_Under the spell of the white touch_
In an earlier chapter I have spoken of our attic as an almost unfailing
source of supply. Any sort of vessel or implement we might happen to
need was pretty certain to turn up there if we looked long enough. It
provided us with jugs and jars, and by and by, when the snow came, a
wooden shovel and a bootjack for our rubber boots. I said that probably
some day we should find a horse and buggy and harness up there, which
was about all that we needed, now. It was just one of those careless
remarks we all make on occasion. It never occurred to me that it was
tinged with prophecy.
We did not find the horse, harness, and buggy in the attic, but we found
them--heired them, to use a good New England word, just as we had heired
the other things. The automobile had not yet reached Brook Ridge, but
it was arriving in the centers and suburbs, upsetting old traditions,
severing old ties. Once we had been commuters on Long Island, and in our
happy suburb there still lived a friend to whom the years had brought
prosperity and motor-machines. In the earlier, more deliberate years he
had found comfort and sufficient speed in an enviable surrey, attached
to a faithful family horse which now, alas! was too slow, too deliberate
for the pace of wealth and the honk-honk of style. So the old horse
stood in the stable, for his owners did not wish to see him go to
strangers. But then one day they heard how we had turned ourselves into
farmers, and presently word came that if we needed Old Beek (shortened
from Lord Beaconsfield), surrey, and harness complete, they were ours to
command. They would be delivered to us in the city, the message said,
from which point we could drive, or ship, them to the farm. It was a
windfall from a clear sky--we said it must be our lucky year. We
accepted the quickest way, and were presently in the city to receive
Lord Beaconsfield.
Had it been earlier in the year, during those magic days of September,
or even in October, when the drifting leaves had turned the highways
into thoroughfares of gold, we should have driven by easy stages the
sixty miles, across the hills and far away, to Brook Ridge, resting
where the night found us. It was too late for that now. The roadsides
were no longer flower-decked or golden. An early snowfall had left them
in rather a mixed condition, and the air had a chill in it that did not
invite extended travel. We could ship by boat to our nearest Sound port,
and the fifteen-mile drive from there seemed no great matter.
We admired the dignity with which His Lordship drew up in front of our
New York hotel. He was a large, handsome animal, sorrel as to color, and
of a manner befitting his station and advanced years. It was evident
that we were not of his class, but with the gentle tact of true nobility
he never, either then or later, permitted this difference in rank to
make us uncomfortable. He even allowed us to call him "Beek," "Old
Beek," "good Old Beek," especially when there was a lump of sugar in
prospect. He was very human.
But I anticipate. We were delighted with Lord Beaconsfield and his
appurtenances. As for the Joy, she was quite beside herself. Anything
with the semblance of a horse would excite the Joy. I got in with the
driver, and we made our way to the river-front, where I saw His Lordship
to his state-room and the surrey stored away. I don't suppose in all his
twenty years he had ever taken a voyage before, but he showed no
nervousness or undue surprise, and that night at the port of arrival he
came stepping down the gang-plank as unconcernedly as the oldest
traveler. We were up and away rather early next morning, for we wished
to travel leisurely, and we were not familiar with the road.
On inquiry we learned there were two roads--one to the east and one to
the west of a little river, the same that formed a mill-pond in
Westbury's door-yard, and here a wide orderly stream flowed into the
sea. The "Glen" road--the one to the east--was thought to be the
shorter, so we chose that. It was a good selection, so far as scenery
was concerned, but if I had the same drive to make again I would go the
other way. With the exception of a small box of lunch crackers for the
Joy, we had provided no food for the journey, for we said we could stop
at a village inn when the time came and get something warm. That was a
good idea, only there were no villages. There was not even a country
store in that lost land of forest and hill and rocky cliff and desolate
open field. Now and then we came to a house, but so dead and forbidding
was its aspect that we did not dare even to ask our way. Never a soul
appeared in the door-yard, and if smoke came from the chimney it was a
thin, blue wisp as from dying embers. The land was asleep, under the
spell of the white touch. To knock at one of those houses would have
been, as it seemed, to call its occupants from their winter trance.
We traveled slowly, for the roads were sticky, and there were many
hills. We could not ask Lord Beaconsfield to do more than walk, which he
did sturdily enough, tugging up the long hills, though they were
probably the first he had ever seen, for his part of Long Island had
been level ground. What must he have thought of that chaotic desolation,
where most of the woods and a good many of the fields were set up at
foolish angles against other woods and fields and where there was no
sign of food for man or beast?
But if we were timid about making inquiries, His Lordship was not. When
his appetite became urgent he forgot that he had come of a proud race,
and soon after noon-time began to trumpet his demands, and his alarm,
like an ordinary horse. His stable at home must have been red, for at
every barn of that friendly color--and most of them were of that hue--he
sent a clarion neigh across the echoing hills. The Joy, bundled warmly,
munched her crackers and made little complaint. Her elders diverted
themselves by admiring the winter scenery--the bared woods, lightly
dressed with snow, the rocky cliffs and ledges, the tumbling black river
that now and again came into view.
As the afternoon wore on and we arrived nowhere, we became disturbed by
doubts as to our direction. It was true that we seemed to be following
the general course of the river, but was it the right river? Hadn't we
gone trailing off somewhere on a second-class tributary that had been
leading us all day through a weird, bedeviled territory that probably
wasn't on the map at all? The brief daylight was fading and it was
important that we arrive somewhere, pretty soon. We must make inquiry.
It would be better to rouse even one of the seven sleepers than to
wander aimlessly into the night. At the next house, I said, we would
knock.
But at the next house we actually discovered something moving--something
outside. As we came nearer it took the form of a man, a sad man,
dragging a crooked limb from a wood-pile. I drew up.
[Illustration: _"Good afternoon," I said. "Can you tell us where we
are?"_]
"Good afternoon," I said. "Can you tell us where we are?"
"Why, yes," he grunted, as he worked and pulled at the limb. "You're at
Valley Forge."
Valley Forge! Heavens! We were within twenty miles of Philadelphia,
on the Schuylkill. At the pace we had been going it did not seem
reasonable. This must be enchantment, sure enough.
"Look here," I said, "you don't mean that this is Valley Forge where
Washington was quartered."
"Don't know anything about that," he said, still grunting over the
crooked limb, "but I've been quartered here for more 'n sixty years, an'
it's always been the same Valley Forge in my time."
"Is--is this Connecticut?"
"That's what it is."
I breathed easier. If he had said Pennsylvania it would have meant that
we were a hundred and fifty miles from home.
"Do you know of any place called the Glen?"
"Of course; right up ahead a few miles. Where'd you folks come from,
anyway? You don't appear to know much about locations."
I side-stepped, thanking him profusely. We were all right, then, but it
seemed a narrow escape.
At last we entered the Glen and recognized certain landmarks. It was a
somber place now--its aspect weirdly changed since the first days of our
coming. Then it had been a riot of summer-time, the cliffs a mat and
tangle of green that had shut us in. On this dull December evening, with
its vines and shrubs and gaunt trees bare, its pointed cedars and
hemlocks the only green, its dark water swirling under overhanging
rocks, it had become an entrance to Valhalla, the dim abode of the gods.
How friendly Westbury's lights looked when we crossed the bridge by the
mill and turned into the drive, and what gracious comfort there was in
his bright fire and warm, waiting supper. We did not go up the hill that
night. Good Old Beek found rest and food and society in Westbury's big
red barn.