Part 38 (1/2)

Let us sum it all up in one word: it was something for which there is no name.

Its track was destruction. On the sea it leaves wrecks. What does it leave on land? Funerals. When it subsides, New England is prostrate. It has left its legacy: this legacy is coughs and patent medicines. This is an epic; this is destiny. You think Providence is expelled out of New England? Listen!

Two days after Euroclydon, I found in the woods the hepatica --earliest of wildwood flowers, evidently not intimidated by the wild work of the armies trampling over New England--daring to hold up its tender blossom. One could not but admire the quiet pertinacity of Nature. She had been painting the gra.s.s under the snow. In spots it was vivid green. There was a mild rain,--mild, but chilly. The clouds gathered, and broke away in light, fleecy ma.s.ses. There was a softness on the hills. The birds suddenly were on every tree, glancing through the air, filling it with song, sometimes shaking raindrops from their wings. The cat brings in one in his mouth. He thinks the season has begun, and the game-laws are off. He is fond of Nature, this cat, as we all are: he wants to possess it. At four o'clock in the morning there is a grand dress-rehearsal of the birds.

Not all the pieces of the orchestra have arrived; but there are enough. The gra.s.s-sparrow has come. This is certainly charming.

The gardener comes to talk about seeds: he uncovers the straw-berries and the grape-vines, salts the asparagus-bed, and plants the peas.

You ask if he planted them with a shot-gun. In the shade there is still frost in the ground. Nature, in fact, still hesitates; puts forth one hepatica at a time, and waits to see the result; pushes up the gra.s.s slowly, perhaps draws it in at night.

This indecision we call Spring.

It becomes painful. It is like being on the rack for ninety days, expecting every day a reprieve. Men grow hardened to it, however.

This is the order with man,--hope, surprise, bewilderment, disgust, facetiousness. The people in New England finally become facetious about spring. This is the last stage: it is the most dangerous.

When a man has come to make a jest of misfortune, he is lost. ”It bores me to die,” said the journalist Carra to the headsman at the foot of the guillotine: ”I would like to have seen the continuation.”

One is also interested to see how spring is going to turn out.

A day of sun, of delusive bird-singing, sight of the mellow earth, --all these begin to beget confidence. The night, even, has been warm.

But what is this in the morning journal, at breakfast?--”An area of low pressure is moving from the Tortugas north.” You shudder.

What is this Low Pressure itself,--it? It is something frightful, low, crouching, creeping, advancing; it is a foreboding; it is misfortune by telegraph; it is the ”'93” of the atmosphere.

This low pressure is a creation of Old Prob. What is that? Old Prob. is the new deity of the Americans, greater than AEolus, more despotic than Sans-Culotte. The wind is his servitor, the lightning his messenger. He is a mystery made of six parts electricity, and one part ”guess.” This deity is wors.h.i.+ped by the Americans; his name is on every man's lips first in the morning; he is the Frankenstein of modern science. Housed at Was.h.i.+ngton, his business is to direct the storms of the whole country upon New England, and to give notice in advance. This he does. Sometimes he sends the storm, and then gives notice. This is mere playfulness on his part: it is all one to him. His great power is in the low pressure.

On the Bexar plains of Texas, among the hills of the Presidio, along the Rio Grande, low pressure is bred; it is nursed also in the Atchafalaya swamps of Louisiana; it moves by the way of Thibodeaux and Bonnet Carre. The southwest is a magazine of atmospheric disasters. Low pressure may be no worse than the others: it is better known, and is most used to inspire terror. It can be summoned any time also from the everglades of Florida, from the mora.s.ses of the Okeechobee.

When the New-Englander sees this in his news paper, he knows what it means. He has twenty-four hours' warning; but what can he do?

Nothing but watch its certain advance by telegraph. He suffers in antic.i.p.ation. That is what Old Prob. has brought about, suffering by antic.i.p.ation. This low pressure advances against the wind. The wind is from the northeast. Nothing could be more unpleasant than a northeast wind? Wait till low pressure joins it. Together they make spring in New England. A northeast storm from the southwest!--there is no bitterer satire than this. It lasts three days. After that the weather changes into something winter-like.

A solitary song-sparrow, without a note of joy, hops along the snow to the dining-room window, and, turning his little head aside, looks up. He is hungry and cold. Little Minnette, clasping her hands behind her back, stands and looks at him, and says, ”Po' birdie!”

They appear to understand each other. The sparrow gets his crumb; but he knows too much to let Minnette get hold of him. Neither of these little things could take care of itself in a New-England spring not in the depths of it. This is what the father of Minnette, looking out of the window upon the wide waste of snow, and the evergreens bent to the ground with the weight of it, says, ”It looks like the depths of spring.” To this has man come: to his facetiousness has succeeded sarcasm. It is the first of May.

Then follows a day of bright sun and blue sky. The birds open the morning with a lively chorus. In spite of Auster, Euroclydon, low pressure, and the government bureau, things have gone forward. By the roadside, where the snow has just melted, the gra.s.s is of the color of emerald. The heart leaps to see it. On the lawn there are twenty robins, lively, noisy, worm-seeking. Their yellow b.r.e.a.s.t.s contrast with the tender green of the newly-springing clover and herd's-gra.s.s. If they would only stand still, we might think the dandelions had blossomed. On an evergreen-bough, looking at them, sits a graceful bird, whose back is bluer than the sky. There is a red tint on the tips of the boughs of the hard maple. With Nature, color is life. See, already, green, yellow, blue, red! In a few days--is it not so?--through the green ma.s.ses of the trees will flash the orange of the oriole, the scarlet of the tanager; perhaps tomorrow.

But, in fact, the next day opens a little sourly. It is almost clear overhead: but the clouds thicken on the horizon; they look leaden; they threaten rain. It certainly will rain: the air feels like rain, or snow. By noon it begins to snow, and you hear the desolate cry of the phoebe-bird. It is a fine snow, gentle at first; but it soon drives in swerving lines, for the wind is from the southwest, from the west, from the northeast, from the zenith (one of the ordinary winds of New England), from all points of the compa.s.s. The fine snow becomes rain; it becomes large snow; it melts as it falls; it freezes as it falls. At last a storm sets in, and night shuts down upon the bleak scene.

During the night there is a change. It thunders and lightens.

Toward morning there is a brilliant display of aurora borealis. This is a sign of colder weather.

The gardener is in despair; so is the sportsman. The trout take no pleasure in biting in such weather.

Paragraphs appear in the newspapers, copied from the paper of last year, saying that this is the most severe spring in thirty years.

Every one, in fact, believes that it is, and also that next year the spring will be early. Man is the most gullible of creatures.