GHOSTS OF THE NORTHEASTER
"The Fourth of July is past; the summer is gone," says a New
England proverb. In this as in many a quaint saying of our
weather-wise, hill-tramping ancestors, there is more than a half-truth
hidden in what seems a humorous distortion. In mid-August we
look about us and know this, for we see ourselves slipping more
and more rapidly down the long slope that leads from flower-crowned
hilltop to frozen lake. Some day a snowstorm will get under
the runners and the balance of the descent will be but a
single shish. Meanwhile we may note the passage by certain
landmarks. In the seven weeks that come between the longest day
and the fifteenth of August, thunderstorms may bring local relief
to the parched earth, but otherwise it is our dry season, and by
the first week in August the farmers are holding their hands to
heaven in vain prayers for rain, vowing that never was so dry a
time and that if the seasons thus continue to change Massachusetts
will be a desert.
Always during August Jupiter Pluvius is wont to change all this.
He sends us not showers, but a rain that wets us for a day and a
night and perhaps longer, and, however greedily the parched earth
may suck it up, finally irrigates all the waste places and covers
all the sore earth with a soothing, healing salve of mud. Such
rains come in to us riding on the broad back of the east wind, as
rode the prince in Andersen's fairy tale, and as the big drops
fall upon us we catch intoxicating scents borne to us from far
Cathay. On the east wind's back the prince rode into paradise
itself, which still lies hidden beneath hills to the eastward of
the Himalayas. We should not blame him for kissing the fairy
princess and being banished, for if he had not done so he had not
brought back the tale and we should not know whence came the
soothing odors that drip with the rain from the wings of the east
wind. Fragrance of spice and of flowers, bloom of ripe fruit, of
grape and fig and pomegranate and quaint odor of olive, scents
that have ripened long in the purple dusk of paradise, the east
wind caught in his garments and bore back to the cold forests of
Northern Germany that night that the prince rode with him. Nor has
he since lost them altogether in crossing the storm-tossed
Atlantic to our shores. Instead the rich vigor of the brine
subtends them and bears them, tanged with salt, to our deeper
delectation. In long carriage they have lost potency, one needs
keen scent to find them, but all the subtle essence of dreams is
in them still, and as the rain brings down early twilight you know
that the prince saw true.
So likely is this storm to come to us in mid-August that the Old
Farmer's Almanack, less oracularly and more bluntly by far than in
its usual weather predictions, bids us look for it each year. Not
only does its yearly recurrence make it a landmark of the passing
of seasons, but the cold northwest breeze which almost invariably
follows it, sucked in from Saskatchewan, breathing of snow
flurries on the frost-touched tundra of the Arctic barrens,
carries a threat of winter that all the world knows. The summer is
over, it says to outdoor creatures, and it is time to put in fall
stores. It is time to hurry all plans that need warm weather for
their completion. Particularly do the late summer and early autumn
blooming plants heed this. Monday saw my favorite meadow dallying
still with the languor of midsummer. Even the tender pink orchid
blooms of arethusa lingered among the grasses, in shadowy,
cool-rooted spots, though the arethusa begins to bloom there in late
May. Hardly have hardhack and meadow-sweet, which are mid-summer
plants, reached the fullness of mature bloom, so softly does the
spring linger in this sheltered spot, so gently does the summer
press her fervor on spring-watered sphagnum.
Crowding up among these have come green sprigs from perennial
roots which are to bear on their tops yellow heads of goldenrod
and loose panicles of purple asters. Yet on the day before the
rain hardly had the green of the goldenrod tips become sun-glinted
with yellow, scarcely an aster had lifted long lashes far enough
so that you could see the iris beneath. After the rain the heads
which had drooped so low in reverence before it rose in the clear
sun and the whole meadow was cloth of gold where before it, had
been olive green with ripe grass tips, while all among the gold
the blue asters came out like stars on a frosty evening, pricking
through the pale glow of sunset. The meadow has lacked vivid color
masses since June. Now it is a veritable mixing pat for the autumn
colors to come, yellow with goldenrod, blue with asters, purple
with Joe-Pye weed, rosy because of the hardhack, and rimmed with
delicate gray-white of thoroughwort. These colors it will hold
until the maples take fire and the green of birches pales to
softest yellow at the expectation of October. So the flash of
coolness in the air after rain set all the wood folk busy. The
squirrels seemed to scold more shrilly and dance along the boughs
inspecting the swelling chestnut burrs with a livelier kick than
before. About this time, too, the bluejays begin to be prophetic
of autumn. Hardly through July and early August has a loud note
been heard from these birds. Often the recesses of the pines have
been full of a gentle tinkling whicker as of muted tin pans that
practised in the hope of some day becoming real phonographs,
voices of young and old bluejays holding family councils
interspersed with quiet joviality, but there has been none of the
strident clamor which is the autumn voice of the bird. Today,
however, in the cool, refreshing breeze out of the northwest it
rang through the wood with familiar vigor, a herald, blowing
trumpets in advance of autumn. It is really all settled; the
bluejay has announced it and summer is over. As the rain brings
down early twilight it brings not only dreams of faint odors of
far Cathay, it brings also clinging in the gray garments of the
east wind films of its mystery and romance. As the prince in his
brief outlook through the window of paradise saw on the panes
moving pictures of life which Time had set there, so through the
dusk of the fields and into the tangle of the forest it is easy to
see this wind from far Cathay moving pictures of Oriental magic
and mystery. Gray djinns stalk across the open spaces in the
gathering dusk and what magician from Samarcand or what prince or
princess of India may float to earth on these billowing
praying-carpets of rain gusts it is impossible to tell. In the open
fields and on the forest edges the effect of ghostly mystery is
enhanced by the strange personality which all things take on. The most
familiar path becomes new to us and each shrub and stump stands
forth, pressing upon our attention, a newly arrived being out of
the realms of space.
Monday afternoon when there was just the promise of rain in the
air the pine woods were so friendly a place that all the birds
flocked in and seemed to be full of soft and gentle jubilation
because of this promise. The spaces that have been so quiet of
late were full of feathers as they had been in June. Here were
robins innumerable, flitting jerkily about and crying "tut, tut"
in a subdued and genial way that was positively ladylike.
Partridge woodpeckers flocked in, drolly jollying each other and
making much talk, sotto voce. Not one of them cried aloud and
though in their humorous antics more than one cried, "flicker,
flicker, flicker," there was in it none of the usual horse-laugh
tone of the high-hole when he is on a rampage. It was reduced to a
gentle whinny that seemed to vie with the boudoir-built notes of
the robins. Bluejays were there too, but there was no clamor, just
a gentle murmur of subdued tones in the soft, resin-scented
twilight.
In the twilight of twenty-four hours after, all my wood-rimmed
world of pasture and meadow was filled with, the eerie presence of
the rain. It was not like a gentle shower of summer when the
patter of falling drops is like a tinkle of fairy music and
showers spell laughter. The coming of a local shower at nightfall
is as gentle and seems as homelike as the gathering of the birds
in the grove. In this east storm brought from far spaces on the
wings of the east wind there was something of wild unrest. The
cool, salt flavor of the air spoke of wild stretches of the North
Atlantic where sea-fogs have touched the eerie loneliness of
Greenland bergs and passed it on to the wind. In this ghostly dusk
of driving mist the smear of the rain across the face is like a
touch of phantom hands coming out of unfathomed spaces, gentle but
uncanny. All the soft perfumes of wood and field seem beaten to
the ground by this rain which brings with its salt tang faint
breathings of some distant spiciness.
The gray light of the lower spaces goes up into the clouds and in
the dusk below shadowless shrubs take on strange shapes. The
pasture edge is familiar no longer. Gray groups grow where surely
was but clear space and all across the long meadow and up the
slope mist horizons jostle one another one moment and are blotted
out the next. The road entrance to the wood is a black cavern out
of which lean grotesque goblins that wave a disquieting welcome.
Here to the right and left as I enter stand black figures where in
daylight I am sure nothing stood, nor does it help to lay the hand
on them and know they are stumps. It is damp and draughty as it
was in the cavern where the prince first found the east wind, and
I look about half expecting to see the strong old woman who tended
the fire and put the winds in bags when they did not behave. There
she stands in the dusk nearby and only by putting my hand on the
prickly needles and the rough trunk do I recognize a familiar
pitch pine. The trees near this entrance to the enchanted wood
sigh as the east wind touches them, seeming to draw deep breaths
as living creatures might and thus add verisimilitude to the
terror that stands on either hand to reach for me. Thus ancient
hermits depicted the soul on the walls of their caverns, a
shrinking shape that fled among goblins that clutched at it from
all sides. The primal instinct of fear of things half seen still
lurks in each man's bones. On a pitch dark night I had made the
entrance to the wood without thought of ghosts. It is the half
known that frightens us.
Once within the wood in the deepening dusk I seemed to leave the
bogies behind. Not far through the pines the path brought me to a
halt cleared hollow where three-year sprouts mingle their lush
aspirations with scattered growth seeded half a century ago. A
lone deer seems to make this spot a sanctuary. Often in daylight
we meet here almost face to face and look at one another
curiously, neither much afraid. In the deepening darkness, just
freed from the primal terrors of the wood edge, I seemed to know
why the deer finds the place a refuge. Here in the little
sheltered hollow no goblins gibbered, no banshee wailed in the wet
wood. Instead the sprout clumps seemed to rustle cheery assurance
and the taller trees to bend in cozy friendliness over them. The
soft fingers of the rain had a soothing touch and wind and
darkness were kindly. I do not know why some spots in the woods
seem thus to shelter and protect whether by night or day while
others repel or fill with distrust, but I know it is so. On a
woodcock haunted slope or in a thicket beloved of ruffed grouse I
almost always feel as if my camp had been pitched in some previous
existence and I had just got home again, though the place,
perhaps, ought to be new to me. I fancy the deer feels that way
and I hope he was snuggled down in the shelter of some of those
big-leaved sprouts, warm and dry, as I passed by.
Down the glade and along the swamp edge I passed with the night
falling fast. Twilight lingers long in our latitude and the gray
sky still lighted the path dimly, though the woods were black on
either side. The tranquillity of the home-like hollow was with me
yet, but I was in for another panic shudder. A fitful gleam of
pale light showed just ahead of me through the black thicket and I
rounded a familiar curve in the path to stand face to face with a
most portentous presence. A veritable ghost stood just within the
wood, seven feet tall, stretching out a rattling bone of an arm
and glowing from shapeless head to formless foot with pale
gleaming garments of bluish white.
More years ago than I like to count up there used to come to my
town an old man with a magic lantern. He would hire the audience
room in the ancient town hall for an evening, hung up a sheet,
charge ten cents admission and show to a crowd of wondering and
delighted urchins pictures wonderful, humorous and startling. He
always wound up with one for which he apologized, then showed it
with much gusto, saying that he did not believe in such things
himself, but that some people liked to see them. This was "death
on the pale horse," and boys used to band together and see one
another home through the darkness after looking at it. The
creature that pointed his fleshless arm at me from the thicket was
not that of the old time magic lantern exhibit, but it reminded me
of that immediately, probably because it struck the same formless
shudder through my bones. Yet it was only for a moment. I had seen
such phosphorescent ghosts before and I had but to step boldly
forward and give the stub a kick to send the spectre flying in
fragments that dropped like huge glowworms in chunks to the sodden
ground. Often in a northeast rain after long drought a rotten
birch stump will thus glow with phosphorescent fire producing a
most formidable and tradition-satisfying ghost.
There is nothing to be feared in a phosphorescent birch stub, even
with the drip of rain from the leaves making stealthy, ghostly
footfalls all through the wood and the voice of the east wind in
the trees overhead beginning to take up a querulous, wordless
complaint that moved back and forth with the footfalls. Foxfire is
a common enough phenomenon. It is easy to explain it all as I do
now. The strange part of such things is always that, at the time,
no matter what a man's training and experience, he feels creeping
back and forth in his bones the old, pale terror of primitive man
in the presence of such things. Science has veneered us with
knowledge of phosphorus and the chemic action of fungi and the
effects of darkness and of light, but a half hour's tramp into the
wet woods while a northeaster blows through the darkness takes all
the gloss off that. We may go boldly on our way with undiminished
front, but something always stirs uneasily within us and looks out
at the back of the neck to see if that scattered glow has not
reassembled and followed us.
Soon the path led me up out of the swamp, the sooner perhaps for
the glowing eyes of foxfire now far behind, and I caught the
beckoning gleam of electric light through the quiver of the rain.
From the brow of cemetery hill the country below rose from velvety
blackness of complete night to a gray sky that was somehow
comforting and friendly. Through it, far down the road toward Blue
Hill, the street lamps glowed yellow through the gloom, showing
the route to the invisible hill. The wind crooned in the pines,
and the swish of sheeted rain seemed a lullaby. Here again, like
the deer-frequented hollow, was a homelike and friendly spot. Even
when I faced the street I found nothing disquieting in the sudden
gleams of reflected light on the wet headstones. These should have
been far more terrifying than any foxfire. Recent traditions of
the race make the cemetery a place of ghosts, and here within its
bounds were gnome lights that sprang into being, flared brightly
for a second, then flashed out of sight as I walked. The long row
of lights seemed to give almost every stone its turn, and the
dancing gnome lanterns flared and vanished behind and before. As I
neared the street puddles in the path caught up the flashes
fitfully till all the quiet acre of the dead seemed full of
goblins bobbing up from below with lanterns, taking a hasty look
about, then pulling the lid dawn upon themselves with an unheard
slam. It should have been disquieting, but it was not. We easily
discount the petty superstitions that tradition and the frills of
literature have made for us. That that grows out of the foxfire in
the swamp has its roots too far back in the inheritance of the
race to be discounted. The cemetery ghosts made only a friendly
illumination for the last stages of a pleasant trip.