October Vagabonds Part 2

"Old man," he said, "that's just great. It's an inspiration from on high.

It makes me feel better already. Gee! but that's bully."

French as was his blood, it will be observed that Colin's expletives were thoroughly American. Of course, he should have said _sacre mille cochons_ or _nom de Dieu de nom de Dieu_; but, though in appearance, so to say, an embodied "_sacre"_ he seemed to find the American vernacular sufficiently expressive.

"Is it a go, then?" said I.

"It's a go," said Colin, once more in American.

And we shook on it.

CHAPTER VII

MAPS AND FAREWELLS

It was wonderful what a change our new plan wrought in our spirits.

Our melancholy was immediately dispersed, and its place taken by active antic.i.p.ations of our journey. The North wind in the trees, instead of bl.u.s.tering dismissal, sounded to our ears like the fluttering of the blue-peter at the masthead of our voyage. Strange heart of man! A day back we were in tears at the thought of going. Now we are all smiles to think of it, all impatience to be gone. We quote Whitman a dozen times in the hour, and it is all "afoot and light-hearted" with us, and "the open road."

But there were some farewells to make to people as well as to trees.

There were friends at Elim to bid adieu, and also there were maps to be consulted, and knapsacks to be packed--exhilarating preparations.

Our friends looked at us, when we had unfolded our project, with a mixture of surprise and pity. "Amiable lunatics" was the first comment of their countenances, and--"There never was any telling what the artistic temperament would do next!" Had we announced an air-s.h.i.+p voyage to the moon, they would have regarded us as comparatively reasonable, but to walk--_to walk_--some four or five hundred miles in America, of all countries, a country of palace cars and, lightning limited expresses, not to mention homicidal touring automobiles, seemed like--what shall I say?--well, as though one should start out for New Zealand in a row-boat, or make the trip to St. Petersburg in a sedan-chair.

But there were others--especially the women--who understood, felt as we did, and longed to go with us. I have never met a woman yet whose face did not light up at the thought of a walking tour, and in her heart long to don Rosalind clothes and set forth in search of adventures. We thus had the advantage, in planning our route, of several prettily coiffed heads bending over our maps and guide-books with us.

"Four hundred and thirty miles," said one of these Rosalinds, whose pretty head was full of pictures of romantic European travel. "Think what one could do with four hundred and thirty miles in Europe. Let us try, for the fun of it."

And turning to a map of Europe, and measuring out four hundred and thirty miles by scale on a slip of paper, she tried it up and down the map from point to point. "Look at funny little England!" she said. "Why, you will practically be walking from one end of England to the other. See," and she fitted her scale to the map, "it would bring you easily from Portsmouth to Aberdeen.

"And now let us try France. Why, see again--you will be walking from Calais to Ma.r.s.eilles--think of it! walking through France, all vineyards and beautiful names. Now Italy--see! you will be walking from Florence to Mount Etna--Florence, Rome, Naples, Palermo."

And so in imagination our fair friend sketched out fanciful pilgrimages for us. "You could walk from Gibraltar to the Pyrenees," she went on.

"You could walk from Venice to Berlin; from Brussels to Copenhagen; you could walk from Munich to Budapest; you could walk right across Turkey, from Constantinople to the Adriatic Sea. And Greece--see! you could walk from Sparta to the Danube. To think of the romantic use you could make of your four-hundred-odd-miles, and how different it sounds--Buffalo to New York!"

And again she repeated, luxuriating in the romantic sound of the words: "Constantinople to the Adriatic! Sparta to the Danube!--Buffalo to New York!"

There was not wanting to the party the whole-souled, my-country-'tis-of-thee American, who somewhat resented these European comparisons, and declared that America was good enough for her, clearly intimating that a certain lack of patriotism, even a certain immorality, attached to the admiration of foreign countries. She also told us somewhat severely that the same stars, if not better, shone over America as over any other country, and that American scenery was the finest in the world--not to speak of the American climate.

To all of which we bowed our heads in silence--but the frivolous, European-minded Rosalind who had got us into this trouble retorted with a grave face: "Wouldn't you just love, dear Miss----, to walk from Hackensack to Omaha?"

Another voice was kind enough to explain for our encouragement that the traveller found in a place exactly what he brought there, and that romance was a personal gift, all in the personal point of view.

"A sort of cosmetic you apply to the face of Nature," footnoted our irrepressible friend.

Still another reminded us that "to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive," and still another strongly advised us to carry revolvers.

So, taking with us our maps and much good advice, we bade farewell to our friends, and walked back to our camp under the stars--the same stars that were s.h.i.+ning over Constantinople.

The next day, when all our preparations were complete, the shack swept and garnished, and our knapsacks bulging in readiness for the road, Colin took his brushes, and in a few minutes had decorated one of the walls with an Autumn sunset--a sort of memorial tablet to our Summer, he explained.

"Can't you think up a verse to put underneath?" he asked.

Then underneath he lettered:

_Two lovers of the Sun and of the Moon, Lovers of Tree and Gra.s.s and Bug and Bird, Spent here the Summer days, then all too soon Upon the homeward track reluctant fared.

Sun-up, October 1, 1908._

Some apples remained over from our larder. We carefully laid them outside for the squirrels; then, slinging our knapsacks, we took a last look round the little place, and locked the door.

Our way lay up the hill, across the pasture and through the beeches, toward the sky-line.

We stood still a moment, gazing at the well-loved landscape. Then we turned and breasted the hill.

"_Allons_!" cried Colin.

"_Allons_!" I answered. "_Allons_! To New York!"

CHAPTER VIII

THE AMERICAN BLUEBIRD AND ITS SONG

I wish I could convey the singular feeling of freedom and adventure that possessed us as Colin and I grasped our sticks and struck up the green hill--for New York. It was a feeling of exhilaration and romantic expectancy, blent with an absurd sense of our being entirely on our own resources, vagrants s.h.i.+fting for ourselves, independent of civilization; which, of course, the actual circ.u.mstances in no way warranted. A delightful boyish illusion of entering on untrodden paths and facing unknown dangers thrilled through us.

"Well, we're off!" we said simultaneously, smiling interrogatively at each other.

"Yes! we're in for it."

So men start out manfully for the North Pole.

Our little enterprise gave us an imaginative realization of the solidarity, the interdependence, of the world; and we saw, as in a vision, its four corners knit together by a vast network of paths connecting one with the other; footpaths, byways, cart-tracks, bride-paths, lovers' lanes, highroads, all sensitively linked in one vast nervous system of human communication. This field whose green sod we were treading connected with another field, that with another, and that again with another--all the way to New York--all the way to Cape Horn! No break anywhere. All we had to do was to go on putting one foot before the other, and we could arrive anywhere. So the worn old phrase, "All roads lead to Rome," lit up with a new meaning, the meaning that had originally made it. Yes! the loneliest of lovers' lanes, all silence and wild flowers, was on the way to the Metropolitan Opera House; or, vice versa, the Flat Iron Building was on the way to the depths of the forest.

"Suppose we stop here, Colin," I said, pointing to a solitary, forgotten-looking little farmhouse, surrounded by giant wind-worn poplars that looked older than America, "and ask the way to Versailles?"

"And I shouldn't be surprised," answered Colin, "if we struck some bright little American schoolgirl who could tell us."

Although we as yet knew every foot of the ground we were treading, it already began to wear an unfamiliar houseless and homeless look, an air of foreign travel, and though the shack was but a few yards behind us, it seemed already miles away, wrapped in lonely distance, wistfully forsaken. Everything we looked at seemed to have gained a new importance and significance; every tree and bush seemed to say, "So many miles to New York," and we unconsciously looked at and remarked on the most trifling objects with the eye of explorers, and took as minute an interest in the usual bird and wayside weed as though we were engaged in some "flora and fauna" survey of untrodden regions.

"That's a bluebird," said Colin, as a faint pee-weeing came with a thin melancholy note from a telegraph wire. And we both listened attentively, with a learned air, as though making a mental note for some ornithological society in New York. "Bluebird seen in Erie County, October 1, 1908!" So might Sir John Mandeville have noted the occurrence of birds of paradise in the domains of Prester John.