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edwindvinas
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Dataset card Data Studio Files
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October—with a gorgeous pageant of color around Mistawis, into which
Valancy plunged her soul. Never had she imagined anything so splendid.
A great, tinted peace. Blue, wind-winnowed skies. Sunlight sleeping in
the glades of that fairyland. Long dreamy purple days paddling idly in
their canoe along shores and up the rivers of crimson and gold. A
sleepy, red hunter’s moon. Enchanted tempests that stripped the leaves
from the trees and heaped them along the shores. Flying shadows of
clouds. What had all the smug, opulent lands out front to compare with
this?
November—with uncanny witchery in its changed trees. With murky red
sunsets flaming in smoky crimson behind the westering hills. With dear
days when the austere woods were beautiful and gracious in a dignified
serenity of folded hands and closed eyes—days full of a fine, pale
sunshine that sifted through the late, leafless gold of the
juniper-trees and glimmered among the grey beeches, lighting up
evergreen banks of moss and washing the colonnades of the pines. Days
with a high-sprung sky of flawless turquoise. Days when an exquisite
melancholy seemed to hang over the landscape and dream about the lake.
But days, too, of the wild blackness of great autumn storms, followed
by dank, wet, streaming nights when there was witch-laughter in the
pines and fitful moans among the mainland trees. What cared they? Old
Tom had built his roof well, and his chimney drew.
“Warm fire—books—comfort—safety from storm—our cats on the rug.
Moonlight,” said Barney, “would you be any happier now if you had a
million dollars?”
“No—nor half so happy. I’d be bored by conventions and obligations
then.”
December. Early snows and Orion. The pale fires of the Milky Way. It
was really winter now—wonderful, cold, starry winter. How Valancy had
always hated winter! Dull, brief, uneventful days. Long, cold,
companionless nights. Cousin Stickles with her back that had to be
rubbed continually. Cousin Stickles making weird noises gargling her
throat in the mornings. Cousin Stickles whining over the price of coal.
Her mother, probing, questioning, ignoring. Endless colds and
bronchitis—or the dread of it. Redfern’s Liniment and Purple Pills.
But now she loved winter. Winter was beautiful “up back”—almost
intolerably beautiful. Days of clear brilliance. Evenings that were
like cups of glamour—the purest vintage of winter’s wine. Nights with
their fire of stars. Cold, exquisite winter sunrises. Lovely ferns of
ice all over the windows of the Blue Castle. Moonlight on birches in a
silver thaw. Ragged shadows on windy evenings—torn, twisted, fantastic
shadows. Great silences, austere and searching. Jewelled, barbaric
hills. The sun suddenly breaking through grey clouds over long, white
Mistawis. Icy-grey twilights, broken by snow-squalls, when their cosy
living-room, with its goblins of firelight and inscrutable cats seemed
cosier than ever. Every hour brought a new revelation and wonder.
Barney ran Lady Jane into Roaring Abel’s barn and taught Valancy how to
snowshoe—Valancy, who ought to be laid up with bronchitis. But Valancy
had not even a cold. Later on in the winter Barney had a terrible one
and Valancy nursed him through it with a dread of pneumonia in her
heart. But Valancy’s colds seemed to have gone where old moons go.
Which was luck—for she hadn’t even Redfern’s Liniment. She had
thoughtfully bought a bottle at the Port and Barney had hurled it into
frozen Mistawis with a scowl.
“Bring no more of that devilish stuff here,” he had ordered briefly. It
was the first and last time he had spoken harshly to her.
They went for long tramps through the exquisite reticence of winter
woods and the silver jungles of frosted trees, and found loveliness
everywhere.
At times they seemed to be walking through a spellbound world of
crystal and pearl, so white and radiant were clearings and lakes and
sky. The air was so crisp and clear that it was half intoxicating.
Once they stood in a hesitation of ecstasy at the entrance of a narrow
path between ranks of birches. Every twig and spray was outlined in
snow. The undergrowth along its sides was a little fairy forest cut out
of marble. The shadows cast by the pale sunshine were fine and
spiritual.
“Come away,” said Barney, turning. “We must not commit the desecration
of tramping through there.”
One evening they came upon a snowdrift far back in an old clearing
which was in the exact likeness of a beautiful woman’s profile. Seen
too close by, the resemblance was lost, as in the fairy-tale of the
Castle of St. John. Seen from behind, it was a shapeless oddity. But at
just the right distance and angle the outline was so perfect that when
they came suddenly upon it, gleaming out against the dark background of
spruce in the glow of that winter sunset they both exclaimed in
amazement. There was a low, noble brow, a straight, classic nose, lips
and chin and cheek-curve modelled as if some goddess of old time had
sat to the sculptor, and a breast of such cold, swelling purity as the
very spirit of the winter woods might display.
“‘All the beauty that old Greece and Rome, sung painted, taught,’”
quoted Barney.
“And to think no human eyes save ours have seen or will see it,”
breathed Valancy, who felt at times as if she were living in a book by
John Foster. As she looked around her she recalled some passages she