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The
idea of the wood-carver may be considered as a sort of compromise
on
the
vicar's part between his two duties, as a munificent discoverer
of
rising talent, and a judicious represser of the too-aspiring
lower
orders.
A wood-carver's work is in a certain sense artistic, and yet
it
isn't anything more, as a rule, than a decent handicraft. The
vicar
rather
prided himself upon this clever sop to both his consciences: he
chuckled
inwardly over the impartial manner in which he had managed to
combine
the recognition of plastic merit with the equal recognition of
profound
social disabilities. Eva, to be sure, had stood out stoutly
against
the wood-carving, and had pleaded hard for a sculptor in London:
but
the vicar disarmed her objections somewhat by alleging the
admirable
precedent
of Grinling Gibbons. 'Gibbons, you know, my dear, rose to the
very
first rank as a sculptor from his trade as a wood-carver. Pity
to
upset the boy's mind by putting him at once to a regular artist.
If
there's
really anything in him, he'll rise at last; if not, it would
only
do him harm to encourage him in absurd expectations.' Oh, wise
inverted
Gamaliels! you too in your decorous way, with your topsyturvy
opportunism,
cannot wholly escape the charge of quenching the spirit.
CHAPTER
VI. ENTER A NEW ENGLANDER.
|Hiram
Winthrop's emancipation had come a little earlier, and it had
come
after this fashion.
It
was early spring along the lake shore, and Hiram had wandered
out,
alone
as usual, into the dense marshy scrub that fringed the Creek,
near
the
spot where it broadens and deepens into a long blue bay of still
half-frozen
and spell-bound Ontario. The skunk-cabbage was coming into
flower!
It was early spring, and the boy's heart was glad within him, as
though
the deacon, and the cord-wood, and the coming drudgery of hoeing
and
weeding had never existed. Perhaps, now, he should see the
trappers
again.
He wandered on among the unbroken woods, just greening with the
wan
fresh buds, and watched the whole world bursting into life again
after
its long wintry interlude; as none have ever seen it waken save
those
who know the great icy lake country of North America. The signs
of
quickening were frequent in the underbrush. The shrill _peep_ of
the
tree-frog
came to him from afar through the almost silent woodland. The
drumming
of the redheaded woodpecker upon the hickory trunks showed that
the
fat white grubs were now hatching and moving underneath the bark
Close
to the water's edge he scared up a snipe; and then, again, a
little
farther, he saw a hen hawk rise with sudden flappings from the
clam-shell
mound. Hark, too; that faint, swelling, distant beat! surely
it
was a partridge! He looked up into the trees, and searched for it
diligently:
and there true enough, settling, after the transatlantic
manner,
on a tall butternut (oh, heterodox bird!), he caught a single
glimpse
of the beautiful fluttering creature, as it took its perch
lightly
upon the topmost branches.
It
was so delightful, all of it, that Hiram never thought of the time
or
his
dinner, but simply wandered on, as a boy will, for hour after
hour
in
that tangled woodland. What did he care, in the joy of his heart,
for
the
coming beating? His one idea was to see the trappers. At last, he
saw
an unwonted sight through the trees--two men actually pushing
their
way
along beside the river. His heart beat fast within him: could
they
be
the trappers? Spurred on by that glorious possibility, he crept
up
quickly
and noiselessly behind them. The men were talking quite loud to
one
another: no, they couldn't be trappers: trappers always go
softly,
and
speak in a whisper. But if they weren't trappers, what on earth
could
they be do down here in the unbroken forest? Not felling wood,
that
was clear; for they had no axes with them, and they walked along
without
ever observing the lie of the timber. Not going to survey wild
lands,
for they had none of those strange measuring things with them
(Hiram
was innocent of the name theodolite) that surveyors are always
peeping
and squinting through. Not gunning either, for they had no guns,
but
only simple stout walking-sticks. 'Sech a re-markable, on-common
circumstance
I never saw, and that's true as Judges,' Hiram said to
himself,
as he watched them narrowly. He would jest listen to what they
were
sayin', and see if he could make out what on airth they could be
doin'
down in them woods thar.
'When
I picked him up,' one of the men was saying to the other, in a
clear,
distinct, delicate tone, such as Hiram had never heard before, 'I
saw
it was a wounded merganser, winged by some bad shot, and fallen
into
the
water to die alone. I never saw anything more beautiful than its
long
slender vermilion bill, the very colour of red sealing wax; and
its
clean
bright orange legs and feet; and its pure white breast just
tinged
at
the tip of each feather with faint salmon, or a dainty buff
inclining
to
salmon. I was sorry I hadn't got my colours with me: I'd have
given
anything
to be able to paint him, then and there.'
Hiram
could hardly contain himself with mingled awe, delight, and
astonishment.
He wanted to call out on the spur of the moment 'I know
that
thar bird. I know him. 'Tain't called that name you give him,
down
our
section, though. We call him a fisherman diver.' But he didn't
dare
to
in his perfect transport of surprise and amazement. It wasn't the
strange
person's tone alone that pleased him so much, though he felt,
in
a vague indefinable way, that there was something very beautiful
and
refined
and exquisitely modulated in it--the voice being in fact
the
measured, clearly articulate voice of a cultivated New England
gentleman,
such as he had never before met in his whole lifetime: it
wasn't
exactly that, though that was in itself sufficiently surprising:
it
was the astounding fact that there was a full-grown, decently
clad
man,
not apparently a lunatic or an imbecile, positively interesting
himself
in such childish things as the very colours and feathers of
a
bird, just the same as he, Hiram Winthrop, might have done in
the
blackberry bottom. The deacon never talked about the bill of a
merganser!
The deacon never noticed the dainty buff on the breast,
inclining
to salmon! The deacon never expressed any burning desire to
pull
out his brushes and paint it! All the men he had ever yet seen in
Geauga
County would have regarded the colours on the legs of a bird as
wholly
beneath their exalted and dignified adult consideration. Corn and
pork
were the objects that engaged their profound intellects, not
birds
and
insects. Hiram had always imagined that an interest in such small
things
was entirely confined to boys and infants. That grown men could
care
to talk about them was an idea wholly above his limited
experience,
and
almost above what the deacon would have called his poor finite
comprehension.
'Yes,'
the other answered him, even before Hiram could recover from his
first
astonishment. 'It's a lovely bird. I've tried to sketch him
myself
more
than once. And have you ever noticed, Audouin, the peculiar way
the
tints
are arranged on the back of the neck? The crest's black, you
know,
glossed
with green; but the nape's white; and the colours don't merge
into
one another, as you might expect, but cease abruptly with quite a
hard
line of demarcation at the point of junction.'
'Jest
for all the world as ef they was sewed together,' Hiram murmured
to
himself inaudibly, still more profoundly astonished at this
incredible
and totally unexpected phenomenon. Then there were two
distinct
and separate human beings in the world, it seemed, who
were
each capable of paying attention to the coloration of a common
merganser.
As Hiram whispered awestruck to his own soul, 'most
mirac'lous!'
He
followed them up a little farther, hanging anxiously on every
word,
and
to his continued astonishment heard them notice to one another
such
petty
matters as the flowering of the white maples, the twittering of
the
red-polls among the fallen pine-needles, the wider and ever wider
circles
on the water where the pickerel had leaped, nay, even the tracks
left
upon the soft clay that marked the nightly coming and going of
the
stealthy
wood-chuck. Impossible: unimaginable: utterly un-diaconal: but
still
true! Hiram's spirit was divided within him. At last the one who
was
addressed as Audouin said casually to his companion, 'Let's sit
down
here,
Professor, and have our lunch. I love this lunching in the open
woods.
It brings us nearer to primitive nature. I suppose the chord it
strikes
within us is the long latent and unstruck chord of hereditary
habit
and feeling. It's centuries since our old English ancestors lived
that
free life in the open woods of the Teutonic mainland; but the
unconscious
memory of it reverberates dimly still, I often think,
through
all our nature, and comes out in the universal love for escape
from
conventionality to the pure freedom of an open-air existence.'
'Perhaps
so,' the Professor answered with a laugh: 'but if you'll leave
your
Boston philosophy behind, my dear unpractical Audouin, and open
your
sandwich-case, you'll be doing a great deal more good in the
cause
of
hungry humanity than by speculating on the possible psychological
analysis
of the pleasure of picnicking.'
Hiram
didn't quite know what all that meant; but from behind the big
alder
he could, at least, see that the sandwiches looked remarkably
tempting
(by the way, it was clearly past dinner-time, to judge by the
internal
monitor), and the Professor was pouring something beautifully
red
and clear into a metal cup out of the wicker-covered bottle. It
wasn't
whisky, certainly; nor spruce beer, either: could it really
be
that red stuff, wine, that people used to drink in Bible times,
according
to the best documentary authorities?
'Don't,
pray, reproach me with the original sin of having been born in
Boston,'
Audouin answered, with a slight half-affected little shiver. 'I
can
no more help that, of course, than I can help the following of
Adam,
in
common with all the rest of our poor fallen humanity.' (Why, that
was
jest
like the deacon!) 'But at least I've done my very best to put
away
the
accursed thing, and get rid, for ever, of our polluted material
civilisation.
I've tried to flee from man (except always you, my dear
Professor),
and take refuge from his impertinent inanity in the bosom
of
my mother nature. From the haunts of the dry-goods man and the
busy
throng of drummers, I've come into the woods and fields as from a
solitary
desert into society. I prefer to emphasise my relations to the
universe,
rather than my relations to the miserable toiling ant-hill of
petty
humanity.'
'Really,
Audouin,' the Professor put in, as he passed his friend the
claret,
'you're growing positively morbid; degenerating into a wild
man
of the woods. I must take you back for a while to the city and
civilisation.
I shall buy you a suit of store clothes, set you up in
a
five-dollar imported hat, and make you promenade State Street,
afternoons,
keeping a sharp eye on the Boston ladies and the Boston
fashions.'
'No,
no, Professor,' Audouin answered, with a graceful flourish of his
small
white hand: (Hiram noticed that it _was_ small and white, though
the
dress the stranger actually wore was not a 'store suit.' but a
jacket
and trousers of the local home-spun); 'no, no; that would never
do.
I refuse to believe in your civilisation. I abjure it: I banish
it.
What
is it? A mere cutting down of trees and disfiguring of nature, in
order
to supply uninteresting millions with illimitable pork and
beans.
The object of our society seems to be to provide more and more
luxuriously
for our material wants, and to shelve all higher ideals of
our
nature for an occasional Sunday service and a hypothetical future
existence.
I turn with delight, on the other hand, from cities and
railroad
cars to the forest and the living creatures. They are the one
group
of beautiful things that the great Anglo-Saxon race, in
civilising
and
vulgarising this vast continent, has left us still undesecrated.
_They_
are not conventionalised; _they_ don't go to the Old Meeting
House
in European clothes Sunday mornings; they speak always to me in
the
language of nature, and tell me our lower wants must be
simplified
that
the higher life may be correspondingly enriched. The only true
way
of
salvation, after all, Professor, lies in perfect fidelity to
one's
own
truest inner promptings.'
[Illustration:
0134]
Hiram
listened still, all amazed. He didn't fully understand it all;
some
of it sounded to him rather affectedly sentimental and finnikin;
but
on the whole what struck him most was the strange fact that this
fine-spoken
town-bred gentleman seemed to have ideas about the world and
nature--differently
expressed, but fundamentally identical--such as he
himself
felt but never knew before anybody else in the whole world was
likely
to share with him. 'That's pretty near jest what I'd have
said
myself,' the boy thought wonderingly, 'if I'd knowed how: only I
shouldn't
ever have bin able to say it so fine and high-falutin.' They
finished
their lunch, and sat talking a while together under the shadow
of
the leafless hickories. The boy still stopped and watched them,
spell-bound.
At last Audouin pulled a head of flowers from close to
the
ground, and looked at it pensively, with his head just a trifle
theatrically
on one side. 'That's a curious thing, Professor,' he said,
eyeing
it at different distances in his hand: 'what do you call it now?
I
don't know it.'
'I'm
sure I can't tell you, the Professor answered, taking it from him
carelessly.
I don't pretend to be much of a botanist, you see, and I'm
out
of my element down here among the lake-side flora.'
Hiram
could contain himself no longer.
'It's
skunk-cabbage,' he cried, in all the exultation of boyish
knowledge,
emerging suddenly from behind the big alder. 'Skunk-cabbage,
the
trappers call it. Ain't it splendid? You kin hear the bees
hummin'
an'
buzzin' around it, fine days in spring, findin it out close to
the
ground,
and goin' into it, one at a time, before the willows has begun
to
blossom. I see lots as I kem along this mornin', putting out
their
long
tongues into it, and scarin' away the flies as they tried to get
a
bit
o' the breakfast.'
Audouin
laughed melodiously. 'What's this?' he cried. 'A heaven-born
observer
dropped suddenly upon us from the clouds!
You
seem to know all about it, my young friend. Skunk-cabbage, is it?
But
surely the bees aren't out in search of honey already, are they?'
''Tain't
honey they get from it,' the boy answered quickly. 'It's
bee-bread.
Jest you see them go in, and watch 'em come out again, and
thar
you'll find they've all got little yaller pellets stickin' right
on
to the small hairs upon their thighs. That's bee-bread, that is,
what
they
give to the maggots. All bees is born out of
maggo
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