The woods were empty--in a sense, yes. Except for the lizards, the animals run to cover during the rain; woodchucks, rabbits, squirrels, are tucked away somewhere out of sight and sound. Bird notes are hushed; the birds, lurking close-reefed under the lee of the big branches or the heavy foliage, or at the heart of the cedar trees, make no sign as we pa.s.s.
Empty, yet not lonely. When the sun is out and the sky is high and bright, one feels that the world is a large place, belonging to many creatures. But when the sky shuts down and the world is close-wrapped in rain and drifting mist, it seems to grow smaller and more intimate.
Instead of feeling the mult.i.tudinousness of the life of woods and fields, one feels its unity. We are brought together in the bonds of the rain--we and all the hidden creatures--we seem all in one room together.
Thus swept into the unity of a dominating mood, the woods sometimes gain a voice of their own. I heard it first on a stormy night when I was walking along the wood road to meet Jonathan. It was a night of wind and rain and blackness--blackness so dense that it seemed a real thing, pressing against my eyes, so complete that at the fork in the roads I had to feel with my hand for the wheel ruts in order to choose the right one. As I grew accustomed to the swish of the rain in my face and the hoa.r.s.e breath of the wind about my ears I became aware of another sound--a background of tone. I thought at first it was a child calling, but no, it was not that; it was not a call, but a song; and not that either--it was more like many voices, high but not shrill, and very far away, softly intoning. It was neither sad nor joyous; it suggested dreamy, reiterant thoughts; it was not music, but the memory of music.
If one listened too keenly, it was gone, like a faint star which can be glimpsed only if one looks a little away from it.
As I had listened that night I began to wonder if it was all my own fancy, and when I met Jonathan I made him stop.
"Wait a minute," I begged him, "and listen."
"I hear it. Come on," he had said. Supper was in his thoughts.
"What do you hear?"
"Just what you do."
"What"s that?" I had persisted, as we fumbled our way along.
"Voices--I don"t know what you"d call it--the woods. It often sounds like that in a big rain."
Jonathan"s matter-of-factness had rather pleased me.
"I thought it might be my imagination. I"m glad it wasn"t," I said.
"Perhaps it"s both our imaginations," he suggested.
"No. We both do lots of imagining, but it never overlaps. When it does, it shows it"s so."
Perhaps I was not very clear, but he seemed to understand.
Since then I have heard it now and again, this singing of the rain-swept woods. Not often, for it is a capricious thing, or perhaps I ought rather to say I do not understand the manner of its uprising. Rain alone will not bring it to pa.s.s, wind alone will not, and sometimes even when they are importuned by wind and rain together the woods are silent.
Perhaps, too, it is not every stretch of woods that can sing, or at all seasons. In winter they can whistle, and sigh, and creak, but I am sure that when I have heard these singing voices the trees have always had their full leaf.a.ge. But however it comes about, I am glad of the times that I have heard it. And whenever I read tales of the Wild Huntsman and all his kind, there come into my mind as an interpreting background memories of wonderful black nights and storm-ridden woods swept by overtones of distant and elusive sound.
We did not hear the woods sing that day. Perhaps there was not wind enough, or perhaps the woods on the "home piece" are not big enough, for it chances that I have never heard the sound there.
As we came up the lane at dusk we saw the glimmer of the house lights.
"Doesn"t that look good?" I said to Jonathan. "And won"t it be good when we are all dry and in front of the fire and you have your pipe and I"m making toast?"
I am perfectly sure that Jonathan agreed with me, but what he said was, "I thought you came out for pleasure."
"Well, can"t I come home for pleasure too?" I asked.
XII
As the Bee Flies
Jonathan had taken me to see the "bee tree" down in the "old John Lane lot." Judging from the name, the spot must have been a clearing at one time, but now it is one of the oldest pieces of woodland in the locality. The bee tree, a huge chestnut, cut down thirty years ago for its store of honey, is sinking back into the forest floor, but we could still see its hollow heart and charred sides where the fire had been made to smoke out the bees.
"Jonathan," I said, "I"d like to find some wild honey. It sounds so good."
"No better than tame honey," said Jonathan.
"It sounds better. I"m sure it would be different scooped out of a tree like this than done up neatly in pound squares."
"Tastes just the same," persisted Jonathan prosaically.
"Well, anyway, I want to find a bee tree. Let"s go bee-hunting!"
"What"s the use? You don"t know a honeybee from a b.u.mblebee."
"Well, you do, of course," I answered, tactfully.
Jonathan, mollified, became gracious. "I never went bee-hunting, but I"ve heard the old fellows tell how it"s done. But it takes all day."
"So much the better," I said.
And that night I looked through our books to find out what I could about bees. Over the fireplace in what was once the "best parlor" is a long, low cupboard with gla.s.s doors. Here Bibles, alb.u.ms, and a few other books have always been stored, and from this I pulled down a fat, gilt-lettered volume called "The Household Friend." This book has something to say about almost everything, and, sure enough, it had an article on bees. But the Household Friend had obviously never gone bee-hunting, and the only real information I got was that bees had four wings and six legs.
"So has a fly," said Jonathan, when I came to him with this nugget of wisdom.
The neighbors gave suggestions. "You want to go when the yeller-top"s in bloom," said one.
"Yellow-top?" I questioned, stupidly enough.
"Yes. Yeller-top--"t"s in bloom now," with a comprehensive wave of the hand.
"Oh, you mean goldenrod!"
"Well, I guess you call it that. Yeller-top we call it. You find one o"
them old back fields where the yeller-top"s come in, "n" you"ll see bees "nough."
Another friend told us that when we had caught our bee we must drop honey on her back. This would send her to the hive to get her friends to groom her off, and they would all return with her to see where the honey came from. This sounded improbable, but we were in no position to criticize our information.
As to the main points of procedure all our advisers agreed. We were to put honey in an open box, catch a bee in it, and when she had loaded up with honey, let her go, watch her flight and locate the direction of her home. When she returned with friends for more honey, we were to shut them in, carry the box on in the line of flight, and let them go again.
We were to keep this up until we reached the bee tree. It sounded simple.
We got our box--two boxes, to be sure of our resources--baited them with chunks of comb, and took along little window panes for covers. Then we packed up luncheon and set out for an abandoned pasture in our woods where we remembered the "yeller-top" grew thick. Our New England fall mornings are cool, and as we walked up the shady wood road Jonathan predicted that it would be no use to hunt bees. "They"ll be so stiff they can"t crawl. Look at that lizard, now!" He stooped and touched a little red newt lying among the pebbles of the roadway. The little fellow seemed dead, but when Jonathan held him in the hollow of his hand for a few moments he gradually thawed out, began to wriggle, and finally dropped through between his fingers and scampered under a stone. "See?"
said Jonathan. "We"ll have to thaw out every bee just that way."
But I had confidence that the sun would take the place of Jonathan"s hand, and refused to give up my hunt. From the main log-road we turned off into a path, once a well-trodden way to the old ox pastures, but now almost overgrown, and pushed on through brier and sweet-fern and huckleberry and young birch, down across a little brook, and up again to the "old Sharon lot," a long field framed in big woods and grown up to sumac and brambles and goldenrod. It was warmer here, in the steady sunshine, sheltered from the crisp wind by the tree walls around us, and we began to look about hopefully for bees. At first Jonathan"s gloomy prognostications seemed justified--there was not a bee in sight. A few wasps were stirring, trailing their long legs as they flew. Then one or two "yellow jackets" appeared, and some black-and-white hornets. But as the field grew warmer it grew populous, b.u.mblebees hummed, and finally some little soft brown bees arrived--surely the ones we wanted.
Cautiously Jonathan approached one, held his box under the goldenrod clump, brought the gla.s.s down slowly from above--and the bee was ours.
She was a gentle little thing, and did not seem to resent her treatment at all, but dropped down on to the honeycomb and fell to work. Jonathan had providently cut a three-forked stick, and he now stuck this into the ground and set the box on the forks so that it was about on a level with the goldenrod tops. Then he carefully drew off the gla.s.s, and we sat down to watch.