The Jonathan Papers Part 11

He had his paper open by this time, and was glancing at the headlines.

When a man is glancing at headlines, it is just as well to let him glance. I gave him fifteen minutes. Then I reopened the matter.

"Jonathan, I said walk."

"What's that?" His tone was vague. It was what I call his newspaper tone. It suggests extreme remoteness, but tolerance, even benevolence, if he is let alone. He drifted slowly over to the window and made a pretense of looking out, but his eyes were still running down the columns. "My dear," he remarked, still in the same tone, "had you noticed that it is beginning to rain?"

"I noticed that yesterday afternoon, about three o'clock," I said.

"Oh, all right. I thought perhaps you hadn't."

"Well?" I waited.

"Well--" he hung fire while he finished the tail of the editorial. Then he threw down the paper. "Don't you think it's rather poor weather for walking?"

This was what I had been waiting for, and I responded glibly, "Some one has said there is no such thing as bad weather, there are only good clothes."

"Do you mean mine?" He grinned down at his farm regimentals.

"Well, then--"

"Why, of course, if you really mean it," he said, and added, as he looked out reflectively at the puddling road, "You'll get your hair wet."

"Hope so! Now, Jonathan, aren't you silly, really? Anybody would think we'd never been for a walk in the rain before in our lives. Perhaps you'd rather stay indoors and be a tabby-cat and keep dry."

"Who got the mail?"

"You did. But you wanted the paper--and you ran."

The fact was, as I very well knew, Jonathan really wanted to go, but he didn't want to start. When people really enjoy doing a thing, and mean to do it, and yet won't get going, something has to be done to get them going. That was why I spoke of tabby-cats.

Jonathan a.s.sumed an alert society tone. "I should enjoy a walk very much, thank you," he said; "the weather seems to me perfect. But," he added abruptly, "wear woolen; that white thing won't do."

"Of course!" I went off and made myself fit--woolen for warmth, though the day was not cold, a short khaki skirt, an old felt hat, and old shoes. Out we went into the drenched world. Whish! A gust of rain in my eyes half blinded me, and I ran under the big maples. I heard Jonathan chuckle. "I can't help it," I gasped; "I'll be wet enough in a few minutes, and then I shan't care."

From the maples I made for the lee of the barn eaves, disturbing the hens who were sulking there. They stepped ostentatiously out into the rainy barnyard with an air of pointedly _not_ noticing me, but of knowing all the time whose fault it was. They weren't liking the weather, anyhow, the hens weren't, and showed it plainly in the wet, streaky droop of their feathers and the exasperated look in their red eyes. "Those hens look as if they thought I could do something about it if I only would," I said to Jonathan as we pa.s.sed them.

"Yes, they aren't a cordial crowd. Here, we'll show them how to take weather!"

We were pa.s.sing under an apple tree; Jonathan seized a drooping bough, and a sheet of water shook itself out on our shoulders. I gasped and ducked, and a hen who stood too near scuttered off with low duckings of indignation.

"Now you're really wet, you can enjoy yourself," said Jonathan; and there was something in it, though I was loath to admit it at the moment.

A moment before I had felt rather appalled at the sight of the rain-swept lane; now I hastened on recklessly.

"I think," said Jonathan, "it's the back of my neck that counts. After that's wet I don't care what happens."

"Yes," I agreed, "that's a stronghold. But I think with me it's my shoulders."

It did not really matter which it was; neck and shoulders both were wet,--back, arms, everything. We tramped down across the hollow, over the brook, whose flood was backing up into the swamp on each side. I paused to look off across the huckleberry hillside beyond.

"How the rain changes everything!" I said.

All the colors had freshened and darkened, and the blur of the rain softened the picture and "brought it together," as the painters say.

"Well," said Jonathan, "woods or open?"

"Which is the wettest?"

"Woods."

"Then woods."

And we plunged in under the big chestnuts, through a ma.s.s of witch-hazel and birch.

Jonathan was quite right. Woods were the wettest. One can hardly fancy anything quite so wet. Solid water, like a river, is not comparable, because it is all in one lump; you know where it is, and you can get out of it when you want to. But here in the woods the water was everywhere, ready to hurl itself upon us, from above, from beside us, from below.

Every step, every motion, drew upon us drenching showers of great drops that had been hanging heavily in the leaves ready to break away at a touch. Little streamlets of water ran from the drooping edges of my hat and from my chin, water dashed in my eyes and I blinked it out.

Jonathan, pausing to hold back a dripping spray of blackberry, heavy with fruit, remarked, "Aren't you getting a little damp?"

"I wonder if I am!" I answered joyously, and plunged on into the next thicket.

There is as much exhilaration in being out in a big rain and getting really rained through, as there is in being out in surf. It has nothing in common with the sensations that arise when, umbrellaed and mackintoshed and rubber-overshoed, we pick our way gingerly along the street, wondering how much we can keep dry, hoping everything is "up"

all round, wishing the wind wouldn't keep changing and blowing the umbrella so, and fancying how we shall look when we "get there." But when you don't care--when you want to get wet, and do--there is a physical glow that is delightful, a sense of being washed through and through, of losing one's ident.i.ty almost, and being washed away into the great swirl of nature where one doesn't count much, but is glad to be taken in as a part. I fancy this is true with any of the elements--earth, air, water. The tale of Antaeus was no mere legend; there is real strength for us in close contact with the earth. There is a purifying and uplifting potency in the winds, a potency in the waters--ocean and river and great rain. Our civilization has dealt with all these so successfully that we are apt to think of them as docile servants, or perhaps as petty annoyances, and we lose the sense of their power unless we deliberately go out to meet them in their own domain and let them have their way with us. Then, indeed, they sweep us out of ourselves for a season, and that is good.

We came out from the thickets on a high, brushy field, sheeted in fine rain that dimmed even the near wood edges. Blackberries grew thick, and we made our way carefully among the briers, following the narrow and devious cow-paths. Suddenly we both stopped. Just ahead of us, under a blackberry bush, was a huge snapping-turtle. He was standing on his hind legs, with his fore legs resting on a branch loaded with fruit, his narrow dark head stretched far up and out, while he quietly ate berry after berry. He was a handsome fellow, with his big black sh.e.l.l all brilliant in the wetness of the rain. As he worked we could see his under side, and notice how it shaded to yellow along the sutures. It was a scene of contentment, and the berries, dripping with fresh raindrops, looked luscious indeed as he feasted.

We stood and watched him for a while, and I got an entirely new idea of turtles. Turtles usually have too much reserve, too much self-consciousness, too little _abandon_, and I had never seen one so "come out of himself," literally and figuratively, as this fellow did.

It made me want to follow up the acquaintance, this happy chance of finding him, so to speak, in his cups; but I repressed the desire, feeling that he might not share it, and we carefully backed away and went around by another path so as not to disturb the reveler. He never knew how much pleasure he had given as well as received.

Into the woods again-- "Look out!" said Jonathan. "Don't step on the lizards!"

He stooped and picked up one, which struck an att.i.tude among his dripping fingers--sleek back a little arched, legs in odd, uncouth positions, tail set stiffly in a queer curve. They are brilliant little creatures, with their clear orange-red coats, scarlet-spotted, like a trout.

"Pretty little chap, isn't he?" said Jonathan.

"Stylish," I said, "but foolish. They never do anything that I can see, except att.i.tudinize.

"But they do a great deal of that," said Jonathan, as he set him gently down.

"Come on," I said; "I can't stand here being sentimental over your pets.

It's raining.

"Oh, if you'd like to _go_--" said Jonathan, and set a pace.

I followed hard, and we raced down through the empty woods, sliding over the great wet rocks, rolling over black fallen tree trunks, our feet sinking noiselessly in the soft leaf mould of the forest floor. Out again, and through the edge of a cornfield where the broad, wavy ribbon leaves squeaked as we thrust them aside, as only corn leaves can squeak.

If we had not been wet already, this would have finished us. There is nothing any wetter than a wet cornfield.

On over the open pastures, with a gra.s.sy swamp at the bottom. We tramped carelessly through it, not even looking for tussocks, and the water sucked merrily in and out of our shoes. Into brush once more--thick hazel and scrub oak; then down a slope, and we were in the hemlock ravine--a wonderful bit of tall woods, dark-shadowed, solemn, hardly changed by the rain, only perhaps a thought darker and stiller, with deeper blue depths of hazy distance between the straight black trunks.

At the bottom a brook with dark pools lying beneath mossy rock ledges, or swirling under great hemlock roots, little waterfalls, and shallow rapids over smooth-worn rock faces. It is a wonderful place, a place for a German fairy tale.