When All the Woods Are Green: A Novel

by S. Weir Mitchell

“Well, sir! I have heard this agreeable story!”

“But, father—”

“I should think you might be fatigued!”

Now, a good kicking would have been preferred by any of these boys to the father’s sarcasm.

“Go up to the house, undress, and go to bed. I don’t want to see you for a day. No words, sir, or I shall lose my temper. Off with you—you are not fit to associate with gentlemen.”

Without a word more, Jack went up the steps and did as he was told; in consequence of which Margaret wept a little, and Anne, who thought on the whole that Jack had gotten off better than she expected, betook herself to her books, with a full determination to have it out with the boy in her own way, and at a later date.

It was well into the afternoon when Carington reached his camp, and found Ellett still away on the river.

“I shall catch it!” said Fred, with a grin at the prospect. He made use of the interval to change his clothes and get rid of the stained garments, after which he ordered a smudge, pulled open the tent-flaps, and cast himself on the camp mattress, for the first time realizing that he was tired, or, at least, had that sense of languor which follows upon intense excitement. The tent-fly was up—the triangular space thus open to view framed prettily the beach, the men and canoes, the river, and the hills beyond. The smoke of the cedar-smudge at times dimmed the picture. At last, being absolutely comfortable, the cushions just right, the midge and black fly routed, he carefully filled and lit his pipe, reflecting, as he did so, on the varied value of tobacco, which he had never misused. Next he sought in one pocket after another, until he came upon a worn note-book. Among its scraps of verse and memoranda he found the well-known apostrophe of El Din Attar to the pipe. He read it with a smile.

“‘O wife of the soul, thou art wiser than any who bide in the harem. A maker of peace thou art and a builder of prudence between temptation and the hour of decision. Can anger abide with the pipe, or a gnat in the smoke of the tent-fire? Lo, wine is but wine for the simple, and a pipe but a pipe for the foolish; and what is a song to the dumb, or a rose to the eye that is blind? A bud of the rose findeth June on the breast of the dark-eyed; a song must be sung by the heart of the hearer. And thus are the pipe and the smoker. Also of it the king hath no more joy than the beggar, saith El Din Attar.’”[El Din Attar.’”] “A pipe is a pipe, and a rose is a rose, be it prim or not,” said the happy young fellow, laughing. “There is no new wisdom. To think what Wordsworth would have said to that? If Hamlet could have played upon this pipe, would he have been nicer to Ophelia?” His own meerschaum had been a friendly counselor at times. “Gracious!” he laughed outright—a good sign of a man that he can soliloquize laughter—“if I should fall in love, and the woman hate tobacco!” He let his fancy wander, and began to reflect, lazily, and yet with some curiosity, on the person he had saved from a serious, if not fatal, calamity. “I got out of that comedy pretty well,” he said to himself. “But, by George! it is rather more awkward to put a person—a woman—under such an obligation as this. How I should hate it! I wonder, does she? I suppose she won’t be at breakfast. That, at least, is a comfort.” Then he reflected that, with people such as these, he would not be too absurdly overwhelmed with gratitude. At last he turned to a book, fully satisfied that, on the whole, he had the best of it, and that there was no need to growl at Fate.

In a minute or two he exclaimed, “In-door poetry, that”; and dropped the volume of too dainty verse. The substance beneath was not worth the polish on top. He was not in a book mood, or disposed to anchor. The hours slipped by without freight of urgent question or answer. He was in a dreamy state, and, liking the hazy indistinctness of its demands, invented for his use, with a smile of approval, the word, “Vaguearies.”