Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/826

766 passes, knee-deep), guarded by wrecks of obsolete salt-mills—black cripples on whom depredation of pirate wind and man have done disaster and disarray. And below the brilliance of landward dune, flecked by olive-bush and scrawl of tough unsubmerged root, the old lighthouse mare may plod with older master through heavy cart track. There the boys hurry down to the Neck to bathe. The young folk on a Sunday flock by it to the beach. But the marsh in its humming radiance, lit by dragon-fly, nicked by swallow, haunted by cry of plover, draws undisturbed its double breath of life.

Little creeks, fingering estuaries, lesser ditches and runs, bring the far sea, booming unseen behind its dune wall, miles inland—salt to salt grass. Its strength percolates the ooze, and the tough, light stems of vigorous grass stand deep in a tide not obvious, invisible—a sort of secret heart of delight. How must the marsh await this driving pulse of the sea! And its upper waving and blossoming know both sea and land wind, the summer squall, the hydra of August thunder-head, and sudden dark that falls.

In September the marsh is peopled. Its lovely solitudes invaded, man comes to seek that which he terms his own. Little has he toiled for it. No dressing has he laid thereon. A windy March finds no sower striding across those locked barrens. Ploughing and delving therein is none, save by the primal forces that harrow at their will. And by the most devious of ways, the volcanic intermittent power sifting and dissecting the deep marsh loam comes from a moon beyond our immediate ether.

Without stimulation or cultivation of man, it has attained a proud maturity. He lays scythe to it in the neap tides, evading the real master, who bubbles into laughter in the outer bay, with regal strength to give and give again, spending carelessly in the law of truest giving.

From red farms far up the creek road where flame the maples, antique wagons come shackling over the uneven marsh roads, threading island after island. The old horses are tethered in the alders. Luncheon, stone bottle, an extra friendly coat of autumnal hue for the frosty evening drive, these are tucked under the seat, and the little army of workers is spread out over the marsh.

Then appear strange domed cities along its rifled spaces. The marsh gold is now stacked in treasuries. As each rises, men upon it trample and pack close, making splendid shapes of action and motion against a rollicking sky.

And this is done not for a day. For, in the more inaccessible spots, the winter frost only can unseal these treasuries, and they be then available and withdrawn.

So with some lurking doubt of that old master who may be creeping silently near, and whose October and wintry power they distrust, the men build little Stonehenge-like foundations, through which a tide may run. And, indeed, as one sees them at times, unroofed, scarring the marsh with their circular notches, it is as if prehistoric giants had left here their camp-fire or altar signs.

Now is the velvet of the marsh clean shorn away. Grooves and ugly furrows everywhere show the serrate path of machine. In their angular gashes the iridescent glaze of salty deposit shines in sunlight. Acrid marsh gas startles the sense as one adventures uncertain footing.

But wait a little until the winds have combed this ruffled surface, and the autumnal noon warmth has mellowed these poor stumps of grass and castaways of stick and stem. A glory unlike any budding April emanation shall enwrap the limitless russet and olive stretches and their coiling tide-runs.

Patch by patch, stains of bulbous samphire gather about the reaches. Its fine crimsons fleck the level distances. It is an overflow of swamp color, an escape from pasture brilliancies.

And the rose-gray of rosemary waves in delicate tufts, each as exquisitely upright as though some dainty child had been planting here a perishable garden. But the rosemary holds fast.

The marsh islands are glowing for miles and miles. Their undiminished orange and embrowned scarlet flash from the varied perspective like signals at sea. Over them is a stubborn sky of intense blue that fights winter to the death, and is sown already with a great wind,