Read Ebook: A Winter of Content by Davidson Laura Lee

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"Set thy house in order, set thy house in order," something seemed to say, "for never, for thee, shall the shadow turn back upon the dial." In that moment I stood alone in space, on this old clock the earth, swinging with the whirling of the spheres.

The lake too has its mystery, a strange light that shines from the point of one of the islands. No one lives on that land; there is no farmhouse near it on the shore, nor is it in line with any dwelling whose light could seem to glimmer from its point. The flare is too high and too steady for fox-fire, the glow that comes from rotting wood, and though men say they have explored the place repeatedly, there has never been any sign of a campfire there. But every now and again that light shines by night, like a beacon, and no one has ever explained it.

Perhaps it is the phantom of the council fire, round which the red warriors sat in the days when this land was theirs. For there were Indians hereabout, and not so very long ago; and people on the mainland tell of a great fight that raged here when a band of the Mississagua Nation, led by the chief White Eagle, fought with an invading war party and of a day of battle from dawn until the going down of the sun when the lake was red with blood. On the sheer face of the cliff of the opposite island are red veinings in the rock. If one pretends very hard, they are pictures of two war canoes left there by some artist of the tribe. The people here believe in them devoutly.

"They were painted in blood," they say.

A very indelible blood it must have been, for those tracings have withstood the wash of high water for many a year.

Whether the picture writing is genuine or no, there is plenty of evidence that Indians lived along the shores of Many Islands, and there is a pretty story told of the wedding of a girl, White Eagle's daughter, to a young brave of her tribe. The Indians came down the lakes and through the portages to Queensport, in their fine canoes, and the lovers were married there by the priest at the mission. Afterward they were all entertained at dinner by the big-hearted wife of the principal merchant of the town. That lady's daughter tells me that for many seasons thereafter the chief's daughter would bring or send beautiful birch baskets, filled with berries or maple sugar for the children of her hostess.

The bride is described as slim and young, with big, dark eyes. The wedding dress was dark blue cloth, trimmed with new-minted five- and ten-cent pieces, pierced and sewed on in a pattern--this worn over a vest of buckskin, beautifully embroidered.

What became of you, little Indian Bride, girl of the grateful heart? Were you happy here at Many Islands, or was it life-blood of your brave that helped to redden all the waters? Did you move back and back with your wandering people, or are you lying under the cedars on some green slope of the shore? I shall never know, but I shall think of you and wonder.

There are no Indians here now, except one old squaw, who lives far back on the road to Maskinonge and tans buckskins in the fine old Indian way, but the plow turns up the arrowheads, and once in a while a bowl or pipe, proofs that the red men lived and fought here.

THE Lake of the Many Islands, long, irregular, spring-fed, lies in a cup of the rolling Ontario farmlands. At the south its waters, passing through a narrow strait, widen into beautiful Blue Bay. At the north they empty, in a series of cascades, into the little river Eau Claire. The town of Les Rapides, its sawmill idle, the ten or twelve log houses closed, stands at the outlet, a deserted village. The eagles soar to and fro over the blue lake; the black bass jump; the dor? swim. There are hundreds of little coves and narrow channels--waters forgotten of the foot, where only the hum of insect wings and the rattle of the kingfisher are heard, and where the heron stands sentinel in the marshes and the loons have their mud nests on the shores.

"Crazy as a loon," that is, of all phrases, the most libelous. For the loon is the most sensible of fowl and possessed of the most distinct personality. No other water bird has so direct and so level a flight. He lays his strong body down along the wind, and goes, like a bullet, straight to his goal, purposeful, unswerving. He has three cries, one a high, maniac laugh, which is, of course, the reason his wits are slandered; then a loud, squealing cry, very like the sound of a pig in distress; and last a long, yearning call, the summons to his mate, perhaps, that he sends out far across the water--a cry that seems the very voice of the wilderness. At twilight, and often in the night, I hear that lonely cry, echoing down the lakes, and the faint, far cry that answers it.

"There will be wind to-night," the weather-wise say. "Hear the loons making a noise."

The birds come to the bay back of the island, and swim about there as friendly as puddle ducks. If I go too close, closer than Mr. Gavia Immer thinks safe or respectful, down he goes and stays for some minutes under the water, to emerge far away, and in quite a different quarter from the one in which I expected to see him. No one on earth could ever predict where a loon will come up when he dives. He looks at me austerely, twisting his black head back on his shoulder, until I would swear he had turned it completely round on his white-ringed neck. Then he gives his crazy laugh and disappears again.

The loon is protected in Canada. No one may shoot him or molest him. But once in a while one comes across a boat cushion made of a bird skin, its gray and white feathers very soft and thick and attached to the skin so fast that it is well-nigh impossible to pluck them. That is the breast of the loon, the great wild bird of the northern lakes, that the game law has failed to save. When I see one of these skins I hate the vandal who has killed the bird.

The Blakes are my nearest neighbors--not nearest geographically, for the Drapeau farm lies closer to the island; but near by reason of their many friendly acts and kind suggestions. If I am ill or in trouble, it is to Henry and Mary Blake that I shall go for help.

Henry Blake of the keen, ice-blue eye, the caustic tongue and the good heart. There was never anything more scathing than his condemnation of the shiftlessness and, what he considers the general imbecility of his neighbors, and never anything kinder than his willingness to help one of them in a crisis. He will sit for an hour, pencil in hand, laboring to explain to some unsuccessful farmer that wood hauled at next to nothing a cord can only land the hauler in a ditch of debt, and when the hapless one has departed, fully determined to go his own way, to hear Henry spit out the one word, "Fat-head," as he turns back to his book, is a lesson in the nice choice of epithet.

When it comes to judgment on the manners, the morals, and the methods of their neighbors Henry and Mary Blake sit in the seats of the scornful; but, after all, they are somewhat justified, for they came over from "The States." Henry, an invalid, bought a rundown island farm, and they have brought it to a good state of cultivation and paid off their mortgage, all in ten years.

But while they are free in their criticisms of the natives, who live from hand to mouth, one notices that the Blakes are always willing to do a good turn, and are usually being asked to do one. Is a house to be built? Henry is called on to plan it. Does a churn spring a leak, or a cow fall ill? Mary goes to the rescue. Does a temperamental seed-drill choke in one of its sixty odd pipes? Henry is sent for to find the seat of the disorder and to apply the remedy.

I also went to him, when deliberating the relative cost of a log house and one of board. Mr. Blake discussed the matter with me in the kindest way, summing up his advice in a sentence, that reached my muddled brain in some such statement as the following:

"It all comes to this. You can get one cedar log, 6x14 for twenty cents. Three goes into twenty-one seven times, so board or log, it would come to the same thing."

It wasn't what he said, of course, but I hastened to agree, lest I should be a fat-head too.

Everything on the Blake farm is a pet, from the handsome young Jersey bull, to the tiniest chick, hatched untimely from a nest-egg. They all run toward Mary as soon as she steps from the kitchen door, and as she hurries from house to barn there is always a rabble of small ducks, chickens, calves, and kittens hurrying after her. The other day, when she, Henry, and Jimmy Dodd, their adopted boy, set off for a tour of the lake, a calf swam after them, and tried so earnestly to climb aboard that, perforce, they turned back to shore and tied the foolish creature, lest he should drown himself and them.

Like almost every family in the countryside, the Blakes have adopted a small boy, giving him a home and training and enough to eat, which he never had before in all his forlorn life. They are kindness itself to Jimmie, but Henry regards him with the same foreboding he feels for all other native-born Canadians. He trains him, but in the spirit of "What's the use?"

"Jimmie here," he philosophizes, "he can't seem to learn the first thing; and if he learns it, he can't retain it. I have taught him to read, but he can't remember a word; and to write, but he forgets it the next day. Mary even put him through the catechism, and a week later he didn't know one thing about it. So what are you going to do? I figure out," he goes on meditatively, "that the people who learn easy are the ones who have been here before. They knew it all in another life, maybe in another language, and all they have to do is just to recall it. But Jimmie here--well, I guess this is his first trip."

All the while Jimmie of the towhead and the thin, wiry legs and arms is grinning at his critic with a wide, snaggle-toothed smile of great affection.

The Blakes' house stands on the site of an old log hut, of two rooms and a lean-to shed. In digging the cellar they came upon a walled-in grave--the boards almost rotted away--and in it lay a skeleton. Whose? No one knows, for that grave was dug before the time of anyone now living at Many Islands. Was it some Indian warrior laid there to sleep? Was it a settler of the old pioneer days? No one can tell and no one cares. The Blakes built their comfortable eight-room house over his bones and thought no more about them.

Yesterday Mary and I drove to Queensport, the county seat, fifteen miles away, that I might show myself at the bank and the stores where I am to trade this winter. The start was to be early, and I rose at dawn to have breakfast over, the cabin cleaned, and I myself rowed over to the farm. The woods lay wrapped in a heavy mist. Not a wet leaf stirred. The water looked like mouse-colored cr?pe, and the sun hung like a big, pink balloon in a sky of gray velvet. But before our start the mists had burned away and the day was glorious.

The road lies through a rolling country, all hills, woods, lakes, and glades. Queensport stands at the head of a chain of lakes. It boasts two banks, a high school, churches of all denominations, and a dozen or so shops and houses set in gardens. We dined at the hotel, the Wardrobe House; we transacted our business at the bank, and turned then to our shopping. We went to the harness shop for bread, to the grocer's for a spool of thread, to the tailor's to enquire the cost of a telephone. Then I bethought me of my need for some rag carpet. I did not really want that carpet that day, indeed, I had not the money to pay for it. I only thought of inquiring for it while I was in the town.

We were directed to the hardware shop as the most likely place for carpets, and I had no sooner mentioned my errand when a voice came out from behind a stove saying eagerly:

"I know where you can find just what you're looking for. My old mother has forty yards of as fine a rag carpet as you could wish to see. Say the word and I'll drive you right out to the farm and show it to you."

Whereupon a tall, wiry, keen-faced man rose up and dashed out of the shop, returning in an instant with a buggy and a wild-looking black horse. Despite my protests we were bundled into the vehicle and driven at a gallop, through the main street of Queensport, and the driving was as the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi. Past farms and fields we flew, stopping with a mighty jerk at the door of the mother's house. There the carpet was rolled forth before me, and there Mary Blake and our energetic friend measured me off twenty yards of it, by a nick in the edge of the kitchen table.

In vain I pleaded and explained my poverty. Our abductor waved me a careless hand.

"Money," he assured us, "is the last thing that ever worried me. You may pay for the carpet when and where you choose."

On the way back to town my new friend was properly presented. His name was William Whitfield. Later I heard varied tales of his peculiarities. There was talk of a horse trade, to which Bill Whitfield was a party. The other man came out of the transaction the richer by one more experience, but the poorer as regarded property. It was told me that men said freely that Bill Whitfield drunk could get the better of any two sober men in the Dominion when it came to a bargain, and, as I contemplated my roll of carpet, leaning against the dashboard, I understood why I had been as wax in his hands, and I could only be thankful that it had not occurred to Mr. Whitfield to sell me the whole forty yards.

Back we jogged, Mary and I, along the quiet roads, discussing our bargains and the news of the town. We passed the schoolhouse just as "Teacher" was locking the door for the night. The dusty road was printed all over with the marks of little bare feet, all turning away from the school gate and pointing toward home. The sun was sinking in a flaming sky as we came to the shore of our own lake, where the rowboat lay on the sand awaiting us, a pair of tired travelers, glad to be nearing home.

I would not be a bigot. To each man should belong the right to vaunt the glories of his own beloved camping ground. There may be other places as beautiful as this Lake of the Many Islands, although I cannot believe it. But Many Islands at sunset, its quiet waters all rose and saffron and lavender, under a crescent moon; when the swallows skim the surface and dip their breasts in the ripple, and the blue heron flaps away to his nest in the reeds--Well! I shall see no other spot that so moves my heart with its beauty, until my eyes look out beyond the sunset and behold the land that is very far off.

I drift on past the islands, where the cedars troop down to the water's edge, and the white birches lean far out over the rocks. The colors fade, the far line of the forests becomes a purple blur, and stars come out and hang in a dove-gray sky. I land at the little dock, safe hidden in the cove; I scramble along the dark trail to the house, while the loons are laughing and calling as they rock on the waves.

THE days are still warm, but autumn is surely here. The wasps are dying everywhere and lie in heaps on all the window-sills; the great water spiders have disappeared, and all day long the yellow leaves drift down silently, steadily, in the forests. Wreaths of vapor hang over the trees, and every wind brings the pungent fall odor of distant forest fires. The hillsides are a blaze of color, with basswoods a beautiful butter-yellow, oaks, russet and maroon and sugar maples, a flame of scarlet against the dark-green velvet of the cedars and hemlocks. Each birch stands forth, a slender Danae, white feet in a drift of gold. The woods here on the island are thinning rapidly. All sorts of hidden dells and boulders are coming to light. Soon the whole island will lie open to the sight, and then there will no longer be anything mysterious about it.

Dried heads of goldenrod, life everlasting, and a few closed gentians are all that are left of the flowers; but the red and orange garlands of the bittersweet wave from every bush, the juniper berries are purple, and the sumacs are a wonder of great garnet velvet cones.

From a walk round the trails I bring in an assortment of seeds: beggar's ticks, stick-seeds, Spanish needles, pitchforks--"the tramps of the vegetable world," Burroughs calls them. They cover my skirt, they cling to my woolen leggings, they perch on the brim of my hat. Little pocket-shaped cases, pods with hooks, seeds shaped like tiny twin turtles, and furry balls like miniature chestnut burrs. As I pick and brush and tear them off I wish I knew what plants had fathered every one of them.

At the approach of cold weather the small animals and the few birds that are left draw nearer to the house. Grouse are in all the paths, flying up everywhere. They rise with a thrashing, pounding noise and soar away over the bushes, to settle again only a little further on. Last evening, at twilight, two of them came on the porch, the little cock ruffling it bravely, wings dragging, fantail spread, ruff standing valiantly erect. A hen followed sedately at his heels. They are very pretty, about the size of bantam chickens. How I hope that I shall be here to see their young in the spring!

This afternoon a red squirrel came round the corner of the house and sat down, absentmindedly, beside me on a bench. When he looked up and saw what he had done he gave a shriek and a bound and fled chattering off toward the sundial. But he will come back and will probably be darting into the house when he thinks my back is turned, for there is nothing half so impudent or so mischievous as the red squirrel. I am told that they do not "den in" as the chipmunks do.

The rabbits do their best to help me get rid of my stores. There are hundreds of them about. They sit under the bushes, peering out; they appear and disappear between the dry stalks of the brakes. At evening they come close to the house, and catch bits of bread and potatoes thrown to them, then sit in the paths munching contentedly. They are not rabbits, correctly speaking, but Canadian hares, with long brown fur, bulging black eyes, furry ears, fringed with black, and very long hind legs. One of them comes so close and seems so fearless that it should not be difficult to tame him. I have named him Peter. These hares turn snow-white in winter, I am told. Even now their coats are showing white where the winter coat is growing.

In the dusk the porcupines come pushing through the fallen leaves, snuffling and grunting. Away in the woods the bobcats scream and snarl. The natives accuse the bobcat of a pretty trick of lying flattened out on a limb, waiting for his prey to pass underneath, then he drops on its back to tear with tooth and talon. They warn me not to walk in the woods after dark, for fear of this Canada lynx.

But my natural histories say that, while the lynx sometimes follows the hunter for long distances, he does it only because he is curious, and that there is no authentic record of the bobcat's ever having attacked a man. So I shall continue to take my walks abroad, without fear that a fierce tree cat will drop on me. But late in the night, when I am waked by that eerie sound, that begins with a low meow, like the cry of the house cat, and goes on louder and louder, to end in a horrid screech, full of a malevolent violence, I cover my head and am glad that I am safe indoors. I know that the lynx has come forth from his lair in a hollow tree and is hunting my poor rabbits.

There is no telephone line to the island; sometimes I am stormbound for a week, but in some underground way, the news of the neighborhood reaches me sooner or later. Therefore, when I came out of doors the other morning, I was instantly aware of a sense of impending disaster, that hung over all the landscape. There was no cheerful popping of guns in the fields, no hoarse voice bawled to the cattle. At Blake's the cause of the silence was explained. All the men round Many Islands had been summoned to the County Court at Frontenac, to be tried for the illegal netting and export of fish out of season. A knot of angry men had gathered on the shore, discussing the summons; anxious women hovered in the background; speculation was rife as to the identity of the informer.

It could have been none of our men, for the obvious reason that all were in the same boat. Black Jack Beaulac, Yankee Jim, Little Jack, Long Joe, William Foret, all had received the same summons. It must have been an inspector from Glen Avon.

"Did we not all remember a strange, white boat in the lake? That was, without doubt, the fish warden come to spy out for nets."

I know very little about the legality of nets versus hooks, or the open and closed seasons for fishing, but even to my ignorance there seemed grave doubts about the line of defense to be offered, and I was conscious that, being an alien and a "sport" , the matter was not being freely discussed in my presence.

Next morning, while it was yet dark, Foret's motor boat was heard, chugging solemnly round the shore, gathering up the victims to take them to court. All day the women went softly, each wondering what was happening to her man, and devising means for scraping up the money for fines, if fines it had to be. Henry Blake went off to town to the trial, and the day passed gray and lowering.

At red sunset the boat turned in at the narrows, but before she hove in sight the very beat of her engine signaled victory. She came swinging down the lake, her crew upright, alert, the flag of Canada flew in the wind, her propeller kicked the water joyously. As she made the round of the lake, to Blake's, to Beaulac's, to Drapeau's, to the Mines, it needed none to tell us that all was well.

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