45 So dreams come true
So we came at last to a strange morning, when my husband said: ‘Your book is out. I think we should go down to Osborne’s and have a look at it.’
Strange as it may seem, I did not want to look at it. I was suddenly afraid to meet this thing face to face. For this was not just a book to me; it was the epitome of a terrible desire that had given me no rest; that had hounded me relentlessly for twenty years.
In a way, it was the ghost of the shabby little girl who had dared to dream this thing so long ago. I wanted nothing so much as to rush away into some dim, dark hill, where wisdom breathes in the silence, and the mind grows still as the stars.
But a sensible housewife, busily stoning plums, does not say such things. I would go, of course, said I, but I first must finish the jam.
‘Good heavens!’ cried George, who was perfectly willing to forego his sleep after a night’s work. ‘Can’t the jam wait? I should think, after all this fury of housework you’d want to get away from it.’
True. Yet, how can I explain that the physical act of leaving the house did not necessarily take me away from it? That what I really wanted was an hour to myself—an hour spent on the little balcony that overlooked a sweep of dun-coloured hills, and the silver crescent of the Bow River—an hour to cut myself off in spirit from pots and pans and the four enclosing walls of a jealous house.
It was late afternoon before we started down the hill on this intimate errand. I cannot say that I experienced any of that marvellous elation that embryo authors are supposed to feel on such an occasion. My mind was too full of jumbled memories.
I was seeing a girl reading Victor Hugo in an attic bedroom, of a house where she was nothing but a drudge; and that other young thing, going home from the tent and awning factory, through sleet and snow, to struggle with an assignment in English literature; I was hearing kind old Miss Rudd: ‘Laura, whatever happens, never lose your sense of the beautiful. Never let yourself dream little dreams!’ God bless her!
I was remembering all the hundred things that had stood in the road of this simple ambition. All the young heartache, all the humiliations, real or imagined—all real enough, since they had cut so deeply. All the ugliness which I had set myself to dispel by the force of a curiosity strong enough to penetrate to bed-rock of some underlying good—all that was lovely, the winsome way of a furry pet, the smile of old faces that had looked on life with courage, the beauty of the embroidered sky; and the miracle of the ever fruitful earth. These were the enduring realities that had kept my soul alive and my heart responsive to the lives of others.
And here we are at last! Here, before a commonplace plate-glass window, where a little stack of books in sunset jackets make a colourful mound. But I cannot see what this fine wrapper represents. I have to pull my hat down, and hide my eyes.
I will not enter—no, not for any gay persuasion! I have seen what I came to see. I have seen the fulfilment of a dream.
That is something, in a world that prides itself on materiality. A small triumph, for so many years; but a small thing can demonstrate a great truth. That I accomplished so little is beside the point.
That truth may serve a bolder spirit to better purpose: what you want, you can do, no matter what the odds against you! And to say just that, with something more than mere words, is the whole purpose of this rambling narrative. That I formed the resolution I must blame an unknown voice, speaking over the radio. A man’s voice, pleading on behalf of Canadian literature.
Somewhere, said he, on some bleak little homestead, there may be another Frederick Grove, another Salverson, dreaming of a book to be written. Something to that effect—the words have escaped me. They escaped me because of the shock they produced. That there is another Grove somewhere, I earnestly hope; but if ill luck has fastened such an ambition upon some little foreign girl circumstanced as I was, I could weep for her. Yet it may be so. It may be that, like myself, some child of immigrants longs to justify her race as something more than a hewer of wood; dreams in the starlight of the lonely prairie of some fair burnt offering to lay upon the altar of her New Country, out of the love of a small, passionate heart.
How to do it, in a strange, new language? How to do it, in the face of poverty and isolation, and the cold indifference of an alien people? How to hold fast to a purpose that no one counts as precious as a new-turned furrow, a pelt of furs, or a load of grain.
It can be done, as simply as the seasons follow the sun. It can be done by the simple, undistinguished feat of snatching at straws; a word, a phrase, a tantalizing speech, to be stored in the mind, analysed, thumbed over, as a miser thumbs his gold; sights and sounds; the way a bird wheels in the wind; the moonlight dappling deep water; the sound of withered grasses telling their rosaries of frost and seeds; a thousand images to feed the mind in the sterile days of drudgery. It can be done by robbing sleep to hobnob with the thinkers of times present and past. It can be done by accepting pain, which, like a sharp sword, cuts through the stupidities that shut us off from our neighbours.
It can be done by keeping true to the thing within you, that no man sees, and only the great gods cherish! For each living creature has its own, inalienable covenant with the universe; its own small service to perform; every creative thought is a part of that universe, and has, within itself, the essence of its fulfilment. This I believe, and this I hope I shall always believe. Life to all men is not the same thing, but it is the same in this: that it becomes for them what they earnestly believe and relentlessly strive to make it.
All things are in the eye of the beholder. A fall of leaves from a scarlet maple-tree trembles for an infinitesimal point of time on the air, vibrates rhythmically, giving off ruby tints of light, and, in its drifting flight, arrests the eye of a chance observer.
Something in him responds. Beautiful! Beautiful! His senses leap, as to the sound of bugles. His imagination soars as on wings; and a thousand frets of life are instantly forgotten.
To another, the lovely miracle does not exist. Dead leaves have blown across his path. The shining incarnation has passed unseen, unheard. The little rustling of the ruby leaves taking their joyous departure, has passed the way of all spirit. No god was crucified on the flaming tree for the redemption of his earthbound senses. There was nothing in the wood; nothing in the winding road; nothing in the pale, evening air.
It is so with everything in the world: out of the heart are the issues of life!
