This text was transcribed by Les Bowler
[Picture: Book cover]
[Picture: “Through patches of snow”]
A Winter of Content
By
LAURA LEE DAVIDSON
* * * * *
“Now there is a rocky isle in the mid
sea, midway between Ithaca
and rocky Samos, Asteris, a little isle.”
The Odyssey of Homer. Translated by
S. S. Butcher and Andrew Lang
* * * * *
[Picture: Decorate graphic]
* * * * *
THE ABINGDON PRESS
NEW YORK CINCINNATI
* * * * *
Copyright, 1922, by
LAURA LEE DAVIDSON
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Printed in the United States of America
* * * * *
To
LOUISE
THE LADY OF THE ISLAND
* * * * *
ILLUSTRATIONS
“THROUGH PATCHES OF SNOW” Frontispiece
“PETER, THE RABBIT, IS TURNING WHITE VERY RAPIDLY” 53
THE HOUSE 82
A POINT OF ONE OF THE ISLANDS 97
“THE HEAVY WOODSLEDS STILL TRAVEL DOWN THE LAKES” 131
“THE DRAPEAUS LIVE ON A LONG PENINSULA TO THE WEST 155
OF THIS ISLAND”
CHAPTER I
A SMALL, rocky island in a lake, a canoe paddling away across the blue
water, a woman standing on a narrow strip of beach, looking after it. I
was the woman left on the shore, the canoe held my companions of the past
summer, the island was to be my home until another summer should bring
them back again.
There is no denying that I was frightened as I turned back along the
trail toward the little house among the birches. It was hard work to
keep from jumping into a boat and putting out after the canoe that was
rounding the point and leaving me alone.
Little chilly fears laid icy fingers on the back of my neck. A shadow
slipped between the trees; a sigh whispered among the leaves. I wanted
to see all round me; I wanted to put my back against a wall. A little,
grinning goblin of a misgiving stuck out an impudent tongue as it quoted
some of the jeers of unsympathetic friends and relatives, who had derided
my plan for borrowing the camp, when summer was gone, and staying on
alone at the Lake of Many Islands.
“Good-by,” had smiled my sister. “You say you mean to stay a year, but
you’ll tire of solitude long before the winter. We’ll see you back at
Thanksgiving.”
It was only mid-September, but I wanted to see her then at that very
instant.
There had been a farewell dinner, the family assembled, to prophesy
disaster.
“You’ll freeze your nose and ears off,” mourned a reassuring aunt.
In vain I reminded her that no inhabitant seen in five summers’ sojourn
at the lake had been without a nose or ears; all had had the requisite
number of features, although some of those same features had withstood
the cold of well-nigh a hundred winters. But she was not consoled, and
continued to regard me so tearfully that I felt sure that she was bidding
farewell to my nose.
“You’ll break a leg and lie for days before anyone knows you are hurt,”
said Cousin John.
“You’ll be snowed in and no one will find you until spring,” said Brother
Henry.
“You are a city woman and not strong. What do you know of a pioneer’s
life? It is the most foolish plan we ever heard of,” chorused all.
Descending from prophecy to argument, they continued:
“Of course you will have a telephone.”
“That I will not,” I answered. “I have been jerked at the end of a
telephone wire for years. I want rest.”
“At least you will have a good dog. That will be some protection.”
“A dog would drive away all the wild things. I want to study them,” I
objected.
“Then, for mercy’s sake, find some other woman to stay there with you.
Surely there is another lunatic willing to freeze to death on the
precious island. You should have a companion, if only to send for help.”
“I don’t want a companion,” I protested, tearfully. “I won’t be
responsible for another person’s comfort or safety. I will do this thing
alone or not at all.”
“I am tired to death,” I stormed. “I need rest for at least one year. I
want to watch the procession of the seasons in some place that is not all
paved streets, city smells and noise. Instead of the clang of car bells
and the honk of automobile horns, I want to hear the winds sing across
the ice fields, instead of the smell of asphalt and hot gasoline, I want
the odor of wet earth in boggy places. I have loved the woods all my
life, I long to see the year go round there just once before I die.”
At which outburst they shrugged exasperated shoulders and were silent,
but each one drew me aside, at parting, and pressed a gift into my hand.
“Be sure to let us know if anything goes wrong. Write to us if you need
the least thing. Don’t be ashamed to come back, if the experiment proves
a failure”—and so on and so on, God bless them!
Of all this the bogy reminded me as he danced ahead up the winding trail.
The house looked lonely, even in the brightness of the late afternoon. I
hurried supper, to be indoors before the twilight fell. Big Canadian
hares hopped along the paths and sat at the kitchen door, their great
eyes peering, long, furry ears alert, quivering noses pressed against the
wire screen. Grouse pecked on the hill side, as tame as barnyard fowl.
From the water came the evening call of the loons.
The scant meal finished, I ran across the platform from the kitchen to
the main house and locked up. Somehow, I did not want any open doors
behind me that evening. Then I loaded the pistol and laid it on a shelf
at the head of the bed, along with the Bible and the Prayer Book. If any
marauder could know how dreadfully afraid I am of that pistol, he would
do his marauding with a quiet mind. I never expect to touch that weapon.
It shall be cleaned and oiled when any of the men come over from the
mainland, but handle it—never! I would not fire it for a kingdom.
While it was still light I climbed into bed, and lay down rigid, with
tight-shut eyes, trying to pretend I did not hear all the rustling,
creaking, snapping noises in the woods. Heavy animals pushed through the
fallen leaves. Something that sounded as large as a moose went crashing
through the dry bushes.
“A rabbit,” I whispered to myself.
Creatures surely as large as bears rushed through the underbrush.
“Grouse,” I tried to believe.
From the lake came stealthy sounds.
“Driftwood pounding against the rocks, not really oars,” I murmured to my
thumping heart.
Then light, pattering footsteps on the porch.
In desperation I raised my head and looked out. It was a little red fox,
trotting busily along, snuffling softly as he went. I lay down and
closed my eyes firmly, determined not to open them again no matter what
might happen, then must have dozed, for, suddenly I was aware of a light
that flooded all the room.
There through the northeast window, large and round and beautiful, shone
the moon, the great Moon of the Falling Leaves. It was like the sudden
meeting with a friend, reassuring, comforting. A broad band of light lay
across my breast like a kind arm thrown over me. The path of the
moonbeams on the water seemed the road to some safe haven. With the
moon’s calm face looking in and the soft lapping of the waves as lullaby,
I fell asleep—and lo! it was day.
This house, the living room of the camp, that is to be my home for the
coming winter, stands on a bluff overhanging the lake. It is a one-room
shack, 16×20 feet, surrounded by an eight-foot porch. It is one-storied,
shingled, the porch roof upheld by birch log pillars, beautiful still
clothed in their silvery bark. There are eight windows, two in each
corner, and through some of them the sun is always shining.
Adjoining this main shack and connected with it by an uncovered platform
are the kitchen and storeroom, but these will not be used in winter. The
stores and I will have to stay in the big house if we are not to freeze.
From these buildings little trails run off through the woods to the dock,
the pump, the summer sleeping shacks, and a path goes all round the
island close to the shore. Away from these beaten tracks are all sorts
of hidden nooks and lovely, dim seclusions.
This little rocky island, one of scores that dot the face of the lake, is
all a tangle of ferns and vines and wildflowers. It is thickly wooded
with white birch, poplar and wild cherry. There are also oaks, maples,
pines, and great clumps of basswood, and innumerable little cedars are
pushing up everywhere.
Making a way through the overgrown paths in the early morning, I break
through myriads of spiderwebs, stretched across from bushes heavy with
dew. They feel like the tiniest of fairy fingers brushing my cheek, and
laid on my eyelids, light as the memory of a caress. Butterflies dressed
in black velvet, with white satin frills and sapphire jewels, flutter on
ahead, and the stems of the birches are seen through a gold-green glow,
like sunlight shining through clear water. When I sit on the sandy
bottom, with the whole lake for my washpot, small fishes, wearing coral
buttons and jade green ruffles on fins and tails, bump their blunt noses
against my knees.
Sounds from the mainland come across the lake, blurred and indistinct.
On the island I hear only the wind in the trees, the water beating
against the stones, and the hum of many insect wings.
There is something queer about the island. I am convinced that it stands
on some magnetic pole or other, that puts every clock and watch out of
order as soon as it is landed here. Cheap or fine, every timepiece
breaks a mainspring, and then we fall back on the sundial to tell us
what’s o’clock. We can always know when it is noon, provided the weather
be sunny. When it is cloudy we guess at the time and wait for the next
fine day.
This sundial stands in a clearing beside the house, and bears for its
motto, not the high-sounding Latin quotation that seems to belong to
sundials, but the trite assertion, “Time is valuable.” A statement
wholly untrue, so far as this present life of mine is concerned. A fine
bass, now, or a tin of beans perhaps is valuable, but surely not time, in
a place where there is nothing to do but eat, sleep, and think.
Yet when I stood to-day, on this lonely bit of land, in the midst of an
empty lake, waiting for the shadow to travel to the mark, I seemed to
catch, for one fleeting instant, some idea of the terrible, inexorable
passing of the hours.
“Set thy house in order, set thy house in order,” something seemed to
say, “for never, for thee, shall the shadow turn back upon the dial.” In
that moment I stood alone in space, on this old clock the earth, swinging
with the whirling of the spheres.
The lake too has its mystery, a strange light that shines from the point
of one of the islands. No one lives on that land; there is no farmhouse
near it on the shore, nor is it in line with any dwelling whose light
could seem to glimmer from its point. The flare is too high and too
steady for fox-fire, the glow that comes from rotting wood, and though
men say they have explored the place repeatedly, there has never been any
sign of a campfire there. But every now and again that light shines by
night, like a beacon, and no one has ever explained it.
Perhaps it is the phantom of the council fire, round which the red
warriors sat in the days when this land was theirs. For there were
Indians hereabout, and not so very long ago; and people on the mainland
tell of a great fight that raged here when a band of the Mississagua
Nation, led by the chief White Eagle, fought with an invading war party
and of a day of battle from dawn until the going down of the sun when the
lake was red with blood. On the sheer face of the cliff of the opposite
island are red veinings in the rock. If one pretends very hard, they are
pictures of two war canoes left there by some artist of the tribe. The
people here believe in them devoutly.
“They were painted in blood,” they say.
A very indelible blood it must have been, for those tracings have
withstood the wash of high water for many a year.
Whether the picture writing is genuine or no, there is plenty of evidence
that Indians lived along the shores of Many Islands, and there is a
pretty story told of the wedding of a girl, White Eagle’s daughter, to a
young brave of her tribe. The Indians came down the lakes and through
the portages to Queensport, in their fine canoes, and the lovers were
married there by the priest at the mission. Afterward they were all
entertained at dinner by the big-hearted wife of the principal merchant
of the town. That lady’s daughter tells me that for many seasons
thereafter the chief’s daughter would bring or send beautiful birch
baskets, filled with berries or maple sugar for the children of her
hostess.
The bride is described as slim and young, with big, dark eyes. The
wedding dress was dark blue cloth, trimmed with new-minted five- and
ten-cent pieces, pierced and sewed on in a pattern—this worn over a vest
of buckskin, beautifully embroidered.
What became of you, little Indian Bride, girl of the grateful heart?
Were you happy here at Many Islands, or was it life-blood of your brave
that helped to redden all the waters? Did you move back and back with
your wandering people, or are you lying under the cedars on some green
slope of the shore? I shall never know, but I shall think of you and
wonder.
There are no Indians here now, except one old squaw, who lives far back
on the road to Maskinonge and tans buckskins in the fine old Indian way,
but the plow turns up the arrowheads, and once in a while a bowl or pipe,
proofs that the red men lived and fought here.