The goats beset us yearning for their missing master. Billy, that maddening beast, eats up one corner of our broom. I throw a heavy armful of kindling wood into his face—and he just sneezes. But Rockwell plays with the goats as if they’re human, or rather, as if he were goat. They half believe it, he has told me,—and, Rockwell, so do I.
Sunday, November third.
To-day was gloriously bright and clear with a strong northwest wind. The mountains are covered with snow, beautiful beyond description. I painted in-and out-of-doors continuously all the day except when Rockwell and I plied the saw. It is no little thing to have one’s work on a day like this out under such a blue sky, by the foaming green sea and the fairy mountains.
Three days go by. It rains and hails and snows, and then is quiet. Over the dead, still air comes the roar of pounding seas. Immense and white they pile on the black cliffs of Caine’s Head, the wash of a storm at sea. Still over the heaving, glassy water we look in vain for Olson. Dark days, and the short hours are long with waiting. How many times we traveled down the cove to look toward Seward, how many score of times we peered through the little panes of our west window never to find the thing we sought for.
I’ve loaded my arms with firewood from the pile. I turn my head and there in our cove before my very eyes at last is Olson! This is November sixth,—nine days away!
“The war is over,” cried Olson as he landed. By all that’s holy in life may the world have found through its mad war at least some fragrance of the peace and freedom that we discovered growing like a flower, wild on the borders of the wilderness....
Long into night I read the mail, count sweaters, caps, and woolen stockings, all that the mail has brought. It is late, Rockwell is asleep, the room is cold, it snows out-of-doors.... And now instead of bed I’ll stir the fire and begin my work.
Thursday, November seventh.
A true winter’s day with the snow deep on the ground and the profound and characteristic winter silence of the out-of-doors to be sensed even in this ever silent place. At earliest daylight began a heavy thunderstorm with lightning all about and a downpour of hail. It occurred intermittently throughout the morning.... I did the washing, using Olson’s washboard and getting the clothes nearly white.
Olson is full of amusing gossip. To the curious in Seward who asked him why I chose to be in this God-forsaken spot he replied: “You damn fools, you don’t understand an artist at all. Do you suppose Shakespeare wrote his plays with a silly crowd of men and women hanging around him? No, sir, an artist has to be left alone.”