The next morning I got up for a few moments at six and peered out of my high window. Some of the smaller trees have been cut down and I could see a little distance into the forest. It looked so quiet—so expectant. I have decided that that is the spirit of these mountain forests of the New World—expectancy, waiting. Civilisation is held in check at present by the laws of New York, which owns the greater portion of the Adirondack tract. But for how long? And they have had more than a glimpse of man, these forests, from the old dead trappers to the flowers of modern and greedy civilisation. What is it they expect? What disaster? What conquests? It seems to me sometimes as if they were holding their breath. And what are they like inside? I wish I had eyes to see? Besides the two thousand lakes there are springs, springs everywhere; there must be millions of them in the great range. From what vast subterranean flood do they burst forth? What silent potent waiting tides are moving unceasingly beneath the brown lakes and the riches of the forest, have been moving since the great glaciers melted?
At eight the keeper’s wife, Mrs. Opp, came up with my breakfast—coffee, and “johnnie cake,” and fish, fresh from the lake, and I detained her for a few moments, for she interests me unaccountably. As I said, she is very fat—she must weigh not a pound less than seventeen stone—and cannot be under five feet nine. Her face is German, but the features are small and delicately cut, and her complexion is as fine of grain as an infant’s. She must be seven or eight and thirty, but her face has that virginal expression of the married woman who never has had children. Her manner is gracious—I cannot apply any other word to it; but even more noticeable, I think, are her teeth and nails. They are perfect and perfectly kept. And yet she is illiterate, and has, she let fall, worked all her life. When Mrs. Van Worden is here she is both cook and housekeeper. Her husband, the keeper, is a big lithe handsome man, with regular features and a white throat. In his rough costume he looks the ideal mountaineer.
“I am not going to be lazy every day,” I remarked apologetically. “But I walked nearly all the way yesterday and then sat up late.”
“No wonder yor’re tired,” she said in her crooning indulgent voice. “A mile of it jest kills me. I git het up so, and my poor legs are that tired—Oh, my!” And she laughed a jolly laugh, as if, however, life were all sunshine.
“But surely you walk sometimes in these beautiful woods.”
“Not very much. I git about enough walkin’ round the house. When I go out of the woods in winter and visit hum fur a spell, well, then, I guess I do go about more. You see there’s somethin’ to go to, but up here—My! I worked in hotels mostly before I come here, so this seems kinder lonesome.”
“You don’t remain here in winter then? I don’t blame you.”
“Oh, I couldn’t. It’s that dismal! Frank, he comes in and out, but there ain’t no real need of me stayin’ here so I go home and have a real good time. I like it here. I like it here. It’s as good’s anywheres, only I’d have a hotel on the St. Lawrence if I could hev my choice. There’d be some life in that! Well, I must go down and not stand gassin’ here. Sure you got all you want? There’s lots more.”
I assured her that I had more than I could possibly eat, and she smiled graciously upon me and withdrew. She is like the policeman and Jemima and the sales-lady in her unconsciousness of caste, but with a difference. What that difference is puzzles me when I have time to think about it.
July 31st