III
Under the spell of the white touch
In an earlier chapter I have spoken of our attic as an almost unfailing source of supply. Any sort of vessel or implement we might happen to need was pretty certain to turn up there if we looked long enough. It provided us with jugs and jars, and by and by, when the snow came, a wooden shovel and a bootjack for our rubber boots. I said that probably some day we should find a horse and buggy and harness up there, which was about all that we needed, now. It was just one of those careless remarks we all make on occasion. It never occurred to me that it was tinged with prophecy.
We did not find the horse, harness, and buggy in the attic, but we found them—heired them, to use a good New England word, just as we had heired the other things. The automobile had not yet reached Brook Ridge, but it was arriving in the centers and suburbs, upsetting old traditions, severing old ties. Once we had been commuters on Long Island, and in our happy suburb there still lived a friend to whom the years had brought prosperity and motor-machines. In the earlier, more deliberate years he had found comfort and sufficient speed in an enviable surrey, attached to a faithful family horse which now, alas! was too slow, too deliberate for the pace of wealth and the honk-honk of style. So the old horse stood in the stable, for his owners did not wish to see him go to strangers. But then one day they heard how we had turned ourselves into farmers, and presently word came that if we needed Old Beek (shortened from Lord Beaconsfield), surrey, and harness complete, they were ours to command. They would be delivered to us in the city, the message said, from which point we could drive, or ship, them to the farm. It was a windfall from a clear sky—we said it must be our lucky year. We accepted the quickest way, and were presently in the city to receive Lord Beaconsfield.
Had it been earlier in the year, during those magic days of September, or even in October, when the drifting leaves had turned the highways into thoroughfares of gold, we should have driven by easy stages the sixty miles, across the hills and far away, to Brook Ridge, resting where the night found us. It was too late for that now. The roadsides were no longer flower-decked or golden. An early snowfall had left them in rather a mixed condition, and the air had a chill in it that did not invite extended travel. We could ship by boat to our nearest Sound port, and the fifteen-mile drive from there seemed no great matter.
We admired the dignity with which His Lordship drew up in front of our New York hotel. He was a large, handsome animal, sorrel as to color, and of a manner befitting his station and advanced years. It was evident that we were not of his class, but with the gentle tact of true nobility he never, either then or later, permitted this difference in rank to make us uncomfortable. He even allowed us to call him "Beek," "Old Beek," "good Old Beek," especially when there was a lump of sugar in prospect. He was very human.
But I anticipate. We were delighted with Lord Beaconsfield and his appurtenances. As for the Joy, she was quite beside herself. Anything with the semblance of a horse would excite the Joy. I got in with the driver, and we made our way to the river-front, where I saw His Lordship to his state-room and the surrey stored away. I don't suppose in all his twenty years he had ever taken a voyage before, but he showed no nervousness or undue surprise, and that night at the port of arrival he came stepping down the gang-plank as unconcernedly as the oldest traveler. We were up and away rather early next morning, for we wished to travel leisurely, and we were not familiar with the road.
On inquiry we learned there were two roads—one to the east and one to the west of a little river, the same that formed a mill-pond in Westbury's door-yard, and here a wide orderly stream flowed into the sea. The "Glen" road—the one to the east—was thought to be the shorter, so we chose that. It was a good selection, so far as scenery was concerned, but if I had the same drive to make again I would go the other way. With the exception of a small box of lunch crackers for the Joy, we had provided no food for the journey, for we said we could stop at a village inn when the time came and get something warm. That was a good idea, only there were no villages. There was not even a country store in that lost land of forest and hill and rocky cliff and desolate open field. Now and then we came to a house, but so dead and forbidding was its aspect that we did not dare even to ask our way. Never a soul appeared in the door-yard, and if smoke came from the chimney it was a thin, blue wisp as from dying embers. The land was asleep, under the spell of the white touch. To knock at one of those houses would have been, as it seemed, to call its occupants from their winter trance.
We traveled slowly, for the roads were sticky, and there were many hills. We could not ask Lord Beaconsfield to do more than walk, which he did sturdily enough, tugging up the long hills, though they were probably the first he had ever seen, for his part of Long Island had been level ground. What must he have thought of that chaotic desolation, where most of the woods and a good many of the fields were set up at foolish angles against other woods and fields and where there was no sign of food for man or beast?
But if we were timid about making inquiries, His Lordship was not. When his appetite became urgent he forgot that he had come of a proud race, and soon after noon-time began to trumpet his demands, and his alarm, like an ordinary horse. His stable at home must have been red, for at every barn of that friendly color—and most of them were of that hue—he sent a clarion neigh across the echoing hills. The Joy, bundled warmly, munched her crackers and made little complaint. Her elders diverted themselves by admiring the winter scenery—the bared woods, lightly dressed with snow, the rocky cliffs and ledges, the tumbling black river that now and again came into view.