Over Prairie Trails (7 page)

Suddenly I became again aware of a glimmer to the left, and the very next moment a lantern shot out of the mist, held high by an arm wrapped in white. A shivering woman, tall, young, with gleaming eyes, dressed in a linen house dress, an apron flung over breast and shoulders, gasped out two words, “You came!” “Have you been standing here and waiting?” I asked. “No, no! I just could not bear it any longer. Something told me. He’s at the culvert now, and if I do not run, he will go down into the swamp!” There was something of a catch in the voice. I did not reply. I swung the horses around and crossed the culvert that bridges the master ditch.

And while we were walking up to the yard – had my drive been anything brave – anything at all deserving of the slightest reward – had it not in itself been a thing of beauty, not to be missed by selfish me – surely, the touch of that arm, as we went, would have been more than enough to reward even the most chivalrous deeds of yore.

T
wo days before Christmas the ground was still bare. I had a splendid new cutter with a top and side curtains; a heavy outfit, but one that would stand up, I believed, under any road conditions. I was anxious to use it, too, for I intended to spend a two weeks’ holiday up north with my family. I was afraid, if I used the buggy, I might find it impossible to get back to town, seeing that the first heavy winter storms usually set in about the turn of the year.

School had closed at noon. I intended to set out next morning at as early an hour as I could. I do not know what gave me my confidence, but I firmly expected to find snow on the ground by that time. I am rather a student of the weather. I worked till late at night getting my cutter ready. I had to adjust my buggy pole and to stow away a great number of parcels. The latter contained the first real doll for my little girl, two or three picture books, a hand sleigh, Pip – a little stuffed dog of the silkiest fluffiness – and as many more trifles for wife and child as my Christmas allowance permitted me to buy. It was the first time in the five years of my married life that, thanks to my wife’s co-operation in earning money,
there was any Christmas allowance to spend; and since I am writing this chiefly for her and the little girl’s future reading, I want to set it down here, too, that it was thanks to this very same co-operation that I had been able to buy the horses and the driving outfit which I needed badly, for the poor state of my health forbade more rigorous exercise. I have already said, I think, that I am essentially an outdoor creature; and for several years the fact that I had been forced to look at the out-of-doors from the window of a town house only, had been eating away at my vitality. Those drives took decades off my age, and in spite of incurable illness my few friends say that I look once more like a young man.

Besides my Christmas parcels I had to take oats along, enough to feed the horses for two weeks. And I was, as I said, engaged that evening in stowing everything away, when at about nine o’clock one of the physicians of the town came into the stable. He had had a call into the country, I believe, and came to order a team. When he saw me working in the shed, he stepped up and said, “You’ll kill your horses.” “Meaning?” I queried. “I see you are getting your cutter ready,” he replied. “If I were you, I should stick to the wheels.” I laughed. “I might not be able to get back to work.” “Oh yes,” he scoffed, “it won’t snow up before the end of next month. We figure on keeping the cars going for a little while yet.” Again I laughed. “I hope not,” I said, which may not have sounded very gracious.

At ten o’clock every bolt had been tightened, the horses’ harness and their feed were ready against the morning, and everything looked good to me.

I was going to have the first real Christmas again in twenty-five years, with a real Christmas tree, and with wife and child, and even though it was a poor man’s Christmas, I
refused to let anything darken my Christmas spirit or dull the keen edge of my enjoyment. Before going out, I stepped into the office of the stable, slipped a half-dollar into the hostler’s palm and asked him once more to be sure to have the horses fed at half-past five in the morning.

Then I left. A slight haze filled the air, not heavy enough to blot out the stars, but sufficient to promise hoarfrost at least. Somehow there was no reason to despair as yet of Christmas weather.

I went home and to bed and slept about as soundly as I could wish. When the alarm of my clock went off at five in the morning, I jumped out of bed and hurried down to shake the fire into activity. As soon as I had started something of a blaze, I went to the window and looked out. It was pitch dark, of course, the moon being down by this time, but it seemed to me that there was snow on the ground. I lighted a lamp and held it to the window; and sure enough, its rays fell on white upon white on shrubs and fence posts and window ledge. I laughed and instantly was in a glow of impatience to be off.

At half past five, when the coffee water was in the kettle and on the stove, I hurried over to the stable across the bridge. The snow was three inches deep, enough to make the going easy for the horses. The slight haze persisted, and I saw no stars. At the stable I found, of course, that the horses had not been fed; so I gave them oats and hay and went to call the hostler. When after much knocking at last he responded to my impatience, he wore a guilty look on his face but assured me that he was just getting up to feed my team. “Never mind about feeding,” I said. “I’ve done that. But have them harnessed and hitched up by a quarter past six. I’ll water them on the road.” They never drank their fill before nine o’clock. And I hurried home to get my breakfast….

“Merry Christmas!” the hostler called after me; and I shouted back over my shoulder, “The same to you.” The horses were going under the merry jingle of the bells which they carried for the first time this winter.

I rarely could hold them down to a walk or a trot now, since the cold weather had set in; and mostly, before they even had cleared the slide-doors, they were in a gallop. Peter had changed his nature since he had a mate. By feeding and breeding he was so much Dan’s superior in vitality that, into whatever mischief the two got themselves, he was the leader. For all times the picture, seen by the light of a lantern, stands out in my mind how he bit at Dan, wilfully, urging him playfully on, when we swung out into the crisp, dark, hazy morning air. Dan being nothing loth and always keen at the start, we shot across the bridge.

It was hard now, mostly, to hitch them up. They would leap and rear with impatience when taken into the open before they were hooked to the vehicle. They were being very well fed, and though once a week they had the hardest of work, for the rest of the time they had never more than enough to limber them up, for on schooldays I used to take them out for a spin of three or four miles only, after four. At home, when I left, my wife and I would get them ready in the stable; then I took them out and lined them up in front of the buggy. My wife quickly took the lines: I hooked the traces up, jumped in, grabbed for the lines and waved my last farewell from the road afar off. Even at that they got away from us once or twice and came very near upsetting and wrecking the buggy; but nothing serious ever happened during the winter. I had to have horses like that, for I needed their speed and their staying power, as the reader will see if he cares to follow me very much farther.

We flew along – the road seemed ideal – the air was wonderfully crisp and cold – my cutter fulfilled the highest expectations – the horses revelled in speed. But soon I pulled them down to a trot, for I followed the horsemen’s rules whenever I could, and Dan, as I mentioned, was anyway rather too keen at the start for steady work later on. I settled back. The top of my cutter was down, for not a breath stirred, and I was always anxious to see as much of the country as I could….

Do you know which is the stillest hour of the night? The hour before dawn. It is at that time, too, that in our winter nights the mercury dips down to its lowest level. Perhaps the two things have a causal relation – whatever there is of wild life in nature, withdraws more deeply within itself; it curls up and dreams. On calm summer mornings you hear no sound except the chirping and twittering of the sleeping birds. The birds are great dreamers – like dogs; like dogs they will twitch and stir in their sleep, as if they were running and flying and playing and chasing each other. Just stalk a bird’s nest of which you know at half past two in the morning, some time during the month of July; and before you see them, you will hear them. If there are young birds in the nest, all the better; take the mother bird off and the little ones will open their beaks, all mouth as they are, and go to sleep again; and they will stretch their featherless little wings; and if they are a little bit older, they will even try to move their tiny legs, as if longing to use them. As with dogs, it is the young ones that dream most. I suppose their impressions are so much more vivid, the whole world is so new to them that it rushes in upon them charged with emotion. Emotions penetrate even us to a greater depth than mere apperceptions; so they break through that crust that seems to envelop the seat of our memory, and once inside, they will work out again into some
form of consciousness – that of sleep or of the wakeful dream which we call memory. The stillest hour! In starlit winter nights the heavenly bodies seem to take on an additional splendour, something next to blazing, overweening boastfulness. “Now sleeps the world,” they seem to say, “but we are awake and weaving destiny.” And on they swing on their immutable paths.

The stillest hour! If you step out of a sleeping house and are alone, you are apt to hold your breath; and if you are not, you are apt to whisper. There is an expectancy in the air, a fatefulness – a loud word would be blasphemy that offends the ear and the feeling of decency. It is the hour of all still things, the silent things that pass like dreams through the night. You seem to stand hushed. Stark and bare, stripped of all accidentals, the universe swings on its way.

The stillest hour! But how much stiller than still, when the earth has drawn over its shoulders that morning mist that allows of no slightest breath – when under the haze the very air seems to lie curled and to have gone to sleep. And yet how portentous! The haze seems to brood. It seems somehow to suggest that there is all of life asleep on earth. You seem to feel rather than to hear the whole creation breathing in its sleep – as if it was soundlessly stirring in dreams – presently to stretch, to awake. There is also the delicacy, the tenderness of all young things about it. Even in winter it reminds me of the very first unfolding of young leaves on trees; of the few hours while they are still hanging down, unable to raise themselves up as yet; they look so worldlywise sometimes, so precocious, and before them there still lie all hopes and all disappointments…. In clear nights you forget the earth – under the hazy cover your eye is thrown back upon it. It is the contrast of the universe and of creation.

We drove along – and slowly, slowly came the dawn. You could not define how it came. The whole world seemed to pale and to whiten, and that was all. There was no sunrise. It merely seemed as if all of Nature – very gradually – was soaking itself full of some light; it was dim at first, but never grey; and then it became the whitest, the clearest, the most undefinable light. There were no shadows. Under the brush of the wild land which I was skirting by now there seemed to be quite as much of luminosity as overhead. The mist was the thinnest haze, and it seemed to derive its whiteness as much from the virgin snow on the ground as from above. I could not cease to marvel at this light which seemed to be without a source – like the halo around the Saviour’s face. The eye as yet did not reach very far, and wherever I looked, I found but one word to describe it: impalpable – and that is saying what it was not rather than what it was. As I said, there was no sunshine, but the light was there, omnipresent, diffused, coming mildly, softly, but from all sides, and out of all things as well as into them.

Shakespeare has this word in Macbeth, and I had often pondered on it:

So fair and foul a day I have not seen.

This was it, I thought. We have such days about four or five times a year – and none but the northern countries have them. There are clouds – or rather, there is a uniform layer of cloud, very high, and just the slightest suggestion of curdiness in it; and the light is very white. These days seem to waken in me every wander instinct that lay asleep. There is nothing definite, nothing that seems to be emphasized – something seems to beckon to me and to invite me to take to my wings and just
glide along – without beating of wings – as if I could glide without sinking, glide and still keep my height…. If you see the sun at all – as I did not on this day of days – he stands away up, very distant and quite aloof. He looks more like the moon than like his own self, white and heatless and lightless, as if it were not he at all from whom all this transparency and visibility proceeded.