Chapter XXII
IN PRAISE OF COUNTRY WINTER
Those who know the country only in summer, know it scarcely at all.From the first November snowstorm to the last drift melting beforethe winds of late March on the northern side of a pasture wall, thewinter season is a perpetual revelation of subtle colour harmonies,of exquisite compositions, of dramas on the trodden snow, of sweet,close-companioned hours before wood fires that crackle, shut into "atumultuous privacy of storm."
Our first winter began one bleak November day when the lone pine in thepotato field was outlined black against a gray sky, and over the longmountain wall to the northwest came suddenly a puff of white vapour,like the beginning of artillery fire, and then the shrapnel of thesnow descended upon us. Wrapped against it, we ran about the farm,marvelling at the transformations it wrought. First it filled up thefurrows on the ploughed land, making our field like a zebra's back.Then it whitened the sundial lawn, reminding us to take the woodendial post in for the winter. Then it whitened the brown earth aroundthe pool, where our July-sown grass had failed to make a catch, andpresently the pool was a black mirror on a field of white.
Then, as a crowning touch, it powdered the pines, and we ran among them.Under their thick shelter the wind was not felt. We could hear the flakeshissing against the needles overhead. All about us the white powder wassifting down. A peep into the outside world showed all distances blottedout by the storm. By evening the grove was a powdered Christmas card,the naked farm fields mantles of white laid upon the earth, the lamps inour house beacons of warmth gleaming behind us.
That snow melted, but others followed it, and by Christmas we were, asMike put it, snowed in for the winter. In the barn was the warm smellof cattle. The motors had disappeared from our roads, and we went tothe village in a pung, meeting other pungs on the way. It was as ifwe had slipped back a whole generation in time. Curiously enough, too,life became more leisurely, more familiar. The great summer estates wereboarded up, the hotels closed. Only the real village people sat inchurch or waited at the post-office. We who in summer had known but fewof our townsfolk now became acquainted with them all. We, too, leftour pung in the horse sheds every Sabbath morning, listened to thenasal drone of the village choir, and joined in the social quarter-hourwhich followed the service. It was an altogether different world we livein from the summer world, and we liked it even better.
What walks we had! Either with stout boots along the roads or withsnowshoes into the deep woods, we took our exercise almost daily bytramping, and to us the countryside was a perpetual revelation. Almostthe first thing which impressed us was the colourful quality of thewinter landscape. Even on our own thirty acres that was apparent. Atsunset of a still, peaceful day we could look forth from our southwindows across the white lawn to the dark green pines and beyond them theexquisite iron-rust tamaracks, soft and feathery. The eastern skywould be mother of pearl at that hour, the southern sky blue, thewestern sky warm salmon, green, and gold, and the encircling hills asoft gray. Then, as the sun sank lower, a veil of amethyst would stealmysteriously into the feathery tamaracks and over the gray hills,all the upper air would blush to rose, and for a brief ecstatic tenminutes nature would sound a colour chord like a Mozartian andante.
Out on the roads we were charmed by the tawny tiger colour of thewillow shoots and the delicate lavender of the blackberry vines risingfrom the snow beside a gray roadside wall. On the edge of the woods awhite birch trunk, naked of leaves, would tell like a lightning stabagainst the wall of pines, while in the woods themselves, where thesunlight flickered through, the brook would wander black as jet beneathbeautifully curved banks of snow, and a laurel bush or fern would standout a vivid green in a shaft of sunlight; or even a spot of brownleaves, where a pheasant or partridge had scratched, would disclosein its centre the vivid red of a partridge berry, a tiny woodlandcolour note that we loved.
And how close our wild neighbours came in the winter! We kept out aconstant supply of suet and sunflower seeds on two or three downstairwindow ledges, and while we were dining, or reading in the south room,we could look up at any time and see chickadees or juncos or nuthatchesjust beyond the pane. The pheasants, too, came to our very doors inwinter, leaving their unmistakable tracks, for they are walking birdsand set their feet in a single line.
It was not long before we began to find tracks of four-footed wildthings, a mink by the brook, a deer in the pasture, and finally afox which, unlike Buster, tracked with one footprint in the other,leaving apparently but two marks. We followed him a long way on oursnowshoes--up through our pasture and across Bert's to Bert's chickenhouse, and then out across the fields and into the woods. Stella hadnever tracked before, and she was as keen on the scent as a Boy Scout,reconstructing the animal's actions in her imagination as she wentalong. We lost the trail finally where it crossed a road, but we pickedup deer tracks instead, and found a spot where they had eaten from thesumach bushes, and another where they had pawed up the snow for frozenapples in an old abandoned orchard.
"Oh, if they'd only come into _our_ orchard!" cried Stella.
It was not long afterward, one moonlight night, that I chanced to besitting up late, and before retiring I glanced from the window. Therewas something--there were two somethings--moving about amid theapple trees. I looked closer and ran to awake Stella. Wrapped in adressing-gown, she came with me to the window and peered out. There, inthe full moonlight which flooded the white world with a misty silverradiance, were two deer pawing for apples in our orchard. Buster, bysome sixth sense, suddenly scented them, and we heard him set up an alarmin the kitchen. The buck shot up his head and listened, a beautifulsight which made Stella gasp for breath. We heard the horse stamp inthe stable, and Buster continued his yelps. But the buck was evidentlysatisfied of his safety, for he lowered his muzzle into the snow again.However, as we watched, there came a different sound to his ears, thoughnot to ours, for suddenly he gave a leap, and with the doe after himtook the stone wall at a bound, the wall across the road at another,and vanished up our pasture. A moment later we, too, heard the sound; itwas the jingle of approaching sleigh-bells.
Stella sighed happily as she went back to bed. "All my dreams are comingtrue!" she whispered.
I wonder if any pleasure in this world is quite comparable with that ofcoming back to your own snug dwelling after a long tramp through thesnowy woods, returning when the green sunset is fading in the west andthe amethyst shadows are creeping up the hills and the cold nightstillness is abroad, and seeing from afar the red window-squares of homegleaming over the snow? Our favourite method of return was to climb thestone wall by the frozen tamarack swamp and enter the pines, wherethe ice-covered brook crept like a flowing black ribbon through thewhite, with the snow on the banks curled over it in the most exquisiteand fantastic of tiny cornices. We could see our south windows throughthe branches, just before the path emerged, and Mrs. Pillig had orders tolight the lamps before our return so that they might glow a welcome.We always stood a moment, hand in hand, regarding them, before weclimbed the slope and entered the door.
Ah, the warmth that greeted us when we stepped inside! The good smell ofburning apple wood on the twin hearths! The cheerful bark of Buster, ifhe had not gone to walk with us! The prophetic rattle of dishes andthe kettle song from the kitchen! We had a kettle of our own, too, now,in the long room. It hung on a crane in the west fireplace, and wasdelightfully black, and often made the tea taste smoky, like camp tea.Quickly we left our wraps in the hall, quickly Stella brought out cupsand tea caddy to a little tabouret before the western fireplace, andsitting on our settle in the chimney nook, with the last wan light ofsunset competing with the evening lamps, we warmed our hands beforethe blaze, and drank our tea, and felt that delicious drowse steal overus which comes only after brisk exercise in the mountain air of winter.
And then the evenings, the long winter evenings by the twin fires,when we were supposed by our friends in town to be pining for theopera or the theatre, and were in realit
y blissfully unaware of either!Stella's first duty after supper was to hear Peter's lessons, whileBuster lay on the hearth and I sprawled in a Morris chair with mycigar, and read the morning paper. That is another delightful featureof country life. You never have time to read the morning paper tillevening, and then you read it comfortably all through, if you like.Peter was going far ahead of his class as a result of this individualinstruction, and had actually begun to develop a real interest in theacquisition of knowledge--a thing that did not exist as a rule in thepupils of Bentford, which, perhaps, was not the pupils' fault. So faras I have observed, it is not characteristic of most of our publicschools in America. Perhaps that is a penalty of democracy; certainlyit is a penalty of too large classes and too low salaries paid forteaching. We make the profession of teacher a stop-gap for girls betweenthe normal school and matrimony.
When Peter's lesson was over, and we were left alone, we had the bestbooks in the world, the best music in the world, to choose from. Wecould have a play if we liked, the kind too seldom seen on Broadway. Wecould have Mozart, or so much of him as Stella could render. We hadletters to write, also, a task always left till evening. Sometimes Ihad tag ends of my morning labours to finish up. Any writing of my ownI brought forth in the evening for Stella to read, and to criticise asmercilessly as she chose--which was sometimes very mercilessly; and wethrashed it over together. Sometimes, even, I agreed with her!
Once a week we gathered in several high school pupils who lived nearby--Mike's Nora, a boy, and three other girls--and read Shakespeare.It took them two months to read one play in school, but we read aplay in two or three evenings, each of us taking a part. I showed thempictures of the ancient playhouses, and explained as best I could theconditions of stage productions in various periods. Stella supplied thenecessary philology. We had a real course in Shakespeare, and yet onewhich interested the children, for they were reading the plays aloud, andvisualizing them. One evening we dressed up in costume, so far as wecould, amid much laughter, and acted a scene from "As You Like It,"with Nora as Rosalind (she wore my knickerbockers and a long cape ofStella's, and blushed adorably), and Mrs. Pillig and Peter called inas audience.
Before the winter was over, two or three other children from the villagehad begged to come to the class, and made the long, cold trip out to thefarm on foot every week. We had cake and chocolate when the lessons wereover. As Stella and I stood in the door listening to the young voices dieaway down the road, we used to look at one another happily.
"Oh," she once cried, "how much you can do for folks in the country!In town we'd pay $4 to see Shakespeare, played by professionals, andthen go selfishly home. Here we can help give him to these children, withall that means. And some of them so need it! Why, look at Joe Bostwick!When he first began to come he had the manners of a bear, and read likea seven-year-old child. I don't believe he'd _ever_ read out loud, orbeen of an evening among nice people. Now he's getting to know howto behave in company, poor fellow, and he reads almost intelligently!"
"You don't want to go back to the city, then?" I smiled.
"Oh, John, I never want to go back to the city," she answered. "I wantto live here forever. I want to do more and more for these people. Iwant to do more and more for Twin Fires. I want to know more and morewhat I've never known--the sense of being rooted to the land, of havinga home. Our grandfathers used to know that, but in our modern citieswe have forgotten. I want to die in the house I've always lived in."
"It's a little soon to plan for that," said I, as we entered the southroom again, but I knew what she meant.
The hour was late for us in the country--almost eleven. We put awaythe cups and plates, and went through our nightly ceremony of lockingup. First, we peeped out of the window at the thermometer, whichregistered two degrees above zero, and I set it down in my diary, forthe temperature and the weather are important items to record whenyou are a farmer. Then we locked all the doors, giving Buster a pat ashe lay on his old quilt in a corner of the kitchen. The kitchen lampwas out, and the room was lighted only by the moon, but the kettle wassinging softly. Then we returned to the south room and banked the firescarefully, so that the fresh logs would catch in the morning, on top ofthe noble piles of ashes. Finally we blew out the lamps. Cold moonlightstole in across the floor from the glass door and windows, and met midwaythe warm red glow from the fires. The world was very still. The greatroom, so homelike, so friendly, so full of beautiful things and yet sosimple, seemed sleeping. We tiptoed from it with a last loving glance andclimbed the stairs. In our dressing-room, which was an extra chamber,an open fire burned, but in our chamber there was no heat. The shadeswere up and the moonlight showed the fairy frost patterns on thepanes. We took a last look out across the silvery world before weretired, a last deep breath of the stinging cold air as the windowswere opened, and jumped beneath the covering, with heavy blanketsbeneath us as well as above.
"It is a very nice old world," said Stella sleepily. "Winter orsummer, it is lovely. I think New York is but a dream--and I hope itwon't be mine!"
I heard her breathing steadily a few minutes later, and from far offsomewhere in the outer world the mournful whistle of a screech owl cameto my ears, the andante of the winter night. It seemed to intensifythe freezing silence. I thought how at college I used to hear from mychamber the screech of trolley cars rounding a curve and biting mynerves. I thought of that lonely chamber, of all my life there, ofStella's life in the triple turmoil of New York. And I put out my handand took hers into it, while she stirred in her sleep, her fingersunconsciously closing over mine. So we awoke in the morning, with thesunshine smiting the snow into diamonds and a chickadee piping forbreakfast.