II

OUR house stands above a pond, a rolling slope of old fields leading down to the tumble and jumble of rocks which make the shore. We do not see the whole pond but only a kind of comfortable bay some two miles long and perhaps a mile or so across. To the south lies a country road, a wooded vale, and a great farm above on a hill; across and to the east are woods again and then a more rural scene of farms and open land. It is the north, and as I set down these words the whole country lies quiescent in the cup of winter’s hand.

Last night, coming in from the barn, I stood awhile in the moonlight looking down towards the pond in winter solitude. Because this year winds have swept the surface clean of early snows, the light of the high and wintry moon glowed palely upwards again from a sombre, even a black fixity of ice. Nothing could have seemed more frozen to stone, more a part of universal silence.

All about me, too, seemed still, field and faraway stand of pine lying frozen in the motionless air to the same moonlit absence of all sound. Had I paused but a moment and then closed the door behind me, I probably would have spoken of the silence of the night. But I lingered a longish while, and lingering found that the seeming stillness was but the interval between the shuddering, the mysterious outcrying of the frozen pond. For the pond was hollow with sound, as it is sometimes when the nights are bitter and the ice is free from snow.

It is the voice of solid ice one hears and not the wail and crash and goblin sighing of moving ice floes such as one hears on the wintry St. Lawrence below the Isle of Orleans. The sounds made by the pond are sounds of power moving in bondage, of force constrained within a force and going where it can. The ice is taking up, settling, expanding, and cracking across though there is not a sign of all this either from the hill above or from the shore.

What I first heard was a kind of abrupt, disembodied groan. It came from the pond … and from nowhere. An interval of silence followed, perhaps a half note or a full note long. Then across, again from below, again disembodied, a long, booming, and hollow utterance, and then again a groan.

Again and again came the sounds; the night was still yet never still. Curiously enough, I had heard nothing while busy in the barn. Now, I heard. Neither faint nor heavy-loud, yet each one distinct and audible, the murmurs rose and ended and began again in the night. Sometimes there was a sort of hollow oboe sound, and sometimes a groan with a delicate undertone of thunder.

As I stood listening to the ice below, I became aware that I was really listening to the whole pond. There are miles of ice to the north and a shore of coves and bays, and all this ice was eloquent under the moon. Now east, now west, now from some far inlet, now from the cove hidden in the pines, the pond cried out in its strange and hollow tongue.

The nearer sounds were, of course, the louder, but even those in the distance were strangely clear. And save for this sound of ice, there seemed no other sound in all the world.

Just as I turned to go in, there came from below one curious and sinister crack which ran off into a sound like the whine of a giant whip of steel lashed through the moonlit air.

My old friends and neighbors, Howard and Agnes Rollins, used to tell me that the ice often spoke and groaned before a big storm. I must watch the glass and the wind and the northeast.

FARM DIARY

Somebody in a red suit of mackinaw cloth and a wool hat is on the pond, fishing through the ice for pickerel. In winter pickerel tend to lose their somewhat muddy taste. / Cold, dark and windless night, and the windows of farms across the pond throw paths of light upon the ice, paths blurred in outline and motionless, having none of the life of the living water. / The last three nights having been rather arctic, I have been getting up at 3 A. M. to replenish the coal fire. The living room has been comfortably warm, and the outlying dependencies warmish, the core of heat fortifying the life of the sleeping house. / Elizabeth returns from a neighbor’s with a present, a jar of mincemeat made from deer meat, a colonial recipe treasured on the farms.

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The farm country is now a winter splendor of heavy woolens, a good, healthy-spirited display of mackinaws in bright colors, cheerful plaid shirts, and heavy woolen caps of plaided red, green, or royal blue. The pageant is at its best when snow has fallen, and the bright colors move about against a universal white.

Some scholar has said, and very wisely, that the songs of a people are an excellent token of their character. The student of human nature would do well to add their clothes! Let him meditate on the fact that in peasant countries where the earth is the real wealth, and the farm lives by its own farm prides and farm traditions, the costumes worn are the most vital, beautiful, and gay that have ever been seen in western civilization.

Conversely, the clothes of an industrial world are the most dreary, ugly, muddy clothes that a way of living has ever put on human backs. Look at them as they are worn by any average urban crowd. There is no sense of hope in them, nothing of life in any mood of pride. Sartorially, this is a new thing in human history. From the noble savage onward, man has been something of a gay dog.

I am glad that the north country goes in for clothes with life and color. It is an excellent sign. Which reminds me that if the neighbors see me wearing a particularly gorgeous new pair of hand-knitted yellow socks, they can recognize a Christmas present arranged for by Elizabeth.