Hilary rolled over in her bed, squeezed her eyes shut, and tried to force sleep to overtake her.
But it would not come. Many years ago she had learned the futility of fighting a temporary bout of insomnia. During such times it was generally her habit to get up and do one of two things: spend time in prayer, or seek out her typewriter. In either case, the night hours always proved profitable.
But on this particular occasion, as she had already spent a good forty-five minutes in prayer, and as her typewriter was four hundred miles away in London, she had to settle for the third option: a cup of tea—hot enough to be relaxing, weak enough not to send sleep even further away.
She rose from her bed, wondering if she dared roam about the house at nearly midnight, much less rummage through an unfamiliar kitchen. But the worst that could happen might be a scolding from the cook, who, Hilary could already tell, possessed strong territorial feelings toward her domain.
Hilary crossed the room to retrieve her robe from a chair. As she glanced out the window, suddenly all thoughts of tea faded from her mind. It was snowing!
She rushed forward and pressed her face to the windowpane. The white flakes must have been falling for some time, for already one or two inches covered the ground, casting over the countryside an eerie luminescent glow. The boughs of tall firs were just beginning to bend under the weight, and the absence of wind allowed the slender piles of whiteness to grow high upon the branches before falling silently upon the powdery blanket below.
“No wonder it was so quiet outside!” exclaimed Hilary.
With a childlike sparkle in her blue eyes, she threw down the robe in her hand, slipped out of her nightgown, and quickly stepped into her slacks, pulled a sweater over her head, put on her shoes, and grabbed her heavy overcoat as she headed out the door and into the stillness of the corridor.
She could scarcely remember the last time she had been out in a fresh snowfall. The bustle of London usually turned what scant snow did fall there into brown slush before nine in the morning. But she had always enjoyed the snow. Even as she hurried down the staircase, another night came to her mind when she had been about ten years old. The night had been a similar one to this, although she had slept well. In the middle of the night she had awakened suddenly, almost as if some inner voice had told her something extraordinary, beautiful, magical was at that moment taking place in the forbidden midnight hours. The instant she had seen the white gleaming cover spread out over the streets, reflecting the glow of a pale moon peering through a break in the cloud cover, she knew she must venture forth.
Creeping from her parents’ flat and down the single flight of stairs, grimacing at the loud creak as she landed on the next to last step, opening the door as noiselessly as she was able, soon she was outside.
Notwithstanding the presence of the moon, snow was still falling, and huge lightly textured flakes brushed against her face, upturned in awe. What a glorious moment that had been for the city-bred youngster, made all the more wondrous in the realization, as she first looked down toward her feet, that neither milkman nor bus nor workers returning home from factory graveyard shifts had yet marred the perfect, velvety mantle.
Funny how things come back to memory, she thought. The uncanny silence, the ghostly illumination. It had been these sensations, more than the sight of the snow itself, which had triggered the memory. It had been many years since that night had come into her mind. As a child she had determined to keep her adventure to herself. But then the terrible cold that resulted two days later forced a confession of her errancy to her worried mother. Mrs. Edwards had smiled gently, and in her eyes could be detected a certain camaraderie which seemed to say that she, too, held memories of one or two childhood journeys such as Hilary’s.
“Well, tonight I’ll not catch cold,” said Hilary to herself as she opened the great front doors and stepped outside.
Her face was met, not with a blast, but yet with the impact of the cold. Huge flakes fell unhindered from the midnight sky—soft, noiseless, gentle.
Hilary held out her hands in unabandoned delight, letting the mystical crystals glide through her fingers. She started down the steps, and was all at once overcome with the curious sensation that she had been there before, standing on those very steps, standing just as she was now, looking out into the sky, with snowflakes fluttering all about. For the briefest of instants, snatches of a dreamlike childhood passed through her mind, with images altogether distinct from the more lucid memories of London. Then came the picture of a small girl again, standing in the snow, with just a trace of high-pitched giggling floating, as if audibly, in the air about her.
Just as quickly as the obscure images had come, they were gone, leaving behind only the sad melancholy of something very precious being lost. Trying to shake the feeling, Hilary continued down the steps and began to cross the courtyard.
She smiled as she went, looking behind her at the footprints she left, feeling the thrill of being the only one in on nature’s delightful secret. She made a wide circle around the fountain, then wandered aimlessly toward the gate across the entry road some hundred feet away.
Suddenly she stopped. There again was the faint sound. Maybe it hadn’t been merely a dream of childhood! Though now there was no giggling, only the faint muffled sounds of voices drifting toward her across the snow. She was not alone in the pre-dawn world after all! Peering ahead, barely visible in the midst of the white earth, Hilary spied two figures. They stood just off the roadway, beyond the gate, in a grove of silver birch. If they hoped for the cover they might afford, the barren, leafless trees offered none. Only one of the figures was identifiable.
Jo stood facing the castle, whispering with emphatic gestures, apparently in heated dialogue with a man whose back was toward Hilary. The usual impassive serenity of Jo’s face was flawed with tension to accompany her motions. Even in the night, Hilary thought she could see her dark eyes flashing.
Instinctively Hilary stepped to one side of the gate, wondering what she should do. Before she had the chance to contemplate long on the question, however, the couple embraced, then stepped apart.
Hilary knew she could not get back into the house without being seen, and her footprints would give her away in an instant. She stepped farther into the shadow of the gate, knowing even as she did so that the last thing she could do was hide.
The dilemma of an encounter was forestalled, however, and then Hilary realized why there had been no footprints but her own in front of the house. When the man disappeared back along the driveway, Jo turned and walked through the trees, where a breach in the hedge at the side of the house admitted her to the garden area. There she crossed the relatively short space to the kitchen door, adding a new set of footprints to the ones she had made earlier, and was soon inside.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Hilary waited another five minutes where she was, then walked back across the courtyard—by now feeling the effects of the cold—into the house again, and back up the stairs.
Long after she had climbed once more into the warmth of her own bed, Hilary asked herself for the twentieth time what the strange meeting could signify. If Jo had a lover, why the secrecy? Surely Logan and Allison would not deny a romantic interest to a thirty-two-year-old woman. If not romance, then what other reason could have driven her out in the snow in the middle of the night to meet a man?
She had no way of answering her question, however, and eventually fell into a deep sleep, whose only interruption was a silly dream about two snowmen crossing a large field of ripening grain together. The larger of the two began to melt, causing the smaller great dread. Before long there was but one snow figure left, a child of a snowman, made with two balls of snow rather than three. When she arrived at a village after walking a long distance, there were no other snowmen to be found. And when all the people asked her name, the little snowgirl couldn’t remember. When asked where her mother was, all the little snowgirl could answer was, “I don’t know where I’m supposed to be.”