These boughs and twigs were like fingers held into a stream that carried loose algae, arresting them in their gliding motion. Or again, those wisps of mist were like gossamers as they floated along, and they would bend and fold over on the boughs before they tore; and where they broke, they seemed like comets to trail a thinner tail of themselves behind. There was tenacity in them, a certain consistency which made them appear as if woven of different things from air and mere moisture. I have often doubted my memory here, and yet I have my very definite notes, and besides there is the picture in my mind. In spite of my own uncertainty I can assure you, that this is only one quarter a poem woven of impressions; the other three quarters are reality. But, while I am trying to set down facts, I am also trying to render moods and images begot by them...
We went on for an hour, and it lengthened out into two. No twigs and boughs any longer, at last. But where I was, I knew not. Much as I listened, I could not make out any difference in the tramp of the horses now I looked down over the back of my buggy seat, and I seemed to see the yellow or brownish clay of a grade. I went on rather thoughtlessly. Then, about eleven o’clock, I noticed that the road was rough. I had long since, as I said, given myself over to the horses. But now I grew nervous. No doubt, unless we had entirely strayed from our road, we were by this time riding the last dam; for no other trail over which we went was quite so rough. But then I should have heard the rumble on the bridge, and I felt convinced that I had not. It shows to what an extent a man may be hypnotised into insensibility by a constant sameness of view, that I was mistaken. If we were on the dam and missed the turn at the end of it, on to the correction line, we should infallibly go down from the grade, on to muskeg ground, for there was a gap in the dam. At that place I had seen a horse disappear, and many a cow had ended there in the deadly struggle against the downward suck of the swamp...
I pulled the horses back to a walk, and we went on for another half hour. I was by this time sitting on the left hand side of the side, bicycle lantern in my left hand, and bending over as far as I could to the left, trying, with arm outstretched, to reach the ground with my light. The lantern at the back of the buggy was useless for this. Here and there the drop-laden, glistening tops of the taller grasses and weeds would float into this auxiliary cone of light—but that was all.
Then no weeds appeared any longer, so I must be on the last half-mile of the dam, the only piece of it that was bare and caution extreme was the word. I made up my mind to go on riding for another five minutes and timed myself, for there was hardly enough room for a team and a walking man besides. When the time was up, I pulled in and got out. I took the lines short, laid my right hand on Peter’s back and proceeded. The bicycle lantern was hanging down from my left and showed plainly the clayey gravel of the dam. And so I walked on for maybe ten minutes.
Suddenly I became again aware of a glimmer to the left, and the very next moment a lantern shot out of the mist, held high by an arm wrapped in white. A shivering woman, tall, young, with gleaming eyes, dressed in a linen house dress, an apron flung over breast and shoulders, gasped out two words, “You came!” “Have you been standing here and waiting?” I asked. “No, no! I just could not bear it any longer. Something told me. He’s at the culvert now, and if I do not run, he will go down into the swamp!” There was something of a catch in the voice. I did not reply I swung the horses around and crossed the culvert that bridges the master ditch.
And while we were walking up to the yard—had my drive been anything brave—anything at all deserving of the slightest reward—had it not in itself been a thing of beauty, not to be missed by selfish me—surely, the touch of that arm, as we went, would have been more than enough to reward even the most chivalrous deeds of yore.
THREE. Dawn and Diamonds
Two days before Christmas the ground was still bare. I had a splendid new cutter with a top and side curtains; a heavy outfit, but one that would stand up, I believed, under any road conditions. I was anxious to use it, too, for I intended to spend a two weeks’ holiday up north with my family. I was afraid, if I used the buggy, I might find it impossible to get back to town, seeing that the first heavy winter storms usually set in about the turn of the year.
School had closed at noon. I intended to set out next morning at as early an hour as I could. I do not know what gave me my confidence, but I firmly expected to find snow on the ground by that time. I am rather a student of the weather. I worked till late at night getting my cutter ready. I had to adjust my buggy pole and to stow away a great number of parcels. The latter contained the first real doll for my little girl, two or three picture books, a hand sleigh, Pip—a little stuffed dog of the silkiest fluffiness—and as many more trifles for wife and child as my Christmas allowance permitted me to buy. It was the first time in the five years of my married life that, thanks to my wife’s co-operation in earning money, there was any Christmas allowance to spend; and since I am writing this chiefly for her and the little girl’s future reading, I want to set it down here, too, that it was thanks to this very same co-operation that I had been able to buy the horses and the driving outfit which I needed badly, for the poor state of my health forbade more rigorous exercise. I have already said, I think, that I am essentially an outdoor creature; and for several years the fact that I had been forced to look at the out-of-doors from the window of a town house only, had been eating away at my vitality. Those drives took decades off my age, and in spite of incurable illness my few friends say that I look once more like a young man.