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Page 49
We went into Duckford's dry-goods store, and Chris unwrapped all his
presents and showed them to me something for each of the six younger than
himself, even a rubber pig for the baby. Lena had given him one of Tiny
Soderball's bottles of perfume for his mother, and he thought he would get
some handkerchiefs to go with it. They were cheap, and he hadn't much
money left. We found a tableful of handkerchiefs spread out for view at
Duckford's. Chris wanted those with initial letters in the corner, because
he had never seen any before. He studied them seriously, while Lena looked
over his shoulder, telling him she thought the red letters would hold their
colour best. He seemed so perplexed that I thought perhaps he hadn't
enough money, after all. Presently he said gravely:
`Sister, you know mother's name is Berthe. I don't know if I ought to get
B for Berthe, or M for Mother.'
Lena patted his bristly head. `I'd get the B, Chrissy. It will please her
for you to think about her name. Nobody ever calls her by it now.'
That satisfied him. His face cleared at once, and he took three reds and
three blues. When the neighbour came in to say that it was time to start,
Lena wound Chris's comforter about his neck and turned up his jacket
collar--he had no overcoat-- and we watched him climb into the wagon and
start on his long, cold drive. As we walked together up the windy street,
Lena wiped her eyes with the back of her woollen glove. `I get awful
homesick for them, all the same,' she murmured, as if she were answering
some remembered reproach.
VI
WINTER COMES DOWN SAVAGELY over a little town on the prairie. The wind
that sweeps in from the open country strips away all the leafy screens that
hide one yard from another in summer, and the houses seem to draw closer
together. The roofs, that looked so far away across the green tree-tops,
now stare you in the face, and they are so much uglier than when their
angles were softened by vines and shrubs.
In the morning, when I was fighting my way to school against the wind, I
couldn't see anything but the road in front of me; but in the late
afternoon, when I was coming home, the town looked bleak and desolate to
me. The pale, cold light of the winter sunset did not beautify--it was
like the light of truth itself. When the smoky clouds hung low in the west
and the red sun went down behind them, leaving a pink flush on the snowy
roofs and the blue drifts, then the wind sprang up afresh, with a kind of
bitter song, as if it said: `This is reality, whether you like it or not.
All those frivolities of summer, the light and shadow, the living mask of
green that trembled over everything, they were lies, and this is what was
underneath. This is the truth.' It was as if we were being punished for
loving the loveliness of summer.
If I loitered on the playground after school, or went to the post-office
for the mail and lingered to hear the gossip about the cigar-stand, it
would be growing dark by the time I came home. The sun was gone; the
frozen streets stretched long and blue before me; the lights were shining
pale in kitchen windows, and I could smell the suppers cooking as I passed.
Few people were abroad, and each one of them was hurrying toward a fire.
The glowing stoves in the houses were like magnets. When one passed an old
man, one could see nothing of his face but a red nose sticking out between
a frosted beard and a long plush cap. The young men capered along with
their hands in their pockets, and sometimes tried a slide on the icy
sidewalk. The children, in their bright hoods and comforters, never
walked, but always ran from the moment they left their door, beating their
mittens against their sides. When I got as far as the Methodist Church, I
was about halfway home. I can remember how glad I was when there happened
to be a light in the church, and the painted glass window shone out at us
as we came along the frozen street. In the winter bleakness a hunger for
colour came over people, like the Laplander's craving for fats and sugar.
Without knowing why, we used to linger on the sidewalk outside the church
when the lamps were lighted early for choir practice or prayer-meeting,
shivering and talking until our feet were like lumps of ice. The crude
reds and greens and blues of that coloured glass held us there.
On winter nights, the lights in the Harlings' windows drew me like the
painted glass. Inside that warm, roomy house there was colour, too. After
supper I used to catch up my cap, stick my hands in my pockets, and dive
through the willow hedge as if witches were after me. Of course, if Mr.
Harling was at home, if his shadow stood out on the blind of the west room,
I did not go in, but turned and walked home by the long way, through the
street, wondering what book I should read as I sat down with the two old
people.
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