October Vagabonds Part 7

It was a day on which you had no wish to talk,--you were too happy,--wanted only to wander on and on as in a dream through the mellow vale--one of those days in which the world seems too good to be true, a day of which we feel, "This day can never come again." It was like walking through the Twenty-third Psalm. And, as it closed about us, as we came to our village at nightfall, and the suns.h.i.+ne, like a sinking lake of gold, grew softer and softer behind the uplands, the solid world of rock and tree, and stubble-field and cl.u.s.tered barns, seemed to be growing pure thought--nothing seemed left of it but spirit; and the hills had become as the luminous veil of some ineffable temple of the mysterious dream of the world.

"Puvis de Chavannes!" said Colin to me in a whisper.

And later I tried to say better what I meant in this song:

_Strange, at this still enchanted hour, How things in daylight hard and rough, Iron and stone and cruel power, Turn to such airy, starlit stuff!

Yon mountain, vast as Behemoth, Seems but a veil of silver breath; And soundless as a flittering moth, And gentle as the face of death,

Stands this stern world of rock and tree Lost in some hushed sidereal dream-- The only living thing a bird, The only moving thing a stream.

And, strange to think, yon silent star, So soft and safe amid the spheres-- Could we but see and hear so far-- Is made of thunder, too, and tears._

CHAPTER XVII

CONTAINING VALUABLE STATISTICS

And the morning was like unto the evening. Summer was still to be our companion, and, as the evening of our coming to Cohocton had been the most dreamlike of all the ends of our walking days--had, so to say, been most evening-spiritual, so the morning of our Cohocton seemed most morning-spiritual of all our mornings, most filled with strange hope and thrill and glitter. We were afoot earlier than usual. The sun had hardly risen, and the s.h.i.+ning mists still wreathed the great hill which overhangs the village. We were for calling it a mountain, but we were told that it lacked fifty feet of being a mountain. You are not a mountain till you grow to a thousand feet. Our mountain was only some nine hundred and fifty feet. Therefore, it was only ent.i.tled to be called a hill. I love information--don't you, dear reader?--though, to us humble walking delegates of the ideal, it was all one. But I know for certain that it was a lane of young maples which made our avenue of light-hearted departure out of the village, though I cannot be sure of the names of all the trees of the thick woods which clothed the hillside beneath which our road lay, a huge endless hillside all dripping and sparkling, and alive with little rills, facing a broad plain, a sea of feathery gra.s.s almost unbearably beautiful with soft glittering dew and opal mists, out of which rose spectral elms, like the shadows of gigantic Shanghai roosters. All about was the sound of brooks musically rippling from the hills, and there was a chaste chill in the air, as befitted the time of day, for

_Maiden still the morn is, and strange she is, and secret, Her cheeks are cold as cold sea-sh.e.l.ls_.

It was all so beautiful that an old thought came back to me that I often had as a child, when I used to be taken among mysterious mountains, for Summer holidays: Do people really live in such beautiful places all the year round? Do they live there just like ordinary people in towns, go about ordinary businesses, live ordinary lives? It seemed to me then, as it seems to me still, that such places should be kept sacred, like fairyland, or should, at least, be the background of high and romantic action, like the scenery in operas. To think of a valley so beautiful as that through which we were walking being put to any other use than that of beauty seems preposterous; but do you know what that beautiful valley was doing, while Colin and I were thus poetizing it, adoring its outlines and revelling in its tints? It was just quietly growing potatoes. Yes! we had mostly pa.s.sed through the apple country. This garden of Eden, this Vale of Enna, was a great potato country. And we learned, too, that its inhabitants were by no means so pleased with beautiful Cohoctori Valley as we were. Here, we gathered, was another beautiful ne'er-do-well of Nature, too occupied with her good looks to be fit for much else than prinking herself out with wild-flowers, and falling into graceful att.i.tudes before her mirror--and there were mirrors in plenty, many streams and willows, in Cohocton Valley; everywhere, for us, the mysterious charm of running water. Once this idle daughter of Ceres used to grow wheat, wheat "in great plenty," but now she could be persuaded to grow nothing but potatoes.

All this and much more we learned from a friend who drew up beside us in a buggy, as I was drinking from a gleaming thread of water gliding down a mossed conduit of hollowed tree-trunks into an old cauldron sunk into the hillside, and long since turned in ferns and lichen. Colin was seated near by making a sketch, as I drank.

"I wouldn't drink too much of that water, lads," said the friendly voice of the dapper little intelligent-faced man in the buggy.

What! not drink this fairy water?

"Why, you country folk are as afraid of fresh water as you are of fresh air," I answered, laughing.

"All right, it's up to you--but it's been a dry Summer, you know."

And then the little man's attention was taken by Colin.

"Sketching?" he asked, and then he said, half shyly, "Would you mind my taking a look how you do it?" and, climbing down from his buggy, he came and looked over Colin's shoulder. "I used to try my hand at it a bit when I was a boy, but those blamed trees always beat me ... don't bother you much, seemingly though," he added, as he watched Colin's pencil with the curiosity of a child.

"I've a little girl at home who does pretty well," he continued after a moment, "but you've certainly got her skinned. I wish she could see you doing it."

His delight in a form of skill which has always been as magical to me as it seemed to him, was charmingly boyish, and Colin turned over his sketch-book, and showed him the notes he had made as we went along. One of a stump fence particularly delighted him--those stump fences made out of the roots of pine trees set side by side, which had been a feature of the country some miles back, and which make such a weird impression on the landscape, like rows of gigantic black antlers, or many-armed Hindoo idols, or a horde of Zulus in fantastic war-gear drawn up in battle-array, or the blackened stumps of giants' teeth--Colin and I tried all those images and many more to express the curious weird effect of coming upon them in the midst of a green and smiling landscape.

"Well, lads," he said, after we had talked awhile, "I shall have to be going. But you've given me a great deal of pleasure. Can't I give you a lift in exchange? I guess there is room for the three of us."

Now Colin and I, on the occasion of our ride with the apple-farmer, awhile back, had held subtle casuistical debate on the legitimacy of men ostensibly, not to say ostentatiously, on foot to New York picking up chance rides in this way. The argument had gone into pursuit of very fine distinctions, and almost rivalled in its casuistry the famous old Duns Scotus--or was it Thomas Aquinas?--debate as to how many angels can dance on the point of a needle. Once we had come to a deadlock as to the kind of vehicle from which it was proper to accept such hospitality. Perhaps it was a Puritan scrupulousness in my blood that had made me take the stand that four-wheeled vehicles, such as wagons, hay-carts and the like, being slow-moving, were permissible, but that buggies, or any form of rapid two-wheeled vehicle, were not. To this Colin had retorted that, on that basis, a tally-ho would be all right, or even an automobile. So the argument had wrestled from side to side, and finally we had compromised.

We agreed that an occasional buggy would be within the vagabond law and that any vehicle, other, of course, than an automobile, which was not plying for hire--such as a trolley or a local train--might on occasion be gratefully climbed into.

Thus it was that we hesitated a moment at the offer of our friend, a hesitancy we amused him by explaining as, presently, conscience-clear, we rattled with him through the hills. He was an interesting talker, a human-hearted, keen-minded man, and he had many more topics as well as potatoes. Besides, he was not in the potato business, but, as with our former friend, his beautiful business was apples. Still, he talked very entertainingly about potatoes; telling us, among other things, that, so friendly was the soil toward that particular vegetable that it yielded as much as a hundred to a hundred and fifty bushels to the acre, and that a fair-sized potato farm thereabouts, properly handled, would pay for itself in a year. I transcribe this information, not merely because I think that, among so many words, the reader is fairly ent.i.tled to expect some little information, but chiefly for the benefit of a friend of mine, the like of whom, no doubt, the reader counts among his acquaintances.

The friend I mean has a mind so quaintly voracious of facts that, often when we have been dining together at one of the great hotels, he would speculate, say, looking round the room filled with eager diners, on how many clams are nightly consumed in New York City, or how many millions of fresh eggs New York requires each morning for breakfast. So when next I dine with him I will say, as he asks me about my trip:

"Do you know that in the Cohocton Valley they raise as much as one hundred to one hundred and fifty bushels of potatoes to the acre?" And he will say:

"You don't really mean to say so?"

I have in my private note-book much more such tabulated information which I picked up and h.o.a.rded for his entertainment, just as whenever a letter comes to me from abroad, I tear off the stamp and save it for a little girl I love.

But, as I said, our friend in the buggy was by no means limited to potatoes for his conversation. He was learned in the geography of the valley and told us how once the Cohocton River, now merely a decorative stream among willows, was once a serviceable waterway, how it was once busy with mills, and how men used to raft down it as far as Elmira.

But "the springs were drying up." I liked the mysterious sound of that, and still more his mysterious story of an undercurrent from the Great Lakes that runs beneath the valley. I seemed to hear the sound of its strange subterranean flow as he talked. Such is the fun of knowing so little about the world. The simplest fact out of a child's geography thus comes to one new and marvellous.

Well, we had to say good-bye at last to our friend at a cross-road, and we left him learnedly discussing the current prices of apples with a business acquaintance who had just driven up--Kings, Rambos, Baldwins, Greenings, and Spigs. And, by the way, in packing apples into barrels, you must always pack them--stems down. Be careful to remember that.

CHAPTER XVIII

A DITHYRAMBUS OF b.u.t.tEEMILK

One discovery of some importance you make in walking the roads is the comparative rarity and exceeding preciousness of b.u.t.termilk. We had, as I said, caught up with Summer. Summer, need one say, is a thirsty companion, and the State seemed suddenly to have gone dry. We looked in vain for magic mirrors by the roadside, overhung with fairy gra.s.ses, littered with Autumn leaves, and skated over by nimble water-bugs. As our friend had said, the springs seemed to have dried up. Now and again we would hail with a great cry a friendly pump; once we came upon a cider-mill, but it was not working, and time and again we knocked and asked in vain for b.u.t.termilk. Sometimes, but not often, we found it. Once we met a genial old man just leaving his farm door, and told him that we were literally dying for a drink of b.u.t.termilk. Our expression seemed to tickle him.

"Well!" he said, laughing, "it shall never be said that two poor creatures pa.s.sed my door, and died for lack of a gla.s.s of b.u.t.termilk,"

and he brought out a huge jug, for which he would accept nothing but our blessings. He seemed to take b.u.t.termilk lightly; but, one evening, we came upon another old farmer to whom b.u.t.termilk seemed a species of the water of life to be h.o.a.rded jealously and doled out in careful quant.i.ties at strictly market rates.

In town one imagines that country people give their b.u.t.termilk to the pigs. At any rate, they didn't give it to us. We paid that old man twenty cents, for we drank two gla.s.ses apiece. And first we had knocked at the farm door, and told our need to a pretty young woman, who answered, with some hesitancy, that she would call "father." She seemed to live in some awe of "father," as we well understood when a tall, raw-boned, stern, old man, of the caricature "Brother Jonathan" type, appeared grimly, making an iron sound with a great bunch of keys. On hearing our request, he said nothing, but, motioning to us to follow, stalked across the farmyard to a small building under a great elm-tree.

There were two steps down to the door, and it had a mysterious appearance. It might have been a family vault, a dynamite magazine, or the Well at the World's End. It was the strong-room of the milk; and, when the grim old guardian of the dairy unlocked the door, with a sound of rusty locks and falling bolts, there, cool and cloistral, were the fragrant pans and bowls, the most sacred vessels of the farm.

"_She bathed her body many a time In fountains filled with milk_."

I hummed to Colin; but I took care that the old man didn't hear me. And we agreed, as we went on again along the road, that he did right to guard well and charge well for so n.o.ble and so innocent a drink. Indeed, the old fellow's b.u.t.termilk was so good that I think it must have gone to my head. In no other way can I account for the following dithyrambic song:

_Let whoso will sing Bacchus' vine, We know a drink that's more divine;

'Tis white and innocent as doves, Fragrant and bosom-white as love's

White bosom on a Summer day, And fragrant as the hawthorn spray.

Let Dionysus and his crew, Garlanded, drain their fevered brew,

And in the orgiastic bowl Drug and besot the sacred soul;

This simple country cup we drain Knows not the ghosts of sin and pain,

No fates or furies follow him Who sips from its cream-mantled rim.