The Hills of Hingham Part 17

But here are the drifts still; and here is the old question of going back to the city to escape them. I shall sometimes wish we had gone back as I start out on a snowy, blowy morning; but never at night as I turn back--there is that difference between going to the city and going home. I often think the trip in is worth while for the sake of the trip out, such joy is it to pull in from the black, soughing woods to the cheer of the house, stamping the powdery snow off your boots and greatcoat to the sweet din of welcomes that drown the howling of the wind outside.

Once last winter I had to walk from the station. The snow was deep and falling steadily when I left the house in the morning, with increasing wind and thickening storm all day, so that my afternoon train out was delayed and dropped me at the station long after dark. The roads were blocked, the snow was knee-deep, the driving wind was horizontal, and the whirling ice particles like sharp sand, stinging, blinding as I bent to the road.

I went forward leaning, the drag in my feet overcome by the pull of the level wind on my slant body. Once through the long stretch of woods I tried to cut across the fields. Here I lost my bearings, stumbled into a ditch, and for a moment got utterly confused with the black of the night, the bite of the cold, and the smothering hand of the wind on my mouth.

Then I sat down where I was to pull myself together. There might be danger in such a situation, but I was not really cold--not cool enough.

I had been forcing the fight foolishly, head-on, by a frontal attack instead of on the enemy's flank.

Here in the meadow I was exposed to the full force of the sweeping gale, and here I realized for the first time that this was the great storm of the winter, one of the supreme pa.s.sages of the year, and one of the glorious physical fights of a lifetime.

On a prairie, or in the treeless barrens and tundras of the vast, frozen North, a fight like this could have but one end. What must the wild polar night be like! What the will, the thrill of men like Scott and Peary who have fought these forces to a standstill at the very poles! Their craft, their cunning, their daring, their imagination!

The sway, the drive, the divine madness of such a purpose! A living atom creeping across the ice-cap over the top of the world! A human mote, so smothered in the Arctic dark and storm, so wide of the utmost sh.o.r.e of men, by a trail so far and filled and faint that only G.o.d can follow!

It is not what a man does, but what he lives through doing it. Life may be safer, easier, longer, and fuller of possessions in one place than another. But possessions do not measure life, nor years, nor ease, nor safety. Life in the Hingham hills in winter is wretchedly remote at times, but nothing happens to me all day long in Boston to be compared for a moment with this experience here in the night and snow.

I never feel the largeness of the sky there, nor the wideness of the world, nor the loveliness of night, nor the fearful majesty of such a winter storm.

As the far-flung lines swept down upon me and bore me back into the drift, I knew somewhat the fierce delight of berg and floe and that primordial dark about the poles, and springing from my trench, I flung myself single-handed and exultant against the double fronts of night and storm, mightier than they, till weak, but victorious, I dragged myself to the door of a neighboring farmhouse, the voice of the storm a mighty song within my soul.

This happened, as I say, _once_ last winter, and of course she said we simply ought _not_ to live in such a place in winter; and of course, if anything exactly like that should occur every winter night, I should have to move into the city whether I liked city storms or not. One's life is, to be sure, a consideration, but fortunately for life all the winter days out here are not so magnificently ordered as this, except at dawn each morning, and at dusk, and at midnight when the skies are set with stars.

But there is a largeness to the quality of country life, a freshness and splendor as constant as the horizon and a very part of it.

Take a day anywhere in the year: that day in March--the day of the first frogs, when spring and winter meet; or that day in the fall--the day of the first frost, when autumn and winter meet; or that day in August--the day of the full-blown goldenrod, when summer and autumn meet--_these_, together with the days of June, and more especially that particular day in June when you can't tell earth from heaven, when everything is life and love and song, and the very turtles of the pond are moved from their lily-pads to wander the upland slopes to lay--the day when spring and summer meet!

Or if these seem rare days, try again anywhere in the calendar from the rainy day in February when the thaw begins to Indian summer and the day of floating thistledown, and the cruising fleets of wild lettuce and silky-sailed fireweed on the golden air. The big soft clouds are sailing their wider sea; the sweet sunshine, the lesser winds, the chickadees and kinglets linger with you in your sheltered hollow against the hill--you and they for yet a little slumber, a little sleep before there breaks upon you the wrath of the North.

But is this sweet, slumberous, half-melancholy day any nearer perfect than that day when

"Announced by all the trumpets of the sky Arrives the snow"--

or the blizzard?

But going back to town, as she intimated, concerns the children quite as much as me. They travel eight miles a day to get to school, part of it on foot and part of it by street car--and were absent one day last year when the telephone wires were down and we thought there would be no school because of the snow. They might not have missed that one day had we been in the city, and I must think of that when it comes time to go back. There is room for them in the city to improve in spelling and penmanship too, vastly to improve. But they could n't have half so much fun there as here, nor half so many things to do, simple, healthful, homely, interesting things to do, as good for them as books and food and sleep--these last things to be had here, too, in great abundance.

What could take the place of the cow and hens in the city? The hens are Mansie's (he is the oldest) and the cow is mine. But night after night last winter I would climb the Hill to see the barn lighted, and in the shadowy stall two little human figures--one squat on an upturned bucket milking, his milk-pail, too large to be held between his knees, lodged perilously under the cow upon a half-peck measure; the other little human figure quietly holding the cow's tail.

No head is turned; not a squeeze is missed--this is _business_ here in the stall,--but as the car stops behind the scene, Babe calls--

"h.e.l.lo, Father!"

"h.e.l.lo, Babe!"

"Three teats done," calls Mansie, his head down, b.u.t.ting into the old cow's flank. "You go right in, we 'll be there. She has n't kicked but once!"

Perhaps that is n't a good thing for those two little boys to do--watering, feeding, brushing, milking the cow on a winter night in order to save me--and loving to! Perhaps that is n't a good thing for me to see them doing, as I get home from the city on a winter night!

But I am a sentimentalist and not proof at all against two little boys milking, who are liable to fall into the pail.

Meantime the two middlers had shoveled out the road down to the mail-box on the street so that I ran up on bare earth, the very wheels of the car conscious of the love behind the shovels, of the speed and energy it took to get the long job done before I should arrive.

"How did she come up?" calls Beeb.u.m as he opens the house door for me, his cheeks still glowing with the cold and exercise.

"Did we give you wide enough swing at the bend?" cries Bitsie, seizing the bag of bananas.

"Oh, we sailed up--took that curve like a bird--didn't need chains--just like a boulevard right into the barn!"

"It's a fearful night out, is n't it?" she says, taking both of my hands in hers, a touch of awe, a note of thankfulness in her voice.

"Bad night in Boston!" I exclaim. "Trains late, cars stalled--streets blocked with snow. I 'm mighty glad to be out here a night like this."

"Woof! Woof!"--And Babe and Pup are at the kitchen door with the pail of milk, shaking themselves free from snow.

"Where is Mansie?" his mother asks.

"He just ran down to have a last look at his chickens."

We sit down to dinner, but Mansie does n't come. The wind whistles outside, the snow sweeps up against the windows,--the night grows wilder and fiercer.

"Why doesn't Mansie come?" his mother asks, looking at me.

"Oh, he can't shut the hen-house doors, for the snow. He 'll be here in a moment."

The meal goes on.

"Will you go out and see what is the matter with the child?" she asks, the look of anxiety changing to one of alarm on her face.

As I am rising there is a racket in the cellar and the child soon comes blinking into the lighted dining-room, his hair dusty with snow, his cheeks blazing, his eyes afire. He slips into his place with just a hint of apology about him and reaches for his cup of fresh, warm milk.

He is twelve years old.

"What does this mean, Mansie?" she says.

"Nothing."

"You are late for dinner. And who knows what had happened to you out there in the trees a night like this. What were you doing?"

"Shutting up the chickens."

"But you did shut them up early in the afternoon."

"Yes, mother."

"Well?"

"It's awful cold, mother!"

"Yes?"

"They might freeze!"