CHAPTER XXX
THE DEATH OF A LITTLE BLACK CHICKEN
A day has come, still, cold and grey, when you say, "There is snow in the air," and you are not sorry. The first snow is curiously attractive. Before, you are a little doubtful as to the season. Is it late autumn—there are still a few leaves on the beech tree—or has winter arrived? You would like to know; you object to being in uncertainty about your seasons. And then the snow comes one night very softly but very surely, and you wake in the morning to find that the thing is accomplished—winter has come. Your furs are reached out, your last thin frock is laid away, your eider-downs are aired, and you are quite resigned, you have no regrets. The summer brought you treasures in abundance, scattered largess with prodigal hand. But winter is no niggard. It gives you branches of trees stripped of their greenery, but beautiful in their form and shape. You had forgotten that the apple tree had a delicious crook here, a bend of the knee there, and a graceful arm with finely-turned wrist held out to its neighbours in the field in a spirit of friendship. And winter gives you brown fields—sad, you were about to say, but your pen halts at the word. They are not sad, they are but resting and waiting. "All things must rest." Those quiet, brown fields have done their work, they have yielded great riches, they have given of their best. Now is their season of peace, and they will be ready after their winter sleep for more work.
Winter gives you red suns and clear, frosty nights. It gives you the friendship of little birds who in summer are shy and not to be won. You are not deceived by their sudden overtures; it is not you, you know. It is the cocoa-nut hanging in front of the window, and the crumbs on the lawn, and the succulent bit of mutton-fat suspended from the apple tree. But you are glad to have them at any price; the tits' joyful chatter and the wrens' hurried warble, and the clear, sweet note of the robin enliven the atmosphere. They make no pretence of being fine musicians, like their sometime friend the thrush; but they say, "What's the good of being a singer if you keep your mouth or bill shut for six months in the year?" And I smile behind my hand and partly agree with them, though I dare not let the thrush hear me. I gave him a great welcome in the spring, and he would think me faithless were I now to speak of him disparagingly.
And winter brings in its wake great glowing fires and warm, lamplit rooms, and a feeling of snug cosiness when the curtains are drawn.
They have pushed my couch close to the fire, for I am a shivery mortal these days, and from my corner I can see the grey sky, the still, bare trees, and I can feel the hush in the air which ever precedes the snow.
Anxiously I hope that Dimbie will be home before it comes, for he is many miles from here—gone at my request to satisfy a longing, a desire of mine which has been with me for many weeks, which has lain very close to my heart, and which has now become so insistent that it cannot be hushed. It has been with me by day, I have whispered it in the long hours of the night, "How fares the tiny black chicken?" Has it suffered, lived on since that cruel moment when my bicycle crushed it to earth, or was its life snatched away from it? If it has lived it will be a big chicken now. The soft down will have become feathers, the wee legs will have grown long and thin.
This morning I found courage to voice my request, to tell Dimbie of my longing. At the first word he started, and his face became set. He walked to the window and drummed on the panes.
"You don't mind, Dimbie? You'll go for me?" I pleaded.
"But why? Why do you want to know?"
"I cannot tell," I replied. "It may be silly, morbid, but I feel as though—one or two things might be made clear to me if I knew."
He did not speak for a long time. His back was to me, and I could not see his face. Presently he said, without looking round, "I'll go. I cannot refuse you anything, Marg. But I don't like it. The chicken may be gone."
"Gone?"
"Well—dead."
"And if it is," I said softly, "I shan't mind. I shall know—and be satisfied."
He came and knelt by the couch.
"But won't you be lonely, girl?"
I shook my head.
"Are you better to-day, sweetheart? Do you think you are any stronger? That wedding was too much for you."
Each day my dear one abuses poor Jane's wedding. I had been overtired that night, faint, with a singing in my cars and the sound of many waters surging around me. And each day also he says, "You are a little stronger, I think, don't you?" But he does not wait for an answer. Sometimes it is better to leave a question unanswered.
Oh, my husband, will you ever know, ever understand how much happiness you have given to me? Before I knew you life was an arid wilderness. I was but young, but there was always Peter. Afterwards I came to a garden of roses and lilies set about with the tender green of spring. And our year! How wonderful it has been! Sorrow came to us, but joy entered a little later. Sorrow we thrust forth, and joy crept still closer, and has remained with us even to the end. Sorrow will dog Dimbie's footsteps for a little season, but joy will triumph over all—"for here we have no continuing city."
*****
Dimbie came home as the first snowflake brushed the window-pane. In the firelight he knelt and told me of the strange thing that had happened. He found the cottage, and as he entered the little chicken turned over on its side, stretched its legs and died. A child with golden hair leaned over it and wept bitterly.
"And had it suffered?" I whispered.
He shook his head.
"The woman said not, but it was lamed. The child from the day of the accident cared for it, tended it, nursed it. It slept in a box in the kitchen, and became very tame. The woman is a widow, and this little one the only child."
"Did you tell her of—me?"
"Yes," said Dimbie gently.
I laid my cheek to his, and he stroked my hair in his old, dear fashion. And we sat thus, and once again told each other the old, old story of our love. The soft snow brushed the window-pane, the corners of the room became shadowy and mysterious, and hand in hand we waited for the light which always follows the darkness.