He made no reply, put forward no further objections to her going, though
the next morning developed a driving sleet. As she and Winchie were
about to get into the carriage he asked; "How long will you be gone?"
"Until I feel better."
"If you are ill, you must not go in this weather."
She looked at him strangely. "If I were dying I should go," was her
slow reply.
He hesitated, studied her small, resolute face, her fever-bright eyes,
with a puzzled expression. "I suppose it's best to give a woman her way
in her whims, so long as they're harmless," said he aloud, but to
himself rather than to her. She finished wrapping up the boy, went out
to the carriage, and got in. He lifted Winchie in, tucked them both
carefully, bade them a last good-by, his expression grave and
constrained.
In those fifteen miles through the searching cold, over roads like
fields deep plowed and frozen hard, she debated how best to carry out
her main purpose in going to that dreary farm--how to take her father
partly, perhaps wholly, into her confidence so that she might get his
help--for help she must have. Her mother was now impossible--quite
demented on the subject of religion latterly through the long steeping
of mind and heart in a theology whose heaven was hardly less formidable
as an eternal prospect than its hell, and whose hell was a fiery sea
canopied by shriek and stench of burning multitude. The old maid
sisters had neither experience nor judgment, only bitterness. To them it
would be inconceivable that a married woman, with a husband who
supported her in comfort, could be other than blissfully happy. But her
father-- He had been a man of affairs, judge. He had lived and read
and thought. She had heard her mother rebuke him for expressing "loose"
opinions; probably he was concealing opinions even more liberal and
enlightened and humane. Perhaps he could give her practical advice--or
at least sympathy.
But, arrived at the farmhouse, she had only to look into those four
countenances to see that she was among people who knew no more of the
life of the present day--or indeed of the real life of any day, even of
what they themselves actually believed and felt--than deep-sea oysters
in their bed know of Alpine flowers. Even her father-- In this remote
desert he had lost what knowledge of life he formerly possessed. She
was now developed enough to realize that he in fact never did know much
about life, that his was a book education only. She had journeyed for
help in vain; she was still alone, dependent wholly upon her own courage
and resource.
"Don't you wish we hadn't come, mamma?" said Winchie when they were in
the room assigned them.
"No," she replied truthfully. She was watching the hickory flames in a
calmer mood than she had known for weeks; at least she had got away
where she could think, could get an outside point of view upon the
posture of her affairs. "No, indeed," she went on to Winchie leaning
against her knee and looking up at her. "No, I feel better already."
"Then I guess I can stand it," said the boy with a sigh.
"You don't know about the hill where we can coast."
As he had never coasted, this did not lighten the impression made on him
by the gloomy farmhouse sitting room, its walls and ceilings covered
with somber paper, by the shriveled grandparents, with deep-sunk,
lack-luster eyes, by the sharp, sour faces of the two old maids. But
next day, when the sun came out and the farmhands beat down a track on
the long hill, Winchie found the situation vastly improved. Flat on her
breast on a sled, with the boy breathless and happy upon her back, she
initiated him into the raptures of "belly-buster."
"Why, mamma, you look like a little girl, not a bit grown up," cried he
after they had been at it all morning and were tugging up the hill for
one last, magnificent rush down before going home to dinner. And she
did indeed seem to be a sister of Winchie's, one hardly in her teens. Of
course, the short skirt and her smallness of stature helped. But it was
in her cheeks, in her eyes, in the curve of her lips as she showed her
white teeth in the happiest of smiles.
"I _am_ a little girl," declared she. And before starting out with him
after dinner she did her hair in two long braids that hung below her
waistline.
They coasted every day; they took long sleigh rides, long romping walks;
they hunted rabbits, went fishing through the ice, were uproarious
outside the house and in--the latter to the scandal of the three women
of the family, who regarded such goings-on as clearly forbidden in the
Scriptures. Even Sunday wasn't so bad as might have been expected; for
it snowed too violently for Mrs. Benedict to take them to the church
where her favorite doctrines were expounded, and they slipped away to
the glorious outdoors. In a sheltered hollow under a shelf of rock they
built an enormous snow man, with a top hat of bark. They ate what
Winchie regarded as the most wonderful meal of his life at the cottage
of one of the farmhands. Never before had he seen such brown brownbread
or such molassessy molasses or eaten off such big, strong dishes that
there wasn't the least danger of breaking, no matter what you did to
them. And he was fascinated by the farmhand's wife and daughter, both
acting their company best and eating with the little finger of each hand
stuck straight out. And in a box in the corner of the room where they
ate was a most exciting brood of little chickens, chirping and
squeaking. And in the midst of dinner a huge, hairy, black dog suddenly
snatched a piece of meat from the farmhand's plate and retired to the
kitchen with it. "Ain't he a caution?" said the farmhand, and Winchie
thought he certainly was.
Courtney was like those who put out to sea, leaving their troubles at
the one shore, not to think of them until they touch the other. All
around were the white hills, and there seemed to be no beyond. She
abandoned her plan of studying her situation. She stopped thinking; she
ate and slept, and played with the boy, and pretended that she was the
little girl she looked, home from school for the holidays, and half
hoping somehow something would happen so that there wouldn't be any
school any more. She did not think, but she hoped. How? What? Where?
She did not know; simply hope, that can burst the strongest grave
despair ever buried it in.
Well along in the second week, toward the middle of the afternoon, she
and Winchie were on the long hill, rounding out one more happy day. She
was as happy as he. When all is lost save youth and health, what is
really lost? She on her breast on the sled and he sprawled along her
back, his arms round her neck, they shot down the steep with shouts and
screams. They stopped, all covered with flying snow, in a soft bank
beneath which the zigzag fence was deep buried. They rolled in the
snow, washed each other's faces, stood up--were within a few feet of a
man in a fur-lined coat almost to his heels. They stared, astounded.
Then Winchie's face darkened and hers grew more radiant still as the
tears sprang to her eyes.
"Basil!" she murmured, Winchie forgotten. "Oh--_Basil_!" And all in
that instant the misery of those months of despair was gloriously
transformed into joy.
"Courtney!" he cried. "How beautiful you are!"
He was extraordinarily handsome himself at that moment. Love is a
matchless beautifier; and if ever love shone from a human countenance,
it was shining, irradiating from his just then. With Winchie jealously
watchful they shook hands. "Aren't you and Winchie going to speak to
each other?" she asked. And Basil, with reluctance and some confusion
held out a hand which the boy very hesitatingly touched.
"I'll pull your sled to the top for you," Basil offered. "Get on,
Winchie."
The boy planted his feet more firmly in the snow. "We were going home,"
said Courtney.
"Get on, Winchie," cried Basil friendlily. "I'll haul you."
"I'm going to walk," replied the boy sullenly.