Free Swamp Angel by Ethel Wilson Page B

says “We reached this point, by broken trail and mountains and water; and when we reached it, thus and thus we named it.”
    “Coming into Lytton,” said the man laconically. Maggie looked up. “There’s kind of a nice thing at Lytton people like to see. Like to see it myself … ever since I was a kid. Maybe you’d have time if the bus stops for a lunch … there’s two rivers comes in, there’s the Fraser from the north and the Thompson from the east and they’re two different colors where they join. Fraser’s dirty, Thompson’s kind of green blue, nice water. Mightn’t be so good now. Depends on how high’s the water.Depends on time of year. People tell me there’s two great rivers in Europe act like that but I’ll bet they’re no prettier than the Thompson and the Fraser flowing in together…. I’ll show you where when we get to Lytton and you can run along down if
he
says there’s time. I gotta see the garage man myself.”
    When the bus drove down the slope into the village of Lytton, and drew up, Maggie made her way along the aisle. She stopped at a seat and looked down. A fair little girl with plaits of flaxen hair standing out on each side of her serious face and a sunny fuzz around her forehead sat there. Her feet did not touch the ground. Her mother sat beside her, next to the window. The child was attentive to a large black cat which was in a basket that took up the whole of her lap. The cat had a narrow red leather collar round its neck and to the collar was attached a leash which the little girl held in her hand as though the cat might at any time wish to jump out of the basket. But the cat only lay blinking, comfortable, half asleep.
    Maggie bent down and said to the child “May I stroke your pussy?” at the same time lightly scratching the top of the cat’s head. The cat closed its green eyes and gave itself to the caress. The child looked up into Maggie’s face and said “Yes you can. She is a very well-disposed cat.” Maggie loved the child for saying that her cat was well-disposed, and with a look of great sweetness she smiled down at her.
    It had become possible for her to look at a little fair girl without being torn with anguish. The sight of a mother with a little girl, of father with mother with a little girl used to be unendurable. Little by little, and insensibly, her cruel loss and misery had receded within her and lay still, and she was able, now, to look at a child without saying within herself “Polly would have sat just so,” “Polly would have skipped and jumped beside me like that little girl,” “Polly would have looked up atme like that.” She had ceased tormenting herself and being tormented; but, without her knowing it, her look dwelt fondly upon every little fair girl.
    For a minute she stroked the head of the well-disposed cat. Maggie and the mother smiled at each other over the child’s head, and then Maggie moved on. She walked quickly down to the bridge.
    It is true. Say “Lytton Bridge” – and the sight springs clear to the eyes. There is the convergence of the two river valleys and the two rivers. The strong muddy Fraser winds boiling down from the north. The gay blue-green Thompson River foams and dances in from the east. Below the bridge where Maggie stood the two rivers converge in a strong slanting line of pressure and resistance. But it is no good. The Thompson cannot resist, and the powerful inexorable Fraser swallows up the green and the blue and the white and the amethyst. The Thompson River is no more, and the Fraser moves on to the west, swollen, stronger, dangerous, and as sullen as ever. The V at the convergence of the valleys shone green with spring and tamed with cultivation. The Lytton wind blew down the two valleys from all the great sagebrush country beyond. Maggie hurried back up the slope.
    “I
suppose,”
she said reflectively when the bus had started again, “that you either like this country very much or not at