THE VISION
Tuesday, March fourth.
A day of snow and rain spent by us indoors, Rockwell hard at work upon his chart of “Trobbeabl Island”—a wonderful imaginary land where his own strange species of wild animals live—and I washing and mending. My seaman’s bag, damaged on its way here in the hold of the steamer, is now quite professionally patched, and the knee of my blue overalls shines with a square patch of white canvas.
Olson was welcome and spent much of the day with us. He has reread Kathleen’s letter to him and is charmed with it. He feels authorized by it to keep me here longer and surely does his best to persuade me. He treasures the picture little Kathleen sent him. All these things, the letters and little trifles that we have given him will be stored away in his too empty box of treasures among a very few old letters and a photograph or two of pioneer ladies and gentlemen in the dress-up costumes of thirty years ago. These scant treasures, what a memorial of a very lonely life! He showed me to-day a photograph of Tom Crane, an old associate of his in Idaho, and two large, splendid looking women, Crane’s wife and his wife’s sister. The wife was frozen to death in the snow while on a short journey with her husband. He lost both feet. Olson led the rescue party bringing in with great difficulty the dead woman and then tending Crane through long, painful days until his crippled recovery.
Thursday, March sixth.
It’s mighty hard work, this painting under pressure. I’m too tired to attempt more than the briefest record on this page of two days’ doings. Yesterday it was gray. At sundown it cleared giving us the most splendid and beautiful sunset, the sun sinking behind the purple, snowy mountains and throwing its rays upward into a seething red-hot mass of clouds. I painted most of the afternoon out-of-doors.
To-day we bathed at sunrise, brisk and cold and clear. The morning tide was so exceedingly low that I ran dry shod clear around the north side of the cove until the whole upper bay was visible. Olson had not known it could be done. Returning we put Olson’s boat into the water and Rockwell and I embarked with my painting outfit. I landed on the point I had just visited afoot. Rockwell in jumping ashore with the painter timed it badly, slipped, and fell full length into the surf of the ground swell, the dory almost riding over him. I roared with laughter—to his great fury. He rowed about in the harbor for almost two hours returning to bring me home. In the afternoon we repeated our excursion—all but the water sports—going this time to the south side of the cove. Rockwell’s a good little oarsman and above all to be trusted to do as he’s told to—a vice in grown-ups, a virtue in children.