“Why not write to me in the winter? I should like that.”
“Would you really? That would take the edge off the lonesomeness. If I didn’t say ‘oh!’ every now and then, of evenings when the green wood cracks and the sparks fly, I guess I’d go dumb before the birds come back.”
“Well, Dorothy, that is settled. I shall write first. Good-by!” And, with Edward, she moved slowly away through the broken cross-lights of the sunset glow.
CHAPTER XXVI
After two or three weeks in the forest, where “the slow-growing trees do patience teach,” and the strong, effortless waters go by and seem only merry and idle, there comes to some men a sense of being at home. It does not come at once. We are all of us, in our busier lives of varied work or pleasure, actors in ever-changing rôles. It can hardly be otherwise. Almost the simplest lives involve some use of the art of the actor. In the woods, away from men and their struggles and ambitions, with the absence of need to be this or that, as duty, work, or social claims demand, we lose the resultant state of tension, of being on guard. It is readily possible to notice this effect in the rapid erasure from the faces of the constantly strained, intellectual workman of the lines of care which mark the features of those on whom, in one or another position, the world relies to carry its burdens.
At first, on passing from great mental occupation to the life of the forest, there is a period of unrest, of vague disappointment. But soon or late, with repose of mind, and the cessation of endless claims upon the sentinel senses, arises a distinct and less explicable indifference to what a fortnight back was important. Our whole world of relation is gradually changed. The passion, strife, and more or less worthy motives of the great camps of men shrink to valueless dimensions, so that we look back and wonder how this or that should have caused us a thought, or called forth that irritability which is apt to be the offspring of the unceasing strain of modern life.
At last we lose count of the days, and acquire a strange impression of the remoteness of the tumult of the active life from which we have fled. So complete may be this feeling that at times the busy past seems to fade into dreamy unreality, as with sense of relief we give ourselves unresistingly to the wholesome influence of the woodland and the waters. Much of this ease of mind must be due to the physical well-being which this existence surely brings to those who know how to get out of it the best it holds.
This calm of spirit, and this feeling of perfect fullness of bodily health, were what Archibald Lyndsay unfailingly secured in his summer holiday. He had become careful to humor the pleasant mood, and to be annoyed when anything took place which forced him even for an hour to return to the problems of the outer world.
Such a summons had come from Anne. She had not explained why she had spoken, nor could she have given a reason beyond the fact that she and he habitually discussed in common all family interests, and that it was not always quite safe for Anne to talk of them to Margaret. That gentle little woman was indisposed to have others, as she said, “come between her and her children,” and was in fact jealous, with a steadiness of jealousy which unwillingly accepted even love as an excuse, and heard, with unreasoning lack of logic, explanations, advice, or comment, which another might have welcomed, or at least calmly considered. Thus, when Anne wished to influence Margaret, she was apt to talk to the husband, who, in turn, was shrewd enough to profit by the counsel without betraying the counselor.