Monday, October twenty-first.
It is so late that I shall write only a little. To-day was again wonderful, a true golden and blue northwest day. I have painted and sawed wood, and built myself a splendid six-legged saw horse. Olson thinks I have already cut my winter’s supply of wood—but it seems to me far from it. Rockwell has been most of the day at his own animal book, making some strange and beautiful birds. This morning the ground was frozen with a hard crust. It did not thaw throughout the day, and again to-night it is very cold. Winter is at last upon us, the long, long winter. And the sun retreats day by day farther toward the mountain. I look to the sun’s going with a kind of dread. We have seen nothing of the boat that last night was driven to shelter. We believe the men to be in the other cove of our island.
CHAPTER IV
WINTER
Endlessly, day after day, the journal goes on recording a dreary monotony of rain and cloud. Who has ever dwelt so entirely alone that the most living things in all the universe about are wind and rain and snow? Where the elements dominate and control your life, where at getting up and bedtime and many an hour of night and day between you question helplessly, as a poor slave his master, the will of the mighty forces of the sky? Dawn breaks, you jump from bed, stand barefoot on the threshold of the door, look through the straight trunked spruces at the brightening world, and read at sight God’s will for one more whole, long day of life. “Ah God! it rains again.” And sitting on the bed you wearily draw on your heavy boots, and rainy-spirited begin the special labors of a rainy day. Or maybe, at the sight of clouds again, you laugh at the dull-minded weather man or curse at him good naturedly. Still you must do those rainy-weather chores and all the other daily chores in hot wet-weather garments. That is destiny.
Most of the time, to do ourselves real justice, we met the worst of weather with a battle cry, worked hard,—and then made up for outdoor dreariness and wet by heaping on the comforts of indoors,—dry, cozy warmth, good things to eat, and lots to do.
We have reached late fall—for northern latitudes. The sky is brooding ominously, heavy, dull, and raw. Winter seems to be closing in upon us. We’re driven to work as if in fear. Hurry, hurry! Saw the great drums of spruce, roll them over the ground and stack them high. Calk tight with hemp the cabin’s windward eaves so that no breath of wind can enter there and freeze the food inside upon the shelf. Set up the far-famed air-tight stove where it will keep you warm,—warm feet in bed and a warm back while painting. Patch up the poor, storm-battered paper roof,—two or three holes we find and we are sure it leaks from twenty. About the cabin pile the hemlock boughs, dense-leafed and warm, making a green slope almost to the eaves. Now it looks cozy! Outside and in the last is done to make us ready for the winter’s worst, and just in time! It is the evening of October twenty-second and the feathery snow has just begun to fall. Olson comes stamping in. “Well, well,” he cries, “how’s this! How does our winter suit you?” It suits us perfectly. The house is warm, Rockwell’s in bed, and I am reading “Treasure Island” to him.
“What are you going to make of him?” asked Olson that night speaking of Rockwell. I was at that moment pouring beans into the pot for baking. I slowed the stream and dropped them one by one:
“‘Rich-man, poor-man, beggar-man, thief,
Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief.’
How in the world can anyone lay plans for a youngster’s life?”
ON THE HEIGHT
Rockwell lay in his bed dreaming, maybe, of an existence lovelier far than anything the poor, discouraged imagination of a man could reach. A child could make a paradise of earth. Life is so simple! Unerringly he follows his desires making the greatest choices first, then onward into a narrowing pathway until the true goal is reached. How can one preach of beauty or teach another wisdom. These things are of an infinite nature, and in every one of us in just proportion. There is no priesthood of the truth.
We live in many worlds, Rockwell and I,—the world of the books we read,—an always changing one, “Robinson Crusoe,” “Treasure Island,” the visionary world of William Blake, the Saga Age, “Water Babies,” and the glorious Celtic past,—Rockwell’s own world of fancy, kingdom of beasts, the world he dreams about and draws,—and my created land of striding heroes and poor fate-bound men—real as I have painted them or to me nothing is,—and then all round about our common, daily, island-world, itself more wonderful than we have half a notion of. Is it to be believed that we are here alone, this boy and I, far north out on an island wilderness, seagirt on a terrific coast! It’s as we pictured it and wanted it a year and more ago,—yes, dreams come true.
And now the snow falls softly. Winter, to meet our challenge, has begun.
Short notes in the journal mark “Treasure Island’s” swift passage. Then enter “Water Babies!” “Just after Rockwell’s heart and mine,” I have recorded it. But Kingsley must lose his friends,—a warning to the snob in literature. How it did weary us and madden us, his English-gentry pride,—unless we outright laughed. “At last it’s finished. That’s an event. When Kingsley isn’t showing off he’s moralizing, and between his religious cant and his English snobbery he is, in spite of his occasional sweet sentiment, quite unendurable. So to-night we read from ‘Andersen’s Fairy Tales’—forever lovely and true.”
Children have their own fine literary taste that we know quite too little about. They love all real, authentic happenings, and they love pure fairy tale. But to them fiction in the guise of truth is wrong, and fairy romance, unconvincing in its details, is ridiculous. Action they like, the deed—not thoughts about it. Doubtless the simple saga form is best of all,—life as it happens, neither right nor wrong, words that they can understand, things they can comprehend, interesting facts or thrilling fancy. Such simple things delight the child that half of “Robinson Crusoe” and three quarters of the smug family from Switzerland are forgiven for the sweet kernel of pure adventure that is there.
As for adventure,—that is relative. Where little happens and the gamut of expression is narrow life is still full of joy and sorrow. You’re stirred by simple happenings in a quiet world.
The killer-whales that early in September played in the shoal water of our cove not thirty feet from land, rolled their huge, shining bodies into view, plunged, raced where we still could follow their gleaming, white patch under water,—there’s a thrill!
The battles that occurred that month between huge fish out in the bay, their terrible, mysterious, black arms that beat the water with a sound like cannon, the plunge into the depths of the poor, frantic, wounded whale, and his return again for air; again the thunder sound and flying foam and spray as the dread black arm is beating on the sea; then calm. You shudder at that huge death. That was a drama for Fox Islanders.
And later the poor magpie’s death. Real tears were shed from a poor boy’s half-broken heart.
Two strangers come these days and stop with Olson. They’re on the search of that small craft that we saw driving seaward in a tempest.
THE DAY’S WORK
There is mystery! Was she adrift unmanned, broke from her moorings, or was there life aboard as we had thought? In that case she’d been stolen, and who were the men and where? Wrecked safely on some island, drowned, or driven out to sea? No man shall ever know.
A porcupine is captured wandering near our house. We build for him a cozy home—he doesn’t like it much but still he should. We care for him day after day, he twines himself, about our hearts. Then at last one day when we’d pastured him in freedom out in the new fallen snow, trusting his tracks to lead us to him, the goats cut in and spoiled the trail and he was lost to us.
Olson has gone to Seward: days of waiting, days of waiting! How many times do we travel down the cove to the point from whence Caine’s Head is seen, going in hope, returning gloomily.
The goats beset us yearning for their missing master. Billy, that maddening beast, eats up one corner of our broom. I throw a heavy armful of kindling wood into his face—and he just sneezes. But Rockwell plays with the goats as if they’re human, or rather, as if he were goat. They half believe it, he has told me,—and, Rockwell, so do I.