1
AT dawn Felix awoke with a sense of loneliness. The vague consciousness
which had remained with him even in sleep of a beautiful and beloved
body at his side, was gone; and the hand that he reached out in troubled
half-sleep had found no warm and reassuring presence. For an instant it
seemed as though the night had been only a dream. He felt a vast
desolation, a profound fear. It was as if not this one night only had
been taken from him, but the thousand nights and days which lay implicit
in it—the lifetime of sweetness and intimacy which it had begun.
Startled awake by the pain of this loneliness, he looked about him.
Rose-Ann was not there. The bed was still warm where she had lain, the
pillow kept the impression of her head, but she was gone. The white
light of the dawn lighted the room, the fire was dying in the grate, a
cool little wind swept in through an open window, and one of the leaves
of the long French window that opened on the balcony stood ajar.
Rose-Ann’s clothing lay folded on a chair at the foot of the bed.
His reason told him that Rose-Ann had slipped out to the balcony to
breathe the morning air. But he was still filled with the terror of that
waking moment. Moved by an unreasoning fear, he leaped from the bed and
ran to the French window. Outside the world was white. On the balcony,
in the deep snow, were the imprints of her little naked feet. Still
agitated, he followed those footprints where they led around the corner
of the house. And then he stopped, and gazed.
She was there, standing unclothed and rosy in the morning wind, in the
light of the dawn, leaning over the railing of the porch.
“Rose-Ann!” he called sharply.
She turned. “Good-morning, old sleepy-head!” she cried. “You were dozing
so peacefully that I didn’t have the heart to wake you up. Isn’t it
lovely!” And she waved a hand toward the ice-bound lake that stretched
out to the east like an Arctic wilderness, tinged with the rose of dawn.
“What are you doing out here?” he demanded, commencing to shiver.
“I was thinking of taking a snow-bath!” she said. “I’ve always wanted to
and never have. Look where the snow has drifted up here against the
house. Wouldn’t it be wonderful just to drop off into that snow bank!
Come, let’s do it!” She took his hand and led him to the edge of the
porch, which was here only a few feet above the ground, with the snow
piled up to its very edge.
“But how would we get out of that snow-bank once we had got in!” he
expostulated. It was a crazy idea, and he had no intention of letting
her carry it out.
“Oh, don’t let’s stand here and argue about it,” she said impatiently,
“and get cold. I’m going to, anyway!” And before he could stop her she
had climbed the railing and leaped down into the snow-bank.... He
realized that he must do the same. There was no choice! And in an
instant he had leaped down beside her, down crunching through soft
feathery snow that stung the skin deliciously and made the blood hot in
his veins—and an instant later, laughing, they were fighting their way
out and stumbling up the steps to the balcony and into the house.
“Towels!” cried Rose-Ann, racing to the bathroom and back and flinging
him one. “Now wasn’t that worth doing!”
“And no doubt very entertaining to the neighbours,” Felix
grumbled—secretly rejoicing in their spectacular feat. It really seemed
to him a splendidly pagan thing to have done.
“Our only neighbour for miles is Mrs. Cowan,” said Rose-Ann, “and she’s
over somewhere the other way. Besides, for once in my life I’m going to
do the things I want to do without stopping to think of other people
first. Now, Felix, can you build a fire? If you can’t, I can!”
“Of course I can build a fire,” said Felix. “The real question is, can
you cook an egg? Because if you can’t, I can.” He was a little nettled
at her having taken the lead in the snow-bath, and he did not intend to
let her carry off any more honours of leadership. “If Clive has not
deceived and betrayed us,” he continued, “you ought to be able to find
eggs and things in the kitchen.”
“All right,” she said obediently; and finished with the simple task of
dressing, in an old skirt and a smock, but not without a look at herself
in the glass, she started off to the kitchen.
Felix looked at the fire. It needed rebuilding, and he would have to
chop some more kindling. He went down to the woodshed, and energetically
chopped up one stick. Then he paused, laid down the hatchet, and
commenced to whistle a plaintive, melancholy, tuneless tune. He picked
up his hatchet, ran his thumb over the edge, and laid it down again.
He was not thinking about chopping kindling. He was thinking about
Rose-Ann, there in the kitchen only a few feet away. What was she doing?
He could see her in imagination, ransacking Clive’s cupboards. He wished
he could see her in reality. He started to his feet impulsively, and
then sat down again.
He was annoyed with himself. Couldn’t he be separated from her for a few
minutes without wanting to tag after her? She would be surprised, and
perhaps annoyed, by his coming in. She would ask, “Have you got the fire
built? Well then, for heaven’s sake, go and build it, and leave me alone
to get you some breakfast!”
He could not confess to her how utterly indispensable her presence had
become to him.... Yesterday they had been two different and separate
persons—but they were so no longer. A quaint churchly phrase leaped into
his mind, a phrase that had never seemed real before: “these twain shall
be made one flesh.” He knew its truth now. Last night they had lain and
talked for hours of the things they were going to do—together. Together!
Their life henceforth had pictured itself to them as something enjoyed
always in common. They had not thought, last night, of ever being apart
again. But of course they would be apart—a great deal of the time. And
doubtless it was as well to begin now. There was no sense whatever to
this feeling of loneliness. He was going to have the rest of a lifetime
with Rose-Ann, and he certainly ought to be able to go off and chop a
little wood without her. No, he must not go to the kitchen to see what
she was doing! He must subdue this weakness—this absurd feeling of
helpless loneliness when he left her for a moment.
He raised his hatchet and brought it down sharply on the stick of wood.
The door opened, and there stood Rose-Ann, with an apron on, her cheeks
flushed.
“Hello!” he said, and laid down the hatchet.
“I just came to see what you were doing,” she said.
“Chopping a little kindling, that’s all,” he said.
“Oh,” she said. She continued to look at him with interest.
He took up the hatchet again, and split the stick with a few efficient
strokes. She looked about, up-ended a short log, and sat down, her hands
in her lap. Felix chopped another stick, and another, with a sense of
great peace and contentment. Chopping kindling had become very
interesting. He chopped on, under her gaze. He did not need to look up
at her. She was there with him; that was sufficient. He went on
chopping.
“Don’t you think that’s enough kindling now, Felix?” she asked at last,
hesitantly.
He looked at the pile. He _had_ chopped an awful lot! “I thought I might
as well cut enough to last for a while,” he explained.
“A good idea,” she agreed. “And we might as well take a lot upstairs
while we’re about it. I’ll take some, if you’ll load me.” She held out
her arms, and he piled them full, then loaded his own, and they went up
together.
She knelt beside him, watching, while he laid the fire. He felt somewhat
insecure in his knowledge of fire-making, and he tried to remember just
how Clive had done it the day before. But he felt nothing critical in
Rose-Ann’s watching; and apparently he remembered well, for the fire
behaved quite as it should. He waited until the proper moment, put on
the cannel coal, and drew the fire-screen in front of the fireplace.
Rose-Ann stood up. “Now we’ll go and get breakfast,” she said.
In the kitchen, she turned to him. “Do you like omelettes?” she asked.
“I love them,” he said.
“With peas and things in? There’s a can of little peas here.” She
searched in a drawer and found a can-opener.
“Here, let me,” said Felix authoritatively, and took it from her.
She surrendered it, and bent to another drawer, bringing out another
apron.
“Must wear,” she said, and tied it around him.
The touch of her fingers was too much. He turned and took her in his
arms, and found himself tightly bound in hers, and kissed the eager lips
uplifted to his.
“Oh, Felix!” she cried in a weak, smothered voice. “Felix, lover!”
“And now,” she said at last, smiling happily and rousing herself from
their dream, “we really must get breakfast!”
2
After breakfast, which was prolonged for hours by talk and cigarettes
and endless cups of coffee, they “bundled up” and took a long walk,
through the deep snow, stumbling and laughing like children, and as
indefatigable as children. First they went down to the lake, that snowy
waste strewn with high-piled ice-hummocks, and with the blue of water
showing strangely here and there. Then they turned their backs on it,
and walked toward the west, where the black branches of trees made
delicate patterns against the sky. They were as if aware of the kinship
of their love to the life of the earth, and seeking outdoors that
magical sympathy of natural living things which no roof-tree, however
hospitable, can furnish to lovers. This great white expanse, with no
green thing visible anywhere, with not even the friendly touch of the
ground underfoot, might have seemed to hold out no invitation to their
love. It was an earth sunken in winter-sleep, apparently unconscious of
their presence, vastly indifferent to their demand. And yet they loved
it, and it gave them something which they craved.
Utterly exhausted, they reached home at last, with the sunset flaming
behind the black branches. They were ravenously hungry. But they faced
the prospect of clearing up after last night’s feast, a task blithely
postponed that morning, before they would have dishes enough to eat
from. Of course, they might have had Mrs. Cowan come in; but they
preferred their magic isolation. Changed into dry garments, they set to
work washing dishes—not without a friendly quarrel over which one should
wash and which one wipe them.
“Maybe you think a man doesn’t know how to wash dishes,” Felix said
belligerently.
“No,” said Rose-Ann, “but I think a woman might have the privilege of
washing dishes in her own house.... Felix, I wish this were our own
house! I shall hate to go back to town after this.... But don’t let’s
think about that now. All right, selfish, you can wash the dishes!”
The thought frightened Felix a little. A house of their own! A house in
the country! How beautiful, and yet how—but no, nothing seemed
impossible now.... They could plan for it, and work for it, and at last
have it, together....
3
“Read me some poetry, Felix,” said Rose-Ann, after dinner, as they lay
drowsily, in a great warm nest of cushions, in front of the fire in the
room upstairs.
He stirred himself, and then relaxed. Rose-Ann’s head was nestled in the
hollow under his shoulder, and her red-gold hair, unbound, flowed across
her bosom and touched his caressing hand. He was altogether too happily
situated at this moment to want to go downstairs and look for a book of
poems. Besides, why need he?
“_And frosts are slain and flowers begotten._”
he began. She closed her eyes, and from her quiet breathing one might
have thought her asleep. But once when he faltered, forgetting the
words, Rose-Ann murmured them softly:
“_And frosts are slain and flowers begotten._”
He took it up, in his voice of subdued chanting:
“_And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins...._”
and so to the end.
“Say me some more,” she breathed. “Like that. Anything with woods or
flowers in it.”
He began quoting, mischievously filling in words to make up the rhythm
where he forgot the original:
“_Iris all hues, roses and jessamine....
In shadier bower.... (I forget! But here it was)
With flowers, garlands and sweet-smelling herbs
Espoused Eve decked first her nuptial bed....
Yes Eve! In naked beauty more adorned,
More lovely than Pandora. (So Milton says!)_
“I can’t remember just how it goes, but there are some lovely things in
that old Puritan’s blood-and-thunder epic....
“_These, lulled by nightingales, embracing slept,
And on their naked limbs the flowery roof
Showered roses. (She’s asleep!)_”
Outside, unseen, the moon emerged from behind racing clouds, and lighted
with its pale radiance the great stretch of winter-bound lake and
desolate shore along which they had wandered that day seeking some
response in its vast indifference; and its rays touched and silvered the
roof-tree of the little house on the edge of a ravine, within whose
doors, by the grace of the English poets, it was April. Blossom by
blossom, about their couch, the spring began, and upon their naked limbs
showered roses.
“No.” said Rose-Ann, “I’m not asleep!”
He laughed tenderly. “No, not now. But you have been for half an hour.
I’ve been watching you sleep. You do it beautifully!”
“Have I really?” She stretched herself, like a kitten upon awaking from
a nap. “Well, I’m awake now, and I want some more poetry. Something sad
this time.”
“More poetry? What a glutton you are!”
“But I _like_ poetry, Felix. It’s real to me—as real as our love.”
“But why sad poetry?” he teased.
“I don’t know. I suppose it’s because I’m so happy.”
“I know,” said Felix, and out of the storehouse of his memory he brought
one after another the stories of old unhappy love, impossible love, love
that goes toward death. It was as if the contrast of these tragic
fantasies was needed to make poignant the sweet and easy fulfilment of
their own love—as if some chill breath from the grave must intervene
between their caresses lest they seem too tame.
“_The mountain ways one summer
Saw life and joy go past,
When we who were so lonely
Went hand in hand at last._
“_And overhead the pine-woods
Their purple shadows cast,
When the tall twilight laid us
Hot mouth to mouth at last._
“_O hills, beneath your slumber,
Or pines, beneath your blast,
Make room for your two children—
Cold cheek to cheek at last!_”
“No,” murmured Rose-Ann, lifting her head and putting her warm cheek
against his own, a cheek wet with sudden tears. “Not cold cheek to
cheek, Felix!”
Tears sprung from that sweet sadness which only happy youth dares
indulge—the wilful and daring melancholy of young love, turning aside
from its joys to think of death....
Rose-Ann dried her eyes cheerfully. “I wanted to cry,” she said. “and
now that I have, I feel better. Give me a cigarette!”
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