Timothy nodded and his eyes lit as if in welcome of the snow.
"Oh, it's wonderful then," he said softly. "You think it's quiet and
peaceful now, but it ain't nothing to what it is then--between the
storms. You'll love it, white and so still you can almost hear God
movin' round. And then the storms." He rose, the first restless motion
Anne had ever seen him make. "They're wonderful. Trees that have stood
for centuries go crashing down. Mountain sides slip away." His eyes
blazed as if he were watching the Creator at work. "When Spring comes,
it's a new world. Me and Mary go round like children, don't we, mother,
looking up things to see if they're there yet. Last Spring that little
creek down there came a~bubbling up to look at us, just like a new
baby, laughing and smiling through the snow. It weren't there the year
before. A storm cut the channel and there it was dancing and laughing
as if it had just been waiting to surprise us. Wasn't it, mother?"
The old woman nodded. "And do you remember that spruce we used to call
'The Hunchback?'" She turned to Anne. "It was so old and twisted and
it never seemed happy, like other spruces; they're always so glad and
straight. We used to wish a storm would take him, for his own sake, and
one winter that gorge yonder opened and when Spring came, he was gone."
"Gone!" Under cover of the snow, cliffs slid away, gorges opened,
century-old trees disappeared!
"Yes. Winter makes great changes up here in the mountains. Down in
the cities you think winter is a time when everything stops and rests
and nothing moves. But up here we see it moving. It's like watching
God fix things up, cut out a bit here and there, tinker round making
improvements. Nothing ain't ever fixed to stay forever. It stands to
reason it can't be. There wouldn't be any life to things that's fixed
like that. Things keep moving and changing. Why, that doesn't frighten
you, does it?" he asked curiously at the look in Anne's eyes. "There
ain't nothing to be afraid of, Mrs. Barton."
"I'm--not afraid," Anne whispered. "Only I--don't want it to change. I
want it to stay like this--perfect always, quiet and still."
Timothy shook his head and smiled gently. "Oh, no, it wouldn't be good
that way. You wait and see. You'll love it. Why, me and mother's often
spoke about it--when we go, we'd like to be out in a big storm and just
be swept down. Not be sick and helpless for a long time, just have
God throw us in along of some change He's making and use us again in
another way, wouldn't we, ma?"
The old woman nodded. "It would be a grand way to go. I suppose we'd
get there in the end just the same, even if we was buried in one of
them tight little city cemeteries under a marble slab like people put
over the dead as if they wanted to keep them shut up in their little
boxes forever; or even if we was burned like some people hold with,
we'd get back into the earth somehow. But folks have their preference,
and me and pa'd like to go, as he says, in some storm that'd sweep us
out clean and sudden into the midst of things."
Into the midst of things!
For a few moments Anne stood motionless, her hands gripping the back
of the chair, staring at the old people, who, lost in the coming of
the snow, seemed already to have slipped away together--into the midst
of things. Then, without a word, she went quickly out of the room and
upstairs to her own.
It was very cold but she threw the window wide and leaned far out into
the night.
In the full moonlight, the peak of Dana rose, the burnished helmet of
a giant warrior leading the mountains into the coming battle. In the
black secrecy of the granite gorges the courier wind ran swiftly with
its orders. The trees took counsel together. Everything was whispering,
moving, preparing. Nothing was motionless any longer in the security
of its own permanence. Everything was awaiting now the fulfillment of
the law beyond its power to anticipate, change, or deviate from its own
purpose.
In a few weeks now the snow would come. Mountain sides would slip away.
Giant trees go crashing down. New rivers open. God would tinker with
the world! Make his changes, form it to his further plan.
Nothing was completed beyond change. Nothing was still. From rocks
to man, the force moved, making, changing, destroying, recreating,
fashioning to--what? Chaos or perfection.
There was no permanent silence and peace apart from motion, from the
ever-changing march of the universe on--to what? A purpose hidden from
finite sense. A scale so vast that its first note was lost in the birth
of time, its last in infinity.
And she, deaf to this tremendous harmony, had stood scornful of all but
the small, thin note of her own personal security! The chord of the
world's pain, so clear to Roger and Black Tom, she had not heard. Of
the perfect scale so clear to Charlotte Welles, she had not grasped a
note. The joy of life that thrust through her mother's muddled thinking
was a far sweeter note than her own blind assurance of superiority.
Even the sensuous longing of Merle for physical beauty was a finer
understanding of the purpose of life than her own.
The moon had moved on across the world, the little meadow lay in
darkness, when Anne closed the window at last and went to bed.
A week later, the first snow fell. It came in the night and Anne waked
to a white world so white and still that the very stillness throbbed
with its own intensity. Anne stood for hours staring out at the
snow-filled hollows. Under that thick white, perhaps change was already
beginning, a little opening here, a little closing here, the small
first notes of the great orchestra tuning for the vast symphony.
In the night the snow fell again, thicker, whiter, heavier.
Early in the morning Anne sought Mary Potter.
"I can get through, can't I? If I go at once?"
"Yes. But there won't be many days longer. The snow's going to be heavy
this year. It's going to be a wild winter. Did you hear that crash last
night? It was that cedar you say looks like an old woman with a basket.
It snapped clear off like----"
"If I pack to-day, can Mr. Potter get me down to Miller's? The stage
will take me to Raymond."
The old woman was making bread, her arms deep in the clinging dough.
But as Anne spoke, she scraped the dough from them and came quietly
round the table.
"You're going back and, do you know, I'm glad. We'll miss you. When we
heard you was coming we were kind of upset only there didn't seem to be
any good reason why you shouldn't. But now, we'll miss you. You fit in.
I guess me and pa got to think we were the only people that like it
quiet and I suppose there's lots--even down there." She always spoke
so of the world beyond the mountains, "down there," with a nod and a
little gesture out and downward.
"Yes. I think that they want quiet down there more than they want
anything in the whole world. They look and look for it and--some find
it. The world is getting noisier and faster, and yet there are more
and more people looking for--Stillness." She smiled. "Churches even
advertise it in the papers--half hours and quarter hours of Silence."
"Well! Down there they'd make a business out of most anything, wouldn't
they? Advertising silence! Why, it's about the only thing everybody can
have."
"Yes--but we don't find that out. We're all making such a noise looking
for it."
Mary Potter wiped one hand on her apron and laid it on Anne's shoulder.
"I guess you won't make much noise looking for it now, will you?"
"No--I don't--think I will. I'll try not to, anyhow."
"I'd like to have seen the baby. His picture's awful cute."
"He is cute. And as good as gold."
"Maybe you'll want to come back in the Spring and can bring him with
you?"
Anne's lip trembled. "I'm never coming back again, Mrs. Potter,
unless--I don't have to come."
The old woman did not answer for a moment and then she nodded. "I
know. Well, I don't think, my dear, you'll ever have to come again.
You--don't--lose it--once you really get it up here."
She patted Anne's shoulder, but Anne suddenly threw her arms round the
other and kissed her. The old woman's eyes lit with pleasure. She said
nothing. She rarely did when she understood.