WINTER
Endlessly, day after day, the journal goes on recording a dreary
monotony of rain and cloud. Who has ever dwelt so entirely alone that
the most living things in all the universe about are wind and rain and
snow? Where the elements dominate and control your life, where at
getting up and bedtime and many an hour of night and day between you
question helplessly, as a poor slave his master, the will of the
mighty forces of the sky? Dawn breaks, you jump from bed, stand
barefoot on the threshold of the door, look through the straight
trunked spruces at the brightening world, and read at sight God's will
for one more whole, long day of life. "Ah God! it rains again." And
sitting on the bed you wearily draw on your heavy boots, and
rainy-spirited begin the special labors of a rainy day. Or maybe, at
the sight of clouds again, you laugh at the dull-minded weather man or
curse at him good naturedly. Still you must do those rainy-weather
chores and all the other daily chores in hot wet-weather garments.
That is destiny.
Most of the time, to do ourselves real justice, we met the worst of
weather with a battle cry, worked hard,--and then made up for outdoor
dreariness and wet by heaping on the comforts of indoors,--dry, cozy
warmth, good things to eat, and lots to do.
We have reached late fall--for northern latitudes. The sky is brooding
ominously, heavy, dull, and raw. Winter seems to be closing in upon
us. We're driven to work as if in fear. Hurry, hurry! Saw the great
drums of spruce, roll them over the ground and stack them high. Calk
tight with hemp the cabin's windward eaves so that no breath of wind
can enter there and freeze the food inside upon the shelf. Set up the
far-famed air-tight stove where it will keep you warm,--warm feet in
bed and a warm back while painting. Patch up the poor, storm-battered
paper roof,--two or three holes we find and we are sure it leaks from
twenty. About the cabin pile the hemlock boughs, dense-leafed and
warm, making a green slope almost to the eaves. Now it looks cozy!
Outside and in the last is done to make us ready for the winter's
worst, and just in time! It is the evening of October twenty-second
and the feathery snow has just begun to fall. Olson comes stamping in.
"Well, well," he cries, "how's this! How does our winter suit you?" It
suits us perfectly. The house is warm, Rockwell's in bed, and I am
reading "Treasure Island" to him.
"What are you going to make of him?" asked Olson that night speaking
of Rockwell. I was at that moment pouring beans into the pot for
baking. I slowed the stream and dropped them one by one:
"'Rich-man, poor-man, beggar-man, thief,
Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief.'
How in the world can anyone lay plans for a youngster's life?"
[Illustration: ON THE HEIGHT]
Rockwell lay in his bed dreaming, maybe, of an existence lovelier far
than anything the poor, discouraged imagination of a man could reach.
A child could make a paradise of earth. Life is so simple! Unerringly
he follows his desires making the greatest choices first, then onward
into a narrowing pathway until the true goal is reached. How can one
preach of beauty or teach another wisdom. These things are of an
infinite nature, and in every one of us in just proportion. There is
no priesthood of the truth.
We live in many worlds, Rockwell and I,--the world of the books we
read,--an always changing one, "Robinson Crusoe," "Treasure Island,"
the visionary world of William Blake, the Saga Age, "Water Babies,"
and the glorious Celtic past,--Rockwell's own world of fancy, kingdom
of beasts, the world he dreams about and draws,--and my created land
of striding heroes and poor fate-bound men--real as I have painted
them or to me nothing is,--and then all round about our common, daily,
island-world, itself more wonderful than we have half a notion of. Is
it to be believed that we are here alone, this boy and I, far north
out on an island wilderness, seagirt on a terrific coast! It's as we
pictured it and wanted it a year and more ago,--yes, dreams come true.
And now the snow falls softly. Winter, to meet our challenge, has
begun.
Short notes in the journal mark "Treasure Island's" swift passage.
Then enter "Water Babies!" "Just after Rockwell's heart and mine," I
have recorded it. But Kingsley must lose his friends,--a warning to
the snob in literature. How it did weary us and madden us, his
English-gentry pride,--unless we outright laughed. "At last it's
finished. That's an event. When Kingsley isn't showing off he's
moralizing, and between his religious cant and his English snobbery he
is, in spite of his occasional sweet sentiment, quite unendurable. So
to-night we read from 'Andersen's Fairy Tales'--forever lovely and
true."
Children have their own fine literary taste that we know quite too
little about. They love all real, authentic happenings, and they love
pure fairy tale. But to them fiction in the guise of truth is wrong,
and fairy romance, unconvincing in its details, is ridiculous. Action
they like, the deed--not thoughts about it. Doubtless the simple saga
form is best of all,--life as it happens, neither right nor wrong,
words that they can understand, things they can comprehend,
interesting facts or thrilling fancy. Such simple things delight the
child that half of "Robinson Crusoe" and three quarters of the smug
family from Switzerland are forgiven for the sweet kernel of pure
adventure that is there.
As for adventure,--that is relative. Where little happens and the
gamut of expression is narrow life is still full of joy and sorrow.
You're stirred by simple happenings in a quiet world.
The killer-whales that early in September played in the shoal water of
our cove not thirty feet from land, rolled their huge, shining bodies
into view, plunged, raced where we still could follow their gleaming,
white patch under water,--there's a thrill!
The battles that occurred that month between huge fish out in the bay,
their terrible, mysterious, black arms that beat the water with a
sound like cannon, the plunge into the depths of the poor, frantic,
wounded whale, and his return again for air; again the thunder sound
and flying foam and spray as the dread black arm is beating on the
sea; then calm. You shudder at that huge death. That was a drama for
Fox Islanders.
And later the poor magpie's death. Real tears were shed from a poor
boy's half-broken heart.
Two strangers come these days and stop with Olson. They're on the
search of that small craft that we saw driving seaward in a tempest.
[Illustration: THE DAY'S WORK]
_There_ is mystery! Was she adrift unmanned, broke from her moorings,
or was there life aboard as we had thought? In that case she'd been
stolen, and who were the men and where? Wrecked safely on some island,
drowned, or driven out to sea? No man shall ever know.
A porcupine is captured wandering near our house. We build for him a
cozy home--he doesn't like it much but still he _should_. We care for
him day after day, he twines himself, about our hearts. Then at last
one day when we'd pastured him in freedom out in the new fallen snow,
trusting his tracks to lead us to him, the goats cut in and spoiled
the trail and he was lost to us.
Olson has gone to Seward: days of waiting, days of waiting! How many
times do we travel down the cove to the point from whence Caine's Head
is seen, going in hope, returning gloomily.
The goats beset us yearning for their missing master. Billy, that
maddening beast, eats up one corner of our broom. I throw a heavy
armful of kindling wood into his face--and he just sneezes. But
Rockwell plays with the goats as if they're human, or rather, as if he
were goat. They half believe it, he has told me,--and, Rockwell, so do
I.
Sunday, November third.
To-day was gloriously bright and clear with a strong northwest wind.
The mountains are covered with snow, beautiful beyond description. I
painted in-and out-of-doors continuously all the day except when
Rockwell and I plied the saw. It is no little thing to have one's work
on a day like this out under such a blue sky, by the foaming green sea
and the fairy mountains.
Three days go by. It rains and hails and snows, and then is quiet.
Over the dead, still air comes the roar of pounding seas. Immense and
white they pile on the black cliffs of Caine's Head, the wash of a
storm at sea. Still over the heaving, glassy water we look in vain
for Olson. Dark days, and the short hours are long with waiting. How
many times we traveled down the cove to look toward Seward, how many
score of times we peered through the little panes of our west window
never to find the thing we sought for.
I've loaded my arms with firewood from the pile. I turn my head and
there in our cove before my very eyes at last is Olson! This is
November sixth,--nine days away!
"The war is over," cried Olson as he landed. By all that's holy in
life may the world have found through its mad war at least some
fragrance of the peace and freedom that we discovered growing like a
flower, wild on the borders of the wilderness....
Long into night I read the mail, count sweaters, caps, and woolen
stockings, all that the mail has brought. It is late, Rockwell is
asleep, the room is cold, it snows out-of-doors.... And now instead of
bed I'll stir the fire and begin my work.
Thursday, November seventh.
A true winter's day with the snow deep on the ground and the profound
and characteristic winter silence of the out-of-doors to be sensed
even in this ever silent place. At earliest daylight began a heavy
thunderstorm with lightning all about and a downpour of hail. It
occurred intermittently throughout the morning.... I did the washing,
using Olson's washboard and getting the clothes nearly white.
Olson is full of amusing gossip. To the curious in Seward who asked
him why I chose to be in this God-forsaken spot he replied: "You damn
fools, you don't understand an artist at all. Do you suppose
Shakespeare wrote his plays with a silly crowd of men and women
hanging around him? No, sir, an artist has to be left alone."
"Well, what does he paint?"
"That's his business. Sometimes I see he has a mountain there on a
picture, and next time I see it's been changed to a lake or something
else."
[Illustration: MEAL TIME]
One can imagine Olson with his questioners. The thing he most wants,
his ambition, one might say, is to make people sit up and take notice
of Fox Island, his homestead. It is in fact one reason why he brought
us here to live. Thanks to its amateur detective, Seward had rejoiced
for a short time in rumors of a German spy on Fox Island. I told Olson
that the authorities might still come and remove me. He flared up,
"I'd like to see them try it! We could take to the mountains with
guns, and more than one of them would never try the thing again." And
then he went on to tell me how in Idaho he had tracked for days and
weeks a notorious gang of outlaws and horse-thieves and at last run
them to earth,--one of his most thrilling and, I believe, absolutely
true stories of his adventures.
At this moment a steamer is blowing in the bay, navigating by the echo
from the mountain faces. She is near to us now but hidden by the
snowstorm.
Rockwell has begun to write the story of a long, waking dream of his.
It's a sweet idea and reads most amusingly in his own queer spelling.
Now, though it is already late, I must draw a while longer and then,
after bathing in the bread pan, sit up in bed and read a chapter of
the life of Blake.
Friday, November eighth.
It is so late that I half expect to see the dawn begin. I have been
working on a drawing of Rockwell and his father--and it looks ever so
fine.
Whew! just at this moment the wind has swept down upon our cabin and
blown the roof in as far as it would with great creaking yield,--and
then passed on sucking it out in its wake to such a spread that a
board that lay across overhead like a collar-beam has fallen with a
crash and clatter,--and Rockwell sleeps on! The wind does blow
to-night, and it doesn't stop outside the walls of the cabin either.
My lamp flutters annoyingly. But ah! the room is comfortable and warm.
This morning, it being at first wondrously fair, Rockwell and I set
out for a boat ride. But what with the fussing of installing our motor
and the launching of our cumbersome boat the wind was given time to
rise and spoil the day for us. But we went out into the bay and played
in the waves to see what the north wind could do. The chop was
devilish, short and deep; the boat bridged from one crest to another
with, it seemed, a clear tunnel underneath,--and then running up onto
a wave mountain she would jump off its dizzy peak landing with a
splash in the valley beyond and dousing us well with water. In a
calmer spot I stopped the engine and sketched our island; after which
we rowed home. The rest of the day we worked on the motor--first to
find out why she wouldn't run, then, having found and fixed that, to
put other parts in still better order, and then, by far the longest
time and still to continue to-morrow, to mend what in the course of
our fixing we had broken.
Rockwell's in bed, asleep, dreaming of the little, wild nightingale
that sang of freedom to that poor, unhappy Chinese Emperor; while far
from here in streets and towns the tin nightingale of law-made liberty
charms the world. And it's now my reading time, my time for bread and
jam and a soft-cushioned back.
The days run by, true winter days, snow, cold, and wind,--what wind!
It is terrifying when from our mountain tops those fierce blasts sweep
upon us roaring as they come; flying twigs and ice beat on the roof,
the boards creak and groan under the wind's weight, the lamp flutters,
moss is driven in and falls upon my work-table, the canvas over our
bed flaps,--and then in a moment the wind is gone and the world is
still again save for the distant wash of the waves and the far off
forest roar.
[Illustration: DAY'S END]
Olson is full of treats. His latest was in pleasant violation of the
law. From a bottle of pale liquid half filled with raisins he poured
me a drink, mixing it with an equal amount of ginger ale and a dash of
sugar. It tasted pretty good, quite thrilling in fact.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Pure alcohol," he said, smacking his lips.
Olson then launched forth on confidential advice, "from one trapper to
another," on how to trap men,--in my case rich patrons. He has my need
of them quite upon his mind.
Olson's eggs, by the way, taste good enough. (They gave him in Seward
twenty-four dozen bad eggs to bring out for the foxes.) We have eaten
a dozen. To-day I cracked seventeen to find six for dinner. Onion
omelette is the fashion to cook them in. Rockwell pronounces them
delicious and--well--so do I.
Hard, hard at work, little play, not too much sleep. The wind blows
ceaselessly. Rockwell is forever good,--industrious, kind, and happy.
He reads now quite freely from any book. Drawing has become a natural
and regular occupation for him, almost a recreation--for he can draw
in both a serious and a humorous vein. At this moment he's waiting in
bed for some music and another Andersen fairy tale.
* * * * *
Another day has gone and a new morning is hours on its way. Out in the
moonlit night strained, tired eyes open wide and are made clear again,
cramped knees must dance in the crisp air, the curved spine bends
backward as the upstretched arms describe that superb embracing
gesture of the good-night yawn. November the thirteenth! how time
sweeps by. And I look over the black water that we soon must cross
again to Seward. The wind bursts around the cabin corner. I shiver
and--go to bed.