The Kentucky Warbler

Thus, often and to many of us, between closing the curtains of the eyes upon the outer world at night and drawing them wide in the morning, within that closed theatre a stage has been erected and we have stepped forth and spoken some solitary part or played a rôle in a drama that leaves us changed for the rest of our days. Yesterday an old self, today a new self. We have been shifted completely away from our last foot-prints and our steps move off in another direction, taking a truer course.

Beyond all else a high, solemn sense subdued Webster with the thought, that in his sleep he had come near as to unearthly things. The long-dead hunter, who had appeared to him, spoke as though he lived elsewhere than on the earth and lived more nobly; his accents, the majesty of his countenance, were moulded as by higher wisdom and goodness. Webster was overwhelmed with the feeling that he had been brought near the mystery of life and death and as from an immortal spirit had received his consecration to the forest.

… He got down on his knees at his bedside, after a while, though little used to prayer…

When he walked into the breakfast-room with a fresh step and freshened countenance, probably all were not slow to notice the change. Families whose lives run along the groove of familiar routine quickly observe the slightest departure from the customary, whether in voice or behaviour, of any member. There was response soon after his entrance to something in him obviously unusual.

"My son," said his father, who had laid down his paper to help him to the slice which had been put aside, "the woods must agree with you"; and he even scraped the dish for a little extra gravy. Ordinarily, when deeply interested in his paper or occasionally when conscious of some disappointment as to his son, he forgot, or was indifferent about, the gravy.

"They do agree with me!" Webster replied, laughing and in fresh tones. He held out his plate hungrily for his slice and he waited for all the gravy that might be coming to him.

"One of the boys has already been here this morning," said his mother, handing him his cup. "They want you to be sure to meet them this afternoon, not to fail. You must have been dead asleep, for I called you at three different times."

"Did you knock three times?"

Webster asked his question with a sinking of the heart; what if his mother's first knock had awakened him? He might never have finished his dream, might never have dreamed at all. How different the morning might have been, how different the world – if his mother had awakened him before his dream!

He received his cup from her and smiled at her:

"I was dreaming," he said, and he smiled also at the safety of his vision.

Elinor, sitting opposite him, had said nothing. She had finished her breakfast before he had come in and plainly lingered till he should enter. Since his entrance she had sat restless in her chair, toying with her fork or her napkin, and humming significantly to herself. She had this habit. "You must not sing at the table, Elinor," her mother had once said. "I am not singing," Elinor had replied, "I am humming to myself, and no one is supposed to listen." Meantime this morning, her quickly shifting eyes would sweep his face questioningly; she must have been waiting for some sign as to what had been the effect of the Thomas Jefferson bluejay the night before and of the repeated attack on his window shutters.

Often when out of humour with her he had declined to notice her at table; now once, when he caught her searching glance, he smiled. Dubiously, half with disbelief and half with amazement, she looked steadily back at him for an instant; then she slipped confusedly from her seat and was gone. Webster laughed within himself: "what will she be up to next?" he thought.

It was quiet now at the table: his father had gone back to his paper, his mother was eating the last of her breakfast fruit, and perhaps, thinking that out in the country things were getting ripe. After an interval Webster broke the silence: he was white with emotion.

"Father," he said quietly, "I have decided what I'd like to do."

Webster's father dropped his paper: Webster's mother's eyes were on him. The years had waited for this moment, the future depended upon it.

"If you and mother do not need me for anything else just yet, I'd like to work my way through the University. But if there's something different you'd rather I'd do, or if you both want me in any other way, I am here."

"My son," exclaimed his father, rudely with the back of his hand brushing away a tear that rolled down his cheek – a tear perhaps started by something in his son's words that brought back his own hard boyhood, "your father is here to work for you as long as he is alive and able. Your mother and I are glad – !" but he, got no further: his eyes had filled and his voice choked him.

Webster's mother stood beside him, her hand on his head, her handkerchief pressed to her eyes.

When he had made his preparations for the glad day's adventure and stepped out on the front porch, his father had gone to the bank, his mother was in the kitchen. Elinor was sitting on the top step. Her back was turned. Her sharp little elbows rested on her knees and her face was propped in her palms. Her figure again suggested a crumpled, purple morning-glory – fragile, not threatened by any human violence but imperilled by nature.

She did not look around as he stepped out or move as he passed down. He felt a new wish to say something pleasant but could not quite so conquer himself. As he laid his hand on the yard gate, he was stopped by these words, reaching his ears from the porch:

"Take me with you!"

He could not believe his ears. Could this be Elinor, his tease, his torment? This wounded appeal, timid pleading – could it proceed from Elinor? He was thrown off his balance and too surprised to act. The words were repeated more beseechingly, wistfully:

"Take me with you, will you, Webster?"

For now that she had given herself away to him, he might as well see everything: that at last she was openly begging that she be admitted to a share in his plans and pleasures, that he no longer disdain to play with her.

He spoke with rough embarrassment over his shoulder:

"You can't go today. Nobody can go today. I'm going miles out into the country to the woods."

"But some day will you take me over into the woods yonder?"

After a while he turned toward her:

"Yes, I will."

"Thank you very much. Thank you very much, indeed, Webster!"

The tide of feeling began to rush toward her:

"There are some wild violets over there, Elinor, wild blue violets and wild white violets – thick beds of them in the shade."

"Oh, how lovely!" She clasped her hands and knotted them tensely under her chin and kept her eyes fixed more hopefully on him.

"There is a flock of the funniest little fairies dancing under one of the big forest trees, each carrying the queerest little green parasol."

"How perfectly, perfectly lovely!"

"And I found one little cedar tree. If they'll let us, I'll dig it up and bring it home and plant it in the front yard. It will be your own cedar tree, Elinor."

"Oh, Webster! Could anything be more lovely of you?"

"You and I and Jenny will go some day soon – "

"No, no, no!" cried Elinor, stamping her feet fiercely and wringing her hands. "I don't want Jenny to go! I won't have Jenny! Just you and I! Not Jenny! Just you and I!"

"Then just you and I," he said, smiling at her and moving away.

"Wait!"

She darted down the steps and ran to him and drew his face over and laid her cheek against his cheek, clinging to him.

He struggled to get away, laughing with his new happiness: tears welled out of her eyes with hers.

Webster had taken to the turnpike.

The morning was cool, the blue of the sky vast, tender, noble. Rain during the night had left the atmosphere fresh and clear and the pike dustless. Little knobs of the bluish limestone jutted out. The greyish grass and weeds on each side had been washed till they looked green again.

The pike climbed a hill and from this hilltop he turned and looked back. He could see the packed outskirts of the city and away over in the heart of it church spires rising here and there. The heart of it had once been the green valley through which a stream of the wilderness ran: there Wilson had seen the water mills and the gallows for hanging Kentuckians and the thousand hitched horses and folks sitting on the public square selling cakes of maple sugar and split squirrels.

Soon he passed the pasture where he had spent yesterday. That had done well enough as a beginning: today he would go further. He remembered many things he had seen in the park-like bluegrass woods. Sweet to his ear sounded the call of bobwhite from the yellow grain. He wondered whether the ailing young crows in the tree-tops had at last taken all their medicine. The curious bird which had watched him out of a hole in the tree-trunk – the chap with the black band across his chest and the speckled jacket and the red cap on the back of his head, was he still on the lookout? What had become of the gorgeous little velvet coach that had travelled across the back of his hand on its unknown road? And that mystery of the high leaves – that wandering disembodied voice: Se-u-re? Se-u-u. Did it still haunt the waving boughs?

But miles on ahead in the country, undergrowth, shade, secrecy for wild creatures – his heart leaped forward to these and his feet hastened.

This day with both eyes open, not shut in sleep, he might find the warbler.

Whole-heartedly, with a boy's eagerness, Webster suddenly took off his hat and ran down the middle of the gleaming white turnpike toward the green forest – toward all, whether much or little, that he was ever to be.