pulled the shawl well round her and blew two spirals.
“You go and make a good pot of coffee,” she said, “and we’ll have it here. That was a sweet bit of melodrama wasn’t it … what d’you suppose happened to Maggie? …”
FIVE
M aggie Lloyd who was Maggie Vardoe left the bus at Chilliwack and asked her way to the modest auto camp where she proposed to spend the night. Seventy miles away Mrs. Severance demonstrated to Edward Vardoe her art with the Swamp Angel, and three people confronted each other with strong feelings all on account of Maggie. But Maggie, as free of care or remembrance as if she had just been born (as perhaps she had, after much anguish), followed the proprietor to a small cabin under the dark pine trees. He unlocked the door, pushed it open, turned on a meager light, and looked at his customer.
“There’s plenty wood and paper beside the stove if you want a fire … there’s matches … here’s the key … the privies is back behind the cabins … there’s a light … going fishing?”
“Yes, I am,” said Maggie as she put down her gear.
“Well, good night then, I hope you sleep good.”
“Good night,” she said, and closed the door behind him and locked it.
As she lay in the dark in the hard double bed and smelled the sweet rough-dried sheets, she saw through the cabinwindows the tops of tall firs moving slowly in a small arc, and back, against the starred sky. Slowly they moved, obliterating stars, and then revealing them. The place was very still. The only sound was the soft yet potential roar of wind in the fir trees. The cabin was a safe small world enclosing her. She put out a hand, groped on the stand beside her bed, took up the small yellow bowl, ran her thumb round its smooth glaze like a drowsy child feeling its toy. How lovely the sound of the wind in the fir trees. She fell asleep.
SIX
H ope is a village on the forested banks of the Fraser River at a point where that river deploys dramatically from the mountains. The history of Hope goes back into the last century when it was a point of arrival, meeting, and departure for miners who were working the Fraser River bars or pressing on to the mines of the Cariboo Country, for Hudson’s Bay men, and for many travelers. “Many” has a relative meaning. British Columbia’s small population, scattered sparsely from the northern Rockies to west and south, and up from the coast, was centered chiefly at the southern tip of Vancouver Island, where Fort Camosun became Victoria; but there was a surge from the United States and from Vancouver Island. Because the rumor and the fact of gold drew white men and Chinamen to the Fraser River bars and further and still further north and east, and because the powerful and difficult Fraser River formed a route – not a highway – and because the Cariboo Trail (first a toehold, then an earthen trail shored up against the mountains high above the river, and now with full crescendo a fine winding well-graded motor road) followed and skipped the river’s lines andcurves, the village of Hope and other companion villages and forts – Yale and Langley – held importance for the small seat of government in Victoria, for the Hudson’s Bay traders, for thousands of American miners, and for other people in the young colony. This bit of history is implicit in the road; it accompanies the water and the air of the river.
Hope is still a village set among noble trees on the bank of a great and wicked river, backed by ascending mountains, and until lately it retained its look of dreaming age. But the look of dreaming age has gone, and Hope lies between two forks of highroads, each going into the mountains, and is subsidiary to them. The main highroad from Vancouver, passing through Chilliwack where Maggie had spent the night, splits at the village of Hope. The northern fork follows the old Cariboo Trail along the steep banks of the Fraser River which winds in broad sweeps and narrow hairpin
“You go and make a good pot of coffee,” she said, “and we’ll have it here. That was a sweet bit of melodrama wasn’t it … what d’you suppose happened to Maggie? …”
FIVE
M aggie Lloyd who was Maggie Vardoe left the bus at Chilliwack and asked her way to the modest auto camp where she proposed to spend the night. Seventy miles away Mrs. Severance demonstrated to Edward Vardoe her art with the Swamp Angel, and three people confronted each other with strong feelings all on account of Maggie. But Maggie, as free of care or remembrance as if she had just been born (as perhaps she had, after much anguish), followed the proprietor to a small cabin under the dark pine trees. He unlocked the door, pushed it open, turned on a meager light, and looked at his customer.
“There’s plenty wood and paper beside the stove if you want a fire … there’s matches … here’s the key … the privies is back behind the cabins … there’s a light … going fishing?”
“Yes, I am,” said Maggie as she put down her gear.
“Well, good night then, I hope you sleep good.”
“Good night,” she said, and closed the door behind him and locked it.
As she lay in the dark in the hard double bed and smelled the sweet rough-dried sheets, she saw through the cabinwindows the tops of tall firs moving slowly in a small arc, and back, against the starred sky. Slowly they moved, obliterating stars, and then revealing them. The place was very still. The only sound was the soft yet potential roar of wind in the fir trees. The cabin was a safe small world enclosing her. She put out a hand, groped on the stand beside her bed, took up the small yellow bowl, ran her thumb round its smooth glaze like a drowsy child feeling its toy. How lovely the sound of the wind in the fir trees. She fell asleep.
SIX
H ope is a village on the forested banks of the Fraser River at a point where that river deploys dramatically from the mountains. The history of Hope goes back into the last century when it was a point of arrival, meeting, and departure for miners who were working the Fraser River bars or pressing on to the mines of the Cariboo Country, for Hudson’s Bay men, and for many travelers. “Many” has a relative meaning. British Columbia’s small population, scattered sparsely from the northern Rockies to west and south, and up from the coast, was centered chiefly at the southern tip of Vancouver Island, where Fort Camosun became Victoria; but there was a surge from the United States and from Vancouver Island. Because the rumor and the fact of gold drew white men and Chinamen to the Fraser River bars and further and still further north and east, and because the powerful and difficult Fraser River formed a route – not a highway – and because the Cariboo Trail (first a toehold, then an earthen trail shored up against the mountains high above the river, and now with full crescendo a fine winding well-graded motor road) followed and skipped the river’s lines andcurves, the village of Hope and other companion villages and forts – Yale and Langley – held importance for the small seat of government in Victoria, for the Hudson’s Bay traders, for thousands of American miners, and for other people in the young colony. This bit of history is implicit in the road; it accompanies the water and the air of the river.
Hope is still a village set among noble trees on the bank of a great and wicked river, backed by ascending mountains, and until lately it retained its look of dreaming age. But the look of dreaming age has gone, and Hope lies between two forks of highroads, each going into the mountains, and is subsidiary to them. The main highroad from Vancouver, passing through Chilliwack where Maggie had spent the night, splits at the village of Hope. The northern fork follows the old Cariboo Trail along the steep banks of the Fraser River which winds in broad sweeps and narrow hairpin
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