SINCE the first of December we have not seen the ground—only a great
field of white so dazzling that one understands the Indian’s name for the
March moon. Verily, my own eyes tell me why it is the Moon of
Snowblindness.
The ice is still thick and clear, but the sun on its surface and the
moving water beneath are both wearing it away, slowly, surely. There are
clear pools on the lake at noon, and then the crows come down and drink,
marching to and fro, like files of small, black-clad soldiers. They
meet, and bow politely, speak to each other singly or in groups, then
line up and off they go with hoarse caws. They look so important that
they might be plotting all sorts of villainies.
“Look out fer yerself,” laughs Uncle Dan. “I’ll put the curse of the
crows on yer.”
A dire threat! What use to break one’s back planting the corn if one’s
evilly disposed neighbor can call winged battalions of those black
thieves to undo all a man’s work and bring him to penury?
The snow is still thick in the woods, but on the hilltops and in the
open, bare patches of earth are beginning to show. Peter’s coat matches
the ground exactly, being a sharply mottled brown and white. Indeed, he
never did turn entirely white, like the wild hares in the woods. Even
when his fur was its snowiest there was always a brown, diamond-shaped
patch on his forehead, and, so far as I know, he was the only hare so
decorated. No matter how far from home he strayed, I could always
recognize him by his brown brand.
This simple life has its inconveniences. I was eating a belated
breakfast the other morning, when bells on the lake and later a sleigh at
the door announced a visitor. It was a perfectly unknown man who
informed me that he had been sent by Mrs. Swanson to bring me to her
house to spend the day. He had to wait outside, in the piercing wind,
until a hasty glance round the combined sleeping, cooking, and reception
room reassured me as to its condition for the entrance of a stranger.
Then he sat beside the stove, pipe in hand, and inspected me gravely
while I prepared for the long drive down the lake.
The day was bright and blue and snapping cold. A point of light flashed
from every facet of the roughened ice. The horse was fresh, the wind at
our backs, and we fairly flew past Jackson’s, over the bare roads and out
again on beautiful Blue Bay, lying like a sapphire in its setting of
silvered shores.
The pony was a broncho, my companion told me, calling my attention to a
brand to prove it. He was all that, and a tree-climbing broncho to boot,
for soon we came to a perpendicular bank as high as the side of a barn,
and I was given to understand that the pony was going to clamber straight
up, with the sleigh dangling at his heels. I left the vehicle and
scrambled up on my own feet, but the animal went up the side of that hill
like a cat at a wall, and without one second’s hesitation.
Arrived at the house I inquired of my hostess if my escort was her son.
“Oh, no,” she answered. “It was only Clarence Nutting, the hired man.”
Evidently, “hired man” means something very different here from what it
has hitherto meant to me. It means friend, protector, helper, and member
of the family. Mrs. Swanson, Susie Dove, the hired girl, Clarence
Nutting, and I all dined together; after dinner we played dominoes. When
Clarence brought in the fresh eggs from the barn he suggested: “Better
give Miss X some to take home with her.” Later he invited me to come
back, and soon, to spend several days.
Through the long, sunny afternoon, we sat round the stove in the pleasant
best room, with its well-starched lace curtains, each with a bunch of
artificial roses sewed on its folds, its oak sideboard decorated with
rose-bordered crêpe paper napkins, its crayon portraits and wonderful,
hand-made hooked rugs. We women had our crocheting, but little Susie sat
very upright, her small, work-roughened hands clasped on her
plaid-covered knees, her toes, in their shiny best shoes, just reaching
the floor, while Clarence played for us on his new graphophone.
Clarence, in his high boots, patched trousers, and flannel shirt, handled
his music box with the tenderness of a lover. He dusted each record
after using it, as carefully as a mother powders a baby. As he played
tune after tune, I saw in that instrument, God knows what of pleasures
foregone, and temptations put aside while he saved out of his meager
wages the price of that graphophone. He had discovered a way to use the
thorns from a hawthorn tree instead of wooden needles. They gave a very
soft and lovely tone. His records were the usual collection sold with
the machine—a few dances, a few Negro dialects and songs, some good
marches and some hymns. After nearly a year of hearing no tunes at all,
I enjoyed them, every one. When the concert was over, Clarence played:
“God be with you till we meet again.”
After tea came the sleigh and we drove home to the island, this time in a
blinding snowstorm. Conversation was not so lively as in the morning. I
was thinking of all the evidences I see here of man’s unquenchable thirst
for beauty and music and the pleasant things of life, that not the most
incessant toil nor hardest privation can ever wholly destroy. I was
remembering how I had gone over to the Blakes’ to use the telephone one
afternoon and had had to wait for an hour because Clarence Nutting’s new
instrument had come, and all the receivers on the line were down while he
played it for the neighborhood. I thought of poor Harry Spriggins’s
delight in a magazine, of Mary Blake’s habit of keeping a glass of fresh
flowers in the center of her table, of the time when Mrs. Drapeau, having
no white tablecloth, had spread a clean sheet over her table for company,
and of the Beaulacs’ joy in the blossoming of their lilac bush.
Then I began dreaming of a big, comfortable shack somewhere on the shore,
to which the people could come, as to a common meeting ground, social
differences and local feuds forgotten. I saw it furnished with a
cupboard full of cups and plates, a piano or victrola. There should be a
circulating library there and games, I decided, and I saw the boys and
girls dancing, singing, cooking popcorn, candy and fudge, in the
evenings. I imagined a group of women drinking tea and sewing while
“teacher” played.
A few days later I went with the Rector and Mrs. Rector to drink tea with
the wife of the owner of a big lumber mill, and there I saw what one
woman has done amid just such conditions as are here at Many Islands.
There were the pretty little church, the parish house, the Sunday school
room, all built by Mrs. Baring, and I heard of the reading circles, the
concerts, the cooking classes that she has organized for the people among
whom she has had to live.
There too I saw the Canadian mother in war times and marveled at her.
Mrs. Baring has sent the light of her eyes, the pride of her heart, the
son who was winning honors at his university and had a great future
before him, overseas to the trenches. I saw picture after picture of
him—Harold as a baby, as a child, as a boy, as a man. He was shown in
his little knickers, his first long trousers, his khaki.
“Yes, he is in France now, but of course we do not know where,” the
mother said. “I send him two pairs of socks, some handkerchiefs and
shirts every week. The boys like that better than one large box
occasionally—they lose their clothes so. We hope that things reach him,
but we do not know. We have not heard from him for two months now.”
All this without a tremor of the firm lips, with not the shadow of a
cloud over the serene blue eyes.
The Rector told me afterward that not once has that mother alluded to the
possibility of her son’s return. She gave her supreme gift without hope
of any reward. Withal her interest in affairs is as keen, her charities
as wide, her hospitality as gracious, as though she had never a care in
the world and her boy were safe at her side.
After supper we climbed over the slippery hillside to the church for
Evensong. Our hostess sat at the organ at the side of the chancel and in
full view of the congregation. During the service I watched her calm,
clear profile. She went through the intolerably pathetic petitions of
the Litany without wavering, as we prayed for those who are fighting by
land and sea and air; for the prisoners, the wounded and the dying, and
her sweet, steady voice led our responses. Only once did I see her
falter. It was during the singing of the hymn. Her pretty ringed
fingers went on pressing the keys; she played, but she could not sing.
“The Son of God goes forth to war,
A kingly crown to gain,
His blood-red banner streams afar,
Who follows in his train?”
Her eyes looked past us, straight across the world. Her lips were parted
in a smile sadder than tears. She was shedding her heart’s blood, drop
by drop, for the safety of the empire.
We do not talk much about the Great War here at Many Islands. Indeed, it
is only when I go to the towns that I realize that Canada is at war.
Once in a while one of our boys speaks of going to the front, and only
the other day Andy Drapeau was saying, “Ef it comes to drafting, I’ll
volunteer. I’ll fight of me own free will. No man shall make me go.”
But at that, Andy was merely talking. He had no idea of enlisting.
No, as always, it is the men of the cities who will go first, and the
reason is not far to seek. It lies in the fact that the bucolic mind is
almost totally devoid of imagination—it cannot picture what it has never
seen. It can form no vision of an empire. It can think of this county
as part of the Province and the Province as part of the Dominion, but of
Canada as part of a great federation it cannot conceive—the thought is
too big. Our vision is bounded by the limits of our own experience. We
know that Britain, France, and Russia are fighting Germany and Austria,
but the fields of Europe lie very far away, while our own fields are very
near.
We all know Germans. We have worked beside them in the hayfields and the
mines. They seem good fellows enough, not companionable because they
speak an outlandish sort of lingo that we doubt their being able to
understand themselves. But why should we fight them? Of the Hun we can
form no idea, thank God. He is outside our experience.
We have a patriotism, but it is local, parochial. If this war were a
baseball game between the rival teams of Sark and Fallen Timber, we could
understand it fast enough. We would “root” for our side and, if need be,
fight for it. But the far-off struggle of nation with nation leaves us
cold. We cannot picture it.
But when the first wounded came back from the trenches, and when the
stories of Saint Julien and Festhubert were told at the firesides, then
went the men of rural Canada forward gladly to fill the places of those
heroes whose deaths are Canada’s undying glory.