IN THE WOODS.
“Do you think there are any places in heaven like this?”
It is little Bessie who whispers the question, as she lies in the grass at Kate’s feet, looking up at the glimpses of sky among the branches—glimpses as blue as her eyes.
Kate looks up, too. Feathery-fine are those branches, swaying lazily in the sunlight; lower down they grow darker and heavy with green, till, here where she sits beneath, everything is in shadow. She glances around. Long, leafy avenues lead down the glens into blackness, and up the slopes into blackness, and away, away into blackness—the blackness of massed foliage that shuts out the world beyond. Can the grand old cathedrals they tell of compare with this—nature’s temple? Here are the lofty columns—not hewn by hands, indeed; here are the airy arches, rich with leaf-work tracery—not carved by hands, ’tis true. This velvety turf—can any mosaic pavement surpass it in beauty? Hardly can windows of stained glass let in a light more mellowthan this which enters from above. She listens. Here and there a tiny rill tinkles along the ledges; thousands of little birds are flitting to and fro, caroling and calling one another; and, like the sound, when heard far off, of billows surging on the beach, she hears the never-ceasing sough of the wind among the trees. Ah, this wind, how cool it is, how fragrant! stooping to finger her hair. And there is the sultry, breathless August down in the city below.
Are there any places like this in heaven? “Yes,” she answers at last, “I like to think so. Indeed,” she adds, “it seems to me sometimes as though this world might almost be heaven itself, if it weren’t for some of the people in it.”
Just now, as if to give force to the remark, one of those jarring voices that make discord in the music of life, is overheard, saying:
“Look at Bessie Barton, off there with Kate. Idowish that child would learn to hold her head up! IfIhad the management of her I’d cure her of her bashfulness in short order!”
Kate glances down. Has Bessie heard? No; her thoughts are ever so far away.
“Oh, Bessie,” says the other, quickly, lest there is more to come, “I see some cardinal-flowers down there by the brook. Won’t you go bring me some, please?”
And as the child flies away on the errand, Kate joins the companions from whom they have strayed, and confronts the owner of the voice with—
“Now you shall not say anything against Bessie. She’s a little angel.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t have dared to say a word, Kate, if I had thought you were within earshot. She’s a particular pet of yours, I believe. But how you can find anything interesting in her, I can’t see. She’s plain, and so shy and lackadaisical! I don’t see how she’s ever going to get through the world without a little morevim.”
“Ah, you’ll see. But as to her being plain, now I don’t think so. What rosy cheeks she has! and her eyes—why, they’re lovely. And she’s not what I should call lackadaisical, in the least. Why, she’s the busiest little body alive! always doing something for somebody. And then she has talent—a wonderful eye for figure. I think she’s going to make an artist.”
“Oh, Kate!” laughs Aunt Sophia, “what remarkable people all your friends are, the younger ones especially. There’s that scapegrace of a boy, my nephew Harry; what do you think ofhim? No doubt you’ll say he’s the pink of propriety. Harry, Harry! come down out of that tree, this minute, and stop tearing about so, or you’ll be all in rags by night!”
“What do I think of him? I think he’s just magnificent!”
“As black as the ace of spades.”
“Yes, he’s tanned up beautifully this summer, and so full of health and spirits, with a heart as big as all out-of-doors.”
“If he would only take to books more.”
“Oh, books are well enough (I wouldn’t, for the world, speak slightingly of them); but books are not everything. Of what good is all the learning if one hasn’t the life—the strength to put it to use? Ah, those sinewy fists! they remind me of the old Greeks. Bless him!—the young Hercules!—when the work comes for him to do he is going to be strong and able to do it.”
“Oh, he has a mission to fulfill, then! What may it be, I wonder? Lassoing wild horses on the pampas?”
“Oh, he’s going to do something splendid, by and by, that will make you all proud of him.”
“Well, youareencouraging. And there’s that little popinjay, Marie Maross, with her saucy eyes (by the way, I never could make out which they are, gray or black), and herstringlets—I can’t conscientiously call them ringlets (I suppose they would have beenwaveletsif she had only known over night she was coming)—and her white dress as limp as if it hadn’t come fresh from the laundry this very morning. Do lookat the grass-stains and mud on it, and half the ruffles on one side torn off! (I don’t see how her mother has any kind of patience with her; but then she’s an easy old shoe.) And her sash awry, and her ribbons flying, and her bracelets rattling, and those half-dozen strings of beads around her neck—”
“Oh, not half-a-dozen!”
“At any rate, enough to be always jingling wherever she goes, like the old woman in the nursery rhyme:
‘With a ring on her finger and a bell on her toe.’
‘With a ring on her finger and a bell on her toe.’
‘With a ring on her finger and a bell on her toe.’
‘With a ring on her finger and a bell on her toe.’
Well, how are you going to dispose ofher? Is she to be a second—a sort of feminine Rubenstein, or a Pauline Lucca—or are you going to send her as missionary to the Feejee Islands?”
“I’m sure the cannibals would not have the heart to eat her up,” Kate answers, laughingly. “The gay little thing! I like to watch her, over there in the garden, fluttering about among the flowers, prattling to her grandfather, keeping him company. I always think of the butterflies—harmless, pretty little creatures, meant, it would seem, only to rollick in the sunbeams and enjoy themselves, and brighten the landscape.”
“But her everlasting chatter! If, instead of living opposite, you were right next door to them, as we are, I’m sureyouwould tire of it sometimes,—especially insummer, when the doors and windows are all open. Oh, I assure you, her tongue is going from morning till night. It fairly drives me wild, sometimes.”
“But with all her prattle one hardly ever hears her say anything really ill-natured.”
“And it’s just as uncommon to hear her say anything with any sense to it!”
“Well,somebodymust do the chattering. If none of us ever spoke but to say something sensible, what a fearfully hushed, melancholy sort of world this would be. That little brook purling among the stones, there seems to be no meaning in what it says, yet Mother Nature doesn’t bid it keep quiet; and if all these little birds should stop singing, though we can detect but little sense in their merry songs, how we should miss the music!—There!” Kate pauses, alarmed at her own boldness, for it is like treading on matches to argue with Aunt Sophia! “I didn’t mean to speechify; I beg your pardon.”
“Ah, well, you and I never will agree. And here comes your angelic protégée.” Namely, Bessie, just now approaching with Monsieur Maross, who has been helping her gather the cardinal-flowers.
Did you over see any of those, lads and lasses? There is no color richer or more beautiful than the deep, glowing scarlet of their corollas. It is this which gives them the name.
“Figure to yourselves,” says M. Maross, who is a naturalist and a foreigner, as you perceive, “figure to yourselves some missionary priest of the early days, as he journeys through the wilderness from one Indian village to another. Passing some moist and shady nook he first spies this superb blossom. He admires it. Instantly he is reminded ofles chapeaux rouges.[1]Behold,lobelia cardinalisis no longer at loss for a title.” Monsieur also goes on to state that the flower alluded to—“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow”—was of this rich, vivid color. Whereupon the listeners exclaim in surprise. They had supposed it was white.
“Yes, that is the general impression, but erroneous. I have myself seen the flower growing in that country. Had it been of white the concluding words would not have been so peculiarly applicable: ‘Even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.’Comprenez?”
“Ah, yes; I see. If we only knew more about the East how many of those passages would gain in force and clearness that now one somehow cannot get at the pith of.”
“You speak truly, Mees.”
Presently, under some spreading beeches, the friends and neighbors who have come to these woods, as is their wont in sultry weather, for a few hours of recreation, gather together for luncheon—without ceremony of table or table-cloth, for this is “no stiff affair,” as some one complacently remarks, but quite “all in the familee,” as Harry says, bringing forth from its hiding-place an unexpected treat. And now everybody understands why so little has been seen of him to-day. Doesn’t he know these miles of woodland by heart? Is there any tree so tall he hasn’t climbed it, or any stream so small he hasn’t traced it to its source? He can show you all the crows’ nests and all the rabbit burrows, and even hint to you mysteriously that a fox dwells hereabout. He knows the banks where the strawberries reddened in June, and the hill-sides where the chestnuts will burst their burs in October, and it is only he who could surprise the company with this heaping basket of blackberries, so fresh and ripe and luscious, still wet with last night’s dew.
“Hal, you’re a brick!” exclaims a youth of his own age, piling his plate with the proffered fruit.
“Oo is weal dood, Hawy, I lite oo!” lisps the infantile voice of Maggie McAllister, two wee, dimpled fists making a successful dive into the basket.
“You ah the light of me eyes and the joy of mehaaht!” murmurs a recent graduate from a boarding-school, languidly inserting a dessert-spoon the while she regards this young man—not yet far advanced in his teens, to be sure—as benignly as if he were about the size of Maggie, there.
“Let ’em help themselves,” he mutters in disgust, setting down the basket directly, and joining Marie where she is seated at the foot of a tree. “I can stand half a day in a swamp and poke amongst blackberry briers till my hands resemble the map of Germany done in red chalk, but I can’t go that sort of thing. Let’s wish.”
Master Harry has not been many seconds in divesting of its edible surroundings that part of the fowl which is known to all as the “wish-bone,” and which the slender fingers of the “popinjay” always manage to break in her favor.
“Say, now, what did you wish? (You have to tell, you know.) That there would be another war or revolution right off, so you could have a chance to show your courage?”
“Now you needn’t make any more fun of my courage. But I don’t care if you do think I’m a coward. I belong to somebody that was brave as a lion. He was a duke, or marquis, or something. For, you see, we didn’t live in this country in the time of the Revolution.”
“Oh!”
“No, we lived in France, and belonged to the nobility. I’ve been asking grandpa all about it, and he told me such asplendid story.
“Grandpa” (she has approached the old gentleman in a pause of the debate he is having with the Lieutenant and some others, on the subject of French politics), “Grandpa, won’t you tell us that story you told me one evening, about your great-uncle, who was a duke, or marquis, or something?”
Just now a sunbeam, resting on the little head, turns the long raven “mane” to purple. Purple hair! Strange Aunt Sophia never noticed it before, all these years! She leans forward with a sudden look of interest. Must Marie owe it to the dukes and marquises that she is to grow in favor with that lady?
“Let us not speak of dukes and marquises, my Marie,” her grandfather has answered, “lest our good friends shall conclude that we are of that class of people who, not being of perceptible merit themselves, endeavor to make up for the deficiency by boasting of their ancestors. Whereas,” with a twinkle of the eye, “if we only trace back far enough, we shall find that we all have the honor of descending from the same illustrious tribe—the monkeys.”
“Oh, you wicked grandpa, to tell such fibs!”
“But, no, Mademoiselle, it is even true what I say. At least so we are informed by the celebrated Mr. Darwin.”
“Well, then, I don’t think much of that Mr. Darwin!”
“Nor I!” cries Kate. “Nor I!” “Nor I!” “Nor I!” echo several voices. And here, in the midst of an American forest, Darwin and his theories, after a heated discussion, are, by vote of the majority, consigned to oblivion.
But during this discussion, Harry, happening to glance that way, discovers Kate, who has just left the group, kneeling on the brink of a deep ravine a few yards distant, and looking down with a very pale face. Catching his eye, she beckons. He is beside her in an instant. “What is it, Katy?” he questions, wonderingly. She motions to be silent, and to look down. On this side, for a space, the wall of the ravine is almost perpendicular. At its base, fifty feet below, a stream gurgles along over broken ledges of rock. Peering over, he sees bashful Bessie Barton working her way up this wall by aid of the shrubbery rooted in the crevices, which latter serve for foothold; and as she climbs she shifts from one arm to the other the little bundle of innocence which answers to the name of Maggie, the dimpled hands clasped about her neck. In the flash of an eye he comprehends it all. While the grown-uppeople were disputing, the child must have slipped away, and only Bessie noticing her absence, has come to search. How little three-year-old ever crept down there, cannot be explained. These tiny creatures will worm themselves into the most astonishing places! Harry’s coat is off directly. He is going to the rescue. But “No,” Kate whispers, “she doesn’t see there’s any one looking on. The least sound or motion may startle her, and she will lose her hold, and—and there are the rocks below!”
What agony, to watch some one in peril when you may not lift a finger to save! Harry never knew such torture as at this moment.
Slowly the little heroine works her way up. Will her strength give out?
Oh, you Aunt Sophias, take care how you deride the bashful people! And did you ever hear what the wag said to the philosopher? “Why don’t you hold your head up, as I do?” And this is what the philosopher said to the wag: “If you will examine the heads of wheat in yonder field you will find that only those which are erect are empty.”
To those watching, the moments seem like hours. Ah, Bessie sees them at last. Wait!—now—quick! Four hands are reached to her, grasp her, lift her with her burden up over the brink. And now that there isno further need of exertion, she sinks back, weak and helpless, in Kate’s arms.
“Take the child to her mother, Harry, and bring me water—water!”
“Why, where have you been, darling?” asks Mrs. McAllister, suddenly remembering her, now that Darwin is disposed of.
“Me did do to find mo’ bewies.”
What with laving her forehead, and the fanning, and the cool drink, Bessie soon revives. “She had got down a good ways when I saw her first. I had to follow so still, for fear of frightening her.” So she explains. “It was her hat that lay here made me think to look down.”
“What does it mean?” “What has happened?” “Did she faint away?” ask one and another, hurrying up; for all but the two witnesses are still ignorant of that fearful scene.
“You tell them, Harry,” says Kate; “tell it to them all! tell it to them all! We’ll have it put in the morning papers. We’ll trumpet it from the house-tops and the corners of the streets.” And hugging the little girl, “Ah, my sweet, you needn’t blush so! I mean they shall appreciate you.”
And noting the cries of wonder and admiration which follow the boy’s announcements, and the crowdthat presses around her shy little friend, and cannot make enough of her, Mademoiselle is overheard saying softly to herself: “Why one can be brave, even in these days.”
[1]The red hats worn by cardinals.
[1]The red hats worn by cardinals.
[1]The red hats worn by cardinals.