There was a faint defect in the high notes, as if his fingers did not touch the strings properly, but his bow action showed cultivation and breadth of feeling. As he struck into one of those difficult octave-leaping movements his face became savage. On the E string a squeal broke forth; he flung the violin into Sam's lap with a ferocious curse, and then, extending his hands, hard, crooked to fit the axe-helve, calloused and chapped, he said to Field:
"Look at my hands! Lovely things to play with, aren't they?"
His voice trembled with passion. He turned and went outside. As he passed Mrs. Field his head was bowed, and he was uttering a groaning cry like one suffering physical pain.
"That's what drink does for a man," Ridgeley said, as they watched Williams disappear down the swampers' trail.
"That man has been a violinist," said Field. "What's he doing up here?"
"Came to get away from himself, I guess," Ridgeley replied.
"I'm afraid he's failed," said Field, as he put his arm about his wife and led her to the sleigh.
The ride home was made mainly in silence. "Oh, the splendid stillness!" the woman kept saying in her heart. "Oh, the splendid moonlight, the marvellous radiance!" Everywhere a heavenly serenity—not a footstep, not a bell, not a cry, not a cracking tree—nothing but vivid light, white snow dappled and lined with shadows, and trees etched against a starlit sky. Unutterable splendor of light and sheen and shadow. Wide wastes of snow so white the stumps stood like columns of charcoal. A night of Nature's making, when she is tired of noise and blare of color.
And in the midst of it stood the camp, with its reek of obscenity, foul odors, and tobacco smoke, to which a tortured soul must return.