MATURE AGAIN.
Michigan is divided into two peninsulas, the apexes of which meet.
The State is shaped like an hour-glass, with the upper portion twisted
to the left. About all the two peninsulas lie blue waters, the inland
seas, lakes Michigan, Superior and Huron. Upon the upper peninsula are
great mineral ranges, copper and iron, a stunted but sturdy forest
growth, and hundreds of little lakelets. The lower peninsula, at its
apex, is yet largely unclaimed from nature, but, toward the south,
broadens out into the great area of grain and apple blossoms, and big,
natty towns, once the country of oak openings, the haunt of Pontiac and
of Tecumseh, braided and crossed by one of Cooper's romances.
It is with the crest of the lower peninsula that this description
deals. There exist not the rigors of the northern peninsula; there the
timber has not tempted woodland plunderers, nor have dried brook-beds
followed shorn forests, nor the farmer invaded the region of light
soil. There is the dense but stunted growth of the hard maple and pine
and beech and fir, and there are windfalls and slashes which sometimes
bridge the creeks. There are still black ash swales and dry beech
ridges, but they are not as massive as further south. There are still
the haunting deer and the black bear and the ruffed grouse, the
"partridge" in the idiom of the country, the "pheasant" of the South
and Southwest. There are scores of tiny lakes, deep and pure and
tenanted, and babbling streams, and there are the knighted speckled
trout, the viking black bass and that rakish aristocrat, the grayling.
One way to cross from Michigan to Huron is in a canoe, threading one's
way from woodland lake to woodland lake, through brush-hidden
brooklets, without a portage. In this region the liverwort blooms
fragrantly beside the snow-bank in early spring, and here the arbutus
exists as in New England. The adder-tongues and violets and anemones
are here in rare profusion in their time, and the wandering gray wolf,
last of his kind, almost, treads softly over knolls carpeted with
wintergreen and decorated with scarlet berries. It is a country of
blue water and pure air, of forest depths and long alleys arching above
strong streams.
This is the southern peninsula of Michigan in its northern part, and
here came, as the first suspicion of a tinge of yellow came to the
leaves of certain trees, as the hard maple trees first flashed out in
faint red, two people.
There were three of them who came at first, for there was the man with
the wagon, engaged in the outlying settlement, who brought them fifteen
miles into the depths of the woodland. They came lumbering through an
archway over an old trail, the homesteader sitting jauntily, howbeit
uncertainly, upon the front seat--for the roadway tilted in spots--and
behind him a couple from the town, a man and a woman, the man laughing
and supporting his companion as the wagon swayed, and the woman
wondering and plucky, and laughing, too, at the oddness of it all. The
forest amazed her a little, and awed her a little, but from awe of it
soon came, as they plunged along, much friendliness. She was
receptive, this game woman, and knew Nature when she met her.
In the rear of the wagon crouched or stood upright, or laid down, as
the mood came upon his chestnut-colored grandness, a great Irish
setter, loved of the man because of many a day together in stubble or
over fallow, loved of the woman because he, the setter, had already
learned to love and regard the woman as an arbitrator, as queen of
something he knew not what.
And so the wagon rumbled on and pitched and tilted, and finally, in
mid-afternoon, reached a place where the road seemed to end. There was
a little open glade, but a few yards across, and there was dense forest
all around, and, just beyond the glade, the tree-tops seemed to all be
lowered, because there was a descent and a lake half a mile long, as
clear as crystal and as blue as the sky. A little way beyond the glade
could be heard the gurgling and ruffling of a creek, which, through a
deep hollow, came athwart the forest and plunged into the lake most
willingly. This was the place where these two people, this man and
woman, were to end their present journey, for the man had been there
before and knew what there to seek and what to find.
And there was a creaky turn of the wagon, a disembarkment, and an
unloading of various things. There was all the kit for a hunter of the
northern woods, and there were things in addition which indicated that
the hunter was not alone this time. There was a tent which had more
than ordinarily selected fixtures to it, and there were two real
steamer-chairs with backs, and there were four or five of what in the
country they call "comforts," or "comforters," great quilts, thickly
padded, generally covered with a design in white of stars or flowers on
beaming red, and there were rods and guns and numerous utensils for
plain cooking.
The wagon with its horses and its driver turned about and tumbled along
the roadway on its return, and there were left alone in the forest,
miles from civilization, miles from any human being save the driver
fast leaving them, the man and woman and the setter dog.
They did not appear depressed or alarmed by the circumstance.
The load from the wagon had been left in a heap. The man pulled from
it a camp-chair with a back, and opened it, and set it up on the grass
very near the edge of the glade, and announced that the throne was
ready for the Empress, not of Great Britain and India, nor of any other
part of the earth, but of the World; it was ready, and would she take
her seat?
He explained that, as, at present, there were some things she didn't
know anything about, she might as well sit in state. So the Empress,
who was not very big, sat in state.
The dog had pursued a rabbit, and was making a fool of himself. The
man selected from among the baggage left an ax, heavy and keen, and
attacked a young spruce tree near. It soon fell with a crash, and the
Empress leaped up, but to sit down again and look interestedly at what
was going on.
The man, the tree fallen, sheared off its wealth of fragrant tips, and
laid the mass of it by the side of the great tree. Then from out the
wagon's leavings he dragged a tent, a simple thing, and, setting up two
crotched sticks with a cross-pole, soon had it in its place. He
carried the mass of spruce-tips by armfuls to the tent and dumped them
within it until there was a great heap of soft, perfumed greenness
there. Then, over all, he spread a quilt or two, and announced, with
much form, to her majesty, that her couch was prepared for her, and
that she could sit in the front of the tent if she wished.
And he cut and put in place two more forked stakes, with a cross-bar,
and hung a kettle and built a fire beneath, and brought water and got
out a frying-pan and bread and prepared for supper. All articles not
demanded for immediate use were stowed away just back of the tent.
"And," he remarked, "there you are."
The Empress rose from her camp-chair and investigated.
"Are we to sleep in the tent, Grant?"
"Yes."
"What will we do if it rains?"
"Stay in the tent."
"But we'll get wet, won't we?"
"No; we'll be upon the spruce-tops; the water will run under us."
"Aren't there animals in the wood?"
"Yes."
"What will you do if they come about?"
"I think I'll kiss you."
The Empress of the World did not seem to fully enter into the spirit of
his carelessness.
She had her imaginings, after all. She knew that she was all right,
somehow, yet she did not quite comprehend. But she knew her royalty.
She rose and went to the entrance of the tent, and stepped in daintily,
and sat down in another chair which had been placed there for her
reception, and then inhaled all the sweetness of the spruce-tips, and
pitched herself down upon the quilts, and curled herself up there for a
moment or two, and then rose and came out again into the open, where
her husband stood watching her.
"Do you like the woods, dear?" he said.
"Don't you see?"
He said nothing, but led her majesty to a seat for a time, while he got
ready for the evening meal--of food from the town for this first
time--and then, in a courtier's way, of course, suggested, that she aid
him.
They cooked and ate the strips of bacon with the soft stale bread he
had brought, and drank the tea, and the shadows of the trees lengthened
across the glade, and the chestnut-hued setter came back to camp and
was gravely reprimanded by his master, and it soon became night, and
time passed, and the fire flashed against the greenery strangely, and
the man took the woman by the hand and led her to the entrance to the
tent, and said:
"We must rise early."
She entered the tent, and not long later he entered, also, or thought
to do so. He lifted the flap, which he had let down, and looked inside.
She lay there upon the cushioned spruce-tips, and, as he raised the
white curtain, the moonlight streamed in upon her.
She looked up at him, and smiled.
The loving face of her was all he saw--the face of the one woman.
He spoke to her. He tried to tell her what she was to him, and failed.
She answered gently and in few words. They understood.
He entered the tent and sat upon the couch beside her as she was lying
there, and took her small hand in his, but said no more. From the wood
about them--for it was into the night now--came many sounds, known of
old, and wonderfully sweet to him, but all new and strange to her.
"Ah-rr-oomp, ah-rr-oomp, ba-rr-oomp," came from the edge of the water
the deep cry of the bullfrog; from the further end of the lake came the
strange gobble, gurgle and gulp of the shitepoke, the small green heron
which is the flitting ghost of shaded creeks and haunting thing of
marshy courses everywhere. Night-hawks, far above, cried with a
pleasant monotony, then swooped downward with a zip and boom. It was
not so late in the season that the call of the whippoorwill might not
be heard, and there were odd notes of tree-toads and katydids from the
branches. There came suddenly the noise of a squall and scuffle from
the marshy edge of the lake, where 'coons were wrangling, and the weird
cry of the loon re-echoed up and down. The air was full of the
perfumes of the wood. The setter just outside the tent became uneasy,
and dashed into a thicket near, and there was a snort and the measured,
swift thud of feet flying in the distance. A deer had been attracted
by the fire-light. An owl hooted from a dead tree near by. There was
the hum of many insects of the night, and the soft sighing of the wind
through boughs. It was simply night in the northern woods.
The man rose and went outside, and stood with one hand upon the
tent-pole at the front. He seemed to himself to be in a dream. He
looked up at the moon and stars, and then at the glittering greenery
deepening further out into blackness about him. He looked down toward
the grass at his feet, and there appeared near him a flash of gold.
What Harlson saw was but a dandelion. That most home-like and
steadfast flower blooms in early springtime and later in the season,
with no regard to the chronology of the year. It was one of the
vagrant late gladdeners of the earth that his eye chanced to light upon.
It held him, somehow. It was wide open--so wide that there was a white
spot in its yellow center--and close above it drooped, a beech-tree's
branch, so close that one long green leaf hung just above the petals.
And upon this green leaf the dew was gathering.
The man looked at the flower.
"Is all the world golden?" he said to himself. And he straightened and
moved and went from the tent to where the open was. He stood in the
glade in the moonlight, and wondered at it all.
Here he was--he could not comprehend it--here, all alone, save for her,
in the forest, miles away from any other human being! He had wholly
loved but two things all his life--her and nature--and the three of
them--she, nature and he--were here together! It was wonderful!
And there in that preposterous covering of canvas, half hid in the
forest's edge, was Jean Cor--no, Jean Harlson, belonging to him--all
his--away from all the world, just part of him, in this solitude!
He wondered why he had deserved it. He wondered how he had won it. He
looked up at the pure sky, with the moon defined so clearly, and all
the stars, and was grateful, and reached out his hands and asked the
Being of it to tell him, if it might be, how to do something as an
offset.
The night passed, and the sun rose clearly over the forest. The
chestnut setter roused himself from behind the tent, and came in front
of it, and barked joyously at a yellow-hammer which had chosen a great
basswood tree with deadened spaces for an early morning experiment
toward a breakfast.
There issued from the white tent a man, who looked upward toward all
the greenness and all the glory, and was glad.
He looked downward at the sward, and there was the little flower. And
the dew had run its course, and had gathered in a jewel at the leaf's
tip, and there, fallen in the midst of the disk of yellow, was the
product from the skies. There, in the flower's heart, was the perfect
gem--a diamond in a setting of fine gold!