Wood-Magic
There are three vines that belong to the ancient forest.
Elsewhere they will not grow, though the soil prepared for
them be never so rich, the shade of the arbour built for them
never so closely and cunningly woven. Their delicate,
thread-like roots take no hold upon the earth tilled and
troubled by the fingers of man. The fine sap that steals
through their long, slender limbs pauses and fails when they
are watered by human hands. Silently the secret of their life
retreats and shrinks away and hides itself.
But in the woods, where falling leaves and crumbling
tree-trunks and wilting ferns have been moulded by Nature into
a deep, brown humus, clean and fragrant--in the woods, where
the sunlight filters green and golden through interlacing
branches, and where pure moisture of distilling rains and
melting snows is held in treasury by never-failing banks of
moss--under the verdurous flood of the forest, like sea-weeds
under the ocean waves, these three little creeping vines put
forth their hands with joy, and spread over rock and hillock and
twisted tree-root and mouldering log, in cloaks and scarves and
wreaths of tiny evergreen, glossy leaves.
One of them is adorned with white pearls sprinkled lightly
over its robe of green. This is Snowberry, and if you eat of
it, you will grow wise in the wisdom of flowers. You will
know where to find the yellow violet, and the wake-robin, and
the pink lady-slipper, and the scarlet sage, and the fringed
gentian. You will understand how the buds trust themselves to
the spring in their unfolding, and how the blossoms trust
themselves to the winter in their withering, and how the busy
bands of Nature are ever weaving the beautiful garment of life
out of the strands of death, and nothing is lost that yields
itself to her quiet handling.
Another of the vines of the forest is called Partridge-berry.
Rubies are hidden among its foliage, and if you eat of this
fruit, you will grow wise in the wisdom of birds. You will know
where the oven-bird secretes her nest, and where the wood-cock
dances in the air at night; the drumming-log of the ruffed grouse
will be easy to find, and you will see the dark lodges of the
evergreen thickets inhabited by hundreds of warblers. There will
be no dead silence for you in the forest, any longer, but you
will hear sweet and delicate voices on every side, voices that
you know and love; you will catch the key-note of the silver
flute of the woodthrush, and the silver harp of the veery, and
the silver bells of the hermit; and something in your heart will
answer to them all. In the frosty stillness of October nights
you will see the airy tribes flitting across the moon, following
the secret call that guides them southward. In the calm
brightness of winter sunshine, filling sheltered copses with
warmth and cheer, you will watch the lingering blue-birds and
robins and song-sparrows playing at summer, while the chickadees
and the juncos and the cross-bills make merry in the windswept
fields. In the lucent mornings of April you will hear your old
friends coming home to you, Phoebe, and Oriole, and
Yellow-Throat, and Red-Wing, and Tanager, and Cat-Bird. When
they call to you and greet you, you will understand that Nature
knows a secret for which man has never found a word--the secret
that tells itself in song.
The third of the forest-vines is Wood-Magic. It bears neither
flower nor fruit. Its leaves are hardly to be distinguished
from the leaves of the other vines. Perhaps they are a little
rounder than the Snowberry's, a little more pointed than the
Partridge-berry's; sometimes you might mistake them for the
one, sometimes for the other. No marks of warning have been
written upon them. If you find them it is your fortune; if
you taste them it is your fate.
For as you browse your way through the forest, nipping
here and there a rosy leaf of young winter-green, a fragrant
emerald tip of balsam-fir, a twig of spicy birch, if by chance
you pluck the leaves of Wood-Magic and eat them, you will not
know what you have done, but the enchantment of the tree-land
will enter your heart and the charm of the wildwood will flow
through your veins.
You will never get away from it. The sighing of the wind
through the pine-trees and the laughter of the stream in its
rapids will sound through all your dreams. On beds of silken
softness you will long for the sleep-song of whispering leaves
above your head, and the smell of a couch of balsam-boughs. At
tables spread with dainty fare you will be hungry for the joy of
the hunt, and for the angler's sylvan feast. In proud cities you
will weary for the sight of a mountain trail; in great cathedrals
you will think of the long, arching aisles of the woodland; and
in the noisy solitude of crowded streets you will hone after the
friendly forest.
This is what will happen to you if you eat the leaves of
that little vine, Wood-Magic. And this is what happened to
Luke Dubois.
I
The Cabin by the Rivers
Two highways meet before the door, and a third reaches away to
the southward, broad and smooth and white. But there are no
travellers passing by. The snow that has fallen during the
night is unbroken. The pale February sunrise makes blue shadows
on it, sharp and jagged, an outline of the fir-trees on the
mountain-crest quarter of, a mile away.
In summer the highways are dissolved into three wild
rivers--the River of Rocks, which issues from the hills; the
River of Meadows, which flows from the great lake; and the
River of the Way Out, which runs down from their meeting-place
to the settlements and the little world. But in winter, when
the ice is firm under the snow, and the going is fine, there
are no tracks upon the three broad roads except the paths of
the caribou, and the footprints of the marten and the mink and
the fox, and the narrow trails made by Luke Dubois on his way
to and from his cabin by the rivers.
He leaned in the door-way, looking out. Behind him in the
shadow, the fire was still snapping in the little stove where
he had cooked his breakfast. There was a comforting smell of
bacon and venison in the room; the tea-pot stood on the table
half-empty. Here in the corner were his rifle and some of his
traps. On the wall hung his snowshoes. Under the bunk was a
pile of skins. Half-open on the bench lay the book that he had
been reading the evening before, while the snow was falling. It
was a book of veritable fairy-tales, which told how men had made
their way in the world, and achieved great fortunes, and won
success, by toiling hard at first, and then by trading and
bargaining and getting ahead of other men.
"Well," said Luke, to himself, as he stood at the door, "I
could do that too. Without doubt I also am one of the men who
can do things. They did not work any harder than I do. But
they got better pay. I am twenty-five. For ten years I have
worked hard, and what have I got for it? This!"
He stepped out into the morning, alert and vigorous,
deep-chested and straight-hipped. The strength of the hills
had gone into him, and his eyes were bright with health. His
kingdom was spread before him. There along the River of
Meadows were the haunts of the moose and the caribou where he
hunted in the fall; and yonder on the burnt hills around the
great lake were the places where he watched for the bears; and
up beside the River of Rocks ran his line of traps, swinging back
by secret ways to many a nameless pond and hidden
beaver-meadow; and all along the streams, when the ice went
out in the spring, the great trout would be leaping in rapid
and pool. Among the peaks and valleys of that forest-clad
kingdom he could find his way as easily as a merchant walks
from his house to his office. The secrets of bird and beast
were known to him; every season of the year brought him its
own tribute; the woods were his domain, vast, inexhaustible,
free.
Here was his home, his cabin that he had built with his
own hands. The roof was tight, the walls were well chinked
with moss. It was snug and warm. But small--how pitifully
small it looked to-day--and how lonely!
His hand-sledge stood beside the door, and against it
leaned the axe. He caught it up and began to split wood for
the stove. "No!" he cried, throwing down the axe, "I'm tired
of this. It has lasted long enough. I'm going out to make my
way in the world."
A couple of hours later, the sledge was packed with camp-gear
and bundles of skins. The door of the cabin was shut; a
ghostlike wreath of blue smoke curled from the chimney. Luke
stood, in his snowshoes, on the white surface of the River of the
Way Out. He turned to look back for a moment, and waved his
hand.
"Good-bye, old cabin! Good-bye, the rivers! Good-bye, the
woods!"
II
The House on the Main Street
All the good houses in Scroll-Saw City were different, in the
number and shape of the curious pinnacles that rose from their
roofs and in the trimmings of their verandas. Yet they were
all alike, too, in their general expression of putting their
best foot foremost and feeling quite sure that they made a
brave show. They had lace curtains in their front parlour
windows, and outside of the curtains were large red and yellow
pots of artificial flowers and indestructible palms and
vulcanised rubber-plants. It was a gay sight.
But by far the bravest of these houses was the residence
of Mr. Matthew Wilson, the principal merchant of Scroll-Saw
City. It stood on a corner of Main Street, glancing slyly out
of the tail of one eye, side-ways down the street, toward the
shop and the business, but keeping a bold, complacent front
toward the street-cars and the smaller houses across the way.
It might well be satisfied with itself, for it had three more
pinnacles than any of its neighbours, and the work of the
scroll-saw was looped and festooned all around the eaves and
porticoes and bay-windows in amazing richness. Moreover, in
the front yard were cast-iron images painted white: a stag
reposing on a door-mat; Diana properly dressed and returning
from the chase; a small iron boy holding over his head a
parasol from the ferrule of which a fountain squirted. The
paths were of asphalt, gray and gritty in winter, but now, in
the summer heat, black and pulpy to the tread.
There were many feet passing over them this afternoon, for
Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Wilson were giving a reception to
celebrate the official entrance of their daughter Amanda into a
social life which she had permeated unofficially for several
years. The house was sizzling full of people. Those who were
jammed in the parlour tried to get into the dining-room, and
those who were packed in the dining-room struggled to escape,
holding plates of stratified cake and liquefied ice-cream high
above their neighbours' heads like signals of danger and
distress. Everybody was talking at the same time, in a loud,
shrill voice, and nobody listened to what anybody else was
saying. But it did not matter, for they all said the same things.
"Elegant house for a party, so full of--" "How perfectly
lovely Amanda Wilson looks in that--" "Awfully warm day!
Were you at the Tompkins' last--" "Wilson's Emporium must be
doing good business to keep up all this--" "Hear he's going
to enlarge the store and take Luke Woods into the--"
"Shouldn't wonder if there might be a wedding here before
next--"
The tide of chatter rose and swelled and ebbed and
suddenly sank away. At six o'clock, the minister and two
maiden ladies in black silk with lilac ribbons, laid down their
last plates of ice-cream and said they thought they must be
going. Amanda and her mother preened their dresses and patted
their hair. Come into the study," said Mr. Wilson to Luke. "I
want to have a talk with you."
The little bookless room, called the study, was the one
that kept its eye on the shop and the business, away down the
street. You could see the brick front, and the plate-glass
windows, and part of the gilt sign.
"Pretty good store," said Mr. Wilson, jingling the keys in
his pocket, "does the biggest trade in the county, biggest but
one in the whole state, I guess. And I must say, Luke Woods,
you've done your share, these last five years, in building it
up. Never had a clerk work so hard and so steady. You've got
good business sense, I guess."
"I'm glad you think so," said Luke. "I did as well as I
could."
"Yes," said the elder man, "and now I'm about ready to
take you in with me, give you a share in the business. I want
some one to help me run it, make it larger. We can double it,
easy, if we stick to it and spread out. No reason why you
shouldn't make a fortune out of it, and have a house just like
this on the other corner, when you're my age."
Luke's thoughts were wandering a little. They went out
from the stuffy room, beyond the dusty street, and the
jangling cars, and the gilt sign, and the shop full of
dry-goods and notions, and the high desks in the office--out
to the dim, cool forest, where Snowberry and Partridge-berry
and Wood-Magic grow. He heard the free winds rushing over the
tree-tops, and saw the trail winding away before him in the
green shade.
"You are very kind," said he, "I hope you will not be
disappointed in me. Sometimes I think, perhaps--"
"Not at all, not at all," said the other. "It's all
right. You're well fitted for it. And then, there's another
thing. I guess you like my daughter Amanda pretty well. Eh?
I've watched you, young man. I've had my eye on you! Now, of
course, I can't say much about it--never can be sure of these
kind of things, you know--but if you and she--"
The voice went on rolling out words complacently. But
something strange was working in Luke's blood,
and other voices were sounding faintly in his ears. He heard
the lisping of the leaves on the little poplar-trees, the
whistle of the black duck's wings as he circled in the air,
the distant drumming of the grouse on his log, the rumble of
the water-fall in the River of Rocks. The spray cooled his
face. He saw the fish rising along the pool, and a stag
feeding among the lily-pads.
"I don't know how to thank you, Mr. Wilson," said he at
last, when the elder man stopped talking. "You have certainly
treated me most generously. The only question is, whether--
But to-morrow night, I think, with your consent, I will speak
to your daughter. To-night I am going down to the store;
there is a good deal of work to do on the books."
But when Luke came to the store, he did not go in. He
walked along the street till he came to the river.
The water-side was strangely deserted. Everybody was at
supper. A couple of schooners were moored at the wharf. The
Portland steamer had gone out. The row-boats hung idle at their
little dock. Down the river, drifting and dancing lightly over
the opalescent ripples, following the gentle turns of the current
which flowed past the end of the dock where Luke was standing,
came a white canoe, empty and astray.
III
The White Canoe
"That looks just like my old canoe," said he. "Somebody must
have left it adrift up the river. I wonder how it floated
down here without being picked up." He put out his hand and
caught it, as it touched the dock.
In the stern a good paddle of maple-wood was lying; in the
middle there was a roll of blankets and a pack of camp-stuff; in
the bow a rifle.
"All ready for a trip," he laughed. "Nobody going but me?
Well, then, au large!" And stepping into the canoe he
pushed out on the river.
The saffron and golden lights in the sky diffused
themselves over the surface of the water, and spread from the bow
of the canoe in deeper waves of purple and orange, as he paddled
swiftly up stream. The pale yellow gas-lamps of the town faded
behind him. The lumber-yards and factories and disconsolate
little houses of the outskirts seemed to melt away. In a little
while he was floating between dark walls of forest, through the
heart of the wilderness.
The night deepened around him and the sky hung out its
thousand lamps. Odours of the woods floated on the air: the
spicy fragrance of the firs; the breath of hidden banks of
twin-flower. Muskrats swam noiselessly in the shadows, diving
with a great commotion as the canoe ran upon them suddenly.
A horned owl hooted from the branch of a dead pine-tree; far
back in the forest a fox barked twice. The moon crept up
behind the wall of trees and touched the stream with silver.
Presently the forest receded: the banks of the river grew
broad and open; the dew glistened on the tall grass; it was
surely the River of Meadows. Far ahead of him in a bend of
the stream, Luke's ear caught a new sound: SLOSH, SLOSH, SLOSH,
as if some heavy animal were crossing the wet meadow. Then a
great splash! Luke swung the canoe into the shadow of the bank
and paddled fast. As he turned the point a black bear came out
of the river, and stood on the shore, shaking the water around
him in glittering spray. Ping! said the rifle, and the bear
fell. "Good luck!" said Luke. "I haven't forgotten how,
after all. I'll take him into the canoe, and dress him up at
the camp."
Yes, there was the little cabin at the meeting of the
rivers. The door was padlocked, but Luke knew how to pry off
one of the staples. Squirrels had made a litter on the floor,
but that was soon swept out, and a fire crackled in the stove.
There was tea and ham and bread in the pack in the canoe.
Supper never tasted better. "One more night in the old camp,"
said Luke as he rolled himself in the blanket and dropped
asleep in a moment.
The sun shone in at the door and woke him. "I must have
a trout for breakfast," he cried, "there's one waiting for me
at the mouth of Alder Brook, I suppose." So he caught up his
rod from behind the door, and got into the canoe and paddled
up the River of Rocks. There was the broad, dark pool, like a
little lake, with a rapid running in at the head, and close
beside the rapid, the mouth of the brook. He sent his fly out by
the edge of the alders. There was a huge swirl on the water, and
the great-grandfather of all the trout in the river was
hooked. Up and down the pool he played for half an hour,
until at last the fight was over, and for want of a net Luke
beached him on the gravel bank at the foot of the pool.
"Seven pounds if it's an ounce," said he. "This is my
lucky day. Now all I need is some good meat to provision the
camp."
He glanced down the river, and on the second point below
the pool he saw a great black bullmoose with horns five feet
wide.
Quietly, swiftly, the canoe went gliding down the stream;
and ever as it crept along, the moose loped easily before it,
from point to point, from bay to bay, past the little cabin,
down the River of the Way Out, now rustling unseen through a
bank of tall alders, now standing out for a moment bold and
black on a beach of white sand--so all day long the moose loped
down the stream and the white canoe followed. Just as the
setting sun was poised above the trees, the great bull stopped
and stood with head lifted. Luke pushed the canoe as near as he
dared, and looked down for the rifle. He had left it at the
cabin! The moose tossed his huge antlers, grunted, and stepped
quietly over the bushes into the forest.
Luke paddled on down the stream. It occurred to him,
suddenly, that it was near evening. He wondered a little how
he should reach home in time for his engagement. But it did
not seem strange, as he went swiftly on with the river, to see
the first houses of the town, and the lumber-yards, and the
schooners at the wharf.
He made the canoe fast at the dock, and went up the Main
Street. There was the old shop, but the sign over it read,
"Wilson and Woods Company, The Big Store." He went on to the
house with the white iron images in the front yard. Diana was
still returning from the chase. The fountain still squirted
from the point of the little boy's parasol.
On the veranda sat a stout man in a rocking chair, reading the
newspaper. At the side of the house two little girls with
pig-tails were playing croquet. Some one in the parlour was
executing "After the Ball is Over" on a mechanical piano.
Luke accosted a stranger who passed him. "Excuse me, but
can you tell me whether this is Mr. Matthew Wilson's house?"
"It used to be," said the stranger, "but old man Wilson
has been dead these ten years."
"And who lives here now?" asked Luke.
"Mr. Woods: he married Wilson's daughter," said the
stranger, and went on his way.
"Well," said Luke to himself, "this is just a little
queer. Woods was my name for a while, when I lived here, but
now, I suppose, I'm Luke Dubois again. Dashed if I can
understand it. Somebody must have been dreaming."
So he went back to the white canoe, and paddled away up
the river, and nobody in Scroll-Saw City ever set eyes on him
again.
-THE END-
Henry Van Dyke's short story: Wood-Magic
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