The Jessica Letters Part 13

It seems very lonesome in the big city without you, little Jack, and often I wish that some of this pile of books around me were carried away and you were brought back to me in their place. But it is better for you where you are.

You must listen to everything Miss Jessica tells you about the trees and birds, and learn to love all the beautiful things growing around you. I remember there were four or five great trees in my father's garden when I was a boy living in the country, and I loved them, each in a different way, and had names for them and talked to them. One was an oak tree that grew up almost to the clouds, and its boughs stood out stiff and square as if nothing could bend them. That was the tree I went to when I had some hard task to do and wanted strength. Another was an elm that always whispered comfort to me when I was in trouble. I used to go to it as some boys run to their mother, for I grew up like you without a mother's love, and I did not even have any sweet lady like Miss Jessica to be fond of me.

You must ask Miss Jessica to teach you all she knows about the trees in Morningtown, and you must listen to what she says to them. Perhaps she will tell you about the famous oaks that grew in a place called Dodona, and were wiser than any man or woman in the world. People used to talk with them as Miss Jessica does with her favourite tree.

And now, dear Jack, I am going to tell you a story which I have made up just for you. It isn't about trees exactly, but it all took place in a deep forest that spread around a wonderful city. From the high white walls of the town one could look out over the green tops of the trees as you look down on the gra.s.s, and that was a marvellous sight. There was a single road that ran through the forest right up to the gate of the city; but it was a hard road to travel, dark most of the time because the sun could not s.h.i.+ne through the leaves, and very lonely, and so still that you could hear your heart beat except when the winds blew, and then sometimes the boughs clashed together overhead and roared and moaned until you longed for the silence again. It was a long road too, and the men who walked through the forest to the city all had great packs on their shoulders. And what do you suppose was in their packs? Why, every traveller carried with him a gorgeous suit of clothes heavy with velvet and gold and silver; for so the people dressed in the beautiful city, and no one could enter the gate unless he too bore with him the royal robes.

But you see, while they were walking in the rough forest, they wore their old clothes of course.

Now in one place a wonderful woman sat by the roadside. She was a maga, or witch, named Simona. She was beautiful if you did not see her too close, with large round eyes that looked very gentle and kind. And when any traveller came by, the big tears would begin to roll down her cheeks and she would cry out to him as if she pitied him and wanted to help him.

"Dear traveller," she would say, "why do you trudge along this gloomy road, and why do you carry that bundle which bends your shoulders and tires your back? Don't you know that it is all a lie about the city you are seeking? There is no city of palaces at your journey's end. Indeed, you will never get to the end of the woods, but will walk on and on, stumbling and falling, and growing weaker and weaker, until at last you fall and never rise. And the wild beasts that you hear at night howling in the bushes will rend and gnaw your body until only your bones are left."

At this the travellers would stop and say: "But what shall we do, wise witch, and whither shall we go?"

Then she would say to them: "Turn aside by this pleasant path, and in a little while you will come to my beautiful garden which is named Philanthropia. There you will find many others whom I have wept for and saved as I do you; and there amid the open glades you may live with them in everlasting peace and love. Houses are there which you need only to enter and call your own. And when you are hungry you have only to speak, and immediately all that you desire to eat will appear on the tables. And when you are tired, soft beds will rise up to receive you. And clothes will be spread before you--not stiff and uncomfortable robes like those you carry in your pack, but soft garments suited to that land of comfort."

Most of the travellers believed the witch and turned into the by-path.

But, alas! it was soon worse for them than it had been on the road; for they were led, not to a garden, but into a great sandy desert, where nothing grew and no rain or dew ever fell. And somehow they could find no way out of the desert, but wandered to and fro in the endless fields of dust, while the hot sun beat upon their heads and their hearts failed them for hunger and thirst.

But now and then a wary traveller did not believe the witch and laughed at her tears and soft voice. And then, unless he got away very quick, something dreadful happened to him. The witch suddenly changed into a huge monster with a hundred flaming eyes, and a hundred mouths with which she raved and bellowed, and a hundred long arms that coiled about like serpents. She was so terrible that most men who saw her in her true form fell down fainting at her feet; and these she lifted up and threw into deep dark holes, hidden from the road, where the poor wretches soon died of sheer loneliness.

And now comes the heart of the story, dear Jack, if you are not too tired to read to the end.

One day a knight and a lady came riding up the road. The knight was not very strong, nor was his armour much to look at,--just an ordinary knight, but he was brave, and there was a mighty determination in his heart to slay the false, wicked witch whose deeds he had heard of. And as he rode he turned often to look into his lady's eyes, and always he seemed to drink new courage from those clear pools, as a thirsty man drinks refreshment from a well of cool water, for the lady was young and pa.s.sing fair--as fair as Miss Jessica, and she, you know, is the loveliest woman in all the world. And so at last they came to where the witch was sitting and weeping. Without a word the knight drew his sword and rushed upon her.

Of course she changed instantly to the monster with the hundred eyes and mouths and arms. The air was filled with the fire from her eyes and with the dreadful bellowing from her mouths, and her arms swung frantically about on every side to seize the knight and crush him. But this was the strange thing about the battle: as often as the knight looked at the lady, who stood near him, he gained new strength and the witch could not harm him.

He was cutting off her arms one by one and victory was almost his, when down the road came an old man wagging his grey beard dolefully and muttering into his breast. And when he reached the three there at the roadside, he stood for a moment watching the battle and still muttering in his beard. Then without a word he beckoned to the lady. She hesitated, sighed, and turned away, leaving the poor knight to struggle alone without the blessing of her eyes. And immediately his strength seemed to abandon him and his sword dropped at his side. You may be sure the witch shouted with triumph at this, and the noise of her bellowing sounded like the clanging of a hundred discordant bells. It was almost over with the knight. But suddenly he too uttered a great cry. Despair came to give him strength where hope had been before. "For love and the world!" he cried out and drove at the monster once again with his uplifted sword.

And, dear Jack, do you wish to know how the battle ended? I am very, very sorry, but I can't tell you, for when I came through the forest the knight and the witch were still fighting. There was a look of desperate determination in the knight's eyes, but, to tell you the truth, I think his heart was with the lady who had left him, and it is not easy to fight without a heart in this world, you know.

Write to me soon, a long, long letter and tell me about the trees of Morningtown. Some day when you are grown up and live with men, you will be glad to remember the friends.h.i.+p and the wise conversation of those brothers of the forest. Good-bye for a time, my boy.

Affectionately, PHILIP TOWERS.

LIV

FROM PHILIP'S DIARY

A wan beggar, seated on the coping that surrounds St. Paul's and exploiting his misery before the world. A strange scene calculated to give one pause,--the poor waif crying his distress on the curb, within the iron fence the ancient sleeping dead, and along the thoroughfare of Broadway the ceaseless unheeding stream of humanity. As I walked up the street with this image in my mind, the lines of an old Oriental poem kept time with my steps until I had converted them into English:

I heard a poor man in the grave-yard cry: "Arise, oh friend! a little hour a.s.sume My weight of cares, whilst I, Long weary, learn thy respite in the tomb."

I listened that the corpse should make reply; Who, knowing sweeter death than penury, Broke not his silent doom.

I am reminded of that joke, rather grim forsooth, which Lowell thought the best ever made. It is in _The Frogs_ of Aristophanes. The G.o.d Dionysus and his slave Xanthias are travelling the road to Hades, the slave as a matter of course carrying the pack for the two. They meet a procession bearing a corpse to the tomb. Xanthias begs the dead man to take the pack with him as he is borne so comfortably on the same road to the nether world.

Whereupon they d.i.c.ker over the portage. "Two s.h.i.+llings for the job," says the corpse, sitting up on his bier. "Too much," says Xanthias. "Two s.h.i.+llings," insists the corpse. "One and sixpence," cries Xanthias. "_I'd see myself alive first_!" says the corpse, sinking down on the bier.

LV

JACK TO PHILIP

DEAR MR. TOWERS:

The young lady have the letter you wrote me and I cant get it. But you needent bother about writing any more tales. I guess you done the best you could, but we dont neither one like what you told about the witch and them young people in the forest. Why do the knight stand there fighting the witch when the old man have run off with his girl? Why dont he take out after them and leave the witch to bleed to death? And the young lady thinks of it worse than I do. She went on awful when she read it, and cried. I guess she was sorry about the way the knight kept on cutting off that woman's legs and arms even if she was bad. She don't say nothing else nice about you now, nor let me. But she says you are the crewelest man she have known. And she cries a heap when there aint nothing the matter, and blames at every thing. The old gentleman feels bad about it but he dont know what to do. I guess now he wishes he hadent fooled with the young lady's salvation none. Because she have told him one day when he was trying to talk pious at her, not to say nothing, that she dident believe in nothing now but d.a.m.nation. And he say "Dont talk that way before the child." But I aint come to neither one of them things yet.

Your trew Frend,

JACK O'MEARA.

P.S.--She goes to see her tree spirit every day. But she dont talk to him no more. She just lays down on her face and cries.

LVI

PHILIP TO JACK

I am afraid, little Jack, that my long story about the lady and the knight in the woods did not interest you very much; and that is a pity, for, if I cannot amuse you, how shall I do when I come to write stories for grown-up folk? Well, anyway, I am going to tell you what happened after the lady and the old man went away into the forest.

For awhile they walked side by side in silence. But the road was long and it was already late, and by and by the night fell and wrapped all the trees in solemn shadows. It was not easy to keep the path in the darkness, and pretty soon they were quite lost and found themselves wandering helplessly in the black tangled aisles of the forest. That was bad, for the lady was tired in body and discomforted in heart. But worse happened when the old man left her to seek out the path alone, for he only lost himself more completely in the treacherous shadows and could not get back to her. Ah, Jack, if the lady was beautiful when the sunlight shone upon her, how lovely do you suppose she was here in the night with the white beams of the moon sifting down through the swaying boughs upon her blanched face? But her beauty merely frightened her the more in her terrible loneliness, where the only sound she heard was the stealthy whisperings of the breeze among the leaves, as if all the shadows up yonder were weaving some plot against her, while at times a low inarticulate moan or some sudden crackling of dry twigs floated to her out of the impenetrable gloom of the forest. At last she threw herself on her face under a great tree, and wept and wept for very terror and loneliness.

Now wonderful things may happen in the night, dear Jack. The trees then have a life of their own, and sometimes when the sun, which belongs to man only, is gone they have power to do what they please to foolish people who come into their circle. And so this tree that stood leaning over the prostrate lady whispered and whispered to itself in a strange language.

Then out of the boughs there came creeping a dark cold shadow. It dropped down noiselessly to the ground and covered the lady all about. It moved and swayed in the faint moonlight like a column of wind-blown smoke. You will hardly believe the rest, but it seemed slowly to take the very shape of the lady herself, as if it were her own shadow that had found her; and so it began to creep into her body. And as it melted into her flesh, she grew cold and ever colder as if her blood were turning to ice. Pretty soon it would have reached her heart and then--I shudder to think what would have become of her. But when the first chill touched her heart, she uttered a loud cry of fear: "Dear knight, dear knight," she called out, "where are you? Save me! save me!"

Then another wonderful thing happened in the darkness, for at such times our spoken words may take on a life of their own just as the trees and shadows do. And so these words of the lady, instead of scattering in the air, were changed into a marvellous little fairy elf that went stealing away through the forest. And as the elf ran swiftly under the trees and over the long gra.s.s, so lightly indeed that the flowers and weeds only bowed under his feet as when a gentle breeze pa.s.ses over them,--as the elf sped on, I say, everywhere the earth sent up a lisping whisper, "Save me, dear knight! save me!"

Now the knight was far away, resting from his battle with the old witch.

He had wounded her in many places, and might perhaps have killed her, had not the sly wicked creature suddenly slipt away from him into some hiding place of hers in the desert. And so, as he could not reach her, he was resting, very tired and very sad. Then suddenly, as he sat with his head hanging down, the little elf came tripping over the gra.s.s and plucked him by the arm, and the faint whisper stole into his ear, "Save me, dear knight! save me!"

Do you suppose he was long in rising and following the clever little elf back to their mistress? Ah, Jack, there was a happy hour and a happy year and a blissful life for the lady and her knight then, was there not?

And now, Jack, I will not bother you with any more stories after this.

Write to me and tell me all you are doing. Be good, little Jack, and listen to the wise words of the trees and other growing things; and, above all, love that sweet lady, Miss Jessica.

Affectionately,

PHILIP TOWERS.