Letters from an Oregon Ranch/Chapter 10
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You must not rashly infer, from the close of my last letter, that we were enveloped in a pall of homesickness on the occasion of our first Christmas on a ranch. It is true that the day was not the maddest, merriest one of all the year for us, and perhaps a knowledge of the privations here may heighten appreciation of the fulness of your own holiday season. So up goes the curtain from the Christmas scene at the Ranch of the Pointed Firs.
First, you must know that, as is usual here in winter, the roads are bottomless. Turkey, cranberries, mince-pie ingredients, Christmas remembrances, all such essentials, are twenty miles away, and as unattainable as if in Darkest Africa. Neither friend nor stranger could be hoped for within our gates. The decoration of the old house in recognition of the day seemed the only pleasure left us; and for this, Nature stood at our very door offering a wealth of greenery. Every evil has its good, and this is one of Oregon’s compensations for her deplorable roads.
Bert and Mary were to spend Christmas with us. The day before, early in the morning, they appeared upon the scene with an old sled drawn through the mud, laden with choice branches of arbor vitæ and mistletoe; the driver walking, lines in hand, the lady crouching in the green jungle like a wood-nymph. This contribution was added to our collection; then with scissors and baskets, Mary and I took a turn along an old rail-fence where wild roses grow luxuriantly, cutting and filling our baskets with the long brown stems, each bearing clusters of scarlet rose-apples just the tint of holly-berries. You who are accustomed to the low-growing wild rose of the East will accuse me of romancing when I tell you that those bushes were much higher than our heads. In the summer the fences are hidden by them. When showered by thousands of pink blooms, their beauty and perfume beguile one into the belief that these old lanes lead straight to Paradise. Alice Gary should have lived here; you remember she wrote,—
“And if my eyes all flowers but one must lose,
Our wild sweet-brier would be the one to choose.”
Bringing our seed treasures home, and judiciously mingling them with the dark-green of buckthorn, a species of holly was evolved rivalling if not surpassing the original. The transformation began in our main living-room. The ugly wall-paper and paint we found here have vanished, and we have sage-green walls, with white woodwork except about the old fireplace, which is of black enamel. The mantel we banked high with our “Oregon holly,” with statuettes of “Diana” and “The Wrestlers” half concealed among the leaves. Just below the mantel was placed a long narrow picture in black and white,—a fur-enveloped Santa Claus, with frisky reindeers dashing through a snowy moonlit forest (set in black),—holly gleaming above, and the fire below flanked on one side by the brass fire utensils, on the other by a brass umbrella-stand overflowing with holly branches. The doors and low bookcases were crowned with holly; bunches of it tied with scarlet ribbon were hung above pictures, and vases and rose-bowls were filled. The windows were embowered with ferns. An immense bunch of mistletoe suspended by white satin ribbon swung from the centre of the room,—not the stiff, dry, crackly kind of other days, but gathered that morning fresh from the oaks and white with berries.
The artists next advanced upon the dining-room,—which being very dark is the dungeon of this house, white paint and yellow ingrain paper struggling bravely to lighten the gloom. We made a frieze of arbor vitæ around the room, just above the picture moulding, about two feet in width,—a task not at all difficult, as we could tack the branches to the wall undismayed by fear of falling plaster, for, for some inscrutable reason, plaster is not much used here. In place of it we have cheesecloth tacked to the board wall; and upon this the paper is pasted. It seems queer, but looks well, and one can drive a nail into it without having a man sound the wall with a hammer in an effort to find the studding.
Upon each end of our sideboard stood a red jardiniere containing a small Christmas tree; between them was a punch-bowl filled with the sweeping fronds of the sword-fern; and shining amid this greenery was a hydra-headed brass candlestick, with red candles. The table was then formally laid for the coming banquet. A centrepiece being in order, wanting a green jardiniere and having none, a wire basket used for frying croquettes was lined with moss,—the exquisite kind that seems woven of miniature ferns, green side out of course, and well pushed through, concealing the wires. In this we planted our loveliest little fir tree. Red berries were strung and festooned through its lower branches, the upper ones embellished with tiny red candles left over from previous decorations at our Eastern home. Placing this centrepiece upon a round mirror in the centre of the table, we rested from our labors by the old stone fireplace, the one and only interior jewel of this mountain home.
Sitting that evening by our fireside, watching the flare and flicker of the flames, we saw passing the long procession of dead and gone Christmases which, viewed in retrospect, bring only sadness. Through filmy azure smoke came dear shadowy faces, looking back from the misty borderlands of “That Undiscovered Country,”—faces one dare not recall even in memory lest that long-smouldering pain in the heart blaze up again with all its old-time fierceness. Listening to the rain and the noisy fall of waters from the hillside spring, with the loud roaring of the mountain brook dashing through our little glen, I felt as never before the pathos of those lines in “In Memoriam,”—
“We live within the stranger’s land,
And strangely falls our Christmas eve.”
The next morning, while waiting for Tom to come to breakfast, I stepped out on the porch to see how Christmas really looked in “the stranger’s land.” The scene, though not particularly enlivening, might easily have been worse. High up in one corner of the yard was a melancholy tangle of salmon bushes, skirted on two sides by an old mossy paling-fence and leafless trees; struggling down from this were clumps of wet brown ferns, gaunt mullein stalks, and frowzy-headed thistles; a gray alder was bending over a mossy spring at the end of the porch, rainy tears trickling through its bare branches and splashing into the waters beneath. Farther away were dark ploughed fields; above them, gray mists rolling stormily through the hills; and grayer than all else, “that inverted bowl they call the sky,” its rim resting upon the green coronet of encircling hills. This might seem a gloomy picture; in reality, it was one of tender and shadowy beauty. The sublimity and picturesqueness of Oregon scenery are triumphant over the worst of weather. Just then I recalled a few snowless Christmases at home, with dull skies, hard frozen ground, icy winds blowing a gale, and nothing to be seen but streets and houses. I could not but think how infinitely better was this wilder landscape, with its mingled green and grayness shut in by the gray bowl above; and then and there I gave thanks to our Heavenly Pilot for leading us into this wonderful “land o’ glamour.”
When we first came here the scenes and sounds impressed me as vaguely familiar,—almost as if I had lived here in some forgotten time long past. I had a haunting sense of its being some part of my life’s tangle; but such a hopeless snarl it seemed, that I had about concluded to call it a vagary of the imagination, when one day Bert came in, saying, “The torrent roars in the vale; blue mists rise in the hills; dark clouds rest upon the head of Mount Nebo.” These sentences, as soon as heard, solved my mental perplexities. We were living again in Ossian’s land, where in early girlhood I had dwelt in fancy while turning the fascinating pages of an old black-and-gold Russia leather copy of Ossian’s Poems. Bert’s words were like a searchlight turned upon the darkened past. The rosy skies of youth flashed up; in that luminous atmosphere floated many changeful pictures. The blue sea was there, with Fingal’s black bounding ships with their white sails; warlike hosts with shining shields and spears, their “red eyes rolling on the foe.” There too were the ghosts of Arden, “with stars dim twinkling through their forms.” Mountains too were there, and rocks, caves, woods, pines, bearded oaks, and foaming torrents. Only the most unimaginative could live in Oregon and not hark back to Ossian. Hear how well he describes our own mountain eyrie: “The rain beats hard; the strength of the mountain streams comes roaring down the hills.” “The blue stream roars in the vale; the thistle shakes there its lonely head; the moss whistles in the wind.” “Autumn is dark on the mountains; gray mists rest in the hills.” “A green field in the bosom of hills.” “Rain gathers round the head of Cromla; the stars of the north shake heads of fire through the flying mists of heaven.” Now, if you want to know just what Oregon is like, read Ossian. We are a little short, it is true, of kings, warriors, bards, harps, and ghosts; but all the rest is here.
But I am straying from my subject. Breakfast over, the Plymouth Rock fowl safely landed in the oven, the plum-pudding steaming, vegetables prepared for cooking, feeling then that what Mrs. Carlyle calls “The Cares of Bread” were off my mind for a time, I said, “Tom, let’s go now and open our Christmas packages.” We had no gifts for each other, owing to the condition of the roads that we must travel to get them; but many boxes and packages from unforgetting friends at home had arrived the previous week, and been kept inviolate, as is our custom, until Christmas day. Very soon we were cutting cords and untying ribbons, with exclamations of delight and surprise as the various tokens of loving remembrance came to light,— rainbow scarfs as filmy as mist, late fichus, fancy aprons, exquisite doilies, chatelaine bags, cushion covers, books, magazines, pictures, calendars, and all such things. One would need to live a whole year in the solitude of the woods to understand my pleasure in again seeing novel and up-to-date things from the great world “that roars and frets in the distance.”
One little gift was rather funny; and though it seems ungracious, I can’t resist telling you about it. It was marked “From Christine,”—a Swedish girl who lived with us many years,—a bright, cheerful, lovable girl; and I wish to goodness she was flying about my kitchen this blessed minute, singing those queer old Scandinavian songs with a voice as clear and sweet as a lark’s. Though Christine can sing like a bird, she certainly is not an art connoisseur. Her gift was an offering in burnt wood, representing a large unhappy-looking lady with a badly swollen cheek and painfully protruding eyes. I had hardly sufficient courage to look at it, but, well knowing poor Christine’s pleasure in sending it, resolved to bear it as best I could. With shuddering tenderness I lifted it to the mantel. “Tom, look at Christine’s gift,—for us both, she said.” He stood awhile before it, then turned away saying, “You can have it all!”
The burnt-wood figure was but a forerunner of worse to follow. Being a woman, Nell, you can understand the significance of the next thing unearthed,—a black knit shoulder-shawl with a purple border.
“Oh, Tom!” I cried, “for mercy’s sake, look at this!”
“Well, what about it?”
“What about it? Why, don't you know it’s the very first shaft from Old Age’s quiver? It means that my sear and yellow days have come; that
‘The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter—and the bird is on the wing.’”
“Oh, nonsense!”
“Well, don’t I know, Tom? I’ve been giving things like this to old ladies all my life.”
“And now your chickens have come home to roost, and the iron has entered your own soul! Who sent it?”
“Your aunt Sarah, with this package for you,—and here’s a note in which she says: ‘You speak, Katharine, of living in a box-house. Now, I hardly know what that means, but it sounds cold and must be draughty; so I send you this little cape, hoping you may find in it agreeable warmth.’”
Agreeable warmth! If ever a woman lived who found agreeable warmth in her first black-and-purple shoulder-shawl, history has failed to mention her.
“What’s this thing?” now came inquiringly from Tom, as he held up a bib-shaped scarlet-felt affair.
“Mercy! I don’t know, but perhaps this note will explain.”
“Yes, here it is. ‘I have been feeling anxious about Thomas, working as he does in the rain. Do please see that he wears the chest-protector I send. One can’t be too careful of one’s health at his time of life.”
“Now, madam, you added that last line!”
“No, sir, here it is in black and white; read for yourself.”
Just then a couple of umbrellas passed the window; the shawl was jerked from my hand and wrapped round the “life-saver,” and both were hurriedly tucked behind a sofa-pillow, as Tom whispered, “Katharine, don’t say a word about these things until we hear how they came out.”
After Bert and Mary had come in and the little confusion of their arrival had subsided, and they had carefully looked over our Christmas exhibit, Bert’s roving eyes fell upon Christine’s gift.
“Hello! where did you get the lumpy-jawed, frog-eyed lady?”
“You are most intolerably rude, Mr. Stanhope, so harshly to criticise a work of art found in the home of your hostess.”
“Art! did you say, Katharine? Well, if that sort of art is rampant in the world just now, then I am mighty glad I’ve taken to the woods.”
Scorning further talk with this degenerate son of the hills, I turned to hear of Mary’s presents, listening eagerly, almost despairingly, as she ran over a most acceptable list. Thinking she had glided by a pair of slippers with suspicious haste, I asked what kind they were.
“Oh, just common ones.”
“Felt?”
“No, cloth.”
“Lined with fur?”
“No, lamb’s wool,” answered Bert, with a man’s blundering frankness.
Smothering my joy, I exclaimed sympathetically, “What a shame! Those are real old ladies’ slippers.”
“Too bad! too bad!” came hypocritically from Tom, poking the fire to conceal his delight.
“Yes, they gave me a shock,” admitted the sufferer. “Of course I knew those woollen monstrosities were lying in wait for me somewhere along the years, but I hardly expected them to bounce out just yet.”
“Come, Bert, walk up to the confessional!”
“Oh, I’ve nothing scary; old age has drawn no bead on me;” and he rattled off an inoffensive list.
Revenge is sweet, and now his wife said sweetly, “Bert, you quite forgot to mention those flannel pajamas your sister sent you.”
“Flannel!” shrieked Tom. “Outrageous! Red?”
“No, sir, not red. Moonlight on the lake, stitched with old gold.”
“But flannel! Why, Bert, that’s a gift for an octogenarian, for lean and slippered age,—‘sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.’”
“Go on,” wailed his victim, “pour vitriol in my wounds.”
“No, my decrepit flannel-scourged brother, I can’t consistently do that, because, you see, we’ve some woolly woes of our own to bear,” dragging them from their lair and waving them aloft as he sang,
“Lift up your eyes, desponding freemen,
Fling to the wind your needless fears!”
When Mary’s eyes fell upon the black-and-purple disturber of the peace, her glee struck me as little short of fiendish. I hate to see such malevolence in a woman; though she said tenderly enough, “What a shame, Katharine! I thought only real old ladies wore such things!”
“Oh, you did? Which only shows, madam, that you are living back in the Oregon hills; no doubt, young girls are now wearing these at their coming-out parties.”
Meantime Tom had donned the scarlet bib, and a voice was saying, “Well, I don’t know how you feel, but that thing would be gall and wormwood to me.”
“Think so, Bert? It is balm of Gilead compared with the note that came from the hand that dealt the blow.”
Being all in the same boat, we grew rather jolly over it, and began laughingly to picture Christmases to come, when we should sit around this fireplace surrounded by such heart-rending tokens of affection as bottles of liniment, porous plasters, hot-water bottles, stout canes with arched necks, spectacle cases, red flannel nightcaps, earmuffs, and woollen scarfs and nubias to wind about our neuralgic heads. Of course old people wouldn’t be supposed to care for works of fiction, and they would send us “Pilgrim’s Progress” in very large type, “No Cross No Crown,” “Fox’s Book of Martyrs,” “Stepping Heavenward,” and similarly consoling literature.
At dinner-time the heavens grew black, the rain was pouring in torrents, and Mary and I were glad that we had previously arranged for lighting the dining-room. With candles and lamps blazing, radiating cheerfulness, our decorations showed up finely. The “Plymouth Rock,” occupying a position of honor, tried hard to look as big as a turkey; we stood by him loyally, praising his appearance and reviling turkey. When the time for dessert arrived and the steaming plum
"Back of the house is a hill, covered with fir, laurel, and young oak trees" (page 45)
pudding was brought in, wreathed with real holly taken from our Christmas boxes, if any longings for mince-pie were felt they were bravely repressed. That pudding was good, if I do say it; and the guests spoke up quite boldly, declaring that “Mrs. Bob Cratchit” never achieved a greater success. I forgot to mention the gift of a fruit cake, which was added to our menu, and a more delicious one had never been transported by overland express. Of course we couldn’t have ice-cream in an iceless land, but we could and did have whipped cream and damson preserves, which everybody said “was enough sight better.” So, with a little bravado, our Christmas dinner passed off very well.