Minstrel Weather.

by Marian Storm.

CHAPTER I.

FACES OF Ja.n.u.s

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Though January has days that dress in saffron for their going, and noons of yellow light, foretelling crocuses, the month is yet not altogether friendly. The year is moving now toward its most unpitying season.

Nights that came on kindly may turn the meadows to iron, tear off the last faithful leaves from oaks, drive thick clouds across the moon, to end in a violent dawn. January holds gentle weather in one hand and blizzards in the other, and what a blizzard can be only dwellers on prairies or among the mountains know. Snow gone mad, its legions rushing across the land with daggers drawn, furious, bearing no malice, but certainly no compa.s.sion, and overwhelming all creatures abroad: bewildered flocks, birds half frozen on their twigs, cattle unwisely left on shelterless ranges, and people who lose the way long before animals give up. Snow hardly seems made of fairy stars and flowers when its full terror sweeps Northern valleys or the interminable solitudes of the plains. The gale so armed for attack owns something of the wicked intention which Conrad says that sailors often perceive in a storm at sea. The rider pursued by a blizzard may feel, like the tossed mariner, that "these elemental forces are coming at him with a purpose, with an unbridled cruelty which means to sweep the whole precious world away by the simple and appalling act of taking his life." We do not smile at the pathetic fallacy when we are alone with cold. The overtaken mountaineer understands-it means to get him. These things happen in places where weather is not obedient to wraps and furnaces, but where it must be fought hand to hand and where the pretty snow tangles its victim's feet and slowly puts him to sleep in a delicious dream of warmth. Tropical lightning has not the calm omnipotence of cold when it walks lonely ways.

January knows days on which the haze of spring and the dim tenderness of the sunshine tempt the rabbit to try another nap _al fresco_, indiscreet though he knows it to be. Even the woodchuck must turn over and sniff in his sleep as the thaw creeps downward; and the muskrat takes his safe way by water once more, while the steel trap waits on the bank, to be sprung humanely by a falling cone. The lithe red fox glides across the upper pastures and weaves among the hardhack unchallenged, for this is not hunting weather. A fleeting respite comes to the tormented mink.

Toward the last of the month, innocent of the February and March to come, p.u.s.s.y willows, ingenuously deceived by the brief mildness, come out inquisitively and stand in expectation beside the brook, convinced that this ice is only left over-what can have delayed the garnet-veined skunk's cabbage, always on hand the first of all? So many willows are needed by the florists that perhaps they do not pay heavily for their premature debut. But they are all gray now. In March they show a cloudy crimson and yellow not alone of the final blossom, but of their fur.

There are plenty of scarlet rose hips in uplifted cl.u.s.ters, for the birds somehow neglect them while they pursue other delicacies of the same color and contour. Nature has probably told the winter chippies that rose hips are no good-spring decorations must not be pilfered by the snow sprites. Puffb.a.l.l.s have broken off from old logs, and in walking through low woods you may step on one here and there, awakening the fancy that the world is burning, under its sad cloak of sepia leaves, and sending up small puffs of smoke to warn those who have trodden it in love and comprehension.

When the winsome skies turn stony, and melancholy winter rain ends in chill mist, January has days to breathe whose air is like breathing under water, down in spring-cold lake, where the incredible, pleasureless fishes move through their gray element, finding pallid amus.e.m.e.nt perhaps in nudging frogs and turtles, well tucked up under a blanket of mud. They are cold-blooded, of course, and not supposed to mind the oppressiveness of the liquid atmosphere. But after ourselves moving in such an environment it is marvelous to ponder that any creatures prefer it, and good to foreknow that our own world will swim out into a splendid frosty weather.

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For its days of quiet sparkle we would remember January, not for lashing tempests, April delusions, or brooding fog. Unbroken snow with blazing spangles shifting as the sun moves, and above it twittering sparrows clinging by one claw to stalks of yarrow or mustard while they shake the seeds loose with the other; old stone walls suddenly demonstrating that they have color, when the foreground is white, and showing bluish, brown, earthen red, and gray alight with mica; streams covered with pearly ice that floods into brilliant orange at sunset; spruce and hemlock imperiously outlined on even far-off hills; skating-time without and kindled logs within-that is the midwinter we remember when the sterner messengers sped from the Pole have gone again. Were it not for the blizzard we might fail to know so well the comforting symbolism of firelight at play upon clean hearths. Many go all their lives, aware only of the coziness or inconvenience of winter, never facing the daggered gale alone, nor struck by the terror of a hostile Nature or the awe of cold that may not soon relent. What one perceives in the volcano, tidal wave, or blizzard, another is spared; the lesson, perhaps, being postponed until he is ready for it. Spring comes sweetly to the milliners' this month. To the wilderness with rapid and menacing step comes full winter.

CHAPTER II.

A WOODLAND VALENTINE

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Forces astir in the deepest roots grow restless beneath the lock of frost. Bulbs try the door. February's stillness is charged with a faint anxiety, as if the powers of light, pressing up from the earth's center and streaming down from the stronger sun, had troubled the buried seeds, who strive to answer their liberator, so that the guarding mother must whisper over and over, "Not yet, not yet!" Better to stay behind the frozen gate than to come too early up into realms where the wolves of cold are still aprowl. Wisely the snow places a white hand over eager-life unseen, but perceived in February's woods as a swimmer feels the changing moods of water in a lake fed by springs. Only the thick stars, closer and more companionable than in months of foliage, burn alert and serene. In February the Milky Way is revealed divinely lucent to lonely peoples-herdsmen, mountaineers, fishermen, trappers-who are abroad in the starlight hours of this grave and silent time of year. It is in the long, frozen nights that the sky has most red flowers.

February knows the beat of twilight wings. Drifting north again come birds who only pretended to forsake us-adventurers, not so fond of safety but that they dare risk finding how snow bunting and pine finch have plundered the cones of the evergreens, while chickadees, sparrows, and crows are supervising from established stations all the more domestic supplies available; a sparrow often making it possible to annoy even a duck out of her share of cracked corn. Ranged along a brown-draped oak branch in the waxing light, crows show a lordly glistening of feathers. (Sun on a sweeping wing in flight has the quality of sun on a ripple.) Where hemlocks gather, deep in somber woods, the great horned owl has thus soon, perhaps working amid snows at her task, built a nest wherein March will find st.u.r.dy b.a.l.l.s of fluff.

The thunderous love song of her mate sounds through the timber. By the time the wren has nested these winter babies will be solemn with the wisdom of their famous race.

There is no season like the end of February for cleaning out brooks.

Hastening yellow waters toss a dreary wreckage of torn or ashen leaves, twigs, acorn cups, stranded rafts of bark, and b.u.t.tonb.a.l.l.s from the sycamore, never to come to seed. Standing on one bank or both, according to the sundering flood's ambition, the knight with staff and bold forefinger sets the water princess free. She goes then curtsying and dimpling over the shining gravel, sliding from beneath the ice that roofs her on the uplands down to the softer valleys, where her quickened step will be heard by the frogs in their mansions of mud, and the fish, recluses in rayless pools, will rise to the light she brings.

Down from the frozen mountains, in summer, birds and winds must bear the seed of alpine flowers-lilies that lean against unmelting snows, poppies, bright-colored herbs, and the palely gleaming, fringed beauties that change names with countries. How just and reasonable it would seem to be that flowers which edge the ice in July should consent to bloom in lowlands no colder in February! The pageant of blue, magenta, and scarlet on the austere upper slopes of the Rockies, where nights are bitter to the summer wanderer-why should it not flourish to leeward of a valley barn in months when icicles hang from the eaves in this tamer setting? But no. Mountain tempests are endurable to the silken-petaled.

The treacherous lowland winter, with its coaxing suns followed by roaring desolation, is for blooms bred in a different tradition.

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The light is clear but hesitant, a delicate wine, by no means the mighty vintage of April. February has no intoxication; the vague eagerness that gives the air a pulse where fields lie voiceless comes from the secret stirring of imprisoned life. Spring and sunrise are forever miracles, but the early hour of the wonder hardly hints the exuberance of its fulfillment. Even the forest dwellers move gravely, thankful for any promise of kindness from the lord of day as he hangs above a sea-gray landscape, but knowing well that their long duress is not yet to end.

Deer pathetically haunt the outskirts of farms, gazing upon cattle feeding in winter pasture from the stack, and often, after dark, clearing the fences and robbing the same disheveled storehouse. Not a chipmunk winks from the top rail. The woodchuck, after his single expeditionary effort on Candlemas, which he is obliged to make for mankind's enlightenment, has retired without being seen, in sunshine or shadow, and has not the slightest intention of disturbing himself just yet. Though snowdrops may feel uneasy, he knows too much about the Ides of March! Quietest of all Northern woods creatures, the otter slides from one ice-hung waterfall to the next. The solitary scamperer left is the cottontail, appealing because he is the most pursued and politest of the furry; faithfully trying to give no offense, except when starvation points to winter cabbage, he is none the less fey. So is the mink, though he moves like a phantom.

Mosses, whereon March in coming treads first, show one hue brighter in the swamps. p.u.s.s.y willows have made a gray dawn in viny caverns where the day's own dawn looks in but faintly, and the flushing of the red willow betrays reveries of a not impossible cowslip upon the bank beneath. The blue jay has mentioned it in the course of his voluble recollections. He is unwilling to prophesy arbutus, but he will just hint that when the leaves in the wood lot show through snow as early as this ... Once he found a hepatica bud the last day of February ...

Speaking with his old friend, the muskrat, last week ... And when you can see red pebbles in the creek at five o'clock in the afternoon ...

But it is no use to expect yellow orchids on the west knoll this spring, for some people found them there last year, and after that you might as well ... Of course cowslips beside red willows are remarkably pretty, just as blue jays in a cedar with blue berries.... He is interminable, but then he has seen a great deal of life. And February needs her blue jays' unwearied and conquering faith.

CHAPTER III.

WAYS OF THE MARCH HARE

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Follow him to the woods and you know his fascination, but never give the March hare a reference for sobriety. His reputation cannot be rehabilitated, yet his intimates love him in spite of it. He is such an accomplished tease! He wakens, playful and ingratiating, with the sun; he skips cajolingly among the crocuses; and before an hour pa.s.ses he is rushing about the fields in a fury, scattering the worn-out, brown gra.s.ses, scaring the first robins, and bouncing over the garden fence to break the necks of any tulips deceived by his morning mood. Impossible animal, he is an eccentric born, glorying in his queerness; and none the less, there are some who think he knows the zest of life better than April's infatuated starling or the woodchuck drowsing in May clover. He loves to kick the chilly brooks into foam and fl.u.s.ter them until they run over their unthawed banks and tear downhill and through the swamp to alarm the rivers, so that they, too, come out on land and the whole world looks as though it had gone back to the watery beginning. He chases north the snowy owl, ornament of our winter woods, and fraternizes with the sinful sparrow. Shrike and grosbeak leave, saying that really it is growing quite warm, and, glancing behind them, they behold the March hare turning somersaults in snowdrifts. He freezes the mud that the sh.o.r.e lark was enjoying. No one depends upon him. Yet, to see swift and enchanting changes of sky, lake, and woodland, go forth with the March hare and find with him, better than quiet, the earth astir.

Trees lose the archaic outline as leaf buds swell. Reddened maples and black ash twigs, yellow flowers on the willow, begin the coloring of a landscape that will not fade to gray and dun again until December comes. The lilacs are growing impatient, for already the sophisticated city lilac bush is wearing costly bloom, careless that a debut made so early early ends. The crocuses, spring's opening ballet, dressed in pastel tints, take their places on the lawn, standing delicately erect, waiting for bird music. Unknown to March's gales, the still swamp pools are fringed with shooting green, full of hints of cowslips; and arbutus-few know on what hillsides-is lifting the warm leaf blanket, trusting that vandal admirers are far away. The March violet is sung more than seen, visiting Northern slopes and woods hollows only by caprice, but all the legends lingering over it, and the magic beauty it gives to maidens who gather it at dawn, make the violet still, for lyrical needs, the flower of March. Cuddled close to sun-warmed stones, cloaked by quaint leaves lined with sapphire and maroon, sometimes now the hepatica has come; and bloodroot nested under bowlders, and in fence corners where the sun is faithful, lifts praying, exquisite petals that open swiftly from the slim bud and are scattered by a touch. The dark blue grape hyacinth stands calm in winds and bitter weather; waist-deep in snow, it proudly holds its ground. Sap is visibly climbing to the highest limbs. It seems even to be mounting in the ancient wild-grape vines that swing from the roof of the wood, bearing no buds and looking dead a hundred years, though there is life beneath the somber and s.h.a.ggy bark. Sap called back through the ducts of the winter-warped thorn, solitary in the clearing where the cruel nor'easter raced, will cover the sad branches, once the soft days are here, with shining blossoms.

The year turns when the sap runs. Little boys who have their sugar maples picked out and under guard, being more forehanded about some things than others, are whittling intensely.

Loneliest of all sounds, the "peepers" take up their forsaken song in flooded meadows, silenced in ghostly fashion by a footstep that comes near. Heartbroken chant, it is more elegy than spring song, hard to hear at dusk, yet it is certain that those peepers are delighted that March is here-as content with their fate, while they utter the poignant notes, as the emphatic old frogs by the deeper water. Wander-birds, almost unresting, are posting north again through the twilights. Bold wild geese are awing for Canada. Quiet returning hawks cross the valleys, and the pine grosbeak hastens past. Spring dowers the devoted but undesired starling with a pleasant voice which will change by summer into an exasperating croak, and so many of our birds suffer this unfair loss that a feathered critic would have good reason to declare that poets ought to be slain in youth. The terrifying little screech owl wails from shadowy woods, and from the venerable timber sounds the horned owl's obscure threat. The chickadee repeats with natural pride his charming repertoire of two notes-"Spring soon!" Nothing is refused this fortunate one, born with a sweet disposition and a winsome song, while sparrows, angrily conducting their courtships, remain on earth solely by dint of original cleverness.

Meadow mole and turtle, woodchuck and chipmunk, are recovering from a three months' nap, waiting patiently in the sunshine for the season to begin. Snakes come out with the rest of the yawning company. Fish glitter again in the hurrying streams, building their nests and houses like the others-often obeying a spring impulse to rush from lake to outlet or from quiet water to streamhead, ending their journey suddenly and forever amid wire meshes. The brooks are icy on the mildest days with melted snow from the mountains, where hemlocks green as arctic waters, shutting out the sun, keep a white floor long after the valley wears gra.s.ses.

Whoever has a touch of madness to lend him sympathy with the March hare likes the bewildering days through which he scampers to vanish at the edge of April. Rebellious, whitening ponds and wind-bent trees; defiant buds and all the kindled life of marsh, hill, and woodland, set free once more from cold, but not from dread-hear at the coming of the mighty month their promise of release. But only to comrades who will run with him through muddy lanes and tangled brush does he show his treasures: forest creatures sped like the couriers, petals lifted like the banners, of life resurgent.

CHAPTER IV.

THE APRIL MOMENT

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Survivor of so much that her fear is gone, triumphant April answers the dark powers as if they could never speak again. Spring after spring she stands among flying petals and smiles at the last bitter winds. She will not grant that the green earth was ever vanquished, fiercely alive as now it is. Scornfully the new silver bloom on the clover sheds the relentless rain. Undaunted, reaffirming, she summons all beauty of color, music, and fragrance beneath her banners, with a vitality so profound and impregnable that more than other months she is careless of man's sympathy. April, preoccupied, hastens from crumbling furrow to meadows that shout the coming of the green. Intense and too eager for tenderness, she craves no admiration. Quite without excuse, the song sparrow sits on a wine-colored willow twig and sings frantically. Anyone has as good a reason for ecstasy as he-merely that the dumb struggle is ended and the long suns have returned in splendor.

Contemplative between their dark exotic leaves, dogtooth violets fill the light-flecked hollows. Spring beauties open warily at daybreak to show stamens of deep rose. Where imperious amber waters go foaming through the swamp, spendthrift gold of cowslips is swept down to the rivers, and budded branches that leaned too close above the ripple are shut out from the sun world for a while. Mauve and canary slippers are waiting for the fairy queen where our wild orchid of the North dangles them on remote knolls, but they are usually found and borne off by some one for whom they are in no way suitable. Translucent young leaves glitter beside the stream's path. Dandelion rosettes appear with serene impartiality on guarded lawn and mountain pasture, where steal also the polite but persistent "p.u.s.s.y tiptoes," a.s.serting the right to display white leaves in spring, if so a plant should choose. The snail has deserted his sh.e.l.l and gone forth to take the air at the risk of being plowed under. None of April's children remember or foresee. The vivid present is enough.

The apple boughs are inlaid with coral. The peach is a cloud of dawn, and petals of the forward cherry and pear are floating reluctantly down.

Wild-fruit trees, mysteriously planted, are misty white above the woodland thicket-scented crabapple and twisted branch of plum. This is the month of blossoms, as May is the month of shimmering leaves and June of the fruitless flower.

The blackbird swings at the foamy crest of the haw, disturbed by a thousand delights, and notes too few to tell them. The crow hoa.r.s.ely mentions his rapture as he flaps above the moving harrow, and the new lambs look on in a tremulous, wounded manner while the famished woodchuck makes away with the cloverheads they were just about to endeavor to bite off. Uncertainly the wondering calves proceed about the pasture, not yet at the stage in life where they will skip with touching curiosity after every object that stirs. At dusk and glistening morning there are bird songs such as only April hears-the outburst of welcome to the light, and the sleepy fluting of the robins when the sky turns to a soft prism in the west. Fainter, more melancholy even than in March, is the twilight lament of the peepers. They are alien to the aria of April.

New England's forget-me-nots are fleet turquoise in the gra.s.ses; New England's arbutus flowers lie flushed pearls among the ancient leaves; but everywhere are the violets of three colors-yellow for the pool's edge, white among the bog lands, and blue as pervasive as the sunlight on hill slope, road bank, and forest floor. And there are violets of an unfathomable blue, sprinkled with white like wisps of cloud against far mountains. Some grow close to earth, taught by past dismay; others, long-stemmed and sweet, will live and suffer and mend their ways next year. The windflower meets the breeze, a slim princess, incredibly fragile, yet broken less easily than the strong tulip, vaguely touched with rose or white as bloodroot. Tulips dwell not only on the ground; they have parted great, opaque petals at the tops of trees, startling to see in the leafless wood. Watercress glitters in the cold streams where trout, winter-weary, are on patrol for those flies now magnificent in their jeweled dress of spring. The first oak leaves are delicately crimson at the end of the bough. Disregard, amid this pageantry of _la vita nuova_, the outrageous satire of brown skeleton "fingers" that point stiffly up through the shining blades of gra.s.s. If they seem to be a chilling cynicism of Nature, who has not found an April dandelion telling a braver story through winter snow?

Cedar and balsam twig are golden-tipped. Nothing is unchanged. Immortal wings that beat through February gales to reach this land of their tradition are fluttering now about the building of the nest. The smooth chimney swift flashes above the barn and is gone. With drooping wings he hangs poised against the daffodil sky in his evening play. Peaceably among the lilacs the contented bluebird sits, though through bulb, root, and chrysalis has pa.s.sed the irresistible current that will let no sharer of the earth be still-not stone nor seed nor man. Into this forced march April steps with gladness, hailing the order, predestined to change. Joining her unresisting, take for your own the moment of escape which the singer in the blossoms freely claims. Life's fullness is measured by these salvaged April moments when suddenly joy becomes a simple and close-dwelling thing, when for a merciful, lighted instant the impersonal and endless beauty of the world seems enough.