I held the horses in at the start. Somehow they realized that a new kind of test was ahead. They caught the infection of speed from my voice, I suppose, or from my impatience. They had not been harnessed by the hostler either. When I came to the stable—it was in the forenoon, too, at an hour when they had never been taken out before—the hostler had been away hauling feed. The boys whom I had pressed into service had pulled the cutter out into the street; it was there we hitched up. Everything, then, had been different from the way they had been used to. So, when at last I clicked my tongue, they bounded off as if they were out for a sprint of a few miles only.
I held them in and pulled them down to a trot; for of all days to-day was it of the utmost importance that neither one of them should play out. At half past twelve a telephone message had reached me, after having passed through three different channels, that my little girl was sick; and over the wire it had a sinister, lugubrious, reticent sound, as if the worst was held back. Details had not come through, so I was told. My wife was sending a call for me to come home as quickly as I possibly could; nothing else. It was Thursday. The Sunday before I had left wife and child in perfect health. But scarlatina and diphtheria were stalking the plains. The message had been such a shock to me that I had acted with automatic precision. I had notified the school-board and asked the inspector to substitute for me; and twenty minutes after word had reached me I crossed the bridge on the road to the north.
The going was heavy but not too bad. Two nights ago there had been a rather bad snowstorm and a blow, and during the last night an exceedingly slight and quiet fall had followed it. Just now I had no eye for its beauty, though.
I was bent on speed, and that meant watching the horses closely; they must not be allowed to follow their own bent. There was no way of communicating with my wife; so that, whatever I could do, was left entirely to my divination. I had picked up a few things at the drug store—things which had occurred to me on the spur of the moment as likely to be needed; but now I started a process of analysis and elimination. Pneumonia, diphtheria, scarlatina and measles—all these were among the more obvious possibilities. I was enough of a doctor to trust my ability to diagnose. I knew that my wife would in that respect rather rely on me than on the average country-town practitioner. All the greater was my responsibility.
Since the horses had not been fed for their midday-meal, I had in any case to put in at the one-third-way town. It had a drug store; so there was my last chance of getting what might possibly be needed. I made a list of remedies and rehearsed it mentally till I felt sure I should not omit anything of which I had thought.
Then I caught myself at driving the horses into a gallop. It was hard to hold in. I must confess that I thought but little of the little girl’s side of it; more of my wife’s; most of all of my own. That seems selfish. But ever since the little girl was born, there had been only one desire which filled my life. Where I had failed, she was to succeed. Where I had squandered my energies and opportunities, she was to use them to some purpose. What I might have done but had not done, she was to do. She was to redeem me. I was her natural teacher. Teaching her became henceforth my life-work. When I bought a book, I carefully considered whether it would help her one day or not before I spent the money. Deprived of her, I myself came to a definite and peremptory end. With her to continue my life, there was still some purpose in things, some justification for existence.
Most serious-minded men at my age, I believe, become profoundly impressed with the futility of “it all.” Unless we throw ourselves into something outside of our own personality, life is apt to impress us as a great mockery. I am afraid that at the bottom of it there lies the recognition of the fact that we ourselves were not worth while, that we did not amount to what we had thought we should amount to; that we did not measure up to the exigencies of eternities to come. Children are among the most effective means devised by Nature to delude us into living on. Modern civilization has, on the whole, deprived us of the ability for the enjoyment of the moment. It raises our expectations too high—realization is bound to fall short, no matter what we do. We live in an artificial atmosphere. So we submerge ourselves in business, profession, or superficial amusement. We live for something—do not merely live. The wage-slave lives for the evening’s liberty, the business man for his wealth, the preacher for his church. I used to live for my school. Then a moment like the one I was living through arrives. Nature strips down our pretences with a relentless finger, and we stand, bare of disguises, as helpless failures. We have lost the childlike power of living without conscious aims. Sometimes, when the aims have faded already in the gathering dusk, we still go on by the momentum acquired. Inertia carries us over the dead points—till a cog breaks somewhere, and our whole machinery of life comes to with a jar. If no such awakening supervenes, since we never live in the present, we are always looking forward to what never comes; and so life slips by, unlived.
If my child was taken from me, it meant that my future was made meaningless. I felt that I might just as well lie down and die.
There was injustice in this, I know I was reasoning, as it were, in a phantom world. Actualities, outlooks, retrospections—my view of them had been jarred and distorted by an unexpected, stunning blow. For that it did not really matter how things actually were up north. I had never yet faced such possibilities; they opened up like an abyss which I had skirted in the dark, unknowingly. True, my wife was something like a child to me. I was old enough to be her father, older even in mind than in actual years. But she, too, by marrying an aging man, had limited her own development, as it were, by mine. Nor was she I, after all. My child was. The outlook without her was night. Such a life was not to be lived.
There was the lash of a scourge in these thoughts, so that I became nervous, impatient, and unjust—even to the horses. Peter stumbled, and I came near punishing him with my whip. But I caught myself just before I yielded to the impulse. I was doing exactly what I should not do. If Peter stumbled, it was more my own fault than his. I should have watched the road more carefully instead of giving in to the trend of my thoughts. A stumble every five minutes, and over a drive of forty-five miles: that might mean a delay of half an hour—it might mean the difference between “in time” and “too late.” I did not know what waited at the other end of the road. It was my business to find out, not to indulge in mere surmises and forebodings.
So, with an effort, I forced my attention to revert to the things around. And Nature, with her utter lack of sentiment, is after all the only real soother of anguished nerves. With my mind in the state it was in, the drive would indeed have been nothing less than torture, had I not felt, sometimes even against my will, mostly without at any rate consciously yielding to it, the influence of that merriest of all winter sights which surrounded me.
The fresh fall of snow, which had come over night, was exceedingly slight. It had come down softly, floatingly, with all the winds of the prairies hushed, every flake consisting of one or two large, flat crystals only, which, on account of the nearly saturated air, had gone on growing by condensation till they touched the ground. Such a condition of the atmosphere never holds out in a prolonged snowfall, may it come down ever so soft-footedly; the first half hour exhausts the moisture content of the air. After that the crystals are the ordinary, small, six-armed “stars” which bunch together into flakes. But if the snowfall is very slight, the moisture content of the lower air sometimes is not exhausted before it stops; those large crystals remain at the surface and are not buried out of sight by the later fall. These large, coarse, slablike crystals reflect as well as refract the light of the sun. There is not merely the sparkle and glitter, but also the colour play. Facing north, you see only glittering points of white light; but, facing the sun, you see every colour of the rainbow, and you see it with that coquettish, sudden flash which snow shares only with the most precious of stones.
Through such a landscape covered with the thinnest possible sheet of the white glitter we sped. A few times, in heavier snow, the horses were inclined to fall into a walk; but a touch of the whip sent them into line again. I began to view the whole situation more quietly. Considering that we had forty-five miles to go, we were doing very well indeed. We made Bell’s corner in forty minutes, and still I was saving the horses’ strength.
On to the wild land we turned, where the snow underfoot was soft and free from those hard clods that cause the horses’ feet to stumble. I beguiled the time by watching the distance through the surrounding brush. Everybody, of course, has noticed how the open landscape seems to turn when you speed along. The distance seems to stand still, while the foreground rushes past you. The whole countryside seems to become a revolving, horizontal wheel with its hub at the horizon. It is different when you travel fast through half open bush, so that the eye on its way to the edge of the visible world looks past trees and shrubs. In that case there are two points which speed along: you yourself, and with you, engaged, as it were, in a race with you, the distance. You can go many miles before your horizon changes. But between it and yourself the foreground is rushed back like a ribbon. There is no impression of wheeling; there is no depth to that ribbon which moves backward and past. You are also more distinctly aware that it is not the objects near you which move, but you yourself. Only a short distance from you trees and objects seem rather to move with you, though more slowly; and faster and faster all things seem to be moving in the same direction with you, the farther away they are, till at last the utmost distance rushes along at an equal speed, behind all the stems of the shrubs and the trees, and keeps up with you.
So is it truly in life. My childhood seems as near to me now as it was when I was twenty—nearer, I sometimes think; but the years of my early manhood have rushed by like that ribbon and are half swallowed by oblivion.
This line of thought threw me back into heavier moods. And yet, since now I banished the hardest of all thoughts hard to bear, I could not help succumbing to the influence of Nature’s merry mood. I did so even more than I liked. I remember that, while driving through the beautiful natural park that masks the approach to the one-third-way town from the south, I as much as reproached myself because I allowed Nature to interfere with my grim purpose of speed. Half intentionally I conjured up the vision of an infinitely lonesome old age for myself, and again the sudden palpitation in my veins nearly prompted me to send my horses into a gallop. But instantly I checked myself. Not yet, I thought. On that long stretch north, beyond the bridge, there I was going to drive them at their utmost speed. I was unstrung, I told myself; this was mere sentimentalism; no emotional impulses were of any value; careful planning only counted. So I even pulled the horses back to a walk. I wanted to feed them shortly after reaching the stable. They must not be hot, or I should have trouble.
Then we turned into the main street of the town. In front of the stable I deliberately assumed the air of a man of leisure. The hostler came out and greeted me. I let him water the horses and waited, watch in hand. They got some hay, and five minutes after I had stopped, I poured their oats into the feeding boxes.
Then to the drug store—it was locked. I hunted the druggist all over town for nearly twenty minutes. Everybody had seen him a short while ago; everybody knew exactly where he had been a minute before; but nobody could discover him just then. I worked myself into a veritable frenzy of hurry. The moisture began to break out all over my body. I rushed back to the livery stable to tell the hostler to hitch up again—and there stood the druggist, looking my horses over! I shall not repeat what I said.
Five minutes later I had what I wanted, and after a few minutes more I walked my horses out of town. It had taken me an hour and fifty minutes to make the town, and thirty-five minutes to leave it behind.
One piece of good news I received before leaving. While I was getting into my robes and the hostler hooked up, he told me that no fewer than twenty-two teams had that very morning come in with cordwood from the northern correction line. They had made a farm halfways to town by nightfall of the day before; the rest they had gone that very day. So there would be an unmistakable trail all the way, and there was no need to worry over the snow.
I walked the horses for a while; then, when we were swinging round the turn to the north, on that long, twenty-mile grade, I speeded them up. The trail was good: that just about summarizes what I remember of the road. All details were submerged in one now, and that one was speed. The horses, which were in prime condition, gave me their best. Sometimes we went over long stretches that were sandy under that inch or so of new snow—with sand blown over the older drifts from the fields—stretches where under ordinary circumstances I should have walked my horses—at a gallop. Once or twice we crossed bad drifts with deep holes in them, made by horses that were being wintered outside and that had broken in before the snow had hardened down sufficiently to carry them. There, of course, I had to go slowly. But as soon as the trail was smooth again, the horses would fall back into their stride without being urged. They had, as I said, caught the infection. My yearning for speed was satisfied at last.
Four sights stand out.
The first is of just such bunches of horses that were being brought through the winter with practically no yard feeding at all; and consequently their healthy outdoor looks, and their velvety rumps were very conspicuous as they scattered away from the trail on our approach. Several times we dashed right in among them, and I had to shout in order to clear the road. They did not like to leave the firm footing on the trail, where they fed by pawing away the snow on both sides and baring the weeds. Sometimes a whole bunch of them would thunder along in a stampede ahead of us till they came to a cross-trail or to a farmyard; there we left them behind. Sometimes only one of them would thus try to keep in front, while the rest jumped off into the drifts; but, being separated from his mates, he would stop at last and ponder how to get back to them till we were right on him again. There was, then, no way to rejoin those left behind except by doing what he hated to do, by getting off the trail and jumping into the dreaded snow, thus giving us the right of way. And when, at last, he did so, he felt sadly hampered and stopped close to the trail, looking at us in a frightened and helpless sort of way while we dashed by.
The next sight, too, impressed me with the degree to which snow handicaps the animal life of our plains. Not more than ten feet from the heads of my horses a rabbit started up. The horses were going at a gallop just then. There it jumped up, unseen by myself until it moved, ears high, eyes turned back, and giving a tremendous thump with its big hind feet before setting out on its wild and desperate career. We were pretty close on its heels and going fast. For maybe a quarter of a mile it stayed in one track, running straight ahead and at the top of its speed so that it pulled noticeably away. Every hundred yards or so, however, it would slow down a little, and its jumps, as it glanced back without turning—by merely taking a high, flying leap and throwing its head aloft—would look strangely retarded, as if it were jumping from a sitting posture or braking with its hind feet while bending its body backward. Then, seeing us follow at undiminished speed, it would straighten out again and dart away like an arrow. At the end of its first straight run it apparently made up its mind that it was time to employ somewhat different tactics in order to escape. So it jumped slantways across the soft, central cushion of the trail into the other track. Again it ran straight ahead for a matter of four or five hundred yards, slowing down three or four times to reconnoitre in its rear. After that it ran in a zigzag line, taking four or five jumps in one track, crossing over into the other with a gigantic leap, at an angle of not more than thirty degrees to its former direction; then, after another four or five bounds, crossing back again, and so on. About every tenth jump was now a high leap for scouting purposes, I should say. It looked breathless, frantic, and desperate. But it kept it up for several miles. I am firmly convinced that rabbits distinguish between the man with a gun and the one without it. This little animal probably knew that I had no gun. But what was it to do? It was caught on the road with us bearing down upon it. It knew that it did not stand a chance of getting even beyond reach of a club if it ventured out into the deep, loose snow. There might be dogs ahead, but it had to keep on and take that risk. I pitied the poor thing, but I did not stop. I wished for a cross-trail to appear, so it would be relieved of its panic; and at last there came one, too, which it promptly took.
And as if to prove still more strikingly how helpless many of our wild creatures are in deep snow, the third sight came. We started a prairie chicken next. It had probably been resting in the snow to the right side of the trail. It began to run when the horses came close. And in a sudden panic as it was, it did the most foolish thing it possibly could do: it struck a line parallel to the trail. Apparently the soft snow in which it sank prevented it from taking to its wings. It had them lifted, but it did not even use them in running as most of the members of its family will do; it ran in little jumps or spurts, trying its level best to keep ahead. But the horses were faster. They caught up with it, passed it. And slowly I pulled abreast. Its efforts certainly were as frantic as those of the rabbit had looked. I could have picked it up with my hands. Its beak was open with the exertion—the way you see chickens walking about with open beaks on a swooningly hot summer day I reached for the whip to lower it in front of the bird and stop it from this unequal race. It cowered down, and we left it behind...
We had by that time reached the narrow strip of wild land which separated the English settlements to the south from those of the Russian Germans to the north. We came to the church, and like everything else it rushed back to the rear; the school on the correction line appeared.
Strangely, school was still on in that yellow building at the corner. I noticed a cutter outside, with a man in it, who apparently was waiting for his children. This is the fourth of the pictures that stand out in my memory. The man looked so forlorn. His horse, a big, hulking farm beast, wore a blanket under the harness. I looked at my watch. It was twenty-five minutes past four. Here, in the bush country where the pioneers carve the farms out of the wilderness, the time kept is often oddly at variance with the time of the towns. I looked back several times, as long as I could see the building, which was for at least another twenty minutes; but school did not close. Still the man sat there, humped over, patiently waiting. It is this circumstance, I believe, which fixed in my memory the exact hour at which I reached the correction line.
Beyond, on the first mile of the last road east there was no possibility of going fast. This piece was blown in badly. There was, however, always a trail over this mile-long drift. The school, of course, had something to do with that. But when you drive four feet above the ground, with nothing but uncertain drifts on both sides of the trail, you want to be chary of speeding your horses along. One wrong step, and a horse might wallow in snow up to his belly, and you would lose more time than you could make up for in an hour’s breathless career. A horse is afraid, too, of trotting there, and it takes a great deal of urging to make him do it.
So we lost a little time here; but when a mile or so farther on we reached the bush, we made up for it. This last run of five or six miles along the correction line consisted of one single, soft, smooth bed of snow. The trail was cut in sharply and never drifted. Every successive snowfall was at once packed down by the tree-fellers, and whoever drove along, could give his horses the lines. I did so, too, and the horses ran.
I relaxed. I had done what I could do. Anxiety there was hardly any now. A drive over more than forty miles, made at the greatest obtainable speed, blunts your emotional energies. I thought of home, to be sure, did so all the time; but it was with expectation now, with nothing else. Within half an hour I should know...
Then the bush opened up. The last mile led along between snow-buried meadows, school and house in plain view ahead. There lay the cottage, as peaceful in the evening sun as any house can look. Smoke curled up from its chimney and rose in a nearly perpendicular column. I became aware of the colder evening air, and with the chill that crept over me I was again overwhelmed by the pitifully lonesome looks of the place.
Mostly I shouted when I drew near to tell of my coming. To-day I silently swung up through the shrubby thicket in which the cottage and the stable behind it lay embedded and turned in to the yard. As soon as the horses stopped, I dropped the lines, jerked the door of the cutter back, and jumped to the ground.
Then I stood transfixed. That very moment the door of the cottage opened. There stood my wife, and between her knee and the door-post a curly head pushed through, and a child’s voice shouted, “Daddy, come to the house! Daddy, come to the house!”
A turn to the better had set in sometime during the morning. The fever had dropped, and quickly, as children’s illness will come, it had gone. But the message had sped on its way, irrevocable and, therefore, unrevoked. My wife, when she told me the tale, thought, well had she reason to smile, for had I not thus gained an additional holiday?
We had a “soft spell” over a week end, and on Monday it had been followed by a fearful storm—snowstorm and blizzard, both coming from the southeast and lasting their traditional three days before they subsided. On Thursday, a report came in that the trail across the wild land west of Bell’s corner was closed completely—in fact, would be impassable for the rest of the winter. This report came with the air of authority; the man who brought it knew what he was talking about; of that I had no doubt. For the time being, he said, no horses could possibly get through.
That very day I happened to meet another man who was habitually driving back and forth between the two towns. “Why don’t you go west?” he said. “You angle over anyway. Go west first and then straight north.” And he described in detail the few difficulties of the road which he followed himself. There was no doubt, he of all men should certainly know which was the best road for the first seventeen miles. He had come in from that one-third-way town that morning. I knew the trails which he described as summer-roads, had gone over them a good many times, though never in winter; so, the task of finding the trail should not offer any difficulty. Well and good, then; I made up my mind to follow the advice.
On Friday afternoon everything was ready as usual. I rang off at four o’clock and stepped into the hall. And right there the first thing went wrong.
Never before had I been delayed in my start. But now there stood three men in the hall, prominent citizens of the town. I had handed my resignation to the school-board; these men came to ask me that I reconsider. The board, so I had heard, was going to accept my decision and let it go at that. According to this committee the board did not represent the majority of the citizens in town. They argued for some time against my stubbornness. At last, fretting under the delay, I put it bluntly. “I have nothing to reconsider, gentlemen. The matter does no longer rest with me. If, as I hear, the board is going to accept my resignation, that settles the affair for me. It must of necessity suit me or I should not have resigned. But you might see the board. Maybe they are making a mistake. In fact, I think so. That is not my business, however.” And I went.
The time was short enough in any case; this cut it shorter. It was five o’clock before I swung out on the western road. I counted on moonlight, though, the fickle luminary being in its first quarter. But there were clouds in the north and the weather was by no means settled. As for my lights, they were useless for driving so long as the ground was completely buried under its sheet of snow. On the snow there form no shadows by which you can recognize the trail in a light that comes from between the two tracks. So I hurried along.
We had not yet made the first three miles, skirting meanwhile the river, when the first disaster came. I noticed a rather formidable drift on the road straight ahead. I thought I saw a trail leading up over it—I found later on that it was a snowshoe trail. I drove briskly up to its very edge; then the horses fell into a walk. In a gingerly kind of way we started to climb. And suddenly the world seemed to fall to pieces. The horses disappeared in the snow, the cutter settled down, there was a sharp snap, I fell back—the lines had broken. With lightning quickness I reached over the dashboard down to the whiffletrees and unhooked one each of the horses’ traces. That would release the others, too, should they plunge. For the moment I did not know what they were doing. There was a cloud of dust dry snow which hid them. Then Peter emerged. I saw with horror that he stood on Dan who was lying on his side. Dan started to roll over; Peter slipped off to the right. That brought rebellion into Dan, for now the neck yoke was cruelly twisting his head. I saw Dan’s feet emerging out of the snow, pawing the air: he was on his back. Everything seemed convulsed. Then Peter plunged and reared, pulling Dan half-ways up; that motion of his released the neck yoke from the pole. The next moment both horses were on their feet, head by head now, but facing each other, apparently trying to pull apart; but the martingales held. Then both jumped clear of the cutter and the pole; and they plunged out, to the rear, past the cutter, to solid ground.
I do not remember how I got out; but after a minute or so I stood at their heads, holding them by the bridles. The knees of both horses shook, their nostrils trembled; Peter’s eye looked as if he were going to bolt. We were only a hundred yards or so from a farm. A man and a boy came running with lanterns. I snapped the halter ropes into the bit rings and handed the horses over to the boy to be led to and fro at a walk so as to prevent a chill; and I went with the man to inspect the cutter. Apparently no damage was done beyond the snapping of the lines. The man, who knew me, offered to lend me another pair, which I promptly accepted. We pulled the cutter out backwards, straightened the harness, and hitched the horses up again. It was clear that, though they did not seem to be injured, their nerves were on edge.
The farmer meanwhile enlightened me. I mentioned the name of the man who had recommended the road. Yes, the road was good enough from town to town. This was the only bad drift. Yes, my adviser had passed here the day before; but he had turned off the road, going down to the river below, which was full of holes, it is true, made by the ice-harvesters, but otherwise safe enough. The boy would go along with his lantern to guide me to the other side of the drift. I am afraid I thought some rather uncharitable things about my adviser for having omitted to caution me against this drift. What I minded most, was, of course, the delay.
The drift was partly hollow, it appeared; the crust had thawed and frozen again; the huge mass of snow underneath had settled down. The crust had formed a vault, amply strong enough to carry a man, but not to carry horse and cutter.
When in the dying light and by the gleam of the lantern we went through the dense brush, down the steep bank, and on to the river, the horses were every second ready to bolt. Peter snorted and danced, Dan laid his ears back on his head. But the boy gave warning at every open hole, and we made it safely. At last we got back to the road, I kept talking and purring to the horses for a while, and it seemed they were quieting down.
It was not an auspicious beginning for a long night-drive. And though for a while all things seemed to be going about as well as I could wish, there remained a nervousness which, slight though it seemed while unprovoked, yet tinged every motion of the horses and even my own state of mind. Still, while we were going west, and later, north into the one-third-way town, the drive was one of the most marvellously beautiful ones that I had had during that winter of marvellous sights.
As I have mentioned, the moon was in its first quarter and, therefore, during the early part of the night high in the sky. It was not very cold; the lower air was quiet, of that strange, hushed stillness which in southern countries is the stillness of the noon hour in midsummer—when Pan is frightened into a panic by the very quiet. It was not so, however, in the upper reaches of the atmosphere. It was a night of skies, of shifting, ever changing skies. Not for five minutes did an aspect last. When I looked up, after maybe having devoted my attention for a while to a turn in the road or to a drift, there was no trace left of the picture which I had seen last. And you could not help it, the sky would draw your eye. There was commotion up there—operations were proceeding on a very vast scale, but so silently, with not a whisper of wind, that I felt hushed myself.
A few of the aspects have persisted in my memory, but it seems an impossible task to sketch them.
I was driving along through open fields. The trail led dimly ahead. Huge masses of snow with sharp, immovable shadows flanked it. The horses were very wide awake. They cocked their ears at every one of the mounds; and sometimes they pressed rump against rump, as if to reassure each other by their mutual touch.
About halfway up from the northern horizon there lay a belt of faintest luminosity in the atmosphere—no play of northern lights—just an impalpable paling of the dark blue sky. There were stars, too, but they were not very brilliant. Way down in the north, at the edge of the world, there lay a long, low-flung line of cloud, black, scarcely discernible in the light of the moon. And from its centre, true north, there grew out a monstrous human arm, reaching higher and higher, up to the zenith, blotting the stars behind it. It looked at first—in texture and rigid outline—as the stream of straw looks that flows from the blower of a threshing machine when you stand straight in its line and behind it. But, of course, it did not curve down. It seemed to stretch and to rise, growing more and more like an arm with a clumsy fist at its end, held unconceivably straight and unbending. This cloud, I have no doubt, was forming right then by condensation. And it stretched and lengthened till it obscured the moon.
Just then I reached the end of my run to the west. I was nearing a block of dense poplar bush in which somewhere two farmsteads lay embedded. The road turned to the north. I was now exactly south of and in line with that long, twenty-mile trail where I had startled horses, rabbit, and partridge on the last described drive. I believe I was just twenty-five miles from the northern correction line. At this corner where I turned I had to devote all my attention to the negotiating of a few bad drifts.
When I looked up again, I was driving along the bottom of a wide road gap formed by tall and stately poplars on both sides—trees which stood uncannily still. The light of the moon became less dim, and I raised my eyes. That band of cloud—for it had turned into a band now, thus losing its threatening aspect—had widened out and loosened up. It was a strip of flocculent, sheepy-looking, little cloudlets that suggested curliness and innocence. And the moon stood in between like a goodnatured shepherd in the stories of old.
For a while I kept my eyes on the sky. The going was good indeed on this closed-in road. And so I watched that insensible, silent, and yet swift shifting of things in the heavens that seemed so orderly, pre-ordained, and as if regulated by silent signals. The clouds lost their sheeplike look again; they became more massive; they took on more substance and spine, more manliness, as it were; and they arranged themselves in distinct lines. Soldiers suggested themselves, not soldiers engaged in war, but soldiers drilling in times of peace, to be reviewed, maybe, by some great general. That central point from which the arm had sprung and which had been due north had sidled over to the northwest; the low-flung line along the horizon had taken on the shape of a long wedge pointing east; farther west it, too, looked more massive now—more like a rather solid wall. And all those soldier-clouds fell into a fan-shaped formation—into lines radiating from that common central point in the northwest. This arrangement I have for many years been calling “the tree.” It is quite common, of course, and I read it with great confidence as meaning “no amount of rain or snow worth mentioning.” “The tree” covered half the heavens or more, and nowhere did I see any large reaches of clear sky. Here and there a star would peep through, and the moon seemed to be quickly and quietly moving through the lines. Apparently he was the general who reviewed the army.
Again there came a shifting in the scenes. It looked as if some unseen hands were spreading a sheet above these flocculent clouds—a thin and vapoury sheet that came from the north and gradually covered the whole roof of the sky. Stars and moon disappeared; but not, so far, the light of the moon; it merely became diffused—the way the light from an electric bulb becomes diffused when you enclose it in a frosted globe. And then, as the sheet of vapour above began to thicken, the light on the snow became dim and dimmer, till the whole of the landscape lay in gloom. The sheet still seemed to be coming, coming from the north. But no longer did it travel away to the south. It was as if it had brought up against an obstacle there, as if it were being held in place. And since there was more and more of it pressing up—it seemed rather to be pushed now—it telescoped together and threw itself into folds, till at last the whole sky looked like an enormous system of parallel clothes-lines over all of which one great, soft, and loose cloth were flung, so that fold after fold would hang down between all the neighbouring pairs of lines; and between two folds there would be a sharply converging, upward crease. It being night, this arrangement, common in grey daylight, would not have shown at all, had it not been for the moon above. As it was, every one of the infolds showed an increasingly lighter grey the higher it folded up, and like huge, black udders the outfolds were hanging down. This sky, when it persists, I have often found to be followed within a few days by heavy storms. To-night, however, it did not last. Shifting skies are never certain signs, though they normally indicate an unsettled condition of the atmosphere. I have observed them after a blizzard, too.
I looked back over my shoulder, just when I emerged from the bush into the open fields. And there I became aware of a new element again. A quiet and yet very distinct commotion arose from the south. These cloth-clouds lifted, and a nearly impalpable change crept over the whole of the sky. A few minutes later it crystallised into a distinct impression. A dark grey, faintly luminous, inverted bowl stood overhead. Not a star was to be seen above, nor yet the moon. But all around the horizon there was a nearly clear ring, suffused with the light of the moon. There, where the sky is most apt to be dark and hazy, stars peeped out—singly and dimly only—I did not recognize any constellation.
And then the grey bowl seemed to contract into patches. Again the change seemed to proceed from the south. The clouds seemed to lift still higher, and to shrink into small, light, feathery cirrus clouds, silvery on the dark blue sky—resembling white pencil shadings. The light of the moon asserted itself anew. And this metamorphosis also spread upward, till the moon herself looked out again, and it went on spreading northward till it covered the whole of the sky.
This last change came just before I had to turn west again for a mile or so in order to hit a trail into town. I did not mean to go on straight ahead and to cut across those radiating road lines of which I have spoken in a former paper. I knew that my wife would be sitting up and waiting till midnight or two o’clock, and I wanted to make it. So I avoided all risks and gave my attention to the road for a while. I had to drive through a ditch and through a fence beyond, and to cross a field in order to strike that road which led from the south through the park into town. A certain farmstead was my landmark. Beyond it I had to watch out sharply if I wanted to find the exact spot where according to my informant the wire of the fence had been taken down. I found it.
To cross the field proved to be the hardest task the horses had had so far during the night. The trail had been cut in deep through knee-high drifts, and it was filled with firmly packed, freshly blown-in snow. That makes a particularly bad road for fast driving. I simply had to take my time and to give all my attention to the guiding of the horses. And here I was also to become aware once more of the fact that my horses had not yet forgotten their panic in that river drift of two hours ago. There was a strawstack in the centre of the field; at least the shape of the big, white mound suggested a strawstack; and the trail led closely by it. Sharp shadows showed, and the horses, pricking their ears, began to dance and to sidle away from it as we passed along its southern edge.
But we made it. By the time we reached the park that forms the approach to the town from the south, the skies had changed completely. There was now, as far as my eye would reach, just one vast, dark-blue, star-spangled expanse. And the skies twinkled and blazed down upon the earth with a veritable fervour. There was not one of the more familiar stars that did not stand out brightly, even the minor ones which you do not ordinarily see oftener than, maybe, once or twice a year—as, for instance, Vega’s smaller companions in the constellation of the Lyre, or the minor points in the cluster of the Pleiades.
I sometimes think that the mere fact of your being on a narrow bush-road, with the trees looming darkly to both sides, makes the stars seem brighter than they appear from the open fields. I have heard that you can see a star even in daytime from the bottom of a deep mine-pit if it happens to pass overhead. That would seem to make my impression less improbable, perhaps. I know that not often have the stars seemed so much alive to me as they did that night in the park.
And then I came into the town. I stayed about forty-five minutes, fed the horses, had supper myself, and hitched up again.
On leaving town I went for another mile east in the shelter of a fringe of bush; and this bush kept rustling as if a breeze had sprung up. But it was not till I turned north again, on the twenty-mile stretch, that I became conscious of a great change in the atmosphere. There was indeed a slight breeze, coming from the north, and it felt very moist. Somehow it felt homely and human, this breeze. There was a promise in it, as of a time, not too far distant, when the sap would rise again in the trees and when tender leaflets would begin to stir in delicate buds. So far, however, its more immediate promise probably was snow.
But it did not last, either. A colder breeze sprang up. Between the two there was a distinct lull. And again there arose in the north, far away, at the very end of my seemingly endless road, a cloud-bank. The colder wind that sprang up was gusty; it came in fits and starts, with short lulls in between; it still had that water-laden feeling, but it was now what you would call “damp” rather than “moist”—the way you often feel winter-winds along the shores of great lakes or along sea-coasts. There was a cutting edge to it—it was “raw” And it had not been blowing very long before low-hanging, dark, and formless cloud-masses began to scud up from the north to the zenith. The northern lights, too, made their appearance again about that time. They formed an arc very far to the south, vaulting up behind my back, beyond the zenith. No streamers in them, no filtered rays and streaks—nothing but a blurred luminosity high above the clouds and—so it seemed—above the atmosphere. The northern lights have moods, like the clouds—moods as varied as theirs—though they do not display them so often nor quite so ostentatiously.
We were nearing the bridge across the infant river. The road from the south slopes down to this bridge in a rather sudden, s-shaped curve, as perhaps the reader remembers. I still had the moonlight from time to time, and whenever one of the clouds floated in front of the crescent, I drove more slowly and more carefully. Now there is a peculiar thing about moonlight on snow. With a fairly well-marked trail on bare ground, in summertime, a very little of it will suffice to indicate the road, for there are enough rough spots on the best of trails to cast little shadows, and grass and weeds on both sides usually mark the beaten track off still more clearly, even though the road lead north. But the snow forms such an even expanse, and the trail on it is so featureless that these signs are no longer available. The light itself also is too characterless and too white and too nearly of the same quality as the light reflected by the snow to allow of judging distances delicately and accurately. You seem to see nothing but one vast whiteness all around. When you drive east or west, the smooth edges of the tracks will cast sharply defined shadows to the north, but when you drive north or south, even these shadows are absent, and so you must entirely rely on your horses to stay on the trail. I have often observed how easily my own judgment was deluded.
But still I felt so absolutely sure that I should know when I approached the bridge that, perhaps through overconfidence, I was caught napping. There was another fact which I did not take sufficiently into account at the time. I have mentioned that we had had a “soft spell.” In fact, it had been so warm for a day or two that the older snow had completely iced over. Now, much as I thought I was watching out, we were suddenly and quite unexpectedly right on the downward slope before I even realized that we were near it.
As I said, on this slope the trail described a double curve, and it hit the bridge at an angle from the west. The first turn and the behaviour of the horses were what convinced me that I had inadvertently gone too far. If I had stopped the horses at the point where the slope began and then started them downward at a slow walk, we should still have reached the bridge at too great a speed; for the slope had offered the last big wind from the north a sheer brow, and it was swept clean of new snow, thus exposing the smooth ice underneath; the snow that had drifted from the south, on the other hand, had been thrown beyond the river, on to the lower northern bank; the horses skidded, and the weight of the cutter would have pushed them forward. As it was, they realized the danger themselves; for when we turned the second curve, both of them stiffened their legs and spread their feet in order to break the momentum of the cutter; but in spite of the heavy calks under their shoes they slipped on all fours, hardly able to make the bend on to the bridge.
They had to turn nearly at right angles to their last direction, and the bridge seemed to be one smooth sheet of ice. The moon shone brightly just then; so I saw exactly what happened. As soon as the runners hit the iced-over planks, the cutter swung out sideways; the horses, however, slipping and recovering, managed to make the turn. It was a worth-while sight to see them strike their calks into the ice and brace themselves against the shock which they clearly expected when the cutter started to skid. The latter swung clear of the bridge—you will remember that the railing on the east-side was broken away—out into space, and came down with a fearful crash, but right side up, on the steep north bank of the river—just at the very moment when the horses reached the deep, loose snow beyond which at least gave them a secure footing. They had gone along the diagonal of the bridge, from the southwest corner, barely clearing the rail, to the northwest corner where the snow had piled in to a depth of from two to five feet on the sloping bank. If the ground where I hit the bank had been bare, the cutter would have splintered to pieces; as it was, the shock of it seemed to jar every bone in my body.
It seemed rather a piece of good luck that the horses bolted; the lines held; they pulled me free of the drift on the bank and plunged out on the road. For a mile or two we had a pretty wild run; and this time there was no doubt about it, either, the horses were thoroughly frightened. They ran till they were exhausted, and there was no holding them; but since I was on a clear road, I did not worry very much. Nevertheless, I was rather badly shaken up myself; and if I had followed the good advice that suggested itself, I should have put in for some time at the very next farm which I passed. The way I see things now, it was anything rather than safe to go on. With horses in the nervous condition in which mine were I could not hope any longer to keep them under control should a further accident happen. But I had never yet given in when I had made up my mind to make the trip, and it was hard to do so for the first time.
As soon as I had the horses sufficiently in hand again, I lighted my lantern, got out on the road, and carefully looked my cutter over. I found that the hardwood lining of both runners was broken at the curve, but the steel shoes were, though slightly bent, still sound. Fortunately the top had been down, otherwise further damage would have been sure to result. I saw no reason to discontinue the drive.
Now after a while—when the nervousness incident upon the shock which I had received subsided—my interest in the shifting skies revived once more, and again I began to watch the clouds. The wind was squally, and the low, black vapour-masses overhead had coalesced into a vast array of very similar but yet distinct groups. There was still a certain amount of light from the moon, but only just enough to show the texture and the grouping of the clouds. Hardly ever had I seen, or at least consciously taken note of a sky that with its blackness and its massed multitudes of clouds looked so threatening, so sinister, so much like a battle-array. But way up in the northeast there were two large areas quite suffused with light from the north. They must have been thin cloud-layers in whose upper reaches the northern lights were playing. And these patches of light were like a promise, like a word of peace arresting the battle. Had it not been for these islands of light, I should have felt depressed when I looked back to the road.
We were swinging along as before. I had rested the horses by a walk, and to a casual observer they would have seemed to be none the worse for their fling at running away. But on closer scrutiny they would again have revealed the unmistakable signs of nervous tension. Their ears moved jerkily on the slightest provocation. Still, the road was good and clear, and I had no apprehensions.
Then came the sudden end of the trail. It was right in front of a farm yard. Clearly, the farmer had broken the last part of the road over which I had come. The trail widened out to a large, circus-shaped flat in the drifts. The snow had the ruffled appearance of being thoroughly tramped down by a herd of cattle. On both sides there were trees—wild trees—a-plenty. Brush lined the narrow road gap ahead; but the snow had piled in level with its tops. This had always been rather a bad spot, though the last time I had seen it the snow had settled down to about half the height of the shrubs. I stopped and hesitated for a moment. I knew just where the trail had been. It was about twenty-five feet from the fence of the field to the east. It was now covered under three to four feet of freshly drifted-in snow. The drift seemed to be higher towards the west, where the brush stood higher, too. So I decided to stay as nearly as I could above the old trail. There, even though we might break through the new snow the older drifts underneath were likely to be firm enough.
We went ahead. The drift held, and slowly we climbed to its summit. It is a strange coincidence that just then I should have glanced up at the sky. I saw a huge, black cloud-mass elbowing its way, as it were, in front of those islands of light, the promise of peace. And so much was I by this time imbued with the moods of the skies that the disappearance of this mild glimmer sent a regret through my very body. And simultaneously with this thrill of regret there came—I remember this as distinctly as if it had been an hour ago—the certainty of impending disaster. The very next moment chaos reigned. The horses broke in, not badly at all; but as a consequence of their nervous condition they flew into a panic. I held them tight as they started to plunge. But there was no guiding them; they were bound to have things their own way altogether. It seemed as if they had lost their road-sense, too, for instead of plunging at least straight ahead, out on the level trail, they made, with irresistible bounds and without paying the slightest attention to the pull of the lines, towards the east. There the drift, not being packed by any previous traffic, went entirely to pieces under their feet. I had meanwhile thrown off my robes, determined at all costs to bring them to a stop, for I knew, if I allowed them to get away with me this time, they would be spoiled for any further drives of mine.
Now just the very fraction of a second when I got my feet up against the dashboard so as to throw my whole weight into my pull, they reared up as if for one tremendous and supreme bound, and simultaneously I saw a fence post straight under the cutter pole. Before I quite realized it, the horses had already cleared the fence. I expected the collision, the breaking of the drawbar and the bolting of the horses; but just then my desperate effort in holding them told, and dancing and fretting they stood. Then, in a flash, I mentally saw and understood the whole situation. The runners of the cutter, still held up by the snow of the drift which sloped down into the field and which the horses had churned into slabs and clods, had struck the fence wire and, lifting the whole of the conveyance, had placed me; cutter and all, balanced for a moment to a nicety, on top of the post. But already we began to settle back.
I felt that I could not delay, for a moment later the runners would slip off the wire and the cutter fall backward; that was the certain signal for the horses to bolt. The very paradoxicality of the situation seemed to give me a clue. I clicked my tongue and, holding the horses back with my last ounce of strength, made them slowly dance forward and pull me over the fence. In a moment I realized that I had made a mistake. A quick pull would have jerked me clear of the post. As it was, it slowly grated along the bottom of the box; then the cutter tilted forward, and when the runners slipped off the wire, the cutter with myself pitched back with a frightful knock against the post. The back panel of the box still shows the splintered tear that fence post made. The shock of it threw me forward, for a second I lost all purchase on the lines, and again the horses went off in a panic. It was quite dark now, for the clouds were thickening in the sky. While I attended to the horses, I reflected that probably something had broken back there in the cutter, but worst of all, I realized that this incident, for the time being at least, had completely broken my nerve. As soon as I had brought the horses to a stop, I turned in the knee-deep snow of the field and made for the fence.
Half a mile ahead there gleamed a light. I had, of course, to stay on the field, and I drove along, slowly and carefully, skirting the fence and watching it as closely as what light there was permitted.
I do not know why this incident affected me the way it did; but I presume that the cumulative effect of three mishaps, one following the other, had something to do with it; the same as it affected the horses. But more than that, I believe, it was the effect of the skies. I am rather subject to the influence of atmospheric conditions. There are not many things that I would rather watch. No matter what the aspect of the skies may be, they fascinate me. I have heard people say, “What a dull day!”—or, “What a sleepy day!”—and that when I was enjoying my own little paradise in yielding to the moods of cloud and sky. To this very hour I am convinced that the skies broke my nerve that night, that those incidents merely furnished them with an opportunity to get their work in more tellingly.
Of the remainder of the drive little needs to be said. I found a way out of the field, back to the road, drove into the yard of the farm where I had seen the light, knocked at the house, and asked for and obtained the night’s accommodation for myself and for my horses.
At six o’clock next morning I was on the road again. Both I and the horses had shaken off the nightmare, and through a sprinkling, dusting fall of snow we made the correction line and finally home in the best of moods and conditions.
END