TO the Scotchman or Englishman, with Loch Katrine or Windermere in his
fond memory's eye, it is not surprising that the great lakes of America
seem howling wildernesses of water, for the shores are mostly low and
unpicturesque. There is no changing tide to give variety, no strong
smell of seaweed nor salt breeze to brace the wearied nerves, but the
wearied nerves are braced nevertheless. The sand is soft and clean to
extend one's length upon, and the waves forever rolling up at one's feet
are soothing in their monotony. There is no fear of the encroachment of
the water, no fear of its leaving a bare mud-flat for nearly a mile; and
the unlimited expanse of blue which meets the horizon satisfies the eye,
which cares not if the land on the other side be hundreds or thousands
of miles away, so long as it be out of sight.
Two young people one evening in July seemed to find Lake Michigan
perfectly satisfactory in every respect. The girl sat on a log of
driftwood, poking holes in the sand with the pointed toes of her shoes,
much too fine for the purpose, while the young man stretched at her feet
looked at her instead of the sunset they had come to admire. I could not
help thinking what a pretty picture they made, as I strolled along the
shore with my pipe, to get cooled off after a very hot day in town.
The family were all at Interlaken, but Margaret was left in Lake City
to keep the grass watered, and to give me my midday dinner. I am unable
to decide which occupation she considered the more important. It is not
easy to get grass to grow with us, and anyone who can display a
reasonably green patch in July and August gives evidence of considerable
perseverance in the matter of lawn sprinkling. I told Margaret she would
be ready to enter the Fire Brigade next winter, she was getting to be
such an expert with the hose. But to return to the shore of Michigan.
The pair of lovers interested me so much that I gradually edged nearer
to them. The species seldom objects to the proximity of a stout little
man with a prosaic pipe in his mouth and a pair of light blue eyes,
handicapped by spectacles, that seem always to be looking for a sail on
the horizon. In fact, I never attract any attention anywhere, unless my
wife is along, and then I am only too proud and happy to shine in her
reflection.
So I sat down on a piece of stump, worn white and smooth like a skeleton
before being cast up by the waves; but when the two caught sight of me,
the man sprang up and came toward me, holding out his hand, while the
girl sauntered off in the other direction, and I saw that she was Mary
Mason.
"Hello, Link?" said I to the young fellow. "Didn't know you were down
here."
"I'm at the hotel for a week or two. I've just been making the
acquaintance of your adopted daughter."
"My what?"
"You have adopted her, haven't you?"
"Don't know that I have--hadn't considered the matter at all."
"She's a sweet girl, and a beauty too. Anyone would be proud to own
her."
"You'd better let Dolly Martin hear you say that."
Abraham Lincoln Todd straightened himself up in the most independent
bachelor style.
"She can look after me when we're married, but in the meantime I'm a
free man."
He is considered very handsome, tall and dark, a good business man too,
and Belle had quite approved of the engagement between him and Dolly
Martin, who, though not a pretty girl, was strong and sensible, and the
daughter of one of her oldest friends.
Lincoln must be taking advantage of his intimacy with our family to
flirt with Mary Mason.
Interlaken is not a fashionable resort. Even the hotel is a homely
abode, which the guests seem to run themselves, though they generally
prefer to live outdoors and go inside only for meals and beds. Once in
a while, on a chilly evening, the young people get up a dance, and some
of us older folks are dragged into it too.
Scotchmen love to dance, and I am no exception. I am not up to waltzing
or any of the newfangled round dances, but give me a Highland
schottische, or a square dance, when there is an inventive genius to
call off the figures and prescribe plenty of variety. There was no
professional caller-off at Interlaken, but Lincoln Todd did duty for one
as he danced. When he tired of it, and led off into a round of waltzes,
ripples, jerseys, bon tons, rush polkas, and goodness knows what
besides, I remained as a wall-flower.
The reason that I sat there was that I could not take my eyes off Mary
Mason. Where she learned to dance I know not, but dance she did, with a
grace and _abandon_ that made every other girl in the room a
clod-hopper. Lincoln Todd was quite infatuated with her.
Ours is one of the dozen or so of cottages that radiate from the big
hotel. Most of the cottagers take dinner and supper at the hotel, being,
like ourselves, in a servantless condition. Belle said she could get
along perfectly well without Margaret, when she had Mary Mason to help
her with the housework, and, indeed, there was not much to be done. The
four bedrooms open into one central room that we call the sitting-room,
but it is only in wet weather it justifies the name, for, as a rule, we
sit in rockers or swing in hammocks on the broad veranda that runs round
three sides of the house. The cottages lie so close together that a good
jumper can easily spring from one veranda to the next, and the lady
proprietors gossip across, and the men too when they come down from
business every evening, or from Saturday till Monday. My lot is
generally the shorter allowance, and one Sunday afternoon I lay in my
favorite hammock on the north side of the veranda, sleeping the sleep of
the brain-tired editor, till voices roused me.
"Mary, where did you get that new tennis racket?"
"Mr. Todd gave it to me."
"Haven't I told you distinctly that you were not even to take candy from
Mr. Todd?"
"He gives things to you and Chrissie."
"That's a very different matter. Chrissie is a child, and he is an old
friend of the family."
"I can't help it if he likes to give me presents."
"You can help taking them, especially from an engaged man."
"I don't care if he is engaged. He says he don't care anything at all
about Miss Martin. He only went after her for her money. He likes me
best, and he says he'll never marry her."
"Mary! I should think you'd know better than to make yourself so cheap.
You give Mr. Todd back that racket right away, and tell him Mrs. Gemmell
said you were not to keep it, and the next time he brings you down
flowers or chocolates you do the same."
If I had not known the sex and the approximate age of Mary, I should
have thought it was a small boy in a temper who stamped off the veranda.
The next Saturday night the full moon was assisted in her duties by a
large bonfire down on our beach. The Adamless Eden, having received its
"week-end" male contingent, was stimulated to a corn-roasting. The green
ears, stuck on the ends of long sticks, were held by girls and men over
the fire till roasted, and then passed on to a row of matrons, disguised
in large aprons, who salted and buttered them ready for eating. If you
know anything that tastes sweeter than a freshly roasted and buttered
ear of Indian corn, your experience is broader than mine.
Using my eyes habitually in the way of business, I could not avoid
noticing that Lincoln Todd was not collecting his share of driftwood for
keeping up the fire, nor did I see Mary Mason's pretty face in the
garland of beauties bending with eager interest over the poles bayoneted
with cobs of corn. It may have been fear of spoiling her complexion that
kept her at one side whispering with Link, but it served them both right
that Dolly Martin should choose that very moment for her stage entrance.
She and her mother joined the group of butterers, and I noticed that
Mrs. Martin returned Belle's cordial greeting rather stiffly. Then Miss
Dolly calmly walked over to the pair sitting apart, having evidently
recognized the back of Lincoln's blazer. She pretended to stumble over
one of his feet.
"Oh, excuse me!" said she; and when Link sprang up, Mary Mason had the
pleasure of witnessing the warmest sort of a meeting between the engaged
lovers. They sallied off in the moonlight, his arm around her waist.
No one but me noticed the young girl slipping down on the sand, and
laying her head on the log on which she had been sitting, and even I
pretended not to see that her handkerchief was in action.
"Hello, Mary!" said I, "I'll match you skipping stones. Look at this!"
With that I sent a beautiful flat one skimming along with nearly a dozen
hops in the brilliant track of the moon on the water. She did not pay
any attention to me at first, and I kept skipping away, just as if I
did not see her mopping her eyes. By-and-by a stroke worthy of myself
sent a pebble spinning through the ripples, and Mary's ready laugh rang
out beside me. Within twenty minutes of Dolly Martin's appearance on the
scene, "Mamie" was the center of the corn-roasters, and the gayest of
the gay. Belle told me she kept on that line of conduct during the whole
week that Miss Martin and her mother stayed at the hotel.
"It seemed to me that Dolly took a special pleasure in parading her
happiness before poor Mary, but Mary never showed the white feather."
"There's the making of a fine woman in her."
"That may be," said my wife. "But this last week she has been extremely
wearing on me. Having no particular man on the string, she has followed
me about like a spaniel, wanted to know what I'm reading, and has begun
a book the minute I'm through with it."
"I've seen her carrying 'The Coming Race' about with her lately, but I
notice that the bookmark always stays in the same place."
Mary became fond of solitary rambles back in the pine woods, intersected
by plank walks that made promenading possible. People liked to wander
through there in the evenings, when the camp-lights in the hollows lent
a mysterious charm, and on up to the big Knight Templar's Building,
erected on the highest point of the sandy bluff overlooking Lake
Michigan. Every night that prominent structure blazed with electric
lights, and sometimes a band played on the veranda; but the only
visitors were cottagers and guests from the hotel, who went up there to
walk about and enjoy the prospect.
Our city editor often surprises me with the depth and breadth of his
local information. For example, I opened the _Echo_ one day to be made
aware that "Miss Mamie Gemmell" had outstripped all the lady bicyclists
in town by making the distance between Lake City and Interlaken in
forty-seven minutes. It was also remarked that she was one of the most
graceful lady riders on the road.
I wonder how many generations a man must be removed from Scotland before
he becomes callous to the disposition of the family name. I own that I
squirmed inwardly, but with outward composure asked Belle where Mary got
the "bike."
"Watty's old one. He taught Mary to ride it, and then made her a present
of it, for he's set his heart on a new wheel."
"Confoundedly generous of him!"
"I'm glad you look at it that way. It is so seldom that he does give up
anything for anybody, I thought he ought to be encouraged, and I said he
should have a new bicycle with pneumatic tires and all the latest
improvements at Christmas, if you did not see fit to give it to him
sooner."
In August I took my annual day's fishing, which has come to be rather a
joke in the house, because, in spite of my elaborate preparations the
night before, and the unheard-of hour at which I rise in the morning, I
have never been known to catch anything worth bringing home.
This time my companion was a journalist from Chicago, an ardent young
fellow, who could not keep from "shop" even when off on his holidays,
and who had started a small weekly paper in which were to be recorded
the doings of a certain congress holding a summer session in our grove.
We rowed up the little lake on the edge of the lily-pads, fishing both
sides of it, but caught nothing except a sunfish or two. Then we lit our
pipes and talked.
"What an extremely clever young lady that adopted daughter of yours is.
I heard only the other day that she is not your own."
"Indeed!"
"Yes, sir. No one would believe it to talk to her, but she's got a
surprisingly bright mind for one so young. She can't be more than
seventeen, but her descriptions are good enough for one of the best
magazines, and she has evidently thought a lot on all the leading topics
of the day. Why, she's up in Hypnotism, Evolution, Theosophy--everything!"
"Bless my soul! How did you find all that out?"
Thereupon he fished from his pocket a couple of his tiresome little
publications.
"I asked her to write something for our paper, that's how I know. Want
to see?"
I do not set up to be a literary critic, but I guess I know my own
wife's style of composition when I encounter it. During the two years
that we were engaged she lived in Detroit and I in Indiana, and I missed
her letters so much after we were married that to this day she is in the
habit of letting me read those she writes to other people. I was not
going to give her away to that newspaper man, though, for the name "Mary
Gemmell" stared me in the face from the end of each article; but I
remonstrated with Belle when I reached home.
"How could I help it, Dave? There was the girl teasing me to write
something for her because this fellow had asked her to do it. She said I
could scribble down something just as easy as not, and then she could
copy it for him. Copy it! She took hours to do it, and I considered she
deserved all the praise she got for the articles."
"I wouldn't do it again, if I were you. It sets the girl sailing under
false colors."
"Poor Mary! Her one little accomplishment has been of no use to her
since that professional elocutionist came to the hotel, and I hated to
see her cast altogether into the shade, especially while Dolly Martin
was here."
Still there came another production from the pen of Miss Mary Gemmell.
"Really, Belle," said I, "this is carrying the joke too far."
"Don't you worry about it. Some of the old cats at the hotel began to
suspect that Mary hadn't written those things, and accused me to my face
of doing it myself, so I had to write an account of the picnic up the
little lake, because they all know I wasn't there at all!"
"Let this be the last, then."
"It shall, I assure you, for I am much displeased with Mary. Since Mrs.
Martin and Dolly left, she's been going it just as hard as ever with
Lincoln Todd. If you walk up to the Knight Templar's Building I'll
warrant you'll find them there promenading this very minute."
"No, I won't, because I passed them just a little while ago as I came
through the woods, sitting on a secluded bench, his arm round her waist
and her head on his shoulder."
"Didn't they see you?"
"I dare say, but I never let on I saw them. What's the use? I can't be
expected to leave the _Echo_ to my subs, and come down here to play
special policeman to Mary Mason. I should have thought Todd was more of
a gentleman."
"So should I, but I've spoken to him, quarreled with him indeed, so
that he doesn't come near the house, but I know that he and Mary meet
just the same. Thank Heaven! he will be married soon."
"Have you told Mary that?"
"Yes; but she laughs and shrugs her shoulders; evidently thinks she
knows more about Lincoln Todd's intentions than I do."
In the last week of August Mr. Todd went off for a few days "on
business," and then there came a dreadful morning when the announcement
of his marriage to Dolly Martin appeared in the _Echo_.
Mary would not believe her ears. She took the paper down to the beach,
and spelled out the notice word by word. Then she lay down on the sand
and bawled, kicking and squealing like a year-old infant when Belle
appealed to her self-respect.
"I could have spanked her well," said my wife. The worst of it was that
the whole hotel was "on to the racket," as Watty vulgarly expressed it,
and rather chuckled over Belle's mortification, instead of sympathizing
with her in the trying time she was having with her "adopted daughter."
Our grief, as a family, was not unbearable when the time came in
September for Mary Mason to go back to the convent.