When a witch is young: a historical novel

by Philip Verrill Mighels

Being now far from all the houses, alone in an area of silence, Adam modified his gait. He even stood perfectly still, listening, for what he could not have heard, gazing far away, at scenes and forms that had no existence. Night and solitude wrought upon him to make him again the boy who had lived that free, natural existence with the Indians. His tongue could not utter, his imagination could not conceive, anything concrete or tangible out of the melancholy ecstasy which the night aroused in his being and which seemed to demand some outward response from his spirit. He felt as if inspiration, to say something, or to do something, were about to be born in his breast, but always it eluded him, always it was just beyond him and all he could do, as his thought pursued it, was to dwell upon the sublimity breathing across the bosom of Nature and so fairly into his face.

He had come away without his hat. Bareheaded, at times with his eyes closed, the better to appreciate the earth in its slumber, he fairly wantoned in the coolness, the sweetness and the beauty of the hour. Thus it was past three o’clock in the morning when at length he came to the woods.

Man might build a palace of gold and brilliants, or Nature grow an edifice of leaves all resplendent with purples, reds, yellows and emeralds, but, when night spread her mantle, these gems of color and radiance might as well be of ebon. It is the sun that gilds, that burnishes, that lays on the tints of the mighty canvas; and when he goes, all color, all glitter and all beauty, save of form, have ceased to be.

Adam saw the trees standing dark and still, their great black limbs outstretched like arms, with upturned hands, suppliant for alms of weather. There was something brotherly in the trees, toward the Indians, Adam thought, and therefore they were his big brothers also. He had even seen the trees retreating backward to the West, as the Red men had done, falling before the march of the great white family.

If Nature has aught of awe in her dark hours, she keeps it in the woods. The silence, disturbed by the mystical murmuring of leaves, the reaching forth of the undergrowth, to feel the passer-by in the depth of shadows, the tangled roots that hold the wariest feet until some small animal—like a child of the forest—can scamper away to safety, all these things make such a place seem sentient, breathing with a life which man knows not of, but feels, when alone in its midst.

To Adam all these things betokened welcome. His mood became one of peculiar exultation, almost, but not quite, cheer. As a discouraged child might say, “I don’t care, my mother loves me, anyway, whether anybody else does or not,” so Adam’s spirit was feeling, “If there is no one else to love me, at least I am loved by the trees.”

With this little joy at his heart, he penetrated yet a bit further into the absolute darkness, and sitting down upon a log, which had given his shins a hearty welcome, he removed his violin from its case and felt it over with fond hands and put its smooth cheek against his own cheek, before he would go on to the further ecstasy which his musical embrace became when he played to tell of his moods.

“Now something jolly, my Mistress,” he said to the instrument, as if he had doubts of the violin’s intentions. “Don’t be doleful.”

Like a fencer, getting in a sharp attack, to surprise the adversary at the outset, he jumped the bow on to the strings with a brisk, debonair movement that struck out sparks of music, light and low as if they were played for fairies. It was a sally which soon changed for something more sober. It might have seemed that the fencer found a foe worthy his steel and took a calmer method in the sword-play. Then a moment later it would have appeared that Adam was on the defensive.

As a matter of fact, it was next to impossible for Rust to play bright, lively snatches of melody, this night, try as he might. The long notes, with the quality of a wail in them, got in between the staccato sparkles. When Adam thought of the Indians, their minor compositions transmitted themselves through his fingers into sound, before he was aware. He had braced himself stiffly on philosophy all the way to this forest-theater, but to little avail. He presently stopped playing altogether.