek, clinging to him.
He struggled to get away, laughing with his new happiness: tears welled
out of her eyes with hers.
* * * * *
Webster had taken to the turnpike.
The morning was cool, the blue of the sky vast, tender, noble. Rain
during the night had left the atmosphere fresh and clear and the pike
dustless. Little knobs of the bluish limestone jutted out. The greyish
grass and weeds on each side had been washed till they looked green
again.
The pike climbed a hill and from this hilltop he turned and looked
back. He could see the packed outskirts of the city and away over in
the heart of it church spires rising here and there. The heart of it
had once been the green valley through which a stream of the wilderness
ran: there Wilson had seen the water mills and the gallows for hanging
Kentuckians and the thousand hitched horses and folks sitting on the
public square selling cakes of maple sugar and split squirrels.
Soon he passed the pasture where he had spent yesterday. That had done
well enough as a beginning: today he would go further. He remembered
many things he had seen in the park-like bluegrass woods. Sweet to his
ear sounded the call of bobwhite from the yellow grain. He wondered
whether the ailing young crows in the tree-tops had at last taken all
their medicine. The curious bird which had watched him out of a hole in
the tree-trunk--the chap with the black band across his chest and the
speckled jacket and the red cap on the back of his head, was he still
on the lookout? What had become of the gorgeous little velvet coach
that had travelled across the back of his hand on its unknown road?
And that mystery of the high leaves--that wandering disembodied voice:
_Se-u-re? Se-u-u._ Did it still haunt the waving boughs?
But miles on ahead in the country, undergrowth, shade, secrecy for wild
creatures--his heart leaped forward to these and his feet hastened.
This day with both eyes open, not shut in sleep, he might find the
warbler.
Whole-heartedly, with a boy's eagerness, Webster suddenly took off his
hat and ran down the middle of the gleaming white turnpike toward the
green forest--toward all, whether much or little, that he was ever to
be.
[Illustration: chapter V--end decoration]
[Illustration: logo--Country Life Press]
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