OUT IN THE SNOW.
"Sydnaein showers
Of sweet discourse, whose powers
Can crown old winter's head with flowers."
CRASHAW.
Winter had not exhausted her repertory, however. She had more wonders to
unfold.
There came a long snowstorm.
"Faithie," said her father, coming in, wrapped up in furs from a visit
to the stable, "put your comfortables on, and we'll go and see the snow.
We'll make tracks, literally, for the hills. There isn't a road fairly
broken between here and Grover's Peak. The snow lies beautifully,
though; and there isn't a breath of wind. It will be a sight to see."
Faith brought, quickly, sontag, jacket, and cloak--hood and veil, and
long, warm snow boots, and in ten minutes was ready, as she averred, for
a sledge ride to Hudson's Bay.
Luther drove the sleigh close to the kitchen door, that Faith might not
have to cross the yard to reach it, and she stepped directly from the
threshold into the warm nest of buffalo robes; while Mis' Battis put a
great stone jug of hot water in beside her feet, asserting that it was
"a real comfortin' thing on a sleigh ride, and that they needn't be
afraid of its leakin', for the cork was druv in as tight as an eye
tooth!"
So, out by the barn, into the road, and away from the village toward the
hills, they went, with the glee of resonant bells and excited
expectation.
A mile, or somewhat more, along the Sedgely turnpike, took them into a
bit of woods that skirted the road on either side, for a considerable
distance. Away in, under the trees, the stillness and the whiteness and
the wonderful multiplication of snow shapes were like enchantment. Each
bush had an attitude and drapery and expression of its own, as if some
weird life had suddenly been spellbound in these depths. Cherubs, and
old women, and tall statue shapes like images of gods, hovered, and
bent, and stood majestic, in a motionless poise. Over all, the bent
boughs made marble and silver arches in shadow and light, and, far down
between, the vistas lengthened endlessly, still crowded with mystic
figures, haunting the long galleries with their awful beauty.
They went on, penetrating a lifeless silence; their horse's feet making
the first prints since early morning in the unbroken smoothness of the
way, and the only sound the gentle tinkle of their own bells, as they
moved pleasantly, but not fleetly, along.
So, up the ascent, where the land lay higher, toward the hills.
"I feel," said Faith, "as if I had been hurried through the Louvre, or
the Vatican, or both, and hadn't half seen anything. Was there ever
anything so strange and beautiful?"
"We shall find more Louvres presently," said her father. "We'll keep the
road round Grover's Peak, and turn off, as we come back, down Garland
Lane."
"That lovely, wild, shady road we took last summer so often, where the
grapevines grow so, all over the trees?"
"Exactly," replied Mr. Gartney. "But you mustn't scream if we thump
about a little, in the drifts up there. It's pretty rough, at the best
of times, and the snow will have filled in the narrow spaces between the
rocks and ridges, like a freshet. Shall you be afraid?"
"Afraid! Oh, no, indeed! It's glorious! I think I should like to go
everywhere!"
"There is a good deal of everywhere in every little distance," said Mr.
Gartney. "People get into cars, and go whizzing across whole States,
often, before they stop to enjoy thoroughly something that is very like
what they might have found within ten miles of home. For my part, I like
microscopic journeying."
"Leaving 'no stone unturned.' So do I," said Faith. "We don't half know
the journey between Kinnicutt and Sedgely yet, I think. And then, too,
they're multiplied, over and over, by all the different seasons, and by
different sorts of weather. Oh, we shan't use them up, in a long while!"
Saidie Gartney had not felt, perhaps, in all her European travel, the
sense of inexhaustible pleasure that Faith had when she said this.
Down under Grover's Peak, with the river on one side, and the
white-robed cedar thickets rising on the other--with the low afternoon
sun glinting across from the frosted roofs of the red mill buildings and
barns and farmhouses to the rocky slope of the Peak.
Then they came round and up again, over a southerly ridge, by beautiful
Garland Lane, that she knew only in its summer look, when the wild grape
festooned itself wantonly from branch to branch, and sometimes, even,
from side to side; and so gave the narrow forest road its name.
Quite into fairyland they had come now, in truth; as if, skirting the
dark peak that shut it off from ordinary espial, they had lighted on a
bypath that led them covertly in. Trailing and climbing vines wore their
draperies lightly; delicate shrubs bowed like veiled shapes in groups
around the bases of tall tree trunks, and slight-stemmed birches
quivered under their canopies of snow. Little birds hopped in and out
under the pure, still shelter, and left their tiny tracks, like magical
hieroglyphs, in the else untrodden paths.
"Lean this way, Faith, and keep steady!" cried Mr. Gartney, as the horse
plunged breast high into a drift, and the sleigh careened toward the
side Faith was on. It was a sharp strain, but they plowed their way
through, and came upon a level again. This by-street was literally
unbroken. No one had traversed it since the beginning of the storm. The
drifts had had it all their own way there, and it involved no little
adventurousness and risk, as Mr. Gartney began to see, to pioneer a
passage through. But the spirit of adventure was upon them both. On all,
I should say; for the strong horse plunged forward, from drift to drift,
as though he delighted in the encounter. Moreover, to turn was
impossible.
Faith laughed, and gave little shrieks, alternately, as they rose
triumphantly from deep, "slumpy" hollows, or pitched headlong into others
again. Thus, struggling, enjoying--just frightened enough, now and then,
to keep up the excitement--they came upon the summit of the ridge. Now
their way lay downward. This began to look really almost perilous. With
careful guiding, however, and skillful balancing--tipping, creaking,
sinking, emerging--they kept on slowly, about half the distance down the
descent.
Suddenly, the horse, as men and brutes, however sagacious, sometimes
will, made a miscalculation of depth or power--lost his sure
balance--sunk to his body in the yielding snow--floundered violently in
an endeavor to regain safe footing--and, snap! crash! was down against
the drift at the left, with a broken shaft under him!
Mr. Gartney sprang to his head.
One runner was up--one down. The sleigh stuck fast at an angle of about
thirty degrees. Faith clung to the upper side.
Here was a situation! What was to be done? Twilight coming on--no help
near--no way of getting anywhere!
"Faith," said Mr. Gartney, "what have you got on your feet?"
"Long, thick snow boots, father. What can I do?"
"Do you dare to come and try to unfasten these buckles? There is no
danger. Major can't stir while I hold him by the head."
Faith jumped out into the snow, and valorously set to work at the
buckles. She managed to undo one, and to slip out the fastening of the
trace, on one side, where it held to the whiffletree. But the horse was
lying so that she could not get at the other.
"I'll come there, father!" she cried, clambering and struggling through
the drift till she came to the horse's head. "Can't I hold him while you
undo the harness?"
"I don't believe you can, Faithie. He isn't down so flat as to be quite
under easy control."
"Not if I sit on his head?" asked Faith.
"That might do," replied her father, laughing. "Only you would get
frightened, maybe, and jump up too soon."
"No, I won't," said Faith, quite determined upon heroism. While she
spoke, she had picked up the whip, which had fallen close by, doubled
back the lash against the handle, and was tying her blue veil to its
tip. Then she sat down on the animal's great cheek, which she had never
fancied to be half so broad before, and gently patted his nose with one
hand, while she upheld her blue flag with the other. Major's big,
panting breaths came up, close beside her face. She kept a quick,
watchful eye upon the road below.
"He's as quiet as can be, father! It must be what Miss Beecher called
the 'chivalry of horses'!"
"It's the chivalry that has to develop under petticoat government!"
retorted Mr. Gartney.
At this moment Faith's blue flag waved vehemently over her head. She had
caught the jingle of bells, and perceived a sleigh, with a man in it,
come out into the crossing at the foot of Garland Lane. The man descried
the signal and the disaster, and the sleigh stopped. Alighting, he led
his horse to the fence, fastened him there, and turning aside into the
steep, narrow, unbroken road, began a vigorous struggle through the
drifts to reach the wreck.
Coming nearer, he discerned and recognized Mr. Gartney, who also, at the
same moment, was aware of him. It was Mr. Armstrong.
"Keep still a minute longer, Faith," said her father, lifting the
remaining shaft against the dasher, and trying to push the sleigh back,
away from the animal. But this, alone, he was unable to accomplish. So
the minister came up, and found Faith still seated on the horse's head.
"Miss Gartney! Let me hold him!" cried he.
"I'm quite comfortable!" laughed Faith. "If you would just help my
father, please!"
The sleigh was drawn back by the combined efforts of the two gentlemen,
and then both came round to Faith.
"Now, Faith, jump!" said her father, placing his hands upon the
creature's temple, close beside her, while Mr. Armstrong caught her arms
to snatch her safely away. Faith sprang, or was lifted as she sprang,
quite to the top of the huge bank of snow under and against which they
had, among them, beaten in and trodden down such a hollow, and the
instant after, Mr. Gartney releasing Major's head, and uttering a sound
of encouragement, the horse raised himself, with a half roll, and a
mighty scramble, first to his knees, and then to his four feet again,
and shook his great skin.
Mr. Gartney examined the harness. The broken shaft proved the extent of
damage done. This, at the moment, however, was irremediable. He knotted
the hanging straps and laid them over the horse's neck. Then he folded a
buffalo skin, and arranged it, as well as he could, above and behind the
saddle, which he secured again by its girth.
"Mr. Armstrong," said he, as he completed this disposal of matters, "you
came along in good time. I am very much obliged to you. If you will do
me the further favor to take my daughter home, I will ride to the
nearest house where I can obtain a sleigh, and some one to send back for
these traps of mine."
"Miss Gartney," said the minister, in answer, "can you sit a horse's
back as well as you did his eyebrow?"
Faith laughed, and reaching her arms to the hands upheld for them, was
borne safely from her snowy pinnacle to the buffalo cushion. Her father
took the horse by the bit, and Mr. Armstrong kept at his side holding
Faith firmly to her seat. In this fashion, grasping the bridle with one
hand, and resting the other on Mr. Armstrong's shoulder, she was
transported to the sleigh at the foot of the hill.
"We were talking about long journeys in small circuits," said Faith,
when she was well tucked in, and they had set off on a level and not
utterly untracked road. "I think I have been to the Alhambra, and to
Rome, and have had a peep into fairyland, and come back, at last, over
the Alps!"
Mr. Armstrong understood her.
"It has been beautiful," said he. "I shall begin to expect always to
encounter you whenever I get among things wild and wonderful!"
"And yet I have lived all my life, till now, in tame streets," said
Faith. "I thought I was getting into tamer places still, when we first
came to the country. But I am finding out Kinnicutt. One can't see the
whole of anything at once."
"We are small creatures, and can only pick up atoms as we go, whether of
things outward or inward. People talk about taking 'comprehensive
views'; and they suppose they do it. There is only One who does."
Faith was silent.
"Did it ever occur to you," said Mr. Armstrong, "how little your thought
can really grasp at once, even of what you already know? How narrow your
mental horizon is?"
"Doesn't it seem strange," said Faith, in a subdued tone, "that the
earth should all have been made for such little lives to be lived in,
each in its corner?"
"If it did not thereby prove these little lives to be but the beginning.
This great Beyond that we get glimpses of, even upon earth, makes it so
sure to us that there must be an Everlasting Life, to match the Infinite
Creation. God puts us, as He did Moses, into a cleft of the rock, that
we may catch a glimmer of His glory as He goes by; and then He tells us
that one day we 'shall know even as also we are known'!"
"And I suppose it ought to make us satisfied to live whatever little
life is given us?" said Faith, gently and wistfully.
Mr. Armstrong turned toward her, and looked earnestly into her eyes.
"Has that thought troubled _you_, too? Never let it do so again, my
child! Believe that however little of tangible present good you may
have, you have the unseen good of heaven, and the promise of all things
to come."
"But we do see lives about us in the world that seem to be and to
accomplish so much!"
"And so we ask why ours should not be like them? Yes; all souls that
aspire, must question that; but the answer comes! I will give you, some
day, if you like, the thought that comforted me at a time when that
question was a struggle."
"I _should_ like!" said Faith, with deeply stirred and grateful
emphasis.
Then they drove on in silence, for a while; and then the minister,
pleasantly and easily, brought on a conversation of everyday matters;
and so they came to Cross Corners, just as Mrs. Gartney was gazing a
little anxiously out of the window, down the road.
Mrs. Gartney urged the minister to come in and join them at the tea
table; but "it was late in the week--he had writing to finish at home
that evening--he would very gladly come another time."
"Mother!" cried Faith, presently, moving out of a dream in which she had
been sitting before the fire, "I wonder whether it has been two hours,
or two weeks, or two years, since we set off from the kitchen door! I
have seen so much, and I have heard so much. I told Mr. Armstrong, after
we met him, that I had been through the Alhambra and the Vatican, and
into fairyland, and over the Alps. And after that, mother," she added,
low, "I think he almost took me into heaven!"