October Vagabonds | Page 4

was gone.
After our first meeting, Colin had dropped in to see me again from time
to time, and when his work at the great house was finished, I had asked
him to come and share my solitude. A veritable child of Nature himself,
he fitted into my quiet days as silently as a squirrel. So much of his life

had been passed out-of-doors with trees and skies, long dream-like days
all alone sketching in solitary places, that he seemed as much a part of
the woods as though he were a faun, and the lore of the elements, and
all natural things--bugs and birds, all wildwood creatures--had passed
into him with unconscious absorption. A sort of boyish
unconsciousness, indeed, was the keynote and charm of his nature. A
less sophisticated creature never followed the mystic calling of art.
Fortunately for me, he was not one of those painters who understand
and expound their own work. On the contrary, he was a perfect child
about it, and painted for no more mysterious reason than that his eye
delighted in beautiful natural effects, and that he loved to play with
paint and brushes. Though he was undoubtedly sensitive somewhere to
the mystic side of Nature, her Wordsworthian "intimations," you would
hardly have guessed it from his talk. "A bully bit of colour," would be
his craftsmanlike way of describing a twilight full of sibylline
suggestiveness to the literary mind. But, strangely enough, when he
brought you his sketch, all your "sibylline suggestiveness" was there,
which of course means, after all, that painting was his way of seeing
and saying it.
The moon rose as we smoked on, and began to lattice with silver the
darkness of the glen, and flood the hillside with misty radiance. Colin
made for his sketch-box.
"I must make good use of this moon," he said, "before we go."
"And so must I," said I, laughing as we both went out into the night, he
one way and I another, to make our different uses of the moon.
An hour later Colin turned in with a panel that seemed made of
moonlight. "How on earth did you do it?" I said. "It is as though you
had drawn up the moon in a silver bucket from the bottom of a fairy
well."
"No, no," he protested; "I know better. But where is your clair de
lune?"
"Nothing doing," I answered.

"Well, then, say those lines you wrote a week or two ago instead."
"'Berries already,' do you mean?"
"Yes."
Here are the lines he meant:
Berries already, September soon,-- The shortening day and ike early
moon; The year is busy with next year's flowers The seeds are ready for
next year' showers; Through a thousand tossing trees there swells The
sigh of the Summer's sad farewells. Too soon those leaves in the sunset
sky Low down on the wintry ground will lie, And grim November and
December Leave naught of Summer to remember-- Saving some flower
in a book put by, Secure from the soft effacing snow, Though all the
rest of the Summer go.
CHAPTER V
THE GREEN FRIEND
Though we had received such unmistakable notice to quit, we still
lingered on in our solitude, after the manner of defiant tenants whom
nothing short of corporal ejection can dislodge. The North wind began
to roar in the tree-tops and shake the doors and windows of the shack,
like an angry landlord, but we paid no heed to him. Yet, all the time,
both of us, in our several ways, were saying our farewells, and packing
up our memories for departure. There was an old elm-tree which Colin
had taken for his Summer god, and which he was never tired of
painting. He must make the one perfect study of that before we pulled
up stakes. So, each day, after our morning adoration of the sun, we
would separate about our different ways and business.
The woods were already beginning to wear a wistful, dejected look.
There was a feeling of departure everywhere, a sense that the year's
excitements were over. The procession had gone by, and there was an
empty, purposeless air of waiting-about upon things, a sort of
despairing longing for something else to happen--and a sure sense that

nothing more could happen till next year. Every event in the floral
calendar had taken place with immemorial punctuality and tragic
rapidity. All the full-blooded flowers of Summer had long since come
and gone, with their magic faces and their souls of perfume. Gone were
the banners of blossom from the great trees. The locust and the chestnut,
those spendthrifts of the woods, that went the pace so gorgeously in
June, are now sober-coated enough, and growing even threadbare. All
the hum and the honey and breathless bosom-beat of