Purple Springs

by Nellie L. McClung

"You are doing something for me, Pearl, that I thought could never be done; you are restoring my faith. Remember, I have not been as unhappy as you may think. I had my happiness—that's more than some women can say. I have had the rapture, the blessedness of love—I've had it all—the rapture of holding and the agony of loss—I'm only thirty-one, but I've lived a thousand years. But, Pearl, you've done something for me already; you have set my feet again on something solid, and I am a different woman from yesterday. Some day I'll tell you a strange story until then, you'll trust me?"

"Until then—and far beyond it—forever," said Pearl. "I'll trust you—I have an idea you and I are going to stick together for a long time."

Pearl went back to the school and found her letter of acceptance in the desk. She tore it up and wrote another, thanking the department for their kindness in offering her such a splendid position, but explaining that she had decided to stay at the school at Purple Springs. She made her decision without any difficulty. There was a deep conviction that the threads of destiny were weaving together her life and Annie Gray's, and she knew, from some hidden source in her soul, that she must stand by. What she could do, was vague and unformed in her mind, but she knew it would be revealed to her.

Pearl, child of the prairie, never could think as clearly when her vision was bounded by walls. She had to have blue distance—the great, long look that swept away the little petty, trifling, hampering things, which so slavishly dominate our lives, if we will let them. So she took her way to a little lake behind the school, where with the school axe she had already made a seat for herself under two big poplar trees, and cut the lower branches of some of the smaller ones, giving them a neat and tidy appearance, like well-gartered children dressed for a picnic.

There were a few white birches mixed with the poplars, so delicately formed and dainty in their slender branches and lacy leaves, they looked like nice little girls with flowing hair, coming down to bathe in the blue lake, timidly trying out the water with their white feet. The trees formed a semi-circle around the east side of the lake, leaving one side open to view, and she could see the prairie falling away to the river, which made a wide detour at this point.

Pearl settled herself in her rustic seat, putting the newspaper, which she had left for the purpose, behind her back as she leaned against the tree, to keep the powdery bark from marking her blue coat, and leaning back contentedly, she drank in the spring sounds.

The sun, which stood almost at noon, seemed to draw the leaves out like a magnet; she could almost believe she saw them unfolding; above her head there was a perfect riot of bird's song, and a blue-bird, like a burst of music, went flashing across the water. A gray squirrel chattered as he ran up a tree behind her, and a rabbit, padding over the dead leaves on his way to the lake, made a sound like a bear.

Up through the tree tops there had climbed a few blue rags of smoke, for behind her a sleepy prairie fire was eating backward toward a ploughed fire-guard, and the delightful acrid smell brought back the memory of past prairie fires, pleasant enough to think of, as life's battles are, if they end victoriously. Not a breath stirred in the trees, and the prairie fire that smouldered so indolently was surely the gentlest of its race.

Suddenly there came a gust of wind through the trees, which set them creaking and crackling with vague apprehension, for the wind is always the mischief maker—the tattler—the brawler who starts the trouble—and the peaceful, slumbering absent-minded prairie fire, nibbling away at a few dead roots and grass, had been too much for it. Here was a perfectly good chance to make trouble which no wind could resist.

A big black cloud went over the sun, and all in a minute the placid waters of the lake were rasped into a pattern like the soles of new rubbers—the trees were bending—crows cawing excitedly, and the fire, spurred by the wind, went racing through the lake bottom and on its way up the bank toward the open country. The cattle, which had been feeding at the east side of the lake, sniffing danger, turned galloping home to furnish an alibi in case of trouble.