In some strange deep way there is no experience of my whole pilgrimage
that I look back upon with so much wistful affection as I do upon the
events of the day—the day and the wonderful night—which
followed my long visit with the forlorn Clark family upon their hill farm.
At first I hesitated about including an account of it here because it
contains so little of what may be called thrilling or amusing incident.
“They want only the lively stories of my adventures,” I said to myself,
and I was at the point of pushing my notes to the edge of the table where
(had I let go) they would have fallen into the convenient oblivion of the
waste-basket. But something held me back.
“No,” said I, “I'll tell it; if it means so much to me, it may mean
something to the friends who are following these lines.”
For, after all, it is not what goes on outside of a man, the clash and
clatter of superficial events, that arouses our deepest interest, but what
goes on inside. Consider then that in this narrative I shall open a little
door in my heart and let you look in, if you care to, upon the experiences
of a day and a night in which I was supremely happy.
If you had chanced to be passing, that crisp spring morning, you would
have seen a traveller on foot with a gray bag on his shoulder, swinging
along the country road; and you might have been astonished to see him lift
his hat at you and wish you a good morning. You might have turned to look
back at him, as you passed, and found him turning also to look back at you—and
wishing he might know you. But you would not have known what he was
chanting under his breath as he tramped (how little we know of a man by
the shabby coat he wears), nor how keenly he was enjoying the light airs
and the warm sunshine of that fine spring morning.
After leaving the hill farm he had walked five miles up the valley, had
crossed the ridge at a place called the Little Notch, where all the world
lay stretched before him like the open palm of his hand, and had come thus
to the boundaries of the Undiscovered Country. He had been for days
troubled with the deep problems of other people, and it seemed to him this
morning as though a great stone had been rolled from the door of his
heart, and that he was entering upon a new world—a wonderful, high,
free world. And, as he tramped, certain lines of a stanza long ago caught
up in his memory from some forgotten page came up to his lips, and these
were the words (you did not know as you passed) that he was chanting under
his breath as he tramped, for they seem charged with the spirit of the
hour:
I've bartered my sheets for a starlit bed; I've traded my meat for a crust
of bread; I've changed my book for a sapling cane, And I'm off to the end
of the world again.
In the Undiscovered Country that morning it was wonderful how fresh the
spring woods were, and how the birds sang in the trees, and how the brook
sparkled and murmured at the roadside. The recent rain had washed the
atmosphere until it was as clear and sparkling and heady as new wine, and
the footing was firm and hard. As one tramped he could scarcely keep from
singing or shouting aloud for the very joy of the day.
“I think,” I said to myself, “I've never been in a better country,” and it
did not seem to me I cared to know where the gray road ran, nor how far
away the blue hills were.
“It is wonderful enough anywhere here,” I said.
And presently I turned from the road and climbed a gently sloping hillside
among oak and chestnut trees. The earth was well carpeted for my feet, and
here and there upon the hillside, where the sun came through the green
roof of foliage, were warm splashes Of yellow light, and here and there,
on shadier slopes, the new ferns were spread upon the earth like some lacy
coverlet. I finally sat down at the foot of a tree where through a rift in
the foliage in the valley below I could catch a glimpse in the distance of
the meadows and the misty blue hills. I was glad to rest, just rest, for
the two previous days of hard labour, the labour and the tramping, had
wearied me, and I sat for a long time quietly looking about me, scarcely
thinking at all, but seeing, hearing, smelling—feeling the spring
morning, and the woods and the hills, and the patch of sky I could see.
For a long, long time I sat thus, but finally my mind began to flow again,
and I thought how fine it would be if I had some good friend there with me
to enjoy the perfect surroundings—some friend who would understand.
And I thought of the Vedders with whom I had so recently spent a wonderful
day; and I wished that they might be with me; there were so many things to
be said—to be left unsaid. Upon this it occurred to me, suddenly,
whimsically, and I exclaimed aloud:
“Why, I'll just call them up.”
Half turning to the trunk of the tree where I sat, I placed one hand to my
ear and the other to my lips and said:
“Hello, Central, give me Mr. Vedder.”
I waited a moment, smiling a little at my own absurdity and yet quite
captivated by the enterprise.
“Is this Mr. Vedder? Oh, Mrs. Vedder! Well, this is David Grayson.”....
“Yes, the very same. A bad penny, a rolling stone.”....
“Yes. I want you both to come here as quickly as you can. I have the most
important news for you. The mountain laurels are blooming, and the wild
strawberries are setting their fruit. Yes, yes, and in the fields—all
around here, to-day there are wonderful white patches of daisies, and from
where I sit I can see an old meadow as yellow as gold with buttercups. And
the bobolinks are hovering over the low spots. Oh, but it is fine here—and
we are not together!”....
“No; I cannot give exact directions. But take the Long Road and turn at
the turning by the tulip-tree, and you will find me at home. Come right in
without knocking.”
I hung up the receiver. For a single instant it had seemed almost true,
and indeed I believe—I wonder—
Some day, I thought, just a bit sadly, for I shall probably not be here
then—some day, we shall be able to call our friends through space
and time. Some day we shall discover that marvellously simple coherer by
which we may better utilize the mysterious ether of love.
For a time I was sad with thoughts of the unaccomplished future, and then
I reflected that if I could not call up the Vedders so informally I could
at least write down a few paragraphs which would give them some faint
impression of that time and place. But I had no sooner taken out my
note-book and put down a sentence or two than I stuck fast. How foolish
and feeble written words are anyway! With what glib facility they
describe, but how inadequately they convey. A thousand times I have
thought to myself, “If only I could WRITE!”
Not being able to write I turned, as I have so often turned before, to
some good old book, trusting that I might find in the writing of another
man what I lacked in my own. I took out my battered copy of Montaigne and,
opening it at random, as I love to do, came, as luck would have it, upon a
chapter devoted to coaches, in which there is much curious (and worthless)
information, darkened with Latin quotations. This reading had an
unexpected effect upon me.
I could not seem to keep my mind down upon the printed page; it kept
bounding away at the sight of the distant hills, at the sound of a
woodpecker on a dead stub which stood near me, and at the thousand and one
faint rustlings, creepings, murmurings, tappings, which animate the
mystery of the forest. How dull indeed appeared the printed page in
comparison with the book of life, how shut-in its atmosphere, how tinkling
and distant the sound of its voices. Suddenly I shut my book with a snap.
“Musty coaches and Latin quotations!” I exclaimed. “Montaigne's no writer
for the open air. He belongs at a study fire on a quiet evening!”
I had anticipated, when I started out, many a pleasant hour by the
roadside or in the woods with my books, but this was almost the first
opportunity I had found for reading (as it was almost the last), so full
was the present world of stirring events. As for poor old Montaigne, I
have been out of harmony with him ever since, nor have I wanted him in the
intimate case at my elbow.
After a long time in the forest, and the sun having reached the high
heavens, I gathered up my pack and set forth again along the slope of the
hills—not hurrying, just drifting and enjoying every sight and
sound. And thus walking I came in sight, through the trees, of a
glistening pool of water and made my way straight toward it.
A more charming spot I have rarely seen. In some former time an old mill
had stood at the foot of the little valley, and a ruinous stone dam still
held the water in a deep, quiet pond between two round hills. Above it a
brook ran down through the woods, and below, with a pleasant musical
sound, the water dripped over the mossy stone lips of the dam and fell
into the rocky pool below. Nature had long ago healed the wounds of men;
she had half-covered the ruined mill with verdure, had softened the stone
walls of the dam with mosses and lichens, and had crept down the steep
hillside and was now leaning so far out over the pool that she could see
her reflection in the quiet water.
Near the upper end of the pond I found a clear white sand-bank, where no
doubt a thousand fishermen had stood, half hidden by the willows, to cast
for trout in the pool below. I intended merely to drink and moisten my
face, but as I knelt by the pool and saw my reflection in the clear water
wanted something more than that! In a moment I had thrown aside my bag and
clothes and found myself wading naked into the water.
It was cold! I stood a moment there in the sunny air, the great world open
around me, shuddering, for I dreaded the plunge—and then with a run,
a shout and a splash I took the deep water. Oh, but it was fine! With
long, deep strokes I carried myself fairly to the middle of the pond. The
first chill was succeeded by a tingling glow, and I can convey no idea
whatever of the glorious sense of exhilaration I had. I swam with the
broad front stroke, I swam on my side, head half submerged, with a deep
under stroke, and I rolled over on my back and swam with the water lapping
my chin. Thus I came to the end of the pool near the old dam, touched my
feet on the bottom, gave a primeval whoop, and dove back into the water
again. I have rarely experienced keener physical joy. After swimming thus
boisterously for a time, I quieted down to long, leisurely strokes,
conscious of the water playing across my shoulders and singing at my ears,
and finally, reaching the centre of the pond, I turned over on my back
and, paddling lazily, watched the slow procession of light clouds across
the sunlit openings of the trees above me. Away up in the sky I could see
a hawk slowly swimming about (in his element as I was in mine), and nearer
at hand, indeed fairly in the thicket about the pond, I could hear a
wood-thrush singing.
And so, shaking the water out of my hair and swimming with long and
leisurely strokes, I returned to the sand-bank, and there, standing in a
spot of warm sunshine, I dried myself with the towel from my bag. And I
said to myself:
“Surely it is good to be alive at a time like this!”
Slowly I drew on my clothes, idling there in the sand, and afterward I
found an inviting spot in an old meadow where I threw myself down on the
grass under an apple-tree and looked up into the shadowy places in the
foliage above me. I felt a delicious sense of physical well-being, and I
was pleasantly tired.
So I lay there—and the next thing I knew, I turned over, feeling
cold and stiff, and opened my eyes upon the dusky shadows of late evening.
I had been sleeping for hours!
The next few minutes (or was it an hour or eternity?), I recall as
containing some of the most exciting and, when all is said, amusing
incidents in my whole life. And I got quite a new glimpse of that
sometimes bumptious person known as David Grayson.
The first sensation I had was one of complete panic. What was I to do?
Where was I to go?
Hastily seizing my bag—and before I was half awake—I started
rapidly across the meadow, in my excitement tripping and falling several
times in the first hundred yards. In daylight I have no doubt that I
should easily have seen a gateway or at least an opening from the old
meadow, but in the fast-gathering darkness it seemed to me that the open
field was surrounded on every side by impenetrable forests. Absurd as it
may seem, for no one knows what his mind will do at such a moment, I
recalled vividly a passage from Stanley's story of his search for
Livingstone, in which he relates how he escaped from a difficult place in
the jungle by KEEPING STRAIGHT AHEAD.
I print these words in capitals because they seemed written that night
upon the sky. KEEPING STRAIGHT AHEAD, I entered the forest on one side of
the meadow (with quite a heroic sense of adventure), but scraped my shin
on a fallen log and ran into a tree with bark on it that felt like a
gigantic currycomb—and stopped!
Up to this point I think I was still partly asleep. Now, however, I waked
up.
“All you need,” said I to myself in my most matter-of-fact tone, “is a
little cool sense. Be quiet now and reason it out.”
So I stood there for some moments reasoning it out, with the result that I
turned back and found the meadow again.
“What a fool I've been!” I said. “Isn't it perfectly plain that I should
have gone down to the pond, crossed over the inlet, and reached the road
by the way I came?”
Having thus settled my problem, and congratulating myself on my
perspicacity, I started straight for the mill-pond, but to my utter
amazement, in the few short hours while I had been asleep, that entire
body of water had evaporated, the dam had disappeared, and the stream had
dried up. I must certainly present the facts in this remarkable case to
some learned society.
I then decided to return to the old apple-tree where I had slept, which
now seemed quite like home, but, strange to relate, the apple-tree had
also completely vanished from the enchanted meadow. At that I began to
suspect that in coming out of the forest I had somehow got into another
and somewhat similar old field. I have never had a more confused or eerie
sensation; not fear, but a sort of helplessness in which for an instant I
actually began to doubt whether it was I myself, David Grayson, who stood
there in the dark meadow, or whether I was the victim of a peculiarly bad
dream. I suppose many other people have had these sensations under similar
conditions, but they were new to me.
I turned slowly around and looked for a light; I think I never wanted so
much to see some sign of human habitation as I did at that moment.
What a coddled world we live in, truly. That being out after dark in a
meadow should so disturb the very centre of our being! In all my life,
indeed, and I suppose the same is true of ninety-nine out of a hundred of
the people in America to-day, I had never before found myself where
nothing stood between nature and me, where I had no place to sleep, no
shelter for the night—nor any prospect of finding one. I was
infinitely less resourceful at that moment than a rabbit, or a partridge,
or a gray squirrel.
Presently I sat down on the ground where I had been standing, with a vague
fear (absurd to look back upon) that it, too, in some manner might slip
away from under me. And as I sat there I began to have familiar gnawings
at the pit of my stomach, and I remembered that, save for a couple of Mrs.
Clark's doughnuts eaten while I was sitting on the hillside, ages ago, I
had had nothing since my early breakfast.
With this thought of my predicament—and the glimpse I had of myself
“hungry and homeless”—the humour of the whole situation suddenly
came over me, and, beginning with a chuckle, I wound up, as my mind dwelt
upon my recent adventures, with a long, loud, hearty laugh.
As I laughed—and what a roar it made in that darkness!—I got
up on my feet and looked up at the sky. One bright star shone out over the
woods, and in high heavens I could see dimly the white path of the Milky
Way. And all at once I seemed again to be in command of myself and of the
world. I felt a sudden lift and thrill of the spirits, a warm sense that
this too was part of the great adventure—the Thing Itself.
“This is the light,” I said looking up again at the sky and the single
bright star, “which is set for me to-night. I will make my bed by it.”
I can hope to make no one understand (unless he understands already) with
what joy of adventure I now crept through the meadow toward the wood. It
was an unknown, unexplored world I was in, and I, the fortunate
discoverer, had here to shift for himself, make his home under the stars!
Marquette on the wild shores of the Mississippi, or Stanley in Africa, had
no joy that I did not know at that moment.
I crept along the meadow and came at last to the wood. Here I chose a
somewhat sheltered spot at the foot of a large tree—and yet a spot
not so obscured that I could not look out over the open spaces of the
meadow and see the sky. Here, groping in the darkness, like some primitive
creature, I raked together a pile of leaves with my fingers, and found
dead twigs and branches of trees; but in that moist forest (where the rain
had fallen only the day before) my efforts to kindle a fire were
unavailing. Upon this, I considered using some pages from my notebook, but
another alternative suggested itself:
“Why not Montaigne?”
With that I groped for the familiar volume, and with a curious sensation
of satisfaction I tore out a handful of pages from the back.
“Better Montaigne than Grayson,” I said, with a chuckle. It was amazing
how Montaigne sparkled and crackled when he was well lighted.
“There goes a bundle of quotations from Vergil,” I said, “and there's his
observations on the eating of fish. There are more uses than one for the
classics.”
So I ripped out a good part of another chapter, and thus, by coaxing, got
my fire to going. It was not difficult after that to find enough fuel to
make it blaze up warmly.
I opened my bag and took out the remnants of the luncheon which Mrs. Clark
had given me that morning; and I was surprised and delighted to find,
among the other things, a small bottle of coffee. This suggested all sorts
of pleasing possibilities and, the spirit of invention being now awakened,
I got out my tin cup, split a sapling stick so I could fit it into the
handle, and set the cup, full of coffee, on the coals at the edge of the
fire. It was soon heated, and although I spilled some of it in getting it
off, and although it was well spiced with ashes, I enjoyed it, with Mrs.
Clark's doughnuts and sandwiches (some of which I toasted with a sapling
fork) as thoroughly, I think, as ever I enjoyed any meal.
How little we know—we who dread life—how much there is in
life!
My activities around the fire had warmed me to the bone, and after I was
well through with my meal I gathered a plentiful supply of wood and placed
it near at hand, I got out my waterproof cape and put it on, and, finally
piling more sticks on the fire, I sat down comfortably at the foot of the
tree.
I wish I could convey the mystery and the beauty of that night. Did you
ever sit by a campfire and watch the flames dance, and the sparks fly
upward into the cool dark air? Did you ever see the fitful light among the
tree-depths, at one moment opening vast shadowy vistas into the forest, at
the next dying downward and leaving it all in sombre mystery? It came to
me that night with the wonderful vividness of a fresh experience.
And what a friendly and companionable thing a campfire is! How generous
and outright it is! It plays for you when you wish so be lively, and it
glows for you when you wish to be reflective.
After a while, for I did not feel in the least sleepy, I stepped out of
the woods to the edge of the pasture. All around me lay the dark and
silent earth, and above the blue bowl of the sky, all glorious with the
blaze of a million worlds. Sometimes I have been oppressed by this
spectacle of utter space, of infinite distance, of forces too great for me
to grasp or understand, but that night it came upon me with fresh wonder
and power, and with a sense of great humility that I belonged here too,
that I was a part of it all—and would not be neglected or forgotten.
It seemed to me I never had a moment of greater faith than that.
And so, with a sense of satisfaction and peace, I returned to my fire. As
I sat there I could hear the curious noises of the woods, the little
droppings, cracklings, rustlings which seemed to make all the world alive.
I even fancied I could see small bright eyes looking out at my fire, and
once or twice I was almost sure I heard voices—whispering—,
perhaps the voices of the woods.
Occasionally I added, with some amusement, a few dry pages of Montaigne to
the fire, and watched the cheerful blaze that followed.
“No,” said I, “Montaigne is not for the open spaces and the stars. Without
a roof over his head Montaigne would—well, die of sneezing.”
So I sat all night long there by the tree. Occasionally I dropped into a
light sleep, and then, as my fire died down, I grew chilly and awakened,
to build up the fire and doze again. I saw the first faint gray streaks of
dawn above the trees, I saw the pink glow in the east before the sunrise,
and I watched the sun himself rise upon a new day—
When I walked out into the meadow by daylight and looked about me
curiously, I saw, not forty rods away, the back of a barn.
“Be you the fellow that was daown in my cowpasture all night?” asked the
sturdy farmer.
“I'm that fellow,” I said.
“Why didn't you come right up to the house?”
“Well—” I said, and then paused.
“Well...” said I.
