October Vagabonds | Page 5

things is over. The
birds sing no more, but only chatter about time-tables. The bee keeps to
his hive, and the bewildered butterfly, in tattered ball-dress, wonders
what has become of his flowery partners. The great cricket factory has
shut down. Not a wheel is heard whirring. The squirrel has lost his
playful air, and has an anxious manner, as though there were no time to
waste before stocking his granary. Everywhere berries have taken the
place of buds, and bearded grasses the place of flowers. Even the
goldenrod has fallen to rust, and the stars of the aster are already
tarnished. Only along the edges of the wood the dry little paper
immortelles spread long shrouds and wreaths in the shade.
Suddenly you feel lonely in the woods, which had seemed so
companionable all Summer. What is it--Who is it--that has gone?
Though quite alone, there was some one with you all Summer, an
invisible being filling the woods with his presence, and always at your
side, or somewhere near by. But to-day, through all the green halls and
chambers of the wood, you seek him in vain. You call, but there is no
answer. You wait, but he does not come. He has gone. The wood is an
empty palace. The prince went away secretly in the night. The wood is
a deserted temple. The god has betaken himself to some secret abode.
Everywhere you come upon chill, abandoned altars, littered debris of
Summer sacrifices. Maybe he is dead, and perchance, deeper in the
wood, you may come upon his marble form in a winding-sheet of
drifting leaves.
Not a god, maybe, you have pictured him, not a prince, but surely as a
friend--the mysterious Green Friend of the green silence and the golden
hush of Summer noons. The mysterious Green Friend of the woods! So
strangely by our side all Summer, so strangely gone away. It is in vain

to await him under our morning sycamore, nor under the great maples
shall we find him walking, nor amid the alder thickets discover him,
nor yet in the little ravine beneath the pines. No! he has surely gone
away, and his great house seems empty without him, desolate, filled
with lamentation, all its doors and windows open to the Winter snows.
But the Green Friend had left me a message. I found it at the roots of
some violets. "I shall be back again next year" he said.
CHAPTER VI
IN THE WAKE OF SUMMER
Yes, it was time to be going, and the thought was much on both our
minds. We had as yet, however, made no plans, had not indeed
discussed any; but one afternoon, late in September, driven indoors by
a sudden squall of rain, I came to Colin with an idea. The night before
we had had the first real storm of the season.
"Ah! This will do their business," Colin had said, referring to the trees,
as we heard the wind and rain tearing and splashing through the
pitch-dark woods. "It will be a different world in the morning."
And indeed it was. Cruel was the work of dismantling that had gone on
during the night. The roof of the wood had fallen in in a score of places,
letting in the sky through unfamiliar windows; and the distant prospect
showed through the torn tapestry of the trees with a startling sense of
disclosure. The dishevelled world wore the distressed look of a nymph
caught déshabillée. The expression, "the naked woods," occurred to
one with almost a sense of impropriety. At least there was a cynical
indecorum in this violent disrobing of the landscape.
"Colin," I said, coming to him with my idea. "We've got to go, of
course, but I've been thinking--don't you hate the idea of being hurled
along in a train, and suddenly shot into the city again, like a package
through a tube?"
"Hate it? Don't ask me," said Colin.

"If only it could be more gradual," I went on. "Suppose, for instance,
instead of taking the train, we should walk it!"
"Walk to New York?" said Colin, with a surprised whistle.
"Yes! Why not?"
"Something of a walk, old man."
"All the better. We shall be all the longer getting there. But, listen. To
go by train would be almost too sudden a shock. I don't believe we
could stand it. To be here to-day, breathing this God's fresh air, living
the lives of natural men in a natural world, and to-morrow--Broadway,
the horrible crowds, the hustle, the dirt, the smells, the uproar."
For answer Colin watched the clean rain fleeting through the trees, and
groaned aloud.
"But now if we walked, we would, so to say, let ourselves down lightly,
inure ourselves by gradual approach to the thought of