XI
THE MARSHES
"Real fall weather," that season of 1879, seemed to delay long beyond the appointed time. During each night, to be sure, it grew cold. The leaves, after their blaze and riot of colour, turned crisp and crackly and brown. Some of the little still puddles were filmed with what was almost, but not quite, ice. A sheen of frost whitened the house-roofs and silvered each separate blade of grass on the lawns. But by noon the sun, rising red in the veil of smoke that hung low in the snappy air, had mellowed the atmosphere until it lay on the cheek like a caress. No breath of air stirred. Sounds came clearly from a distance. Long V-shaped flights of geese swept athwart the sky very high up, but their honking carried faintly to the ear. Time seemed to have run down. And yet when the sun, swollen to the great dimensions of the rising moon, dipped blood-red through the haze, the first faint premonitory tingle of cold warned one that the tepid, grateful warmth of the day had been but an illusion of a season that had gone. This was not summer; but, in the quaint old phrase, Indian summer. And its end would be as though the necromancer had waved his wand.
In the meantime the barges and schooners continued to take chances in order to market the last of the year's lumber crop; the small boys and squirrels made the most of the nut crop; the grouse remained scattered in noisy cover; and the ducks frequented the open stretches where they were quite out of reach.
But at last Bobby Orde, awakening early, heard the rising and falling moan of wind past the eaves' corner outside his windows. He hopped out of bed, thrust his feet into a pair of knit socks and ran to the window. The sun was not yet up; but the wild barbaric gold of it was flung abroad over flat, hard-looking clouds.
"'Bright sunrise at morning,
The sailor takes warning,'"
murmured Bobby.
In the yard below, the brown leaves were chasing themselves madly around and about, back and forth, like restless spirits. Others slanted down from the trees in continuous flocks. The maples tossed restlessly. In the air was a deep bitter chill which sent Bobby scurrying back to his warm nest in a hurry.
After breakfast he was glad of his heavier suit. The sun rose and shone, it is true; but its rays possessed no warmth. The light of it appeared to be a cold silver, like the sheen on stubble. All the landscape seemed to have paled. Gone were the rich glowing reds, the warm browns. A gray cast hung over the land.