I have tried dawn fishing, and found it wanting. I have tried dawn hunting in the woods, after "partridges," and found it not all that Jonathan, in his buoyant enthusiasm, appears to think it. And so, when he grew eloquent regarding the delights of dawn hunting on the marshes, I was not easily fired. I even referred, though very considerately, to some of our previous experiences in affairs of this nature, and confessed a certain reluctance to experiment further along these lines.
"Well, you have had a run of hard luck," he admitted tolerantly, "but you'll find the plover-shooting different. I know you won't be sorry."
I do not mean to be narrow or prejudiced, and so I consented, though rather hesitatingly, to try one more dawn adventure.
We packed up our guns, ammunition, extra wraps, rubber boots, and alarm clock. Thesefive things are essential—nay, six are necessary to real content, and the sixth is a bottle of tar and sweet oil. But of that more anon.
Thus equipped, we went down to a tiny cottage on the shore. We reached the village at dusk, stopped at "the store" to buy bread and butter and fruit, then went on to the little white house that we knew would always be ready to receive us. It has served us as a hunting-lodge many times before, and has always treated us well.
There is something very pleasant about going back to a well-known place of this sort. It offers the joy of home and the joy of camping, the charm of strangeness and the charm of familiarity. We light the candles and look about. Ah, yes! There are the magazines we left last winter when we came down for the duck-shooting, there is the bottle of ink we got to fill our pens one stormy day last spring in the trout season, when the downpour quenched the zeal even of Jonathan. In the pantry are the jars of sugar and salt and cereals and tea and coffee and bacon; in the kitchen are the oil stoves ready to light; in the dining-room are the ashes of our last fire.
Contentedly I set about making tea and arranging the supper-table, while Jonathan took a basket and pitcher and went off to a neighbor for eggs and milk. We made a fire on the hearth, toasted bread over the embers, and supped frugally but very cozily.
Afterwards came the setting of the alarm clock—a matter of critical importance.
"What hour shall it be?" inquired Jonathan, his finger on the regulator.
"Whenever you think best," I answered cheerfully.
Now, as we both understood, I had no real intention of being literally guided by what Jonathan thought best,—that would have been too rash,—but it opened negotiations pleasantly to say so.
Jonathan, trying to be obliging against his better judgment, suggested, "Well—six o'clock?"
But I refused any such tremendous concession, knowing that I should have to bear the ignominy of it if the adventure proved unfortunate. "No, of course not. Six is much too late. Anybody can get up at six."
"Well, then," he brightened; "say five?"
"Five," I meditated. "No, it's quite light at five. We ought to be out there at daylight, you said."
Jonathan visibly expanded. He realized that I was behaving very well. I thought so myself, and it made us both very amiable.
"Yes," he admitted, "we ought to be, of course. And it will take three quarters of an hour to drive out there. Add fifteen minutes to that for breakfast, and fifteen minutes to dress—would a quarter to four be too outrageous?"
"Oh, make it half-past three," I rejoined recklessly, in a burst of self-sacrifice.
At least I would not spoke our wheels by slothfulness. The clock was set accordingly, and I went to sleep enveloped in virtue as in a garment, the sound of the sea in my ears.
Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r!Whathashappened? Oh, the alarm clock! It can't be more than twelve o'clock. I hear the spit of a match, then "Half-past three," from Jonathan. "No!" I protest. "Yes," he persists, and though his voice is still veiled in sleep, I detect in it a firmness to which I foresee I shallyield. My virtue of last night has faded completely, but his zeal is fast colors. I am ready to back out, but, dimly remembering my Spartan attitude of the night before, I don't dare. Thus are we enslaved by our virtues. I submit, with only one word of comment—"And we call this pleasure!" To which Jonathan wisely makes no response.
We groped our way downstairs, lighted another candle, and sleepily devoured some sandwiches and milk—a necessary but cheerless process, with all the coziness of the night before conspicuously left out. We heard the carriage being brought up outside, we snatched up our wraps,—sweaters, shawls, coats,—Jonathan picked up the valise with the hunting equipment, we blew out the candles, and went out into the chilly darkness. As our eyes became accustomed to the change, we perceived that the sky was not quite black, but gray, and that the stars were fewer than in the real night. We got in, tucked ourselves up snugly, and started off down the road stretching faintly before us. The horse's steps sounded very loud, and echoed curiously against the silent houses as we passed. As wewent on, the sky grew paler, here and there in the houses a candle gleamed, in the barnyards a lantern flashed—the farmer was astir. Yes, dawn was really coming.
After a few miles we turned off the main highway to take the rut road through the great marsh. The smell of the salt flats was about us, and the sound of the sea was growing more clear again. A big bird whirred off from the marsh close beside us. "Meadowlark," murmured Jonathan. Another little one, with silent, low flight, then more. "Sandpipers," he commented; "we don't want them." The patient horse plodded along, now in damp marsh soil, now in dry, deep sand, to the hitching-place by an old barn on the cliff.
As we pulled up, Jonathan took a little bottle out of his pocket and handed it to me. "Better put it on now," he said.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Tar and sweet oil—for the mosquitoes."
I smelled of it with suspicion. It was a dark, gummy liquid. "I think I prefer the mosquitoes."
"You do!" said Jonathan. "You'll think again pretty soon. Here, let me have it." Hehad tied the horse and blanketed him, and now proceeded to smear himself with the stuff—face, neck, hands. "You needn't look at me that way!" he remarked genially; "you'll be doing it yourself soon. Just wait."
We took our guns and cartridges, and plunged down from the cliff to the marsh. As we did so there rose about me a brown cloud, which in a moment I realized was composed of mosquitoes—a crazy, savage, bloodthirsty mob. They beset me on all sides,—they were in my hair, my eyes, nose, ears, mouth, neck. I brushed frantically at them, but a drowning man might as well try to brush back the water as it closes in.
"Where's the bottle?" I gasped.
"What bottle?" said Jonathan, innocently. Jonathan is human.
"The tar and sweet oil. Quick!"
"Oh! I thought you preferred the mosquitoes." Yes, Jonathanishuman.
"Never mind what youthought!" and I snatched greedily at the blessed little bottle.
I poured the horrid stuff on my face, my neck, my hands, I out-Jonathaned Jonathan; then I took a deep breath of relief as the mosquitomob withdrew to a respectful distance. Jonathan reached for the bottle.
"Oh, I can just as well carry it," I said, and tucked it into one of my hunting-coat pockets.
Jonathan chuckled gently, but I did not care. Nothing should part me from that little bottle of ill-smelling stuff.
We started on again, out across the marsh. Enough light had come to show us the gray-green level, full of mists and little glimmers of water, and dotted with low haycocks, their dull, tawny yellow showing softly in the faint dawn light.
"Hark!" said Jonathan.
We paused. Through the fog came a faint, whistling call, in descending half-tones, indescribable, coming out of nowhere, sounding now close beside us, now very far away.
"Yellowlegs," said Jonathan. "We aren't a bit too soon."
We pushed out into the midst of the marsh, now sinking knee-deep in the spongy bed, now walking easily on a stretch of firm turf, now stepping carefully over a boundary ditch of unknown depth—out to the haycocks, wherewe sank down, each beside one, to wait for the birds to move.
I do not know how long we waited. The haycock was warm, the night wind had fallen, the gray sky was turning white, with primrose tones in the east; the morning star paled and disappeared; the marsh mists partly lifted, and revealed far inland the soft, dark masses of encircling woods. And every little while came the whistling call, plaintive, yet curiously hurried, coming from nowhere. I lay back against the hay, and, contrary to orders, I let my gun slip down beside me. The fact was, I had half forgotten that anything definite was expected of me, and when suddenly I heard a warning "Look out!" from Jonathan's mow, I was in no way prepared. There was a rush of wings; the air was full of the whistling notes of the birds as they flew; they passed over us, circling, rising, sinking, sweeping far up the marsh, then, as Jonathan whistled their call, circling back again out of the mist at incredible speed.
Probably it would have made no difference if I had been prepared. A new kind of game always leaves me dazed, and now I watchedthem, spellbound, until I heard Jonathan shoot. Then I made a great effort, pulled at my trigger, and rolled backwards from my haycock into the spongy swamp, inches deep with water just there.
Jonathan called across softly, "Shot both barrels, didn't you?"
I rose slowly, wishing there were some way of wringing out my entire back. "Of course not!" I gasped indignantly.
"Think not?" very benevolently from the other cock. "'Twouldn't have kicked like that if you hadn't. Look at your gun and see."
I reseated myself damply upon the haycock. "I tell you Ididn't. Why should I shoot both at once, I'd like to know! I—never—"
Here I stopped, for as I broke open my gun I saw two dented cartridges, and as I pulled them out white smoke rolled from both barrels. There seemed nothing further to be said, at least by a woman, so I said nothing. Jonathan also, though human, said nothing. It is crises like these that test character. I turned my cool back to the east, that the rising sun, if it ever really got thoroughly risen, mightwarm it, and grimly reloaded. Jonathan continued his call to the birds, and when they returned again I behaved better.
By seven o'clock the birds had scattered, and we left our places to go back to the horse. On the way we encountered two hunters wandering rather disconsolately over the marsh. They stopped us to ask what luck, and we tried not to look too self-satisfied, but probably they read our success in our arrogant faces, streaked with tar and sweet oil as they were. Possibly the bulge of our hunting-coat pockets helped to tell the story.
"How long have you been out here?" they asked enviously.
"Two hours or so," said Jonathan.
"How'd you get out so early?"
"We got up early," said Jonathan, with admirable simplicity.
The strangers looked at him twice to see if he meant to jeer, but he appeared impenetrably innocent, and they finally laughed, a little ruefully, and went on out into the marsh we were just leaving. Why does it make one feel so immeasurably superior to get up a few hours before other people?
We drove home along the sunny road, where the bakers' carts and meat wagons were already astir. Could it be the same road that a few hours before had been so cold and gray and still? Were these bare white houses the same that had nestled so cozily into the dark of the roadside? We reached our own plain little white house and went in. In the dining-room our candles and the remains of our midnight breakfast on the table seemed like relics of some previous state of existence. Sleepily I set things in order for a real breakfast, a hot breakfast, a breakfast that should be cozy. Drowsily we ate, but contentedly. Everything since the night before seemed like a dream.
It still seems so. But of all the dream the most vivid part—more vivid even than the alarm clock, more real than my tumble into wetness—is the vision that remains with me of mist-swept marsh, all gray and green and yellow, with tawny haycocks and glimmerings of water and whirrings of wings and whistling bird notes and the salt smell of the sea.
Yes, Jonathan was right. Dawn hunting on the marshes is different, quite different.
"The kangaroo ran very fast,I ran faster.The kangaroo was very fat,I ate him.Kangaroo! Kangaroo!"
This, the hunting-song of the Australian Bushman, is the best one I know. Without disguise or adornment, it embodies the primitive hunting instinct that is in every one of us, whether we hunt people or animals or things or ideas.
Jonathan and I do not habitually hunt kangaroos, and our hunting, or at any rate my share in it, is not as uniformly successful as the Bushman's seems to have been. For our own uses we should have to amend the song something as follows:—
"The partridge-bird flew very fast,I missed him.The partridge-bird was very fat,I ate—chicken.Partridge-bird! Partridge-bird!"
But we do not measure the success of ourhunting by the size of our bag. The chase, the day out of doors, two or three birds at the most out of the dozen we flush, this is all that we ask. But then, we have a chicken-yard to fall back upon, which the Bushman had not.
We sit before a blazing open fire, eating a hunter's breakfast—which means, nearly everything in the pantry. Coffee and toast are all very well for ordinary purposes, but they are poor things to carry you through a day's hunting, especially our kind of hunting. For a day's hunt with us is not an elaborate and well-planned affair. It does not mean a pre-arranged course over "preserved" territory, with a rendezvous at noon where the luncheon wagon comes, bringing out vast quantities of food, and taking home the morning's bag of game. It means a day's hunt that follows whither the birds lead, in a section of New England that is considered "hunted out," over ground sometimes familiar, sometimes wholly new, with no luncheon but a few crackers or a sandwich that has been stowed away in one of Jonathan's game pockets all the morning, and perhaps an apple or two, picked up in passing, from some old orchardnow submerged in the woods—a hunt ending only when it is too dark to shoot, with perhaps a long tramp home again after that. No, coffee and toast would never do!
As we turn out of the sheltered barnyard through the bars and up the farm lane, the keen wind flings at us, and our numb fingers recoil from the metal of our guns and take a careful grip on the wood. At once we fall to discussing the vital question— Where will the birds be to-day? For the partridges, as the New Englander calls our ruffed grouse, are very fastidious about where they spend their days. Sometimes they are all in the swamps, sometimes they are among the white birches of the hillsides, sometimes in the big woods, sometimes on the half-wooded rock ledges, sometimes among the scrub growth of lately cut timberland, and sometimes, in very cold weather, on the dry knolls where the cedars huddle—the warm little brooding cedars that give the birds shelter as a hen does her chicks.
When I first began to hunt with Jonathan, he knew so much more than I in these matters that I always accepted his judgment. If hesaid, "To-day they will be in the swamps," I responded, "To the swamps let us go." But after a time I came to have opinions of my own, and then the era of discussion set in.
"To-day," begins Jonathan judicially, "the wind is north, and the birds will be on the south slopes close to the swamp bottoms to keep warm."
"Now, Jonathan, you know I don't a bit believe in going by the wind. The partridges don't mind wind, their feathers shed it. What they care about is the sun, and to-day the sun is hot,—at least," with a shiver, "it would be if we had feathers on instead of canvas.Ibelieve we shall find them in the big woods."
I usually advocate the big woods, because I like them best for a tramp.
Jonathan, too well content at the prospect of a day's hunt to mind contradiction, says genially, "All right; I'll go wherever you say."
Which always reduces me to terms at once. Above all things, I dislike to make myself answerable for the success or failure of the day. I prefer irresponsible criticism beforehand—andafterwards. So I say hastily, "Oh, no, no! Of course you know a great deal more than I do. We'll go wherever you think best."
"Well, perhaps itistoo warm for the swamps to-day. Now, they might be in the birches."
"Oh, dear!Don'tlet's go to the birches! The birds can't be there. They never are."
"I thought we were going to go where I thought best."
"Yes—but only not to the birches. It's all a private myth of yours about their being there."
"Is it a private myth of mine that you shot those two woodcock in the birches of the upper farm last year? And how about that big gray partridge—"
"Well—of course—that was later in the season. I suppose the birds do eat birch buds when everything else gives out."
And so I criticize, having agreed not to. But it's good for Jonathan; it makes him careful.
"Well, shall it be the swamp?"
"No; if you reallythinkthey're in the birches, we'll go there. Besides, the swampseems a little—chilly—to begin with. Wait till I've seen a bird. Then I shan't mind so."
"Then you do admit it's a cool morning?"
"To paddle in a swamp, yes. The birds don't have to paddle."
We try the birches, and the pretty things whip our faces with their slender twigs in their own inimitable fashion, peculiarly trying to my temper. I can never go through birches long without growing captious.
"Jonathan," I call, as I catch a glimpse of his hunting-coat through an opening, "I thought the birds were in the birches this morning. They don't seem really abundant."
Jonathan, unruffled, suggests that I go along on the edge of the woods while he beats out the middle with the dog, which magnanimous offer shames me into silent if not cheerful acquiescence. Suddenly—whr-r-r—something bursts away in the brush ahead of us. "Mark!" we both call, and, "Did you get his line?" My critical spirit is stilled, and I am suddenly fired with the instinct to follow, follow! It is indeed a primitive instinct, this of the chase. No matter how tired one is, the impulse of pursuit is there. At the close ofa long day's hunt, after fifteen miles or so of hard tramping,—equal to twice that of easy walking,—when my feet are heavy and my head dull, I have never seen a partridge fly without feeling ready, eager, to follow anywhere.
After we move the first bird, it is follow my leader! And a wild leader he is. Flushed in the birches, he makes straight for the swamp. The swamp it is, then, and down we go after him, and in we go—ugh! how shivery the first plunge is—straight to the puddly heart of it, carefully keeping our direction. We go fast at first, then, when we have nearly covered the distance a partridge usually flies, we begin to slow down, holding back the too eager dog, listening for the snap of a twig or the sound of wings, gripping our guns tighter at every blue jay or robin that flicks across our path. No bird yet; we must have passed him; perhaps we went too far to the left. But no—whr-r-r!Whereis he? There! Out of the top of a tall swamp maple, off he goes, sailing over the swamp to the ridge beyond. No wonder the dog was at sea. Well—we know his line, we are off again after him inspite of the swamp between, with its mud and its rotten tree trunks and its grapevines and its cat briers.
Up on the ridge at last, we hunt close, find him, get a shot, probably miss, and away we go again. Some hunters, used to a country where game is plenty, will not follow a bird if they miss him on the first rise. They prefer to keep on their predetermined course and find another. But for me there is little pleasure in that kind of sport. What I enjoy most is not shooting, but hunting. The chase is the thing—the chase after a particular bird once flushed, the setting of my wits against his in the endeavor to follow up his flight. We have now and then flushed the same bird nine or ten times before we got him—and we have not always got him then. For many and deep are the crafty ways of the old partridge, and we have not yet learned them all. That is why I like partridge-hunting better than quail or woodcock, though in these you get far more and better shooting. Quail start in a bunch, scatter, fly, and drop where you can flush them again, one at a time; woodcock fly in a zigzag, drop where they happen to, andsit still till you almost step on them. But the partridge thinks as he flies—thinks to good advantage. He seems to know what we expect him to do, and then he does something else. How many times have we gone past him when he sat quietly between us, and then heard him fly off stealthily down our back track! How often, in a last desperate search for a vanished bird, have I jumped on every felled cedar top in a field—except the one he was under! How often have I broken open my gun to climb a stone wall,—for we are cautious folk, Jonathan and I,—and, as I stood in perilous balance, seen a great bird burst out from under my very feet! How often—but I am not going to be tempted into telling hunting-stories. For some reason or other, hunting-stories chiefly interest the narrator. I have watched sportsmen telling tales in the evenings, and noted how every man but the speaker grows restive as he watches for a chance to get in his own favorite yarn.
And it is not the partridges alone with whom we grow acquainted. We have glimpses, too, of the other outdoor creatures. The life of the woods slips away from us as we pass, but onlyjust out of sight, and not always that. The blue jays scream in the tree-tops, officiously proclaiming us to the woods; the chickadees, whomustsee all that goes on, hop close beside us in the bushes; the gray squirrel dodges behind a tree trunk with just the corner of an eye peering at us around it. The chipmunk darts into the stone wall, and doubtless looks at us from its safe depths; the rabbit gallops off from the brier tangle or the brush heap, or sits up, round-eyed, thinking, little silly, that we don't see him. Once I saw a beautiful red fox who leaped into the open for a moment, stood poised, and leaped on into the brush; and once, as I sat resting, a woodchuck, big and uncombed, hustled busily past me, so close I could have touched him. He did not see me, and seemed so preoccupied with some pressing business that I should hardly have been surprised to see him pull a watch out of his pocket, like Alice's rabbit, and mutter, "I shall be late." I had not known that the wood creatures ever felt hurried except when pursued. Another time I was working up the slope on the sunny edge of a run, and, as I drew myself up over the edge of a big rock, Ifound myself face to face—nose to nose—with a calm, mild-eyed, cottontail rabbit. He did not remain calm; in fact, we were both startled, but he recovered first, and hopped softly over the side of the rock, and went galloping away through the brushy bottom, while I, still kneeling, watched him disappear just as Jonathan came up.
"What's the joke?"
"Nothing, only I just met a rabbit. He sat here, right here, and he was so rabbit-y! He looked at me just like an Easter card."
"Why didn't you shoot him?"
"I never thought of it. I wish you had seen how his nose twiddled! And, anyhow, I wouldn't shoot anything sitting up that way, like a tame kitten."
"Then why didn't you shoot when he ran?"
"Shoot a rabbit running! Running in scallops! I couldn't."
The fact is, I shouldn't shoot a rabbit anyway, unless driven by hunger. I am not humane, but merely sentimental about them because they are soft and pretty. Once, indeed, when I found all my beautiful heads oflettuce neatly nibbled off down to the central stalks, I almost hardened my heart against them, but the next time I met one of the little fellows I forgave him all.
I believe that one of the very best things about our way of following a partridge is the sense of intimacy with the countryside which it creates—an intimacy which nothing else has ever given us. In most outdoor faring one sticks to the roads and paths, in fishing one keeps to the water-courses, in cross-country tramping one unconsciously goes around obstacles. Nothing but the headlong and undeviating pursuit of a bird along a path of his choosing would ever have given me that acquaintance with ledge and swamp and laurel copse that I now possess. I know our swamp as a hippopotamus might, or—to stick to plain Yankee creatures—a mud turtle. It is a very swampy swamp, with spring holes and channels and great shallow pools where the leaves from the tall swamp maples—scarlet and rose and ashes of roses—sift slowly down and float until they sink into the leaf mould beneath. I have favorite paths through it as the squirrels have in the tree-tops; I knowwhere the mud is too deep to venture, where the sprawling, moss-covered roots of the maples offer grateful support; I know the brushy edges where the blossoming witch-hazel fills the air with its quaint fragrance; I know the sunny, open places where the tufted ferns, shoulder high, and tawny gold after the early frosts, give insecure but welcome footing; I know—too well indeed—the thickets of black alder that close in about me and tug at my gun and drive me to fury.
Yes, we know that swamp, and other swamps only less well. We know the rock ledges, the big dry woods of oak and chestnut and maple and beech. We know the ravines where the great hemlocks keep the air always dim and still, and one goes silent-footed over the needle floor. We grow familiar, too, with all the little things about the country. We discover new haunts of the fringed gentian, the wonderful, the capricious, with its unbelievable blue that one sees nowhere else save under the black lashes of some Irish eyes. We find the shy spring orchids, gone to seed now, but we remember and seek them out again next May. We surprise the springflowers in their rare fall blossoming—violets white and blue in the warm, moist bottom-lands, sand violets on the dry knolls, daisies, hepaticas, buttercups, and anemones— I have seen all these in a single day in raw November. We learn where the biggest chestnuts grow—great silky brown fellows almost twice the size of Jonathan's thumb. We discover old landmarks in the deep woods, surveyors' posts, a heap of stones carefully piled on a big rock. We find old clearings, overgrown now, but our feet still feel underneath the weeds the furrows left by the plow. Now and then we come upon a spot where once there must have been a home. There is no house, no timbers even, but the stone cellar is not wholly obliterated, and the gnarled lilac-bush and the apple tree stubbornly cling to a worn-out life amidst the forest of young white oaks and chestnuts that has closed in about them. Once we came upon a little group of gravestones, only three or four, sunken in the ground and so overgrown and weather-worn that we could read nothing. There was no sign of a human habitation, but I suppose they must have been placed there in the olddays when the family burial-ground was in one corner of the farm itself.
We learn to know where the springs of pure water are, welling up out of the deep ground in a tiny pool under some big rock or between the roots of a great yellow birch tree. And when the sun shines hot at noon, and a lost trail and a vanished bird leave us to the sudden realization that we are tired and thirsty, we know where is the nearest water. We know, too, the knack of drinking so as not to swallow the little gnats that skim its surface—you must blow them back ever so gently, and drink before they close in again. How good it tastes as we lie at full length on the matted brown leaves! How good the crackers taste, too, and the crisp apples, as we sit by the spring and rest, and talk over the morning's hunt and plan the afternoon's—subject to the caprices of the birds.
But I suppose the very best about hunting can never be told at all. That is true of any really good thing, and there is nothing better than a long day after the birds. It is always good to be out of doors. And there are seasons when one is glad to wander slowly over thefields and byways; there are times when it seems best of all to be still—in the heart of the woods, on the wide hill pastures, in the deep grass of the meadows. But not in the fall! Is it a breath of the migrating instinct that makes us want to be off and away, to go, and go, and go? Yes, fall is the time for the hunt—gay, boisterous fall, rioting in wind and color to keep up its spirits against the stealthy approach of winter. And whether we shoot well or ill, whether our game pockets are heavy or light, no matter what the weather we find or the country we cross, it is all good hunting, very good. And at night we come in to a blazing fire, feeling tired, oh, so tired! and hungry, oh, so hungry! and with soul and body shriven clean by wind and sun.
Our friends say to us now and then, "But why must you do these things with a gun? Why can't you do the same things and leave the gun at home?" Why, indeed? When I put this question to Jonathan, he smokes on placidly. But of one thing I am sure: if it had not been for the guns and the ducks, I should never have known what the marshes were like in winter fog—what they were like under a winter sky with a wind straight from the North Pole sweeping over their bare stretches.
It was early afternoon. Through the study window I looked out upon a raw, foggy world, melting snow underfoot and overhead. It was the kind of day about which even the most deliberately cheerful can find little to say except that this sort of thing can't last forever, you know. However, if I had had a true instinct for "nature," I should, I suppose, have seen at a glance that it was just the day to goand lie in a marsh. But this did not occur to me. Instead, I thought of open fires, and popcorn, and hot peanuts, and novels, and fudge, and other such things, which are supposed to be valuable as palliatives on days like these.
The telephone rang. "Oh, it's you, Jonathan!... What? No, not really! You wouldn't!... Well, if the ducks like it, they may have it all. I'm not a duck.... Why, of course, if you really want me to, I'll go, only.... All right, I'll get out the things.... Three o'clock train? You'll have to hurry!"
I hung up the receiver and sat a moment, dazed, looking out at the reek of weather. Then I shook myself and darted upstairs to the hunting-closet. In half an hour the bag was packed and Jonathan was at the door. In an hour we were on the train, and at twilight we were tramping out into a fog-swept marsh. Grayness was all around us; underfoot was mud, glimmering patches of soft snow, and the bristly stubble of the close-cut marsh grass.
"What fools we are!" I murmured.
"Why?" said Jonathan contentedly.
"Oh, if you can't see—" I said.
And then, suddenly, as we walked, my whole attitude changed. The weather, as weather, seemed something that belonged in a city—very far away, and no concern of mine. This wasn't weather, here where we walked; it was a gray and boundless world of mystery. We raised our heads high and breathed long, deep breaths as the fog drifted against our faces. We were aware of dim masses of huddling bushes, blurred outlines of sheds and fences. Then only the level marsh stretched out before us and around us.
"Can we find our way out again?" I murmured, though without real anxiety.
"Probably," said Jonathan. "Isn't it great! You feel as if you had a soul out here! By the way, what was it you said about fools?"
"I forget," I said.
We went on and on, I don't know just where or how long, until we came to the creek, where the tide sets in and out. I should have walked into it if Jonathan hadn't held me back. As we followed it, there rose a hoarse, raucous "Ngwak! ngwak! ngwak!" and a greatrush of wings. Jonathan dropped on one knee, gun up, but we saw nothing.
"We'll settle down here," he said. "There'll be more coming in soon. Wait a minute—hold my gun." He disappeared in the fog, and came back with an armful of hay, taken from the heart of a haystack of whose existence he seemed, by some sixth or seventh sense, to be aware. "There! That'll keep you off the real marsh. Now settle down, and don't move, and listen with all your ears, and be ready. I'll go off a little way."
I sank down on the hay, and watched him melt into the grayness. I was alone in the dim marsh. There was no wind, no sound but the far-off whistle and rush of a train. I lay there and thought of nothing. I let myself be absorbed into the twilight. I did not even feel that I had a soul. I was nothing but a point of consciousness in the midst of a gray infinity.
Suddenly I was aware of a sound—a rapid pulsing of soft, high tone—too soft for a whistle, too high for a song,—pervasive, elusive; it was overhead, it was beside me, behind me, where? Ah—it was wings! The winnowing of wings! I half rose, grasping my gun, witha sense of responsibility to Jonathan. But my vision was caught in the grayness as in a web. The sound grew clearer, then fainter, then it passed away. The twilight gathered, and the fog partly dissolved. A fine rain began to fall, and in the intense silence I could hear the faint pricking of the drops on the stiff marsh stubble. I had thought the patter of rain on a roof was the stillest sound I knew, but this was stiller. Again came the winnowing of wings—again and again; and sometimes I was able to see the dark shapes passing overhead and vanishing almost before they appeared. Now and then I heard the muffled, flat sound of Jonathan's gun—he was evidently living up to his opportunities better than I was. Occasionally, in a spasm of activity, I shot too.
Until night closed in about us that sound of wings filled the air, and I knelt, listening and watching. It is strange how one can be physically alert while yet one's soul is withdrawn, quiet and receptive. Out of this state, as out of a trance, I was roused by the sense of Jonathan's dim bulk, seeming "larger than mortal," as he emerged from the night.
"Cold?" he said.
"I don't know—no, of course I'm not." I found it hard to lay hold on clear ideas again.
"I heard you shoot. Get any?"
"I think I hurried them a little."
We started back. At least I suppose it was back, because after a while we came to the road we had left. I was conscious only of bewildering patches of snow that lay like half-veiled moonlight on the dark stretches of the marsh. At last a clump of cedars made themselves felt rather than seen. "There's the fence corner! We're all right," said Jonathan. A snow-filled horse rut gave faint guidance, the twigs of the hedgerow lightly felt of our faces as we passed. We found the main road, and it led us through the quiet, fog-bound village, whose house lights made tiny blurs on the mist, to the hot, bright little station. Then came the close, flaringly lighted car, and people—commuters—getting on and off, talking about the "weather," and filling the car with the smell of wet newspapers and umbrellas. We had returned to the land of "weather." Yet it did not really touch us. Itseemed a dream. The reality was the marsh, with its fog and its pricking raindrops and its sentinel cedars, its silence and its wings.
In the days that followed, the fog passed, and there were long, warm rains. The marsh called us, but we could not go. Then the sky cleared, the wind rose, the mercury began to drop. Jonathan looked across the luncheon table and said, "What about ducks?"
"Can you get off?" I asked joyously.
"I can't, but I will," he replied.
And this time— Did I think I knew the marsh? Did I suppose, having seen it at dawn in the fall days when the sun still rises early, having seen it in winter twilight, fog-beset, that I knew it? Do I suppose I know it now? At least I know it better, having seen it under a clearing sky, when the cold wind sweeps it clean, and the air, crystalline, seems like a lens through which one looks and sees a revelation of new things.
As we struck into the marsh, just at sundown, my first thought was a rushing prayer for words, for colors, for something to catch and hold the beauty of it. But there are no words, no colors. No one who has not seenit can know what a New England shore marsh can be in winter under a golden sky.
Winter does some things for us that summer cannot do. Summer gives us everything all at once—color, fragrance, line, sound—in an overwhelming exuberance of riches. And it is good. But winter— Ah, winter is an artist, winter has reserves; he selects, he emphasizes, he interprets. Winter says, "I will give you nothing to-day but brown and white, but I will glorify these until you shall wonder that there can be any beauty except thus." And again winter says: "Did you think the world was brown and white? Lo, it is blue and rose and silver—nothing else!" And we look, and it is so. On that other evening, in the fog, the world had been all gray—black-gray and pale gray and silver gray. On this evening winter said: "Gray? Not at all. You shall have brown and gold. Behold and marvel!"
I marveled. There was a sweep of golden marsh, under a gold sky, and at its borders low lines of trees etched in rich brown masses, and my sentinel cedars standing singly or by twos and threes—cedars in their wintertones of olive brown, dull almost to harshness, holding themselves stiffly against the great wind, yielding only at their delicate tips when the gusts came, recovering again in the lulls, to point dauntlessly skyward. The narrow boundary ditches, already glassing over in the sudden cold, stretched away in rigid lines, flashing back the light of the sky in shivers of gold. The haystacks reiterated the color notes—gold on their sunset side, deep brown on their shadowed one.
There is a moment sometimes, just at sundown, when the quality of light changes. It does not fall upon the world from without, it radiates from within. Things seem self-luminous. Yet, for all their brightness, we see them less clearly, one's vision is dazzled, enmeshed. It is the time when that wondrous old word "faerie" finds its meaning. It is a magic moment. It laid its spell upon us.
Jonathan emerged first, bracing himself. "It will shut down soon. We haven't a minute to spare. We ought to be on the creek now."
It was hard to believe that such brightness could ever shut down. But it did. By the timewe reached the creek the gold had vanished, except for a narrow line in the western sky. The world lay in clear, brown twilight, and the wind swept over it.
Jonathan got more hay, and this time I saw the haystack from which he plucked it. I threw myself on it, collar up, cap down, lying as low as possible.
"Bad night for ducks, of course," growled Jonathan. "If only the thaw had held twelve hours more! However—"
He swung off to some chosen spot of his own.
I lay there and the wind surged over me. There was nothing to stop it, nothing to make it noisy. It sang a little around the flap of my coat, it swished a little in the short marsh grass, but chiefly it rushed by above me, in invisible, soundless might. It seemed as if it must come between me and the stars, but it did not, and I watched them appear, at first one by one, then in companies and cohorts, until the sky was powdered with them. Now and then a dark line of ducks streamed over me, high up, in direct, steady flight, but the sound of their wings was swallowed up by thewind. I did not even try to shoot; I was trying to find myself in an elemental world that seemed bigger and more powerful than I had ever conceived it.
Gradually I realized that I was cold. The wind seemed suddenly to have become aware of me. It roared down upon me, it shook me, worried me, let me go, and pounced upon me again in the sport of power. I said to myself, "I cannot resist, I will give myself up to it absolutely," I stopped feeling cold. I was no more than a ship's timber lying on the shore—with just a centre, a point of consciousness somewhere inside, to be aware of the difference between the elements and the something I knew was myself.
But at last I moved. It was fatal. A wave of cold started, pricking somewhere in my head, and undulated sinuously through me, down to my feet. More waves followed; they careered through me. I considered them with interest. Then they settled into aches at all the extremities. All at once it ceased to be interesting, and became a personal grievance—against the wind? the ducks? No— Jonathan! Of course it was Jonathan's fault. Whydidn't he come? I gazed into the twilight where he had disappeared. I couldn't go and hunt for him, because I should certainly get lost or fall into a ditch. Ah! What was that? The long red flash of a gun!—another!—then the double report! Well, of course, if he were shooting, I would suspend judgment a reasonable time.
But it seemed quite an unreasonable time before I felt the impact of his tread on the springy marsh floor. I rose stiffly, feeling cross.
"Did you think I was never coming?"
"I can't think. My brains are stiff."
"I was delayed. I dropped one in the ditch. He was only wounded. I couldn't leave him."
"Then you got some?"
"Feel!"
I felt his game pockets. "One, two—oh, three! I didn't hear you shoot except twice. Well"—I was stamping and flinging my arms around myself in the endeavor to thaw out—"I think they're very well off: they're bound for a warm oven."
"Cold? Thunder! I ought to have left you the bottle. Here!"
I took it and gulped, protesting: "Detestable stuff! Wait, I'll take some more."
"This from you! Youmustbe cold! Come on! Run! Look out for the little ditches! Jump where I do."
We started stiffly enough, in the teeth of the big, dark wind, till the motion, and the bottle, began to take effect. A haymow loomed. We flung ourselves, panting, against it, and, sinking back into its yielding bulk, drew long breaths.
"Did we think it was cold?" I murmured; "or windy?"
We were on the leeward side of it, and it gave generous shelter. The wind sighed gently over the top of the mow, breathed past its sides, never touching us, and we gazed up at the stars.
"The sky is fairly gray with them," I said.
"Perhaps," said Jonathan lazily, "it's that bottle, making you see ten stars grow where one grew before."
"Perhaps," I suggested, choosing to ignore this speech, "it's the wind, blowing the stars around and raising star-dust."
We lay in our protecting mow, and thewarmth of our bodies drew out of it faint odors of salt hay. We did not talk. There are times when one seems to exist in poise, with eternity on all sides. One's thoughts do not move, they float.
"Well?" said Jonathan at last.
I could hear the hay rustle as he straightened up.
"Don't interrupt," I answered.
But my spirit had come down to earth, and after the first jolt I realized that, as usual, Jonathan was right.
We plunged out again into the buffeting wind and the starlit darkness, and I followed blindly as Jonathan led across the marshes, around pools, over ditches, until we began to see the friendly twinkle of house lights on the edge of the village. On through the lanes to the highroad, stumbling now and then on its stiffened ruts and ridges. As houses thickened the gale grew noisy, singing in telephone wires, whistling around barn corners, slamming blinds and doors, and rushing in the tree-tops.
"O for that haymow!" I gasped.
"The open fire will be better." Jonathan flung back comfort across the wind.
Ten minutes later we had made harbor in the little house by the shore. The candles were lighted, the fire set ablaze, and as we sat before it cooking chops and toast I said, "No, Jonathan, the open fire isn't any better than the haymow."
"But different?" he suggested.
"Yes, quite different."
"And good in its own poor way."
He turned his chop. Chops and toast and a blazing fire give forth odors of distracting pleasantness under such circumstances.
"I think," I said, "that each gives point to the other."
"Aren't you glad I took you for ducks?" he asked.
I mused, watching my toast. "I suppose," I said, "no one in his senses would leave a comfortable city house to go and lie out in a marsh at night, in a forty-mile gale, with the mercury at ten, unless he had some other motive than the thing itself—ducks, or conspiracy, or something. And yet it is the thing itself that is the real reward."
"Isn't that true of almost everything?" said Jonathan.
Jonathan methodically tucked his bookmark into "The Virginians," and, closing the fat green volume, began to knock the ashes out of his pipe against the bricked sides of the fireplace.
"'The Virginians' is a very comfortable sort of book," he remarked.
"Is it?" I said. "I wonder why."
He ruminated. "Well, chiefly, I suppose, because it's so good and long. You get to know all the people, you get used to their ways, and when they turn up again, after a lot of chapters, you don't have to find out who they are—you just feel comfortably acquainted."
I sighed. I had just finished a magazine story—condensed, vivid, crushing a whole life-tragedy into seven pages and a half. In that space I had been made acquainted with sixteen different characters, seven principalones and the rest subordinate, but all clearly drawn. I had found it interesting, stimulating; as atour de forceit was noteworthy even among the crowd of short-stories—all condensed, all vivid, all interesting—that had appeared that month. But—comfortable? No. And I felt envious of Jonathan. He had been reading "The Virginians" all winter. His bookmark was at page 597, and there were 803 pages in all, so he had a great deal of comfort left.
Perhaps comfort is not quite all that one should expect from one's reading. Certainly it is the last thing one gets from the perusal of our current literature, and any one who reads nothing else is missing something which, whether he realizes it or not, he ought for his soul's sake to have—something which Jonathan roughly indicated when he called it "comfort." The ordinary reader devours short-stories by the dozen, by the score—short short-stories, long short-stories, even short-stories laboriously expanded to a volume, but still short-stories. He glances, less frequently, at verses, chiefly quatrains, at columns of jokes, at popularized bits of historyand science, at bits of anecdotal biography, and nowhere in all this medley does he come in contact with what is large and leisurely. Current literature is like a garden I once saw. Its proud owner led me through a maze of smooth-trodden paths, and pointed out a vast number of horticultural achievements. There were sixty-seven varieties of dahlias, there were more than a hundred kinds of roses, there were untold wonders which at last my weary brain refused to record. Finally I escaped, exhausted, and sought refuge on a hillside I knew, from which I could look across the billowing green of a great rye-field, and there, given up to the beauty of its manifold simplicity, I invited my soul.
It is even so with our reading. When I go into one of our public reading-rooms, and survey the serried ranks of magazines and the long shelves full of "Recent fiction, not to be taken out for more than five days,"—nay, even when I look at the library tables of some of my friends,—my brain grows sick and I long for my rye-field.
Happily, there always is a rye-field at hand to be had for the seeking. Jonathan finds refugefrom business and the newspapers in his pipe and "The Virginians." I have no pipe, but I sit under the curling rings of Jonathan's, and I, too, have my comfortable books, my literary rye-fields. Last summer it was Malory's "Morte d'Arthur," whose book I found indeed a comfortable one—most comfortable. I read much besides, many short stories of surpassing cleverness and some of real excellence, but as I look back upon my summer's literary experience, all else gives place to the long pageant of Malory's story, gorgeous or tender or gay, seen like a fair vision against the dim background of an old New England apple orchard. Surely, though the literature of our library tables may sometimes weary me, it shall never enslave me.
But they must be read, these "comfortable" books, in the proper fashion, not hastily, nor cursorily, nor with any desire to "get on" in them. They must lie at our hand to be taken up in moments of leisure, the slowly shifting bookmark—there should always be a bookmark—recording our half-reluctant progress. (I remember with what dismay I found myself arrived at the fourth and lastvolume of Malory,) Thus read, thus slowly woven among the intricacies and distractions of our life, these precious books will link its quiet moments together and lend to it a certain quality of largeness, of deliberation, of continuity.
For it is surely a mistake to assume, as people so often do, that in a life full of distractions one should read only such things as can be finished at a single sitting and that a short one. It is a great misfortune to read only books that "must be returned within five days." For my part, I should like to see in our public libraries, to offset the shelves of such books, other shelves, labeled "Books that may and should be kept out six months." I would have there Thackeray and George Eliot and Wordsworth and Spenser, Malory and Homer and Cervantes and Shakespeare and Montaigne—oh, they should be shelves to rejoice the soul of the harassed reader!
No, if one can read but little, let him by all means read something big. I know a woman occupied with the demands of a peculiarly exigent social position. Finding her one day reading "The Tempest," I remarked on herenterprise. "Not a bit!" she protested, "I am not reading it to be enterprising, I am reading it to get rested. I find Shakespeare so peaceful, compared with the magazines." I have another friend who is taking entire charge of her children, besides doing a good deal of her own housework and gardening. I discovered her one day sitting under a tree, reading Matthew Arnold's poems, while the children played near by, I ventured to comment on what seemed to me the incongruity of her choice of a book. "But don't you see," she replied, quickly. "That is just why! I am so busy from minute to minute doing lots of little practical, temporary things, that I simply have to keep in touch with something different—something large and quiet. If I didn't, I should die!"
I suppose in the old days, in a less "literary" age, all such busy folk found this necessary rest and refreshment in a single book—the Bible. Doubtless many still do so, but not so many; and this, quite irrespective of religious considerations, seems to me a great pity. The literary quality of the Scriptures has, to be sure, been partly vitiated by thelamentable habit of reading them in isolated "texts," instead of as magnificent wholes; yet, even so, I feel sure that this constant intercourse with the Book did for our predecessors in far larger measure what some of these other books of which I have been speaking do for us—it furnished that contact with greatness which we all crave.
It may be accident, though I hardly think so, that to find such books we must turn to the past. Doubtless others will arise in the future—possibly some are even now being brought to birth, though this I find hard to believe. For ours is the age of the short-story—a wonderful product, perhaps the finest flower of fiction, and one which has not yet achieved all its victories or realized all its possibilities. All the fiction of the future will show the influence of this highly specialized form. In sheer craftsmanship, novel-writing has progressed far; in technique, in dexterous manipulation of their material, the novices of to-day are ahead of the masters of yesterday. This often happens in an art, and it is especially true just now in the art of fiction. Yes, there are great things preparing for us in thefuture, there are excellent things being done momently about us. But while we wait for the great ones, the excellent ones sometimes create in us a sense of surfeit. We cannot hurry the future, and if meanwhile we crave repose, leisure, quiet, steadiness, the sense of magnitude, we must go to the past. There, and not in the yearly output of our own publishers, we shall find our "comfortable" books.
Jonathan had improvidently lighted his pipe before he noticed that the fire needed his attention. This was a mistake, because, at least in Jonathan's case, neither a fire nor a pipe responds heartily to a divided mind. As I watched him absently knocking the charred logs together, I longed to snatch the tongs from his indifferent hands and "change the sorry scheme of things entire." Big wads of smoke rolled nonchalantly out of the corners of the fireplace and filled the low ceiling with bluish mist, yet I held my peace, and I did not snatch the tongs. I know of no circumstances wherein advice is less welcome than when offered by a woman to a man on his knees before the fire. When my friends make fudge or rare-bits, they invite criticism, they court suggestion, but when one of them takes the tongs in his hand, have a care what you say to him! In our household a certain conventionof courtesy—fireplace etiquette—has tacitly established itself, in accordance with which the person who wields the tongs, assuming full responsibility for results, is free from criticism or suggestion. Disregard of such etiquette may not have precipitated divorce, but I have known it to produce distinctly strained relations. And so, while Jonathan tinkered in a half-hearted way at the fire, I ruled my tongue. At last, little vanishing blue flickers began to run along the log edges, growing steadier and yellower until they settled into something like a blaze.
Jonathan straightened up, but there was a trace of the apologetic in his tone as he said, "That'll do, won't it?"
"Why, yes," I replied cautiously, "it's a fire."
"Well, what's the matter with it?" he asked tolerantly.
"Since you press me, I should say that it lacks—style."
Jonathan leaned back, puffing comfortably—"Now, what in thunder do you mean by style?"
But I was not to be enticed into an empty discussion of terms. "Well, then, say frowsy. Call it a frowsy fire. You know what frowsy means, I suppose. Of course, though, I don't mean to criticize, only you asked me." And I added, with perhaps unnecessary blandness, "I'mwarmenough."
Jonathan smoked a few moments more, possibly by way of establishing his independence, then slowly rose, remarking, "Oh, well, if youwanta stylish fire—"
"I didn't say stylish, I said style—"
But he was gone. He must have journeyed out to the woodshed,—however, there was a moon,—for he returned bearing a huge backlog. He had been magnanimous, indeed, for it was the sort that above all others delights my heart—a forked apple log with a big hollow heart. In a moment, I was on my knees clearing a place for it, and he swung it into position on the bed of embers, tucked in some white birch in front, and soon the flames were licking about the flaking gray apple bark and shooting up through the hollow fork in a fashion to charm the most fastidious.
People whose open fires are machine-fed—whoarrange for their wood as they do for their groceries, by telephone—know little of the real joys of a fire. It is laid by a servant,—unintelligently laid,—and upon such masses of newspaper and split kindling that it has no choice but to burn. The match is struck, the newspapers flare up, and soon there is a big, meaningless blaze. Handfuls of wood—just wood, any kind of wood—are thrown on from time to time, and perhaps a log or two—any log, taken at random from the wood-box. Truly, this is merest savagery, untrained, undiscriminating; it is the Bushman's meal compared to the Frenchman's dinner. Not thus are real hearth fires laid. Not thus are they enjoyed. You should plan a fire as you do a dinner party, and your wood, like your people, should be selected and arranged with due regard to age, temperament, and individual eccentricity. A fire thus skillfully planned, with some good talkers among the logs, may be as well worth listening to as the conversation about your table—perhaps better.
To get the full flavor of a fire you must know your wood— I had almost said, youmust remember where the tree stood before it was cut—white birch in the dry, worn-out slopes, black birches from the edges of the pasture lots, chestnut from the ledges, maple from the swamps, apple from the old orchard, oak cut in sorrow when the fullness of time has come, and burned with the honor due to royalty.
But though this may be a refinement of fancy, it is no fancy that one kind of wood differs from another in glory. There is the white birch, gay, light-hearted, volatile, putting all its pretty self into a few flaring moments—a butterfly existence. There is black birch, reluctant but steady; there is chestnut, vivacious, full of sudden enthusiasms; the apple, cheerful and willing; the maple and oak, sober and stanch, good for the long pull. Every locality has its own sorts of wood, as its own sorts of people. Mine is a New England wood basket, and as I look at it I recognize all my old friends. Of them all I love the apple best, yet each is in its own way good. For a quick blaze, throw on the white birch; for a long evening of reading, when one does not want distraction, pile on the oak and maple. Theywill burn quietly, unobtrusively, importuning you neither for care nor appreciation. But for a fire to sit before with friends, bring in the apple wood. Lay the great backlog, the more gnarled the better, and if there is a hole through which the flames may shoot up, that is best of all—such logs we hoard for special occasions. Then with careful touch arrange the wood in front, your bundles of twigs, your pretty white birch sticks and your dry chestnut to start the fun, then the big apple forelog, the forestick and the backstick, not too much crowding or too much space. Ah, there is a seemly fire! There is a fire for friends!
For the renewal of old friendships, as for the perfecting of new ones, there is nothing like a fire. I met a friend after years of separation. We came together in a modern house, just modern enough to be full of steam pipes and registers and gas-logs, but not so modern as to have readopted open fireplaces. The room had no centre—there was no hearth to draw around, there was no reason for sitting in one place rather than another. We could not draw around the steam pipes or the register.The gas-log was not turned on, it would have been too hot, and anyhow—a gas-log! We sat and talked for hours in an aimless, unsatisfactory sort of way. I felt as if we were, figuratively speaking, sitting on the edges of our chairs. It was better than nothing, but it was not a real meeting. The next year we were together again, but this time it was before our own blazing apple log. We did not talk so much as we had done before, but we were silent a great deal more, which was better. For in really intimate communion, silence is the last, best gift, but it cannot be forced, it cannot be snatched at. You may try it, but you grow restless, you begin to consider your expression, you wonder how long it will last, you fancy it may seem to mean too much, and at last you are hurried over into talk again. But before a fire all things are possible, even silence. Chance acquaintances and intimate friends fall alike under its spell, talk is absolutely spontaneous, it flows rapidly or slowly, or dies away altogether. What need for talk when the fire is saying it all—now flaring up in a blaze to interpret our rarest enthusiasms, now popping and snapping with wit or fury,now burning with the even heat of steady, rational life, now settling into a contemplative glow of meditation.
In the circle of the hearth everything is good, but reminiscences are best of all. I sometimes think all life is valuable merely as an opportunity to accumulate reminiscences, and I am sure that the precious horde can be seen to best advantage by firelight. Then is the time for the miser to spread out his treasure and admire it. I remember once Jonathan and I were on a bicycle trip. My chain had broken and we had trudged eight long, hot, dusty miles to the river that had to be crossed that night. It was dark when we reached it, and it had begun to rain, a warm, dreary drizzle. As we stumbled over the railway track and felt our way past the little station toward the still smaller ferry-house, a voice from the darkness drawled, "Guess ye won't git the ferry to-night—last boat went half an hour ago."
It was the final blow. We leaned forlornly on our wheels and looked out upon the dark water, whose rain-quenched mirror dully reflected the lights of the opposite town. FinallyI said, "Well, Jonathan, anyhow, we're making reminiscences."
This remark was, I own, not highly practical, but I intended it to be comforting, and if it failed—as it clearly did—to cheer Jonathan, that was not because it lacked wisdom, but because men are so often devoid of imagination save as an adornment of their easy moments.
Finally the same impersonal voice out of the dark uttered another sentence: "Might row ye 'cross if ye'vegotto go to-night."
"How much?" said Jonathan.
"Guess it's wuth a dollar. Mean night to be out there."
We had, between us, forty-seven cents and three street-car tickets, good in the opposite town. All this we meekly offered him, and in the pause that followed I added desperately, "And we can each take an oar and help."
"Wall— I'll take ye."
It seemed to me that the voice suggested an accompanying grin, but I had no proof.
And so we got across. We never saw the face of our boatman, but on the other side wefelt for his hand and emptied our pockets into it—nickels and dimes and pennies, and the three car tickets; but as we were turning to grope our way up the dock the voice said, "Here—ye'll need two of them tickets to git home with. I do' want 'um."
Now already it must be evident to any one that my remark to Jonathan, though perhaps ill-timed, embodied a profound and cheering truth. The more uncomfortable you are, the more desperate your situation, the better the reminiscences you are storing up to be enjoyed before the fire.
Yes, there is nothing like firelight for reminiscences. By the clear light of morning—say ten o'clock—I might be forced to admit that life has had its humdrum and unpleasant aspects, but in the evening, with the candles lighted and the fire glowing and flickering, I will allow no such thing. The firelight somehow lights up all the lovely bits, and about the unlovely ones it throws a thick mantle of shadow, like the shadows in the corners of the room behind us. Nor does the firelight magic end here. Not only does it play about the fair hours of our past, making them fairer,it also vaguely multiplies them, so that for one real occurrence we see many. It is like standing between opposing mirrors: looking into either, one sees a receding series of reflections, unending as Banquo's royal line.
Thus, once last winter Jonathan and I spent a long evening reading aloud a tale of the "Earthly Paradise." Once last summer we sat alone before the embers and quietly talked. Once and only once. Yet firelit memory is already laying her touch upon those hours. Already, though my diary tells me they stood alone, I am persuaded that they were many. I look back over a retrospect of many long winter evenings, in whose cozy light I see again the ringed smoke of Jonathan's pipe and hear again the lingering verse of the idle singer's tales; a retrospect of many long summer twilights, wherein the warmth of the settling embers mingles with the sharp coolness of a summer night, and pleasant talk gives place to pleasant silence.