The Way of a Wood-Chopper
“ COUNTRY life,” said the Woodchopper, “ is happier now than ever it used to be.”
“ In what way? ” asked Civilia.
“ Oh, in every way,” returned the Wood-chopper. “ It has grown up to itself; it has developed a cult; a cult consciously Greek.”
Civilia, picking out a stump to perch upon, bent and counted the mysterious inner rings. “ This tree,” she announced, “ was seventy-five years old. What fun to know! Go on talking, Wood-chopper.”
The Wood-chopper, leaning on his buck-saw, his pipe in his mouth, stared at her.
“ That little square piece of lace in the neck of your gown — it is like a drink to a thirsty man; you look like the women of Bernardino Luini, or the Raibolini ‘Francia’; your hair with the sun on it has the most curious dappled look.”
Civilia, for answer, stuck out a slippered toe; she kicked viciously at a chip. “ I must be going in the house,” she remarked meaningly. “ The Troubadour’s wife is waiting to walk with me.”
“Forgive me; I forgot. One does forget, you know,—especially in the country. I was saying,” the Woodchopper’s hazel eyes looked daring — “ Now just what was I saying? ”
“ That thing about country life,” prompted Civilia briskly. “And please work while you talk; I came out here to see you work; it was that,” with emphasis, “ that interested me.”
“ Ah ? — Oh, yes.” The Wood-chopper ran his hand along the flat bands of the saw. “ Country life. I mean that it’s grown a new side; that, to my thinking, is the result, the only good result, of this extravagant age. In the old days they had a golden period, when every one had time and money to indulge in æsthetic tastes. Well, the country life demonstrates our ‘Golden Age.’ The new farmer has, you might say, learned the symbolism of his surroundings.”
“ How? ”
“ Well, for example.” The Woodchopper picked up a huge knotty log, set it on the saw-buck, and braced it with his knee; he then threw Civilia a humorous look, announcing, “ The Kitchen-Fire Sonata. First movement — adagio — cantabile, legato.”
“You funny thing!”
The Wood-chopper began to saw. His long, firm hands, grasping the uncouth implement, flashed back and forth in even rhythm. Civilia, sitting by, dreamily watched the sawdust fall. She stole glance after glance at the resolute line of the Wood-chopper’s lips, her eyes rested on his shoulders, rising, falling. Could this indeed be the same man who a year ago in the city had come to her, bitter, broken, ruined, to say good-by and ask her to forget him ?
“ I am so glad I could not forget him,” Civilia’s heart whispered. “Oh, how can I ever thank the Troubadour and his wife for bringing me here! ” Then, remembering, she bit her lip. “Mercy,” she reminded herself, “mercy, a Wood-chopper—? ”
The end of the log dropped off. The Wood-chopper, smiling, turned to Civilia and bowed. He limbered his saw; he took up a bit of bacon-rind and greased the broad band. His eyebrows were quizzically raised.
“ It is customary, at the end of the first movement, to applaud.”
Civilia blushed. “ I beg your pardon, I forgot. I was thinking, thinking of what you said, — that Greek countryconsciousness?— Explain, won’t you?”
“With pleasure.”
The Wood-chopper made as if to come and sit down beside her.
She shook her head, frowning.
“ No — of course if you can’t work and talk too — ” she said severely.
He considered. “ I can work and talk too,” he answered gravely. “Only, if I come over and chop off one of your little hands, at which I cannot help looking, don’t blame me. I can talk as I work. I practiced it all winter.”
“To whom did you talk?” suspiciously.
“To a fox, and my dog, Larry, and — myself, dear lady.” The Wood-chopper let her see the lonely look in his eyes. He drew the rest of the log into position and bowed again, saying, “ Before I attack this exceedingly difficult andante, before I explain that remark of mine about country symbolism, let me ask you a question, — several questions. To begin with, how did the sun look to you to-day at mid-day? ”
“What an odd question!” Civilia stooped to pick up some tiny white chips. “ It was wonderful — a great golden hub in the centre of an azure wheel of sky.”
“ I saw you when you were looking up and thinking that,” nodded the Wood-chopper. “ I was coming out of the barn. I was carrying a sack of potatoes, one of seventy sacks that I planted myself, dug myself, harvested myself. You were coming down out of the hill orchard, singing. You called out to me that you had named the orchard ‘The Court of Winged Blossoms’; you said that you had spent the morning on Japanese Fan Scenery, eating cloud-lotus and taking leaf dancing lessons. You wanted to know if I knew that the pasture brook played Paderewski’s ‘Minuet.’ You said that the apple-blossoms looked like — and then you bit your lip and were silent. Do you know that you had absolutely no right to look as you looked then? ”
“ How absurd of you! I had just found three white violets, and of course I was — ”
“Ah ? ” The Wood-chopper returned his tobacco-pouch to his corduroy pocket. “ That explains it. That was your finding-white-violets look. Next year I shall sow the whole south pasture with white violets.”
Civilia had collected quite a pile of little chips. Now she set one upon the other until they made a tower in her slender hand. She looked displeased.
“ You have not cultivated politeness, have you? You asked me a question. I answered it. But you refuse to explain that ‘ Greek-consciousness ’ idea, which really interested me.”
The Wood-chopper, however, was still evasive.
“What did you think, last night, when you went to bed and knew you were shut away from the world by those great mountains, and felt how little you were and heard the Silence? ”
He studied her curiously.
“ Oh,” she cried eagerly, “was n’t it wonderful? Of course, you are used to it; but I — it was the first time. It’s deeper than the middle of the ocean, is n’t it? Besides, there, you have always the noise of the screw and the cro’nest man calling out, ' ALL’S WELL.’ Here,” her voice was wistful, “no one calls ’All’s well,’ and you have to lie awake and look yourself in the face and wonder if all is well.”
The Wood-chopper stared. “ Lie awake and look yourself in the face,” he repeated. " You — pansy, you; how do you know about things like that? ”
Civilia, absorbed in what she was saying, did not notice his question.
“After the rats and ghosts and things had all quieted down; after the great gloomy Chord of Midnight was struck, I began to feel the hush, swelling in like a tide. It beat on my ears. I hid my head under the covers, ashamed because I could not bear it. I wanted to cry out and beg it to let me understand it. I got up and went to the window and looked out, and do you know what I thought?”
The Wood-chopper could not have known, he waited so anxiously to hear. He stood, head down, his hands in his pockets, kicking at chips and listening.
“ It seemed to me,” Civilia spoke softly, “ that the night was Omniscience. That was what made it so deathly quiet. The black sky was a silent bell studded with stars, and the moon hung in it like a moveless golden clapper — Oh, dear, — now you ’re not doing a stitch of work, — I told you you would n’t.”
But the Wood-chopper had become strangely eager. “ Wait a minute,” he said. “Listen. It’s these very things you’ve been telling that illustrate what, a few minutes ago, I was trying to say. You ’d never have thought them, dreamer though you are, unless you had had sophistication and the treasures of art and literature to play with. Little Greek, little Greek, don’t you see what the trained mind and the cultivated imagination are bringing to lonely roads and bare fields and black nights? The Old World symbols — they are coming into a New World’s life.”
“ You mean? ” Civilia hesitated.
“ I mean,” returned the Wood-chopper quickly, “that the anæmic, hysteric intensity of metropolitan existence is, by a sort of miracle, pouring forth a new and curious country vitality; the full-blooded, sensuous appreciation of sky and space and the manifestations of Nature. We Americans are not old enough yet, not deep enough, perhaps because our blood is not fused with the blood of some needed complementary race, to be able to draw our inspiration from the raw forms of commercialism, the crude, everyday urban surroundings. What culture we possess is, strangely enough, antipathetic to what things we produce. It was drawn from sources old, serene, contemplative. It cannot be nourished on modern outlines, modern decorations, the Heterogeneous, the Mass, the blot and blank and bump of the New.”
“Ah,” breathed Civilia. “Ah, but you do know how to say things! ”
The Wood-chopper looked his gratitude.
“ I had to come way off here and be sat upon by a mountain or two before I understood it myself,” he explained. “ Then I, who had always scorned the ‘Nature School,’ understood. The terrible passions of rapid transit, the increasing risk in adventure, the coldblooded advance of speculation and science, and the worship of money, must someday be absorbed into a new beauty cult; but not for us. We of to-day have our roots in a more exquisite soil; we, without being aware of it, have drunk of classicism. Beauty for us has grown to be the breath of life, health its expression, freedom its religion, and the country its Temple.”
Civilia looked thoughtfully at him. “How oddly you have changed,” — she spoke timidly; “ this is so different from last winter, when you were such a — ”
“ Well, say — sickly jackass,” suggested the Wood-chopper.
“ No,” she answered him, shaking her head, “only lazy, purposeless; playing and drinking until that awful day — ” She shuddered, frowning at her handful of chips.
“We will say fool jackass,” insisted the Wood-chopper. “ But, little Civilia, I got a heap out of it, that failure of mine. Here I am, in the country, up against it, as they say, hustling to get my share of the fruits of the earth; yet no matter what menial work I do, I am worshiping in my chosen temple; I’m Apollo, I’m Bacchus, and Mercury, and all the rest of them.”
For a moment Civilia regarded him delightedly, as he stood there, one foot planted on the chopping-block, smiling at her. Then her face changed; she stamped her foot.
“ You,” she exclaimed vindictively, “you — get to work.” Civilia gave what she thought a very good imitation of a man-driving shrew.
“ Oh!” muttered the Wood-chopper, “oh! if you only — if only you were — ”
He seized the axe, fixed a knotty segment in correct position, and struck an attitude.
“ Andante maestoso. Sorry to give you two slow movements in succession; I don’t do the molto perpetuo and the tremolo vivace until I come to the kindlings and my little hatchet.”
Down came the strong, steady cleave; the blade smote the anguished wood through its clean heart. At the same moment Civilia jumped with a little cry of dismay. She sat up, rubbing her cheek. “ It’s nothing,” she said.
“ Nothing? ” returned the Woodchopper roughly. “ A chip struck you.”
For a moment he stood dismayed at the idea of the pretty wounded cheek. With a movement as uncontrollable as tender, he was kneeling on the ground by her side, saying things no woodchopper in his right senses ever says.
“ You are spoiling what might have been a very pleasant afternoon,” said Civilia coldly.
“ There is a chip on your shoulder,” he observed, searching her face for possible splinters.
“ Take it off,” with a shrug.
“I meant,” with slow mischief, “on your — lips.”
“Really!” Civilia’s emphasis was angry. She sat up, bright-eyed and flushed; and the Wood-chopper, in the somewhat oppressive silence, meekly rose and backed away.
He took up the hatchet and split kindlings quite steadily. The wood fell in white criss-cross patterns; and a soft perfume, the exhalations of a tree’s pure dying flesh, filled the late afternoon air.
“ I wish,” remarked the Woodchopper, at last, “ I do wish you could find it in your heart to tell me how those apple-blossoms looked; it would help me to decide — something.”
Receiving no answer, he bent to his splitting, a smile playing around his mouth. After a time he again looked up.
“ Soon,” he remarked carelessly, “ soon, I must go look for the cows. They wait for me at twilight, in a place all maiden-hair fern, and purple rocks arabesqued in lichens. You will come too? ”
The little figure on the stump did not reply.
“ After that,” continued the Woodchopper genially, “ I shall feed the pigs. Peradventure you would behold that spectacle? ”
Still silence.
“After that I shall bed the horses, and, yes, feed Larry and the cats, — even unto the striped tiger cat whom you dislike, but who is a kind of suffragette cat and catches rats and must be encouraged. — You will help me? ”
No answer.
“Not,” the Wood-chopper explained kindly, “ not that you like to be with me, but that you think it is good for me to be with you.”
“There! — Oh, dear, now I have dropped all my cunning little chips!”
She bent to search for them.
The Wood-chopper, vaulting the chopping-block, came to help. They groped in the gathering dusk. Suddenly, unexplainedly, their hands touched and their eyes met. The Wood-chopper caught his breath.
“ Have you noticed,” he asked unsteadily, “ that when the twilight comes here, it comes bloomy, purple-dusted, like the background of a Chavannes mural? ”
“ Yes,” murmured Civilia, busily counting the regained chips.
“ Have you noticed,” he said, and she wondered why his voice trembled, “ that when the dawn comes over the hills, it comes white, pure, like the angel with the flaming sword, and it makes you turn your face and look it in the eyes while it decides if you are fit to live? ”
“Yes,” came the unwilling whisper,
— “seventeen — eighteen— I thought I had twenty.”
“ Have you noticed,” pleaded the Wood-chopper, coming close to her, and speaking as gently as he might for the heart dragging at its anchor in his breast, “ have you noticed that all great pictures and music and books seem true only here, in the country? And that Work, that strange prophetess who seems to have gone crazy in the cities, is still calm and sane and true mother-Sibyl here? ”
“ Yes.”
Civilia dropped her eyes confusedly. The chips were all counted now; there was nothing to do but try to meet his eyes, and that — that was —
“ Well then? ” he said slowly. He took her hand and held it tight. There was on his face a look new to her. “ Well, then — Civilia —? ”
It was twilight. The chopping-block and the saw-buck, like strange symbols thrown on a prophetic background, seemed to dissolve and fade away. Bells on the necks of cropping cows rang silver dissonance in the pale green lanes. The trees took mysterious shapes of hooded monks, jesters in cap-andbells, Mercury with the thyrsus, and Satyrs with winking eyes, —and here was this Wood-chopper, with the cows to be got home and the pigs and cats to be fed, hanging on to a little human hand and talking.
“To-night,” he was saying dreamily, “ to-night, the Flatiron is wavering on that background of purply-gray-yellow that the city has for sky. The Times Building has its night helmet on. All the rosy city windows blink and grin; all the serpent and swan and buglooking things are crawling. From the witch trellises of Broadway the white grapes of the city vineyards hang lobate, pallid, tempting for the night’s press of what bitter, bitter wine!”
He paused.
“ The mystery of the city,” murmured Civilia.
“ The mystery,” the Wood-chopper repeated it after her — “ it spins webs dotted with balls of light. It rushes with the moles of underground travel. Its rose and green and violet burnings stain the black mocking of the harbor waters. Its glamour is on the loose black masses of shipping that are forever sliding past weary eyes, combining and recombining in fateful, shifting, prophetic drift.”
“ I have seen it so,” she said softly. “ I have wondered.”
“ But not as I have,” he brooded sadly. “ Not with disillusioned eyes. Not so that it seemed to hang like a masking veil over starved natures; not so that it turned men into carrion and vultures; not so that it made the bubbling faces and fluttering forms of the street so many ragged phantoms of Gain and Loss —phantoms that swarmed and tangled and loosened, to swarm again, hiding their unutterable secrets; not on dead faces, broken hearts — ”
“Ah, don’t, don’t!” she pleaded. She clung to him. He flung his arm around her suddenly. “ I had hoped that in this new life you had forgotten.”
“ Forgotten? ” he said bitterly. “ I loved it too well ever to forget. It was because I loved it so well, that I came here, to find — better things.”
The Wood-chopper stopped abruptly. For a moment the desperate story of treacherous friends and lost fortunes was in his eyes. Then his arm tightened; he remembered another story.
“ I must be going in —now,” Civilia said faintly. “ The Troubadour’s wife just came to the window and went away again. I don’t know what she ’ll think.”
The Wood-chopper took her face within his two hands and turned it, pale in the dusk, to his.
“ Would it,” he asked very gently, “ would it be too bleak and lonely here — with me? ”
She could not answer.
“Listen,” he said. “Look! Over that ridge in the west where the great green trees go sailing, ships would seem to come to you. In the pastures where silver bells ring and the cows crop sweet flowers and juicy herbs we could live the rare old English ballads. In my hives the honey-bees would build you golden palaces of sweet. Think of it, darling: roadways hung with purple of wild grapes; fields massed with waving color; trees full of fruit and nuts; spotted fish in the shadowed brook; warm white eggs in the hay; the four priests, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, and we two Greeks worshiping in the Temple of the Country. Why,” he pleaded passionately, “do you not answer? Why,” trying to see her face, “ do you make me ashamed of—all I have to give? ”
She wondered why a Wood-chopper could not understand things without being told, — a Wood-chopper, of all men!
“Little Greek, little Greek?” he asked wistfully.
They Stood close in the twilight with the silver bells ringing. Now and then, at the house, the shadow of the Troubadour’s wife fell on the drawn shades. But no door opened, no voice called.
Then a thought struck the Woodchopper. “Those apple-blossoms, now,” he said reminiscently, “they looked like cupids, did n’t, they? Little white faces and dewy delicate wings? ”
“ Partly,” acknowledged Civilia. “ Partly,” she whispered.