Chapter II (2)

But why does this evil beast traverse in a dream the sleep of a happy man, torturing him after a blissful day?... Happily, in the same buffalo-skin sleeps his good genius, with a sleep that is peaceful and unbroken all night long. The phantoms of agonizing dreams are dispersed by the brotherly voice sounding under the tent in the early day. And listen now to this little world of oak-leaves, under which you have slept, saying their morning prayers in the breeze.

It is enough to hear the rippling of the river, when you emerge from your tent, and to see once more the boat that is calmly waiting for you, to feel a hunger for adventure. So off you start again through the fog to devour the beautiful week that lies before you, round and new; you have not yet broken the loaf, you have merely nibbled a few crumbs; the country you have passed is only a tiny morsel of the territories you plan to annex.

Occasionally, when you have watched the banks gliding by for a long time, the desire seizes you to draw nearer and explore a little the hinterland of the country you are skirting. Nothing easier for you who are at once the commanding officer, the crew and the passengers. One of the two coxswains runs along the shore, while the other continues to row and a little further on picks up the explorer and hears him recount his discoveries. There have been surprises. By good luck the rover has happened into a cottage, and because he looks well and it is a summer morning when hearts are softened with generosity, the farmer’s wife has offered him a bowl of milk which he has tossed off, while the children have watched the stranger amorously plunging his big nozzle into the little bowl. During this excursion the other one on board, if he is thirsty, halves a melon and dispatches it, drawing up under the bows on the bank, where he waits for the explorer. In the heat of the day, a New England lad whose muscles are hard enough to manage the oars feels himself invaded by an Oriental indolence, with a great pity for the vague humanity toiling and moiling down there in the world. Amid the delights of the siesta, with a succulent slice of melon in a boat in the shadow of a willow, he can find some apology for pleasure-lovers, even for smokers of opium.

The river seems to flow solely for the joy of these two comrades who have set out one fine Saturday for the conquest of the world. Just this side of Nashua a fleet of great canal-boats appears, with sails set and high bulwarks, like junks. Have you really been asleep on the stream and actually reached the Orient? Let’s make the most of it. The rowers will enjoy a little idling. From the dory they throw a rope and get themselves towed a bit of the way like pashas; it has grown so hot that two schoolmasters, who are not of the soft kind, can allow themselves to be towed by a great merchantman. They toss into the water some of the melons that remain on board; they have seen enough of them, and the fish may like them. These jovial boatmen with whom they chat do not break the beautiful harmony of the landscape; they belong in it, and their language has the flavour of the river-grass. When they have passed and you find yourselves alone again in your dory, oars in hand, the solitude has almost a new taste.

Noon suggests a swim and a siesta under a tree. Suddenly a boatman’s horn, echoing from bank to bank, rouses the sleepers, and they set out again. The linden trees on the shore are a revelation. Nashua drops behind, the bridge, the junction of the rivers, the mills; they are in the woods again, and the evening clouds are reflected in the water like a warning. This evening the gods have planned for the encampment a beautiful, solitary spot on the border of a pine-wood, under the rocky walls of a deep ravine. The gods that voyage along these shores know how soft is the carpet the pine-needles make and what a fragrance they will add to the fire and the smoke. The song of the kettle, like an incantation, calls up this evening the friends they have left in the village; their images prowl and linger about the tent, bending over the shoulders of these two companions on the edge of the forest who are trying to discover on the map in the centre of what universe they are this evening and what country they will annex to-morrow. If you are awakened to-night by the shrill grating of a cricket, or the rambling of a spider over the peaks and passes of your face, the brook that flows at the bottom of the ravine has a cradle-song that will lull you to sleep again. Later, through a restless night at home, you will think of the quality of this sleep close to the earth after a day on the water.

Far away in the night someone is beating a drum--some tyro preparing for a country muster--and this trivial rat-a-tat-tat, ennobled by the distance and the darkness, seems, in the warmth of heroism that pours through the buffalo-skin, strangely to arm you for the most extravagant deeds. What will the coming dawn suggest, the Deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre or the Quest of the Golden Fleece? And has this high wind that shakes the tent a mission to inform the sleepers and publish the great news along the banks and under the pines? In any case, you are awake before dawn to be ready to welcome the great day, whatever it may be. Hand me the hatchet, I am off for fuel. The birds are still on their roosts and the kettle is already singing like a nurse. They haul the boat up on land, upset it and empty it and give it a good rinsing. At three o’clock everything is reshipped, stowed away, ready for departure, with the tent spread over the bow, for it is drenched with dew. The heavy morning fog, the curtain that had fallen to conceal the surprises to come, promises a glorious day.

As the banks are cleared of their velvety coverlet, sparkling with dew under the first rays, and the pines on the shore reveal their outlines, the river appears as large as an arm of the sea. The day of glory announced by the drum rises between the high slopes of the river: not a village in sight; you might think you were in the days of the Redskins, in the midst of a primitive country. You row with a will. Drummer of the night, the meaning of your rat-a-tat-tat becomes clear. We are going to review landscapes and men.

First, at Cromwell’s Falls, the lock-keeper, with whom the boys exchange some wholesome gossip. Several canal-boats are waiting to pass. On such a morning, if you encountered humanity in the form of some fellow with affected manners, a crabbed face and the look of a deacon, you would bless anyone who would force his respectable head under the water. But as for these shapely, strapping boatmen, in their shirt-sleeves, bare-headed, slouching or leaning on a pole, they have a sort of accent that heightens the meaning of the proud word on your own lips, fellow-creature. See that flaxen-haired brother there, with his skin tanned by wind and sun, young or old, you could never say which, but rugged and beautiful as a tree. Don’t put yourself out to be polite; it doesn’t go with these fellows. A few words of the language of men and everything is understood. The banter you shout back to them as you pull away is as cordial as a farewell. With all the boatmen you meet you exchange a friendly greeting.

Happy souls.... To be the two men on board these canal-boats, pushing with the pole when you are going up the stream, steering with the aid of an oar at each end when you are in mid-stream, hoisting the sail if the wind is favourable, transporting wood or bricks and bringing back odd freight: what could be jollier on a rustling September morning like this on the water? You contrive a little shelter under the cargo, where you may retire from the rain. As you sail your boat along in this way you do not seem to be toiling for wages or an employer; it is as if you were playing some very ancient game. The day’s work ended, you get your supper and lodging at some house or other by the water-side, breakfast in the morning with the lock-man, load your boat, travel all day, unload, receive your pay, take a drink at the inn, where you hear the news of the world, and then off again. A fine life, blooming with songs that sound over the river.

These were the people the marvelling eyes of a child had seen now and then, when a canal-boat passed the village. Their fabulous race, as he has come to know it better, has lost none of its glamour in the eyes of the man. Sometimes when the high road approaches within a few hundred yards of the shore, what a sorry, absurd figure the parti-coloured stage cuts beside these barges, as it sweeps past in a cloud of dust! Good luck to you, my fine fellows, who are in such a hurry to get there, piled in together, busy, with your worries and your trunks heaped up on the rack behind.... No doubt you are making good time, but you have not the least notion of the sights we are passing, that cottage bathed in a patriarchal atmosphere, with the well and the barn, and the old grandfather sitting on a bench; and those shagbark trees, unlike anything to be seen in Concord or where you live, in all probability, and those magnificent maples. See that scow there turned up on the bank, which those carpenter boys are mending. The joyous ring of the great strokes of their hammers, echoing from shore to shore, and the glittering of their tools in the sun, are not for townspeople who take the stage. These things that make work as beautiful as a festival, the work that nourishes the soul and the muscles of a man ... repairing a boat, building a hayrick, woodcutting in the forest, setting up the frame of a house under the benediction of the open air ... what have they in common with your infernal routine, you passengers of the stage?

The burning sun plumbs the landscape. That large island with the shade and the cattle, at the mouth of a river, is too inviting to be ignored. They put into port, and as the flesh is weak they no longer resist the temptation of those pigeons that have also stopped there, during the heat of the day, and are innocently cooing among the branches, heedless of the two savages that approach with their engines of death. One of the pigeons has fallen. You savages, wash in the river the hands that have killed in cold blood one of these beautiful pigeons that had also set out on a journey; do penance, eaters of innocent flesh, who have already brought down some squirrels for your supper, and now, in sheer wantonness, replace them with a pigeon: boil a bowl of rice. After the feast, recite some poetry, since you have no music, and yield in your satiety to idleness in the shade of this island where you have been behaving like abject creatures of civilisation.

But it is time to re-embark. They raise the sail to take advantage of the breeze. From the top of a hill forming the bank, some lumberers are rolling down timber that falls into the water with a thundering roar; their axes and levers glitter in the sun. That cottage, with its dooryard blossoming with sunflowers and poppies, smiles with such confidence that they skirt the bank to see it better. This is a wild region that makes them want to explore it a little. Those old oaks welcome them as friends who do not often receive visits. A lonely horse in a pasture, then some cows grazing in the shade, after the warm day, and some wild apple trees with the sourish fruit that Henry knows so well and likes. That ruined mill shrouded in creepers, which the pedestrian discovers while following a torrent through the woods, sets him thinking when he regains the boat of the life and the dreams of the old settler who lived there once and the taste that his flour must have had.

At Coos Falls, in a solitary part of the river, some stone-masons are repairing the locks. They stop for a chat. One of them, a young man, questions the voyagers about their adventures, examines the little craft and its outfit with a confession in his eye. If he only could set off with these two fellows to explore the world! What a trio they would make, a mason and two schoolmasters, who are not more than twenty-five.... A wild desire seizes him to throw away the chisel and mallet, leap into the boat and say to them: “Take me! I have had enough of stone-cutting. Now I want to cut into the stuff of the vast world....” But the stones remain, little mason, weights heavier than your vision, which soon disappears with the two explorers, leaving you pensive at your work.

As they continue to ascend, the watery landscape becomes more rugged, interspersed with rapids, rocks, falls. On the fifth day they are between Manchester and Bedford. There are many locks to pass through, and sometimes no lock-keeper is at hand. Then they have the fun of manipulating the lock themselves, no easy task but so amusing.... They are at once the passengers and the all-powerful being who locks the boat through.

Contemplating the cottages of these lock-keepers, gloriously lost before a vast stretch of whirling waters, roaring, foaming, you are filled with envy at the thought of the good soul who lives his life there as a lock-man, almost as solitary as a lighthouse-keeper, and the desire seizes you to go in, just to ask for a glass of water and hear the sound of a human voice as a contrast to that of the river. This one seems to be asleep on the earth under the benediction of the summer sun, like an infant in the warmth of its mother’s breast. Henry crosses the little garden and knocks at the door. A woman opens it: he can’t have such a shaggy face, after all, in spite of five nomadic days, or she would not invite him in so prettily. The freshly scoured floor has a fragrant odour; the visitor is afraid of soiling it with his big boots. He takes a glass from the dresser, then goes to the well where he catches a glimpse of his hairy face, the face of a voyager who has not had the leisure to shave himself like a true Christian. The lockman’s wife offers him a little molasses and ginger to temper this hard water, for the day is warm. Nearby her brother, the sailor, who seems a little out of his element among these freshwater folk, dandles the family cat; with his sea-dog’s eye, filled with the horizon, he scrutinizes the visitor curiously, sympathetically. Oh, these lockmen’s cottages, with their fireplaces and their door-yards, in this solitude!... What honey one could make here, a wild and exquisite honey, with that lingering suggestion of bitterness in the taste which is so grateful to healthy palates.

The oarsman is a happy man who turns his back on his discoveries, lets them come, and only enjoys them after they have well passed. This wooded island is the largest they have encountered thus far. It seems to say: I have been here since the beginning of things, waiting for the day when you would plant your tent-pole for the night in the shelter of my great elms. Who knows but I shall yield myself to you with such trust that you may decide to conclude your adventure and set up your hearthstone here? Between the world and myself there is nothing but a strip of water: would not that protect you from it and connect you with it sufficiently?... But as it is still morning, they leave behind them the great island and the great dream, to resume the course of the big wonders that are offered two poor devils who scan the world from a little boat of their own making.

After Amoskeag Falls, as steep as a staircase where they are in danger of capsizing every minute and have to jump into the water to right the boat, the river opens out into a lake. They make fast under a grove of alders for their lunch and siesta. A good breeze blows up. Boats pass, with their sails set, great, heavy, one-winged birds advancing with a stately solemnity. The boats pass which they saw before lunch and the last of which offered to take the two navigators and their traps on board and carry them the rest of the way; when the brothers are resting in the shade, the wag at the helm calls out a proposal to take them in tow. Many thanks, my boy, not just now; it is too good under these trees. When lunch is finished, John and Henry also raise their sail and, rowing vigorously, catch up with the big canal-boat which has hardly advanced at all, the breeze having fallen. Now then, my barge-boy, would you like us to take you in tow? Here’s a piece of rope if we can oblige you. The little dory you laughed at a while ago has the laugh on you. And one by one the oarsmen overtake the other monsters that are painfully dragging their bellies in a file along the watery road.

They have become once more the sovereigns of the river; but this does not make it less necessary for them to look for provisions before night. Their stock is low. John jumps ashore and sets off to find a farmhouse where they can revictual, while Henry explores the other bank for a suitable haven for the night. Again the canal-boats loom behind them, advancing with much effort, for the breeze has quite died away. John comes back with a loaf of bread and some melons, accompanied by a little flaxen-haired boy who wants to have a close view of the boat of these people who have set out for adventure on the water and have brought nothing to eat. He too, like the little mason, would love to go with them; who would not love to go with John? They would be happy to take him on board, this lively boy with the sparkling blue eyes, who would not weigh very much among the cargo; but his father will not allow it. But he is a very good-natured father, just the same, and he invites the travellers to come and visit his farm the next day. With pleasure. Are they not colleagues? Who knows more about raising melons than they? They might even be able to recommend some seeds. They taste his products, one of which, set in the water to cool while they are pitching the tent, has taken it into its head to go off with the current, like a melon on vacation that has been seized with a desire for the sea; they have to jump into the boat to capture it, for it is already far away. They taste his melons, sitting on the bank, facing the glow of the sunset in which the river wishes to share, to light its depths on its evening journey. The song over there, close by, is that of the brook at the mouth of which they have pitched their camp, and which hastens to confide to the great confused current a few secrets it has brought from afar.

That night Henry’s dreams under the tent file past amid the babble of this neighbour and disappear as he awakens at the soft tapping of drops of rain on the cotton roof. A sparrow trills cheerily in the morning: a good omen. They set out with this promise. More locks. And then the last one: nothing beyond but impassable rapids. A pity, for the navigators, who have set out from Concord, Massachusetts, want to push on by boat to Concord, New Hampshire. It would be more of an adventure but it can’t be done. Since their goal is the White Mountains, they will leave the boat here and continue along the shore on foot. Before they became great navigators, they had been great walkers.

So they cut a pair of sticks and set out like pilgrims in the mist and rain. If they are to have no more the joy of the river and the boat, they will have the pleasure of the hard earth under the freedom of their big boots. The earth and the watery meadows have a sweet smell. All the frogs in Christendom are sounding the hymn of deliverance and the toadstools smile with joy in the starch of their little collars. The travellers resolutely drench themselves. Are you afraid of a little wetting? Then stay shut up at home; stay where it’s dry, dry souls. You are not cut out for sitting in the rain, on the side of a brush-covered hill, happy even if your clothes are soaking. Perhaps it will clear in the afternoon; but what if it doesn’t clear?

A good welcome to big Concord. To save time they take the stage (yes, like those other idiots) as far as Plymouth, where a friend lives with whom they want to shake hands; then they resume the staff and the road. They come to a little sylvan inn where, in the evening, the people of the neighbourhood gather to discuss their business and hear the news over a glass of whisky. They wonder where in the world these people have come from when all day they have not caught even a glimpse of a roof. On the inn-table lies an old newspaper. At home Henry has little use for this kind of literature; he leaves the paper to his father who enjoys it so much. But in this poor, solitary inn, when you have tramped all day through the woods, it is astonishing what savour an old newspaper that gives you the stale news of the world acquires, a newspaper that has been rumpled by all sorts of rough hands, astonishing how your eyes fasten on a paragraph and you are led to believe in the virtues of the soap recommended in the advertisements.

And then, in this lost country, you have surprising encounters. Along a path in the woods a young soldier advances in full regimentals, going to muster no doubt with his musket on his shoulder; he marches with military step, with an air of being very sure of the importance of his mission. He must carry himself well, you see, before these civilians, and safeguard in the depths of the forest the prestige of his military apparel. Poor little soul! As he passes close to John and Henry his martial mask falls, he becomes a little boy again in his absurd harness in the presence of these trees that are judging him, and, crestfallen under his warrior helmet, he steals away unheroically, embarrassed by the greaves that chafe his legs. Honest little lad, we wish you well! They can send you off and dress and drill you in the barracks or get you killed for no reason at all. Your ingenuousness consents to it all in advance.

As they leave Sanbornton the mountains appear. They spend several days exploring them. It is a great revelation. The culminating point of the journey is at an altitude of 6288 feet, that of Mount Washington, which the two comrades climb. On the twelfth day they are back again at the place where they left their boat. Everything is in good condition, and the tent, the blankets, left in charge of the melon-grower, are quite dry. This lovable man expects his friends to carry off an immense melon to ballast the little boat: see, this one, which he long ago gave his flaxen-headed heir permission to dispose of as he chose. John carries it off, to the satisfaction of the owner, for he is the friend to whom you give whatever is dearest to you.

They are not homesick in the least, but they must return southwards to their own anchorage. The return is beautiful too. They set off spinning like an arrow, with the current, as far as the confluence of the Concord. The departure is at noon, this very Thursday. The river smiles under the fresh mid-September wind; they raise the sail, they can rest on their oars occasionally without loss of time. And everything drifts past them again, in the other direction. As they see the funny little dory repassing with its two savages on board, the people recognize them and give them a friendly halloo. To watch the sail, the lumbermen, rolling their timber down with an immense splash into the water, pause for a moment. From their boat the two adventurers salute every nook of the landscape, banks, islands, mouths of rivers, like old acquaintances. They must set up their tent once more, at least: it shall be opposite the large island of the slaughtered pigeons where they took their siesta on the way up. The boat is drawn up on the sand. Not a sail in sight; nothing but the spiders of the grassy jungle which come out curiously at the light of the lantern, and explore the mystery of the buffalo-skin spread out on the ground.

It is fragrant this evening, and every blade of grass, damp with dew, seems to be on its doorstep taking the air. They have journeyed far to-day and are tired; and after dipping their slices of bread in a cup of cocoa and scribbling the main things down in their journals, they blow out the lantern and bid farewell to Thursday. A high wind in the night flaps the curtains of the tent. In the morning, the heavy fog rolls away over the water, uncovering a landscape suddenly tinged with autumn. In the flitting clouds, in the look of the cottages, in the lowing of the cattle in the meadows, in the flying troops of flickers, the death of summer is confirmed. And when they set foot on earth and clamber up the bank to cast an eye over the countryside, they catch almost everywhere the prevailing yellow note of the asters, coreopses, tansies, golden-rod, little flowers of autumn already burning with the flames of the declining summer’s sun--the little candles left lighted all day long for the pilgrims in the church of the meadows.

But they carry on at a good pace, with sail stretched, one steering with an oar in the stern, the other rowing. The boat, seized by the autumnal ferment, speeds along; in the rippling of the water before them they seem to hear it laughing to itself at the promise of the splendour the season is preparing to bring forth. They are invigorated by this brisk wind that obliges them to sit muffled in their cloaks. See how they bound along; they are almost home again already. Here is the beginning of Massachusetts. They pass--rare spectacle--a pleasure-boat with a young man and a girl, and a dory, a commoner sight, with some people who are gathering driftwood for the winter. As they sail, they munch an apple-pie they have bought at a farm; it is rather tart. Driven by this famous breeze that bends the trees on the bank, they scud merrily along, with a devil-may-care look in their faces, at a speed that astonishes the men on some scows which they pass. Already the locks of the canal through the woods that gives access to the Concord. Yes, here we are, dear old Musketaquid! We shall have to row hard, against the current, and try to arrive this evening.

The sun reappears to make Chelmsford and Billerica smile, and sinks magnificently, filling the valley with a flood of soft light. High overhead, in silence, two herons pass against the sky, on their way to the North. A good journey, comrades up there; our home is to the Southwest. If you feel as we do, at this heavenly hour of the end of day when two lads, returning from a long expedition, are filled by the beauty of the familiar landscape, you are two very high-hearted herons. The night falls, they row in the light of the few candles a kind providence has set burning above, far higher than the track of the herons. There is no sound on board but the monotonous cadence of the oars, for John and Henry have no desire to talk; silence alone can draw out the thoughts that fill them. They mean to arrive to-night, Friday the thirteenth.

And indeed, late in the evening, the boat of the two argonauts draws up very smoothly alongside the shore whence it had set out fourteen days before, and rubs its wet cheek against the bearded bank. They have completed a stage of fifty miles this day.

John and Henry leap ashore, draw up the boat and fasten it to the wild apple tree. And then! A last look at the dory that has borne them so far out into the wide world, and laden with their traps they turn their steps towards the house. For them now the sweetness of civilised life and soft beds. They are ready to face them with visages bronzed by the wind and the sun of the river. But to-morrow morning, when they awaken, how surprising it will be not to hear the flick-flack of the cotton tent over their heads, to smell no longer the warm odour of the buffalo-skin! What a surprise and what a disenchantment to find the four walls, a motionless ceiling, the glass window.... How sad. Meanwhile, a ramble in the woods to-morrow, just to see what preparations are on foot there for the festival of autumn.

* * * * *

The school will soon have lasted for three years. In spite of all, the masters have inspired confidence, and there are now twenty-five pupils. There would be more of them if the building were not inadequate. For others are awaiting the first vacancy, to be taught in their turn. And those pious personages may well ask whether the good morals of the rod are not in peril.

Then, towards Easter, they hear that the Thoreau school is going to close. What has happened? John feels shaky, unable to continue. For some time he has not been well, but he has said nothing about it, in order not to discourage the pupils in their work. But now he is no longer able to keep up the pretence. Whatever the regrets and the consequences may be, everything must be given up abruptly, on the high tide of success, so that John may take care of himself, for it is he who steers the ship. Henry, who had begun the school without his brother, would no longer have the same reasons for keeping it if the latter retired. To keep school with John was perfect. Without him, it was not to be thought of. Better to look for something else.

John is ill, consumed by a slow, tenacious disease.... Is the grandfather, lying down there in the graveyard, demanding him back? Already three of his daughters--Aunts Sarah, Nancy and Mary, and one of his sons, Uncle David, whose Christian name Henry bears, have died young of consumption, like their father. Is his grandson going to have the same fate? Or is John to be confronted with a demand more brutal still? To be condemned without appeal, because sweet souls like him are out of place on this earth? Yes, for the poor fellow, as he drags along, is finally carried off, with a refinement of horror. In shaving himself he makes an insignificant cut. Lockjaw sets in; and the smile of this loving soul is extinguished amid atrocious convulsions. John dies in torture.

In the house of mourning, on this February day of 1842, the younger brother is the most miserable of all. What is the use of fortitude, of this mask of impassibility, when you are stricken in the tenderest depths? How survive the best part of yourself? A boy, crushed under his suffering, does not know.... John, my brother, after these years we have enjoyed together, and all the secrets we have shared, how can I support alone the weight of this grief that once was joy? My comrade, my inspiration, my good genius, my brother. You whom one read as a beautiful story that everyone loves to hear retold. You never had to be deciphered laboriously to yield the meaning of the tale....

Henry remains sitting in the house, with this weight that overwhelms him. He no longer cares for anything: everything, in the garden, in the woods, on the banks of the river, in the neighbourhood of their school, cries out his destitution. His sisters try to take him out to distract him. He does not object, he is inert. He is indifferent to everything. It is as if he had lost the highest reason for existence, love.

Will he regain his poise, his taste for life? Possibly--apparently. But there is in his deepest depths an incurable wound that will never endure being touched, however lightly. He cannot make the slightest verbal allusion to his bereavement, so greatly does it pain him. To deceive himself he plays the stoic, writing to a friend that a musical air has brought back to him the sense of the harmony of the universe and that he wishes never again to see his brother in life--that he wishes only for his ideal prototype. But in the confidences of his Journal how much truer he is! “Where is my heart gone? They say men cannot part with it and live.” That delightful intimacy they had shared through childhood, boyhood, manhood, he knew very well he would never find again, _never_. John’s grave enclosed the youth of two. Twelve years later, trying to describe to a friend those moments when his brother had disappeared in torture, Henry turned pale and almost fainted.

There remained the boat they had built, with which they had unrolled the beautiful watered ribbon of their adventures. To see it rocking against the bank was simply to have before him a sharper image of his grief: John taking sail to face alone a terrible adventure. He would go no more in this boat. That was ended.

In the following spring he gave it to a friend who wanted it.