They had begun to breathe more easily now, and, almost as if they were under the spell of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, they had followed him step by step into the room.
“Yes suh,” Dick chuckled, “I was jest fixin’ to hide this gun away and keep it hid twill Christmas day, but Cap’n Shepperton—hee!” he chuckled heartily and slapped his thigh—“you can’t fool ole Cap’n Shepperton! He was too quick fo’ me. He jest must’ve smelled this ole gun right out. He comes right in and sees it befo’ I has a chance to tu’n around…. Now, white fokes,” Dick’s voice fell to a tone of low and winning confidence, “Ah’s hopin’ that I’d git to keep this gun as a little surprise fo’ you. Now that you’s found out, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If you’ll jest keep it a surprise from the other white fokes twill Christmas day, I’ll take all you gent’mun out and let you shoot it. Now cose,” he went on quietly, with a shade of resignation, “if you want to tell on me you can—but”—here his voice fell again, with just the faintest yet most eloquent shade of sorrowful regret—“Ole Dick was lookin’ fahwad to this. He was hopin’ to give all the white fokes a supprise Christmas day.”
They promised earnestly that they would keep his secret as if it were their own. They fairly whispered their solemn vow. They tiptoed away out of the little basement room, as if they were afraid their very footsteps might betray the partner of their confidence.
This was four o’clock on Saturday afternoon. Already, there was a somber moaning of the wind, grey storm clouds sweeping over. The threat of snow was in the air.
SNOW FELL THAT night. It began at six o’clock. It came howling down across the hills. It swept in on them from the Smokies. By seven o’clock the air was blind with sweeping snow, the earth was carpeted, the streets were numb. The storm howled on, around houses warm with crackling fires and shaded light. All life seemed to have withdrawn into thrilling isolation. A horse went by upon the street with muffled hoofs.
George Webber went to sleep upon this mystery, lying in the darkness, listening to that exultancy of storm, to that dumb wonder, that enormous and attentive quietness of snow, with something dark and jubilant in his soul he could not utter.
Snow in the South is wonderful. It has a kind of magic and a mystery that it has nowhere else. And the reason for this is that it comes to people in the South not as the grim, unyielding tenant of the Winter’s keep, but as a strange and wild visitor from the secret North. It comes to them from darkness, to their own special and most secret soul there in the South. It brings to them the thrilling isolation of its own white mystery. It brings them something that they lack, and that they have to have; something that they have lost, but now have found: something that they have known utterly, but had forgotten until now.
In every man there are two hemispheres of light and dark, two worlds discrete, two countries of his soul’s adventure. And one of these is the dark land, the other half of his heart’s home, the unvisited domain of his father’s earth.
And this is the land he knows the best. It is the earth unvisited—and it is his, as nothing he has seen can ever be. It is the world intangible that he has never touched—yet more his own than something he has owned forever. It is the great world of his mind, his heart, his spirit, built there in his imagination, shaped by wonder and unclouded by the obscuring flaws of accident and actuality, the proud, unknown earth of the lost, the found, the never-here, the ever-real America, unsullied, true, essential, built there in the brain, and shaped to glory by the proud and flaming vision of a child.
Thus, at the head of those two poles of life will lie the real, the truthful image of its immortal opposite. Thus, buried in the dark heart of the cold and secret North, abides forever the essential image of the South; thus, at the dark heart of the moveless South, there burns forever the immortal splendor of the North.
So had it always been with George. The other half of his heart’s home, the world unknown that he knew the best, was the dark North. And snow swept in that night across the hills, demonic visitant, to restore that land to him, to sheet it in essential wonder. Upon this mystery he fell asleep.