I relaxed. I had done what I could do. Anxiety there was hardly any now. A drive over more than forty miles, made at the greatest obtainable speed, blunts your emotional energies. I thought of home, to be sure, did so all the time; but it was with expectation now, with nothing else. Within half an hour I should know...
Then the bush opened up. The last mile led along between snow-buried meadows, school and house in plain view ahead. There lay the cottage, as peaceful in the evening sun as any house can look. Smoke curled up from its chimney and rose in a nearly perpendicular column. I became aware of the colder evening air, and with the chill that crept over me I was again overwhelmed by the pitifully lonesome looks of the place.
Mostly I shouted when I drew near to tell of my coming. To-day I silently swung up through the shrubby thicket in which the cottage and the stable behind it lay embedded and turned in to the yard. As soon as the horses stopped, I dropped the lines, jerked the door of the cutter back, and jumped to the ground.
Then I stood transfixed. That very moment the door of the cottage opened. There stood my wife, and between her knee and the door-post a curly head pushed through, and a child’s voice shouted, “Daddy, come to the house! Daddy, come to the house!”
A turn to the better had set in sometime during the morning. The fever had dropped, and quickly, as children’s illness will come, it had gone. But the message had sped on its way, irrevocable and, therefore, unrevoked. My wife, when she told me the tale, thought, well had she reason to smile, for had I not thus gained an additional holiday?
SEVEN. Skies and Scares
We had a “soft spell” over a week end, and on Monday it had been followed by a fearful storm—snowstorm and blizzard, both coming from the southeast and lasting their traditional three days before they subsided. On Thursday, a report came in that the trail across the wild land west of Bell’s corner was closed completely—in fact, would be impassable for the rest of the winter. This report came with the air of authority; the man who brought it knew what he was talking about; of that I had no doubt. For the time being, he said, no horses could possibly get through.
That very day I happened to meet another man who was habitually driving back and forth between the two towns. “Why don’t you go west?” he said. “You angle over anyway. Go west first and then straight north.” And he described in detail the few difficulties of the road which he followed himself. There was no doubt, he of all men should certainly know which was the best road for the first seventeen miles. He had come in from that one-third-way town that morning. I knew the trails which he described as summer-roads, had gone over them a good many times, though never in winter; so, the task of finding the trail should not offer any difficulty. Well and good, then; I made up my mind to follow the advice.
On Friday afternoon everything was ready as usual. I rang off at four o’clock and stepped into the hall. And right there the first thing went wrong.