第3章 ON THE NORTHERN ICE(1)

THE winter nights up at Sault Ste.

Marie are as white and luminous as the Milky Way.The silence which rests upon the solitude appears to be white also.Even sound has been included in Nature's arrestment, for, indeed, save the still white frost, all things seem to be oblit-erated.The stars have a poignant brightness, but they belong to heaven and not to earth, and between their immeasurable height and the still ice rolls the ebon ether in vast, liquid billows.

In such a place it is difficult to believe that the world is actually peopled.It seems as if it might be the dark of the day after Cain killed Abel, and as if all of humanity's re-mainder was huddled in affright away from the awful spaciousness of Creation.

The night Ralph Hagadorn started out for Echo Bay -- bent on a pleasant duty -- he laughed to himself, and said that he did not at all object to being the only man in the world, so long as the world remained as un-speakably beautiful as it was when he buckled on his skates and shot away into the solitude.

He was bent on reaching his best friend in time to act as groomsman, and business had delayed him till time was at its briefest.So he journeyed by night and journeyed alone, and when the tang of the frost got at his blood, he felt as a spirited horse feels when it gets free of bit and bridle.The ice was as glass, his skates were keen, his frame fit, and his venture to his taste! So he laughed, and cut through the air as a sharp stone cleaves the water.He could hear the whistling of the air as he cleft it.

As he went on and on in the black stillness, he began to have fancies.He imagined him-self enormously tall -- a great Viking of the Northland, hastening over icy fiords to his love.

And that reminded him that he had a love -- though, indeed, that thought was always present with him as a background for other thoughts.To be sure, he had not told her that she was his love, for he had seen her only a few times, and the auspicious occasion had not yet presented itself.She lived at Echo Bay also, and was to be the maid of honor to his friend's bride -- which was one more reason why he skated almost as swiftly as the wind, and why, now and then, he let out a shout of exultation.

The one cloud that crossed Hagadorn's sun of expectancy was the knowledge that Marie Beaujeu's father had money, and that Marie lived in a house with two stories to it, and wore otter skin about her throat and little satin-lined mink boots on her feet when she went sledding.Moreover, in the locket in which she treasured a bit of her dead mother's hair, there was a black pearl as big as a pea.

These things made it difficult -- perhaps im-possible -- for Ralph Hagadorn to say more than, "I love you." But that much he meant to say though he were scourged with chagrin for his temerity.

This determination grew upon him as he swept along the ice under the starlight.

Venus made a glowing path toward the west and seemed eager to reassure him.He was sorry he could not skim down that avenue of light which flowed from the love-star, but he was forced to turn his back upon it and face the black northeast.

It came to him with a shock that he was not alone.His eyelashes were frosted and his eyeballs blurred with the cold, so at first he thought it might be an illusion.But when he had rubbed his eyes hard, he made sure that not very far in front of him was a long white skater in fluttering garments who sped over the ice as fast as ever werewolf went.

He called aloud, but there was no answer.