Wood Magic: A Fable
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Transcriber's note:
Obvious minor typesetting errors in punctuation have been
silently corrected.
One sentence which began "The gale had cracked a very
large bow..." has been changed for consistency with the
rest of the paragraph to read "The gale had cracked a very
large bough..."
WOOD MAGIC
A Fable
by
RICHARD JEFFERIES
Author of "The Gamekeeper at Home," "Field and Hedgerow," "The Toilers
of the Field," Etc.
New Impression
Longmans, Green, and Co.
39 Paternoster Row, London
New York, Bombay, and Calcutta
1907
All rights reserved
_BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE._
_First published, 2 vols., post 8vo, by Cassell & Co., in 1881; Reissued
by them in one volume in 1882._
_'Silver Library' Edition, June, 1883. Reprinted September, 1894;
January, 1899; February, 1903; April, 1907._
_Inscribed to Harold._
CONTENTS.
I. Sir Bevis
II. At Home
III. Adventures of the Weasel
IV. Brook-Folk
V. Kapchack
VI. The Squirrel
VII. The Courtiers
VIII. The Emperor Choo Hoo
IX. The Council
X. Traitors
XI. The Storm in the Night
XII. The Old Oak.--The King's Despair
XIII. The Courtship in the Orchard
XIV. The Great Battle
XV. Palace Secrets
XVI. The New King
XVII. Sir Bevis and the Wind
PREFATORY NOTE.
Little need be said as to this re-issue of _Wood Magic_. It was
originally published in two volumes, post 8vo, by Messrs. Cassell & Co.
in 1881, and re-issued by them in one volume in 1882. The present
edition is reprinted from the original edition. The frontispiece and
vignette are drawn by the accomplished lady who chooses to be known as
E. V. B., whose illustrations to the _Story Without an End_ charmed many
boys and girls years ago, and I hope still fascinate their children.
C. J. L.
WOOD MAGIC.
CHAPTER I.
SIR BEVIS.
One morning as little "Sir" Bevis [such was his pet name] was digging in
the farmhouse garden, he saw a daisy, and throwing aside his spade, he
sat down on the grass to pick the flower to pieces. He pulled the
pink-tipped petals off one by one, and as they dropped they were lost.
Next he gathered a bright dandelion, and squeezed the white juice from
the hollow stem, which drying presently, left his fingers stained with
brown spots. Then he drew forth a bennet from its sheath, and bit and
sucked it till his teeth were green from the sap. Lying at full length,
he drummed the earth with his toes, while the tall grass blades tickled
his cheeks.
Presently, rolling on his back, he drummed again with his heels. He
looked up at the blue sky, but only for a moment, because the glare of
light was too strong in his eyes. After a minute, he turned on his side,
thrust out one arm, placed his head on it, and drew up one knee, as if
going to sleep. His little brown wrist, bared by the sleeve shortening
as he extended his arm, bent down the grass, and his still browner
fingers played with the blades, and every now and then tore one off.
A flutter of wings sounded among the blossom on an apple-tree close by,
and instantly Bevis sat up, knowing it must be a goldfinch thinking of
building a nest in the branches. If the trunk of the tree had not been
so big, he would have tried to climb it at once, but he knew he could
not do it, nor could he see the bird for the leaves and bloom. A puff of
wind came and showered the petals down upon him; they fell like
snowflakes on his face and dotted the grass.
Buzz! A great bumble-bee, with a band of red gold across his back, flew
up, and hovered near, wavering to and fro in the air as he stayed to
look at a flower.
Buzz! Bevis listened, and knew very well what he was saying. It was:
"This is a sweet little garden, my darling; a very pleasant garden; all
grass and daisies, and apple-trees, and narrow patches with flowers and
fruit-trees one side, and a wall and currant-bushes another side, and a
low box-hedge and a haha, where you can see the high mowing grass quite
underneath you; and a round summer-house in the corner, painted as blue
inside as a hedge-sparrow's egg is outside; and then another haha with
iron railings, which you are always climbing up, Bevis, on the fourth
side, with stone steps leading down to a meadow, where the cows are
feeding, and where they have left all the buttercups standing as tall
as your waist, sir. The gate in the iron railings is not fastened, and
besides, there is a gap in the box-hedge, and it is easy to drop down
the haha wall, but that is mowing grass there. You know very well you
could not come to any harm in the meadow; they said you were not to go
outside the garden, but that's all nonsense, and very stupid. _I_ am
going outside the garden, Bevis. Good-morning, dear." Buzz! And the
great bumble-bee flew slowly between the iron railings, out among the
buttercups, and away up the field.
Bevis went to the railings, and stood on the lowest bar; then he opened
the gate a little way, but it squeaked so loud upon its rusty hinges
that he let it shut again. He walked round the garden along beside the
box-hedge to the patch by the lilac trees; they were single lilacs,
which are much more beautiful than the double, and all bowed down with a
mass of bloom. Some rhubarb grew there, and to bring it up the faster,
they had put a round wooden box on it, hollowed out from the sawn butt
of an elm, which was rotten within and easily scooped. The top was
covered with an old board, and every time that Bevis passed he lifted up
the corner of the board and peeped in, to see if the large red, swelling
knobs were yet bursting.
One of these round wooden boxes had been split and spoilt, and half of
it was left lying with the hollow part downwards. Under this shelter a
toad had his house. Bevis peered in at him, and touched him with a twig
to make him move an inch or two, for he was so lazy, and sat there all
day long, except when it rained. Sometimes the toad told him a story,
but not very often, for he was a silent old philosopher, and not very
fond of anybody. He had a nephew, quite a lively young fellow, in the
cucumber frame on the other side of the lilac bushes, at whom Bevis also
peered nearly every day after they had lifted the frame and propped it
up with wedges.
The gooseberries were no bigger than beads, but he tasted two, and then
a thrush began to sing on an ash-tree in the hedge of the meadow.
"Bevis! Bevis!" said the thrush, and he turned round to listen: "My
dearest Bevis, have you forgotten the meadow, and the buttercups, and
the sorrel? You know the sorrel, don't you, that tastes so pleasant if
you nibble the leaf? And I have a nest in the bushes, not very far up
the hedge, and you may take just one egg; there are only two yet. But
don't tell any more boys about it, or we shall not have one left. That
is a very sweet garden, but it is very small. I like all these fields to
fly about in, and the swallows fly ever so much farther than I can; so
far away and so high, that I cannot tell you how they find their way
home to the chimney. But they will tell you, if you ask them.
Good-morning! I am going over the brook."
Bevis went to the iron railings and got up two bars, and looked over;
but he could not yet make up his mind, so he went inside the
summer-house, which had one small round window. All the lower part of
the blue walls was scribbled and marked with pencil, where he had
written and drawn, and put down his ideas and notes. The lines were
somewhat intermingled, and crossed each other, and some stretched out
long distances, and came back in sharp angles. But Bevis knew very well
what he meant when he wrote it all. Taking a stump of cedar pencil from
his pocket, one end of it much gnawn, he added a few scrawls to the
inscriptions, and then stood on the seat to look out of the round
window, which was darkened by an old cobweb.
Once upon a time there was a very cunning spider--a very cunning spider
indeed. The old toad by the rhubarb told Bevis there had not been such a
cunning spider for many summers; he knew almost as much about flies as
the old toad, and caught such a great number, that the toad began to
think there would be none left for him. Now the toad was extremely fond
of flies, and he watched the spider with envy, and grew more angry about
it every day.
As he sat blinking and winking by the rhubarb in his house all day long,
the toad never left off thinking, thinking, thinking about the spider.
And as he kept thinking, thinking, thinking, so he told Bevis, he
recollected that he knew a great deal about a good many other things
besides flies. So one day, after several weeks of thinking, he crawled
out of his house in the sunshine, which he did not like at all, and went
across the grass to the iron railings, where the spider had then got his
web. The spider saw him coming, and being very proud of his cleverness,
began to taunt and tease him.
"Your back is all over warts, and you are an old toad," he
said. "You are so old, that I heard the swallows saying their
great-great-great-grandmothers, when they built in the chimney, did
not know when you were born. And you have got foolish, and past doing
anything, and so stupid that you hardly know when it is going to rain.
Why, the sun is shining bright, you stupid old toad, and there isn't a
chance of a single drop falling. You look very ugly down there in the
grass. Now, don't you wish that you were me and could catch more flies
than you could eat? Why, I can catch wasps and bees, and tie them up so
tight with my threads that they cannot sting nor even move their wings,
nor so much as wriggle their bodies. I am the very cleverest and most
cunning spider that ever lived."
"Indeed, you are," replied the toad. "I have been thinking so all the
summer; and so much do I admire you, that I have come all this way,
across in the hot sun, to tell you something."
"Tell _me_ something!" said the spider, much offended, "_I_ know
everything."
"Oh, yes, honoured sir," said the toad; "you have such wonderful eyes,
and such a sharp mind, it is true that you know everything about the
sun, and the moon, and the earth, and flies. But, as you have studied
all these great and important things, you could hardly see all the very
little trifles like a poor old toad."
"Oh, yes, I can. I know everything--everything!"
"But, sir," went on the toad so humbly, "this is such a little--such a
very little--thing, and a spider like you, in such a high position of
life, could not mind me telling you such a mere nothing."
"Well, I don't mind," said the spider--"you may go on, and tell me, if
you like."
"The fact is," said the toad, "while I have been sitting in my hole, I
have noticed that such a lot of the flies that come into this garden
presently go into the summer-house there, and when they are in the
summer-house, they always go to that little round window, which is
sometimes quite black with them; for it is the nature of flies to buzz
over glass."
"I do not know so much about that," said the spider; "for I have never
lived in houses, being an independent insect; but it is possible you may
be right. At any rate, it is not of much consequence. You had better go
up into the window, old toad." Now this was a sneer on the part of the
spider.
"But I can't climb up into the window," said the toad; "all I can do is
to crawl about the ground, but you can run up a wall quickly. How I do
wish I was a spider, like you. Oh, dear!" And then the toad turned
round, after bowing to the clever spider, and went back to his hole.
Now the spider was secretly very much mortified and angry with himself,