Page:The Green Bay Tree (1926).pdf/89



HE day after Christmas dawned bright and clear, as clear as any day dawned in the Flats where at sunrise the smoke turned the sun into a great copper disk rising indolently toward the zenith of the heavens. The false warmth of the January thaw, precocious that year, brought gentle zephyrs that turned the icicles on the sweeping eaves of the house into streams of water which added their force to the rivulets already coursing down the long drive to leave the gravel bare and eroded, swelling with the upheaval of the escaping frost. But the false warmth brought no beauty; no trees burgeoned forth in clouds of bright green and no crocuses thrust forth their thin green swords and errant blossoms. The January thaw was but a false hope of the northern winter. When the sun of the early afternoon had destroyed all traces of the snow save drifts which hid beneath the rhododendrons or close against the north wall of the stable, it left behind an expanse of black and dessicated lawn, in spots quite bare even of dying grass. The garden stripped of its winter blanket at last stood revealed, a ravaged fragment of what had once been a glory.

Lily, drawn from the house by the warmth of the sun, wandered along the barren paths like a lovely hamadyrad enticed by deceitful Gods from her winter refuge. She ran from clump to clump of shrubbery, breaking off the tender little twigs in search of the green underbark that was a sign of life. Sometimes she found the green; more often she found only dead, dry wood, bereft of all vitality. In the flower garden she followed the brick path to its beginning in the little arbor covered with wistaria vine. Here too the Mills had taken their toll; the vine was dead save a few thin twining stalks that clung to the arbor. In the border along the walk, she found traces of irises—hardy plants difficult to