When All the Woods Are Green: A Novel

by S. Weir Mitchell

Carington was about to feel the results of a combination of influences, some within and some outside of those due to mental and moral peculiarities entirely his own.

What I saw in an idle hour may serve to illustrate my meaning. The reader has my benevolent permission to leave it unread. I was once lying on my couch of spruce in a rude log-cabin on the Alligash River. It was raining heavily, and we had left our tents awhile for the more perfect shelter of a deserted log-cabin where the lumbermen had wintered years before my coming. Apparently for reasons as good as our own, many live things had come hither—some for a permanent home, and some, like Noah’s menagerie, for temporary protection. A splendidly constructed spider’s net occupied the open space where a window-pane had been. The three remaining panes were intact. It was a happy thought of that spider: when flies at noon sought the cool shade of the house, this open pane seemed to offer a way, and, when the sun fell, the path of exit was as inviting. The net was well stocked, as I saw, but mostly these corpses were dead shells, out of which the succulent meats had been taken. Nevertheless, the deadly retiarius lay coiled in a corner, as eager as if he had never had a breakfast. As to the flies, who were many, they seemed to be as ignorant of the net’s thin lines as men are of the fatal meshes which circumstance spins in the way of human flies, or which character weaves when the fly is his own spider. The spaces between the anchoring cables were wide. Most of the flies went through quite unaware how near they had been to death. Some got into the toils and struggled out, and then went and sat down in dark corners, and reflected on free-will and predestination. At last a queer-looking, yellowish fly got into trouble. He was physically odd-looking, and as to mental organization clearly distinct from the herd of flies. He was evidently adventurous and on a holiday. He was in and out of the room, between the long net lines, half a dozen times. “That is luck!” said I. “The goddess Wyrda has smiled on him!” At last he struck the net, and was caught. In place of struggling, he kept still a moment, while the spider ran out and made a reconnaissance. Then my fly gave a kick and a flutter, and was off and away. “Luck and strength,” said I. By and by he sailed past me, and sat down to dine on the sweet margins of some ponds of molasses—the relics of our lunch. Being a little too eager, he got his legs in the sweets, and then his wings. Not liking this, he flew away, and, after a disorderly flight, made for the window, where he hit the center of the net. This time I got up to observe the affair closely. He made a brave fight, but the molasses on his sticky legs was the determining circumstance. The net-thrower crawled up with caution, when, of a sudden, a great bee, humming in its flight, went like a Minié ball through the net, and the spider fled, and the fly tumbled out—and this was the end. I felt as if I had been a superior being who, from the vantage of a higher sphere, had been watching one of earth’s numberless dramas. He would have seen how instincts, character, and circumstance combine to determine the fates of men.

CHAPTER XXVIII

There are few things more interesting than to observe in a quiet family the effects of an explosion of the unusual. Assuredly, what had happened to the Lyndsays was uncommon. There is family character just as there is national character. Individuality is more or less dominated by it. Among those with whom we are dealing the endless discussions which in some groups of human beings are wasted on a matter of annoyance—a calamity or a grievance—were quite unknown. At need they talked over their troubles or difficulties, and put them aside when decisions were once attained.

Anne was fond of saying, “Talk is a wedge which widens troubles. When you think, you are talking to yourself alone, and are responsible for the consequences; it is hard so to weigh words as to know what weight they will have for others.” And thus it was that even about her most unbearable pain she said nothing, and disliked all discussions which led to no working opinion. Mrs. Lyndsay alone was given to seeking sympathy in her small ailments; but Anne, as she herself once observed, “wore neither her heart nor her liver on her sleeve.” And this was the general tone. If talk was needed to settle a thing, there was enough, and no more. Lyndsay liked to say, “And now we will put it aside, my dear.” He had thus ended a talk with his wife, who was disposed to say far more.

To all of them the unpleasant event I have recorded brought a sense of horror. But the primary mood of anger or disgust gave way to some other form of mental or moral activity, which varied with the person. Lyndsay simply and directly occupied himself with the slight evidence he had, and endeavored to reach a conclusion as to the criminal. Anne fell to thinking with interest of the motives of the criminal, and as to what possible temptation could make her desire to do such an act. The mother remained in a state of somewhat lessened emotional disturbance, wanting some one to talk to of it all, but finding none save Rose, who had no power to repress her.

Thus Thursday passed quietly enough at the Cliff Camp. Mr. Lyndsay wisely went a-fishing, and took Rose. It was pitiably true that, for Mrs. Lyndsay, the incident of the day before had renewed the grief which time had begun to heal. She wondered how Archie could go and fish. She even made a mild attempt to keep her daughter at home; but Lyndsay resolutely persisted, and had his way. Left to herself, Margaret devoted the morning to coddling Anne, which resulted, for the latter, in a condition of restrained irritability which was almost too much even for this heroic woman. At last she took refuge in her room.

Jack spent the day in cleaning his rifle, and Dick in stuffing a kingfisher, while Ned bothered him with questions which not Solomon could have answered. As to Carington, he asked Ellett to go up to the church and make careful measurements of the footsteps, as this, by relieving him of the task, would enable him to get away earlier for his long paddle to Mackenzie.

At dawn, Carington, with his two men, in their canoe, went by the Cliff Camp, where all was peacefully still.