The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights Part 1

The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights.

by Mary Hartwell Catherwood.

THE KING OF BEAVER

Success was the word most used by the King of Beaver. Though he stood before his people as a prophet a.s.suming to speak revelations, executive power breathed from him. He was a tall, golden-tinted man with a head like a dome, hair curling over his ears, and soft beard and mustache which did not conceal a mouth cut thin and straight. He had student hands, long and well kept. It was not his dress, though that was careful as a girl's, which set him apart from farmers listening on the benches around him, but the keen light of his blue eyes, wherein shone the master.

Emeline thought she had never before seen such a man. He had an attraction which she felt loathsome, and the more so because it drew some part of her irresistibly to him. Her spirit was kin to his, and she resented that kins.h.i.+p, trying to lose herself among farmers' wives and daughters, who listened to their Prophet stolidly, and were in no danger of being naturally selected by him. This moral terror Emeline could not have expressed in words, and she hid it like a shame. She also resented the subservience of her kinspeople to one no greater than herself. Her stock had been masters of men.

As the King of Beaver slowly turned about the circle he encountered this rebel defying his a.s.sumption, and paused in his speaking a full minute, the drowsy farmers seeing merely that notes were being s.h.i.+fted and rearranged on the table. Then he began again, the dictatorial key transposed into melody. His covert message was to the new maid in the congregation. She might struggle like a fly in a web. He wrapped her around and around with beautiful sentences. As Speaker of the State Legislature he had learned well how to handle men in the ma.s.s, but nature had doubly endowed him for entrancing women. The spiritual part of James Strang, King and Prophet of a peculiar sect, appealed to the one best calculated to appreciate him during the remainder of his exhortation.

The Tabernacle, to which Beaver Island Mormons gathered every Sat.u.r.day instead of every Sunday, was yet unfinished. Its circular shape and vaulted ceiling, panelled in the hard woods of the island, had been planned by the man who stood in the centre. Many openings under the eaves gaped windowless; but the congregation, sheltered from a July sun, enjoyed freely the lake air, bringing fragrance from their own fields and gardens. They seemed a bovine, honest people, in homespun and hickory; and youth, bright-eyed and fresh-cheeked, was not lacking. They sat on benches arranged in circles around a central platform which held the Prophet's chair and table. This was his simple plan for making his world revolve around him.

Roxy Cheeseman, Emeline's cousin, was stirred to restlessness by the Prophet's unusual manner, and s.h.i.+fted uneasily on the bench. Her short, scarlet-cheeked face made her a favorite among the young men. She had besides this attraction a small waist and foot, and a father who was very well off indeed for a Beaver Island farmer. Roxy's black eyes, with the round and unwinking stare of a bird's, were fixed on King Strang, as if she instinctively warded off a gaze which by swerving a little could smite her.

But the Prophet paid no attention to any one when the meeting was over, his custom being to crush his notes in one hand at the end of his peroration, and to retire like a priest, leaving the dispersing congregation awed by his rapt face.

The two cousins walked sedately along the street of St. James village, while their elders lingered about the Tabernacle door shaking hands.

That primitive settlement of the early '50's consisted of a few houses and log stores, a mill, the Tabernacle, and long docks, at which steamers touched perhaps once a week. The forest partially encircled it.

A few Gentiles, making Sat.u.r.day purchases in a shop kept by one of their own kind, glanced with dislike at the separating Mormons. The shouts of Gentile children could also be heard at Sat.u.r.day play. Otherwise a Sabbath peacefulness was over the landscape. Beaver Island had not a rugged coastline, though the harbor of St. James was deep and good. Land rose from it in gentle undulations rather than hills.

Emeline and Roxy walked inland, with their backs to the harbor. In summer, farmers who lived nearest St. James took short-cuts through the woods to meeting, and let their horses rest.

The last house on the street was a wooden building of some pretension, having bow-windows and a veranda. High pickets enclosed a secluded garden. It was very unlike the log-cabins of the island.

"He lives here," said Roxy.

Emeline did not inquire who lived here. She understood, and her question was--

"How many with him?"

"All of them--eight. Seven of them stay at home, but Mary French travels with him. Didn't you notice her in the Tabernacle--the girl with the rose in her hair, sitting near the platform?"

"Yes, I noticed her. Was that one of his wives?"

Roxy waited until they had struck into the woods path, and then looked guardedly behind her.

"Mary French is the youngest one. She was sealed to the Prophet only two years ago; and last winter she went travelling with him, and we heard she dressed in men's clothes and acted as his secretary."

"But why did she do that when she was his wife according to your religion?"

"I don't know," responded Roxy, mysteriously. "The Gentiles on the mainland are very hard on us."

They followed the track between fragrant grapevine and hickory, and the girl bred to respect polygamy inquired--

"Do you feel afraid of the Prophet, Cousin Emeline?"

"No, I don't," retorted the girl bred to abhor it.

"Sometimes I do. He makes people do just what he wants them to. Mary French was a Gentile's daughter, the proudest girl that ever stepped in St. James. She didn't live on the island; she came here to visit. And he got her. What's the matter, Cousin Emeline?"

"Some one trod on my grave; I s.h.i.+vered. Cousin Roxy, I want to ask you a plain question. Do you like a man's having more than one wife?"

"No, I don't. And father doesn't either. But he was obliged to marry again, or get into trouble with the other elders. And Aunt Mahala is very good about the house, and minds mother. The revelation may be plain enough, but I am not the kind of a girl," declared Roxy, daringly, as one might blaspheme, "that cares a straw for the revelation."

Emeline took hold of her arm, and they walked on with a new sense of companions.h.i.+p.

"A great many of the people feel the same way about it. But when the Prophet makes them understand it is part of the faith, they have to keep the faith. I am a reprobate myself. But don't tell father," appealed Roxy, uneasily. "He is an elder."

"My uncle Cheeseman is a good man," said Emeline, finding comfort in this fact. She could not explain to her cousin how hard it had been for her to come to Beaver Island to live among Mormons. Her uncle had insisted on giving his orphan niece a home and the protection of a male relative, at the death of the maiden aunt by whom she had been brought up. In that day no girl thought of living without protection. Emeline had a few thousand dollars of her own, but her money was invested, and he could not count on the use of it, which men a.s.sumed a right to have when helpless women cl.u.s.tered to their hearths. Her uncle Cheeseman was undeniably a good man, whatever might be said of his religious faith.

"I like father myself," a.s.sented Roxy. "He is never strict with us unless the Prophet has some revelation that makes him so. Cousin Emeline, I hope you won't grow to be taken up with Brother Strang, like Mary French. I thought he looked at you to-day."

Emeline's face and neck were scarlet above her black dress. The Gentile resented as an insult what the Mormon simply foreboded as distasteful to herself; though there was not a family of that faith on the island who would not have felt honored in giving a daughter to the Prophet.

"I hate him!" exclaimed Emeline, her virgin rage mingled with a kind of sweet and sickening pain. "I'll never go to his church again."

"Father wouldn't like that, Cousin Emeline," observed Roxy, though her heart leaped to such unshackled freedom. "He says we mustn't put our hand to the plough and turn back. Everybody knows that Brother Strang is the only person who can keep the Gentiles from driving us off the island. They have persecuted us ever since the settlement was made. But they are afraid of him. They cannot do anything with him. As long as he lives he is better than an army to keep our lands and homes for us."

"You are in a hard case betwixt Gentiles and Prophet," laughed Emeline.

Yet the aspects of life on Beaver Island keenly interested her. This small world, fifteen miles in length by six in breadth, was shut off by itself in Lake Michigan, remote from the civilization of towns. She liked at first to feel cut loose from her past life, and would have had the steamers touch less often at St. James, diminis.h.i.+ng their chances of bringing her hateful news.

There were only two roads on the island--one extending from the harbor town in the north end to a village called Galilee at the extreme southeast end, the other to the southwest sh.o.r.e. Along these roads farms were laid out, each about eighty rods in width and a mile or two in length, so that neighbors dwelt within call of one another, and the colony presented a strong front. The King of Beaver could scarcely have counselled a better division of land for the linking of families. On one side of the Cheesemans had dwelt an excellent widow with a bag chin, and she became Elder Cheeseman's second wife. On the other side were the Went-worths, and Billy Wentworth courted Roxy across the fence until it appeared that wives might continue pa.s.sing over successive boundary lines.

The billowy land was green in the morning as paradise, and Emeline thought every day its lights and shadows were more beautiful than the day before. Life had paused in her, and she was glad to rest her eyes on the horizon line and take no thought about any morrow. She helped her cousin and her legal and Mormon aunts with the children and the cabin labor, trying to adapt herself to their habits. But her heart-sickness and sense of fitting in her place like a princess cast among peasants put her at a disadvantage when, the third evening, the King of Beaver came into the garden.

He chose that primrose time of day when the world and the human spirit should be mellowest, and walked with the farmer between garden beds to where Emeline and Roxy were tending flowers. The entire loamy place sent up incense. Emeline had felt at least sheltered and negatively happy until his voice modulations strangely pierced her, and she looked up and saw him.

He called her uncle Brother Cheeseman and her uncle called him Brother Strang, but on one side was the mien of a sovereign and on the other the deference of a subject. Again Emeline's blood rose against him, and she took as little notice as she dared of the introduction.

The King of Beaver talked to Roxy. Billy Wentworth came to the line fence and made a face at seeing him helping to tie up sweet-peas. Then Billy climbed over and joined Emeline. They exchanged looks, and each knew the mind of the other on the subject of the Prophet.

Billy was a good safe human creature, with the tang of the soil about him, and no wizard power of making his presence felt when one's back was turned. Emeline kept her gray eyes directed towards him, and talked about his day's work and the trouble of ploughing with oxen. She was delicately and sensitively made, with a beauty which came and went like flame. Her lips were formed in scarlet on a naturally pale face. Billy Wentworth considered her weakly. He preferred the robust arm outlined by Roxy's homespun sleeve. And yet she had a sympathetic knowledge of men which he felt, without being able to describe, as the most delicate flattery.

The King of Beaver approached Emeline. She knew she could not escape the interview, and continued tying vines to the cedar palisades while the two young islanders drew joyfully away to another part of the garden.

The stable and barn-yard were between garden and cabin. Long variegated fields stretched off in bands. A gate let through the cedar pickets to a pasture where the cows came up to be milked. Bees gathering to their straw domes for the night made a purring hum at the other end of the garden.

"I trust you are here to stay," said Emeline's visitor.

"I am never going back to Detroit," she answered. He understood at once that she had met grief in Detroit, and that it might be other grief than the sort expressed by her black garment.

"We will be kind to you here."

Emeline, finis.h.i.+ng her task, glanced over her shoulder at him. She did not know how tantalizingly her face, close and clear in skin texture as the petal of a lily, flashed out her dislike. A heavier woman's rudeness in her became audacious charm.

"I like Beaver Island," she remarked, winding the remaining bits of string into a ball. "'Every prospect pleases, and only man is vile.'"