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Title: The aristocrats
Author: Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
Release date: February 14, 2024 [eBook #72957]
Language: English
Original publication: London & New York: John Lane, 1901
Credits: D A Alexander, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by University of California libraries)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ARISTOCRATS ***
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
SENATOR NORTH
_Thirtieth Thousand_
THE CALIFORNIANS
_Fourth Edition_
PATIENCE SPARHAWK
_Second Edition_
THE DOOMSWOMAN
_New Edition_
The
Aristocrats
Being the impressions of the _Lady_
HELEN POLE dur^{ing} her sojourn
in The Great North Woods
as spontan^{eously} recorded in
her _letters_ to her friend
in North Brit^{ain} the
Count^{ess of} EDGE
and ROSS
[Illustration]
By
GERTRUDE ATHERTON
John Lane
LONDON--NEW YORK
1901
Copyright, 1901
_By_ JOHN LANE
_Second Edition_
The Crow Printing Company
New York
To
All Lovers
of
The ADIRONDACK _Peaks_
and _Forests_ and _Lakes_
this little volume
is dedicated
By
An Alien but Ardent and
Grateful Admirer
H. P.
Letter I
From _the Lady_ HELEN POLE _to the Countess of_ EDGE _and_ ROSS.
_Boulder Lake_, THE GREAT NORTH WOODS,
Hamilton County, New York, U. S. A.
June 16th
_Dear Polly_:
I am on top of a mountain by a lake, with other mountains towering
irregularly in all directions; a primeval wilderness, in fact, for
every mountain is covered with a dense forest, and we reached our lake
by an ascent up an almost perpendicular “corduroy” road--made of logs.
Agatha and I walked most of the time, for the way the horses stumbled
and strained was appalling. Of course poor Bertie had to stay in the
“buckboard”--a sort of box on wheels without springs--and stand the
terrible jolting; but I think the unique experience diverted him and he
would have enjoyed it rather if it had not been for the poor horses. I
could not look at them, and lingered some distance behind and stared
into this wonderful forest. The Adirondacks are said to be one of
the original ranges of the earth, and when one reflects that these
spruces and maples and hemlocks and birches had great-grandfathers
about the same time--the sensation is almost uncanny, and I realise
how over-civilised we all are. Not that I am blasée at twenty-six. God
forbid; and I never have been so keen about anything in my life as I am
to see every rapidly succeeding phase of this extraordinary country. It
is so new, so various, so contradictory, so vital, so un-European.
But to return to the Adirondacks. By the merest good fortune we did
not have to go to an hotel, for, in spite of the fact that we brought
over a retinue of servants, I am sure that even Quick never would
have known how to go to work to find a house in this wilderness, and
it would have come to our taking a floor--if we could get it--of some
hotel, and having no end of bother. But on the Oceanic we got to know
rather well a Mr. Rogers, who belongs to one of the many clubs that
own lakes and tracts in the Adirondacks, and he offered us his house
or “camp”--said that his mother and sister were going abroad this
summer, and that he could live at the Club House, which he preferred.
Of course Bertie and Agatha demurred, as the club rules would not
permit Mr. Rogers to accept any rent; but I said at once to take it,
and gave them no peace till they consented. I urged that we could repay
Mr. Rogers’ hospitality a hundred fold in England, that we all hated
hotels and bother, and that it was of the utmost importance to settle
Bertie at once. Now they are very grateful to me, for Bertie, poor
darling, is better already, and the house is not only comfortable but
charming. It would hold five or six people besides the servants, and
is built of big logs, with the rough bark on, and an upper and lower
veranda connected by little flights of stairs. Inside it is “sealed”
with diagonal strips of polished wood instead of plaster; the floors
are also of hard wood with rugs, and the furniture is mostly cane and
very picturesque and jolly. In the living-room is a huge fireplace of
stones with the moss on, the low ceiling is crossed with heavy beams,
and there are several mounted deer heads. From the front verandas and
windows we get a fine view of the lake and the little irregularities
which form its bays, but on all other sides we look directly into the
forest. There is no clearing to speak of about the house, and the tall
spruce-trees, pointed like church spires, and the maples with their
delicate beautiful leaves form a perfect wall; for their branches grow
to the very ground. It is all very wild, and I am writing to you on a
table made from the lower section and part of the roots of a tree.
But I must tell you of something that happened on the journey. It
interested me deeply. We did not make the journey too comfortably.
Agatha sent all the servants but Bertie’s man, Parker, and including
our maids, to the lake three days before ourselves, in order that our
unconscionable number of boxes might be unpacked, and the place look as
familiar to Bertie as possible. At New York and Albany we did not miss
the servants and took for granted that wherever there were shillings
there were porters. But at a city with a Greek name, where we had to
change cars, we found ourselves standing on the platform in the midst
of portmanteaux, and Parker with his hands full supporting Bertie, who
was terribly knocked up by the trip. I asked a man if there were no
porters, and he said, “nup.” I forgot to say that poor Agatha had one
of her headaches, and for once everything devolved upon me. She sank
down upon a bench and looked as if she never intended to move again.
Parker assisted Bertie into the waiting-room, and then went in search
of tea and rolls. I approached a policeman. He was a big manly looking
fellow, and I was sure he would help me. He did, the dear thing. When I
asked him to tell me where I could find a porter, he said, “No porters
here, but I’ll take your things to the parcel room. Your train won’t
be along for forty-five minutes.” At the parcel window, when he had
handed all those big portmanteaux in and got me a cheque, I offered him
a quarter of a dollar, about the equivalent of our shilling. He refused
it so nicely. “Another time,” he said. I apologized, saying that the
act was mechanical, and he smiled and said, “Well, I guess you’ll find
that we can help a lady for nothing up here.” He then pointed out the
restaurant at the end of the platform, and after I had assisted Agatha
there, and had a cup of the most shocking tea I ever tasted, I looked
him up again; for I was so much interested in his refusal to accept a
tip that I wanted to talk to him. Agatha had subsided beside Bertie,
and would not have cared if I had stood on my head on the platform. I
began by asking him if he would help us on to the train, and he said
emphatically that he would, and then we talked about tipping, and
both agreed that it was a pernicious system, calculated to destroy a
man’s self-respect. He added with a fine scorn that he did not see
how a man who thought anything of himself could take any money but
his wages, particularly from a lady. Then he asked me if I wasn’t
English, and if my brother--or husband?--“brother, I guess, you don’t
look married”--were not consumptive. “He looks it,” he added; “but not
too far gone for the Adirondacks to set him up.” And then we talked
about the cheerful subject of consumption, and he seemed quite pleased
when I told him that so far Bertie had not developed tuberculosis,
although he had had twenty-six hemorrhages in the last two years, and
was getting weaker all the time. He told me I mustn’t worry, but give
him all the mountain air he could swallow and all the sunshine he could
“soak in.” I couldn’t make the man out at all. He had the monumental
dignity of our policemen, but he talked to me exactly as if I were his
equal, and, as he had no thought of taking a liberty, with no offensive
familiarity. And yet he certainly was not a gentleman working for his
living; just a plain, ordinary--well, I suppose the word American will
do as well as any other. All the Americans I have met think a jolly lot
of themselves, and I suppose my policeman was one of the finer flowers
of the Declaration of Independence. After he had helped us into the
train he shook hands with me and said he’d look forward to seeing me
again on my way back. “I knew you were English the moment I set eyes on
you,” he said, “and I thought by your looks you were very proud, and
high-and-mighty, but the minute you spoke I seen you were just as nice
as nice could be, and I’m glad to have done what I could for you.” As
the train moved out of the station I bowed to him and he touched his
helmet with his club like an officer saluting. Now what do _you_ make
of him?
There’s not a soul up here yet but ourselves; so you’ll doubtless be
inflicted with another letter in a day or two. I must go and read to
Bertie. He is swinging in a hammock on the front veranda in the sun
and _does_ seem so much better. The mornings and nights are cold, but
for several hours during the day the sun is heavenly, and one feels so
close to it up here. You, too, are a lone figure, not on a mountain but
on a moor, and dreadfully _ennuyée_, I fear; so relieve your loneliness
after my fashion and write to me often. I know that you have some one
else to write to--alas! that I have not--but heaven knows you must have
time for us both. What a thousand pities Freddy could not have died a
glorious death rescuing some one from the lions when they were walking
the streets of Umtali, or trying to assassinate Mr. Kruger. I am not
blood-thirsty, but we all have to die some time, and Freddy _is_ so
wicked, and has made you so unhappy, and there _is_ such a chance of
happiness for you, and I do so hate to think of you in a divorce court
with all the world reading the hateful particulars. Well, it is all on
the knees of the gods.
Bertie sends you his love, and I send you all of mine you have not
already.
HELEN.
Letter II
_From the Lady_ HELEN POLE _to the Countess of_ EDGE _and_ ROSS.
_Boulder Lake_,
June 18th
I wish you were up here with me, Polly; I am sure you would forget
all your troubles. It is such an extraordinary experience to be in a
primeval wilderness, where one never hears a church bell, never comes
suddenly upon a wayside calvary, never passes a peasant in costume,
nor a picturesque hovel. The civilisations and the arts that have
made Europe such an inexhaustible wonder never have ventured here.
It is Nature, virgin and ignorant, and it often gives me the most
unaccountable sensation. Perhaps when I am more familiar with it, I
shall be more successful in defining it. I have not grasped the spirit
of the place yet. There is nothing of the frowning majestic awesomeness
of wild mountain regions that I have read of and often imagined, and,
as surely, there is nothing of the peace of England--that peace that
must pervade any perfected civilisation just as repose comes to the
truly cultivated mind of middle years. It is something between the two,
beauty without tameness, solitude without calm, yet with none of the
feverish restlessness of the young civilisation at its feet, primeval
wildness without its terrors; for scarcely a living thing that harms,
human or brute, but has been exterminated; noble heights that never
frown. There you have the Adirondacks as I am able to interpret them
to you at present. They give me an intense pleasure, that is all I can
add. As we approached the mountains on the day of our arrival I thought
I should be disappointed, the foliage looked so _soft_. From a distance
one could not define a single tree; they are so densely limbed and
leafed, their branches grow so low, and they crowd so closely, that
the mountains looked as if covered by a thick shrubbery, through which
a path never had been cut, and out of which not a tree projected. But
after we were in the mountains all was changed, we drove through the
very heart of the woods, thick with high trees and full of a pleasant
gloom; and once in approaching them we passed a hill that looked to be
set close with green church spires, so thick were the spruce among the
maples.
The trees about the lake grow down to the edge of the brown water,
almost out of it, and so densely, that in rowing past, one rarely has a
glimpse into the woods. When one does, it is to see the great boulders
that have given the lake its name. They, too, are on the edge of the
lake, covered with moss that sometimes is green, sometimes a mingling
of the most delicate tints, pink and green and pearl and blue. Rioting
everywhere along the edge of the lake is the wild honeysuckle, pink
and intoxicatingly fragrant. By the Club House is an open field where
they raise hay. Just now it looks like a wild lawn full of buttercups
and daisies, almost as much of an anomaly up here in this wilderness as
these comfortable houses and gaily painted boats.
And the perfumes and the silence! how can I describe them? The fresh
primitive smell of earth that never has been turned, the sensuous
sweetness of the honeysuckle, the strong resinous vitalising odour of
the balsam tree. And the silence just misses being oppressive. The
birds sing one at a time. I have not yet heard a duet, much less a
chorus. Once in a while, there is the tinkle of a cow-bell, and the
wind is always playing gently with the tree-tops.
For a few days I greatly feared that Bertie would hate it, but he lies
for hours in the hammock, a balsam pillow beside him, either sleeping
or listening while Agatha or I read to him. He vows that he will shoot
deer with Mr. Rogers in September. That gives him two months and a
half--I wonder! I think I should be so happy I should quite go off my
head. But he is so young, and only a few of our ancestors have died of
consumption. Agatha, dear old mother, is conscious-stricken, because
the disease did not attack her instead of Bertie, and, although she
never would admit it, I think my aggressive health annoys her. I
believe that if I had rosy cheeks she would have left me behind; but if
I am white instead of pink, I have the deep vitality that I know Bertie
ought to have. I expect he often wonders, poor darling, why his sisters
of forty and six-and-twenty should have long superfluous lives before
them, while he, at barely eight and twenty, is stricken and miserable.
Agatha says it is the will of God, but I am afraid it was going the
pace and wet feet. Agatha frowns sternly when I suggest that it was
more Bertie’s fault than the Almighty’s, for although she will admit
that wet feet might have something to do with it, she will not even
listen to a hint of Bertie’s well-known delinquencies, will not admit,
dear austere nun-like soul, that such things exist in the world. She is
still inexorably opposed to your divorce, Polly; says that it is the
duty of a wife to accept her fate, etc., and when I try to explain, she
tells me I have no right to know anything about such shocking things
that do not really exist (God save her blessed inconsistent soul), and
walks austerely out of the room.
But we do know things, don’t we, Polly? I wonder if, in face of all
I have been so close to, I ever shall have the temerity to enter the
undemonstratable state of matrimony? Of course I know of a decent
number of comfortable marriages, and--well, two--happy ones, but
somehow the others, particularly yours, stand out; to say nothing of
the fact that all the girls who married in our first season, eight
long years ago, are flashing pretty strong. Sometimes I feel like a
widow with a past! But how many confidences I have listened to, and how
much sympathy I have been called upon to pour into temporarily blighted
lives! It is a blessed relief to be here in this silence and fragrance
and beauty; and when the horrors that men and women make for themselves
come into my mind, I go out and look at the solitary peak that towers
above the long receding range of mountains at the head of the lake.
Sometimes it is pale blue, sometimes light green; under a rain storm
it is a lurid grey. More often there are long shadows on it, which
constantly change in form, and the highest wind never seems to ruffle
its forests. It takes the significance out of our petty civilisation
and I sometimes wish I could live alone on it. I don’t suppose I really
do, though. Of course I have not lived yet, myself, and I dream my
dreams, and hope for better things than I have seen. I have filled my
writing-desk with balsam and I hope a little of its healthy fragrance
may reach you.
19th
To-day I had an experience which, in a way, reminded me of my
policeman. Once or twice I had noticed about the house a stout straight
freckled-faced girl, a daughter of a villager on an outer spur of the
mountains who was pressed into service by our invaluable Quick when the
house-maid he engaged in New York deserted him in the earlier stages
of the journey. As I came out of the woods this morning our rural
handmaiden marched up to me with an almost defiant air, a very high
colour, and said:
“I’d like to speak to a dook, ma’am, I mean lady.”
“Really?” I said.
“Yes, I’m going away. It’s the first place I’ve ever lived in where the
hired girls didn’t eat with the family, and I haven’t felt nice since
I’ve bin here. I don’t see any reason why you should be so terrible
proud if you are English; and all the help sayin’ ‘your grace’ and
‘your ladyship,’ makes my flesh crawl.”
“We are not proud,” I began, but she interrupted me passionately.
“Oh, yes you are. You hold your head as if the ground warn’t good
enough for you to walk on. I can’t help lookin’ at you because you’re
so beautiful with your black hair and your blue eyes and white skin,
and your nose is just lovely! That there Lady Agatha don’t look so
very different from any other old maid that I can see, and I’m sure
she dresses wors’n anything I _ever_ seen. I don’t mind her, but
_you_--_you_--make me feel like dirt. I just stare and stare at you
and hate myself because I can’t keep from wishin’ I was you----” Here
she made a struggle to control her voice and keep down her tears. “I
went to school till a year ago,” she continued, “and I’ve paid lots of
visits to well-to-do farmers in this county, whose daughters has had a
year’s schoolin’ in Utica, and I call them all by their first names--so
I can’t bear to feel the way you and all these high-toned help make me
feel----”
Here I felt so sorry for her, she was so plainly suffering in her dumb
lacerated pride, that I took her hand and patted it. “Don’t worry
about all that,” I said. “We belong to different countries, that is
all. Everything is on quite another plan in England. I can imagine how
absurd our old-fashioned titles must seem to you over here. You see how
wise your ancestors were to drop them. I cannot help mine, but I can
assure you that I am not proud--I never have thought of such a thing.
It is you who are proud, and I think your pride very fine. Why do you
wish to see my brother?”
She was somewhat mollified by this time and answered with a flash of
anticipation in her eyes:
“Because I’ve read about dooks and I’d give my eyes to speak to one.
I didn’t kinder believe there were such things outside of books and
noospapers.”
“Well, you shall speak to my brother,” I said. “Come with me.” I led
the way to the veranda, not without misgivings, for I did not know what
sort of humour our invalid would be in. And he _was_ in a wax about
something.
“Bertie,” I said, “here is a young person, native to this beautiful
wilderness, who wants to speak to you, being under the delusion that
Dukes are quite unlike ordinary mortals.”
Bertie, who was muffled up in a horrid old overcoat, with white mits on
his hands, glowered over his book.
“What rot!” he exclaimed. “What infernal rot. I should think you would
have more sense. I wish you’d get me a decent novel. I hate these
American things--all analysis, epigrams, scenery and virtue. America
must be a provincial hole. Fetch me----”
But I had hastened the maiden away. As she was about to retire to the
back regions, she stopped and turned her head.
“Well,” she remarked, “I guess I’m as good as he is, anyway. White
mits! My land! _He_ don’t make me feel nobody, only tired.” And she
looked quite pleased as she flirted her skirts through the doorway.
This letter should go by parcel post!
My love to you.
HELEN.
Letter III
_From the Lady_ HELEN POLE _to the Countess of_ EDGE _and_ ROSS.
_Boulder Lake_,
June 23d
_Dearest Poll_:
None of the Club people here yet, and if it were not for newspapers
and letters--a man in the employ of the Club climbs this perpendicular
mountain every evening with the post--I should cease to believe in
a world which lives in my mind as a mere clash of sound. It _is_ so
quiet here! Sometimes when I am alone in my room I throw a shawl over
the clock to muffle its ticking. It seems a cheap intrusion upon this
colossal silence. I have been in the woods for hours at a time when
not even a bird has trilled, nothing but that soft soughing of the
unsleeping wind in the tree-tops. In the evening an occasional caw-caw
comes from the forest, a lonesome cricket shrills, a frog croaks in the
reeds.
I often go deep down into the forest and listen to the faint monotonous
hum of the leaves, always a soft sound, when one gets away from the
rigid spruce, because the leaves of the maple are as delicate in
texture as they are in tint. And these leaves, in places, seem to
fill the woods. Unless you throw back your head you barely realise the
existence of the trees, only that gently moving lace-like curtain of
green many-pointed leaves that meets the leafy ground. The sunlight
splashes here and there. I have found a gorge whose gloom is eternal;
in the friendlier depths the twilight is almost green. You know how I
despise all theologies and churches and vulgar public demonstration
of what should be man’s most sacred inner life; but when I am alone
in the forest I always say my prayers; and that occasional solitary
communion with God is surely the only true religion for intelligent
beings. I have heard of “revival meetings” in which people “stand up
and confess Christ.” _Public emotions._ How unutterably vulgar and
cheaply sensational. And what pleasure can a religion be that is shared
with the multitude, that is formulated, ticketed, branded with the
approval of others? I hope everybody I know, except the one or two I
love, thinks me a pagan. I am jealous of what is more truly my own than
anything else can ever be.
But to return to my woods. I have spoken of the sleepless wind, but
occasionally it goes elsewhere, and I have sat for hours on one of
the boulders which strew these mountains, born of some unimaginable
convulsion, modelled by unrecorded glaciers, and waited eagerly for
even a bird to give the silence a tiny but startling shake. And yet,
as I have written you before, I think, there is none of the peace of
England here. But it is magnificent, this feeling of lofty remoteness,
of standing just under the sky, of feeling and hearing the silence.
There is sweetness and charm rather than grandeur in these woods, but
still not peace. Nature is much like human nature. While her youth
lasts--and how much man has to do with the quickening of time!--she
suggests turbulence in her silences, there is something disquieting,
even forbidding, in that very sweetness which is a careless incidental
gift. Sometimes when I am alone in the forest, a mile or more from
home, not even another “trail” but the one I dare not leave, the ferns
and dogwood brushing my waist, that broken green curtain motionless
against a colossal boulder, not a sound, not a fleeting suggestion of
any world beyond those ancient trees with their young leaves, those
immeasurable depths with other mountains and other forests beyond
them, all beauty, the very idealisation of one’s dreams of the “forest
primeval,” the isolation of mountain-tops made manifest, a fear comes
over me which I have no more been able to define than I have yielded
to. I know that the bear is infrequent and harmless, the panther is
gone for ever, that a poisonous snake has never been seen on the
Adirondacks, that tramps are unheard of, and that I cannot lose my way
if I keep to the trail. And as you know I am what is called heroic, and
have spent hours alone on English moors and in English woods. Never
before have I felt the sudden terror that assails me here in this
beautiful gentle and unthinkably aged forest, with its eternal virginal
youth. Some day the meaning of it will come to me suddenly, like the
girl’s face in the moon; you know I manage to get to the core of most
things.
Bertie is getting a little bored, and is restless, but is so much
better that he is very good-natured about it. He takes a short walk
with me in the forest every day, and a row when the sun is full on the
lake. I often row him, it is so good to have him all to myself. Agatha
has been the best of mothers to us, but after all she is _not_ our
mother, and she is almost too old for a sister. We love her, but we
love each other far more, more indeed than we ever have loved any one
else, but Dad; and sometimes when in his wretched physical weakness
Bertie drops his head on my shoulder, and becomes as confidential with
me as in his innocent boy days, I see into a soul that has more good in
it than bad, and much strength in spite of the sad weakness his broken
confessions reveal. I am sure now that if he recovers he will become as
useful, if not as great, a man as Dad. Ah, there was a man! He admired
Agatha from a distance, but he kept us two so close to him that we
ought to be a thousand times better and more sensible than we are. But
he has been dead six long years, Bertie has rank and riches, and I am
beautiful. What hope that the world would let us alone!
Agatha is so happy at Bertie’s improvement that she does not
care--except on his account--whether the lake people come up at all
or not, and, besides, she is too good to be bored. I do not mean that
sarcastically, for these people who are constantly thinking of others
never have time to sit down and commiserate their Ego.
This evening I was down at the edge of the lake watching the sunset--a
blue one of many shades, from limpid pale blue lakes to masses of rich
ultramarine, instead of the usual splendour of red and gold--when the
keeper passed me in a boat. He paused and pointed to the end of the
lake.
“Fog’s goin’ up the mountain, Miss,” he said. “Sure sign of rain; and
I heard a cuckoo in the woods to-day, another sign as never fails.
I guess them big fireplaces’ll come in handy for a day or two.”
Fortunately we have plenty to read.
I forgot to tell you that Jemima, our erstwhile handmaiden, of whom
I wrote you, and who is now “visiting” the lake-keeper’s family,
yesterday brought me two charming offerings, a basket of wild
strawberries from the meadow and a bunch of half-wild half-cultivated
pink roses. I simply buried my face in the roses, their sweetness was
so poignant, so delicious, that I wanted to inhale and absorb it all
at once, and I pressed them to every bit of my face and neck. The
strawberries, too, were so fragrant! such tiny things, but with a most
agreeable acid sweetness. I have not seen Bertie enjoy anything so much
for a long time; and when I could no longer smell my roses--alas! for
the quick blunting of mortal sense!--I smothered Bertie’s face in their
pink fragrance and enjoyed them again, vicariously.
24th
I received your first long letter last night and I have read it no less
than four times. That proves a good many things, does it not?--that you
write the most interesting letters in the world, that I am interested
in all that concerns you, and that I have no other correspondent.
Freddy certainly is amusing; there is a touch of farce in every
tragedy; but I am glad you have not answered his effusions even
sarcastically. And I am glad the days of duelling are over. It is true
that V. R. would settle the whole question promptly, but then there
would be a scandal, which has been avoided so far, and still can be,
even with the inevitable divorce. But I know how hard it all is on you,
and fancy-free as I am and always have been, I can well imagine that
the separation is the hardest of all.
I am hoping my letters cheer and interest you. It is all so interesting
to me, here in this wilderness of the new world--I feel exactly like
one of the old colonials--that I love to write about it.
It has been storming for a week, cold and wind and rain; and we have
spent the time in the living-room, about the big rock fireplace
filled with blazing logs. We are very cosy within, and have plenty
to read, and Bertie says he likes it for a change; but I never heard
such howling furious winds. Every now and again there is a crash in
the forest and I run to the window. But that wall of trees, with its
branches to the ground, is impenetrable. It creaks and bends and
grinds, and the beeches and maples shake wildly in the blast, but
there is no rift. But I can imagine the wild scene, the ruin in those
forest depths. What isolation! And how like the storms that rage in our
inner life that no mortal eye ever glimpses. My woods suggest virgin
sweetness no longer. That wall of wet angry leaves surrounding a blind
furious struggle of forces, the writhing fighting trees raging at being
assaulted by the elements, shrieking through the forest when they
are overcome, the torn surface of the lake, all give me a feeling of
delicious terror, and I wish that I were a poet.
Bertie, while we were in New York, subscribed for no less than seven
newspapers, and Mr. Rogers kindly made me out a list of the best
American novels of the past ten years, every one of which I bought. I
have read the newspapers aloud to Bertie ever since our arrival, and
during this week I have read--to myself; Bertie does his own novel
reading,--just twenty-six works of American fiction. After a two week’s
course of the newspapers I had come to the conclusion that the United
States was the most full-blooded nation the world had ever known;
bursting with virility and energy, a great lusty young giant, full of
good and bad, sophisticated, but so busy as to have retained a certain
native ingenuousness; its cities presenting the very extremes of virtue
and vice; the monotony of its Western farms varied by picturesque
desperadoes;--but I have wandered from my simile: I was trying to
say that the young giant was an extraordinary compound of primeval
passions, with the force that those passions alone are the mainspring
of, and the sophistication which the old world flung into his brain the
day his eyes saw the light; a little like a raging lion with the soul
of a man. In some of the newspapers these extremes meet; in others I
find either the intense conservatism or the rampant radicalism which
are bound to be in this country of extremes; but in even an old fogy
like the Morning----[A] I find the same suggestion, doubtless because
young men write for it, although under a restraint that has evidently
never been heard of in the offices of the Morning----.[A]
But the literature of the country! It would give one a precisely
opposite impression of “Americanism.” It is true that in England I had
read three or four American novels that seemed to me full of blood
and life, but I infer they are not literature, for they are not on
Mr. Rogers’ list (he inherited, grew up in, one of the three or four
distinguished publishing houses of the country, so I suppose he knows),
and, judging from these twenty-six novels, I should, had Bertie failed
to subscribe for those papers, have concluded that the United States
was in about the middle stage of anæmia, not yet in the pernicious
stage, but with blood dangerously watered. These books, judging by
the extracts from reviews at the back, and the number of editions
quoted, have been lauded by the critics, and well patronised by the
public--the same public which makes up the component parts of the
lusty young giant. I must say I cannot see him reading his literature.
It is superlatively well written; frequently it has brilliancy and
style and form; the touch of both men and women is, often, almost
elusively delicate; the conversations sprightly and epigrammatic; the
sentiments most proper and elevated; the side of life shown is almost
invariably life as it ought to be, not as it is; nobody’s taste is
offended, nobody is told anything he ought not to know (he can learn
all that every day in the newspapers, some of which claim to have a
million readers); they are always readable and seldom commonplace. But
they never by any chance forsake the obvious. Altogether, one feels
in the most excellent, elegant, irreproachable company, for even in a
story of the slums, or one containing, perchance, an irregular baby,
the author keeps you close to himself and whispers it all to you; he
never lets the objectionable directly offend your sensitive soul. I
now am inclined to believe that old story of the drawers on the piano
legs. What is the keynote of this American literature? I have hunted
for it industriously and talked it over with Bertie. We both have
come to the conclusion that it is intended to be “aristocratic.” That
is the only way in which we can explain the literature of this most
strenuous and vigorous of nations. High above the hurly-burly certain
of its cultivated members, gifted with a pretty trick of words, are
endeavouring to create a rarefied atmosphere which only the elect
can enter, where those that do enter prove themselves to be of the
elect. Roast beef, roast goose, plum pudding and burgundy, bread and
butter and potatoes, apples and Yorkshire pudding are never served;
only the entrees, the thin red and white wines that warm gently,
but never intoxicate; champagne at rare intervals, and never, Oh,
never! in my lady’s slipper;--the most dainty and expensive sweets,
ice-creams of exceptional make, never common vanilla or chocolate,
and occasionally--I should have put it first--a ducky little cutlet;
birds, of course, caviare, and--Oh, I had forgotten, no _pie_. Pie is a
universal taste, therefore bourgeois, like roast beef. And Bertie and
I are so devoted to roast beef, and have formed almost a passion for
pie! Bertie says he will lie and count the leaves on the trees before
he will read another, and even Agatha says they are unsatisfactory,
and that she prefers sermons--occasionally she reads one aloud to us!
I never have taken kindly to this form of literature, but I really
think, with all their obsolete ideas, they have more substance, more
_inside_, than these lively, modern, educational, elegant, but--timid
novels. I wonder if that is the word and why? I’ll ask Mr. Rogers.
Two or three of the newspapers, as I told you are stately and
conservative, and I notice that their review columns have the exact
tone of the literature. I was told in New York that their sales were
small but intensely aristocratic--so much so that a popular politician
could not afford to be seen with one--and that the sensational papers
had enormous circulations, and were by no means ignored by “the very
best people,” that they did good by exposing the “crooked” methods
of monopolists and all sorts of abuses, and that they wielded an
immense political influence--also that many of the creators of the
nation’s bloodless masterpieces wrote occasionally for them--for a high
consideration--and were not averse from reaching the larger audience.
It now comes back to me, I once heard that there is an immense sale in
the United States for the sort of literature forbidden by our County
Council. Yet there is no law to suppress these plague-laden rats
burrowing in the cellars of the social structure. It seems to me that
we are more advanced, after all. We know the world and frankly admit
it. No book frightens us if it is written by a man whose gifts and
whose experience fit him to write for people who demand that good taste
alone shall be the line of cleavage between the real and the ideal of
life, who knows that we want truth and not polite fibs, but the truths
that lie in red roast beef and rich warm wine, not in some nasty mess
washed down by rum--nor yet diseased livers and absinthe. From these
last, indeed, we have the County Council to protect us, we have only to
reject the dull and the imported thin, and to encourage frankly those
who add to our knowledge of life and mature our minds. The exceptional
man and woman sees, comes into contact with phases of life that the
average mortal never brushes. It is, I hold, their duty to tell _all_
they know; their only lookout is to tell it for the sane not for the
erotic mind. The great writers of the Past all have proved that, given
the proper treatment, there is no subject yet evolved on earth that
cannot be discussed. But I should say that the great Writers of the
Past had never been imported to the United States. Perhaps they were
carefully edited and put into drawers first.
By the way, talking of the strange inconsistencies of this country, I
have noticed much the same quality in the many American women who have
visited England from time to time, some of whom I have known rather
well. When they have a lover--and they usually have as far as I am able
to judge--they appear to be so frightened that people will find it out.
They say and do the most absurd things to throw you off the track. Such
unnecessary little explanations and subterfuges--as if any one cared!
We are almost frank about our immoralities, carrying things off with a
high hand and contemptuously daring any one to question us. I am not an
upholder of immorality, and, so far as I have seen, it carries little
happiness with it--neither does virtue, for that matter. What does?
Living on a mountain top and dreaming of ideals?--and I would advise
women generally to avoid the complications as long as they can, above
all the heartache for the man whom no legal tie is always bringing
back to them; but I think an insolent admission of it far preferable
to hypocrisy, and not nearly so demoralising. All the Americans I have
known seemed to me to be constantly striving for something they had
not, for a notch above. I believe that originally it was the ideal the
young republicans, in common with their republic, strove for, but now
I think they are all ashamed of being middle-class and trying to be
aristocratic, and they fancy that to be elegantly correct and proper is
a part of the game. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! How little they know.
26th
This morning we had a thunder-storm in the midst of a heavy fog--a
pure white one like those we call a mist in our country, and bearing
no resemblance to the London pea-soup. The lightning flashing through
it had an odd and beautiful effect. Later the fog rolled _down_ the
mountain to the valleys of lower ranges, leaving only a light mist on
the mountains and peak opposite. Through this the sun shone gently, and
the dense low-looking forests on those distant heights looked as if
lightly powdered. I have been down into the forest again. It is wet,
but fresher and greener than ever, and full of sweet smells. The balsam
when wet, fills the woods with a fragrance that seems to cry aloud of
new vitality. Here and there a great tree has fallen, carrying feebler
ones with it. To-day I discovered that the ground is covered in many
places by a running shrub, that looks like its name, “ground pine.” And
in other places, on rocks, I found a stiff dark-green moss that looked
like a mass of tiny stars. There is so much beauty in these woods one
can make only so many discoveries a day. This morning after the storm,
I went out by the road instead of the trail, and walked down for a
mile or more on those dreadful logs. But that wild magnificent avenue,
dropping and turning abruptly, lured me on. Suddenly I saw straight
ahead for many miles, and at the end of that lofty perspective was a
great mountain, powdered with mist; afterward as I stood watching it,
entranced, darkening to a deep rich blue. And between my avenue and
that far mountain, was only another lofty valley, high above the level,
far from the quick impatient sound of cities. I had not before so fully
understood--and revelled in--our isolation.
It sometimes appalls me to be so far from a doctor or a chemist shop,
but after all what the Adirondacks cannot do for Bertie no man can,
and Agatha has a trunk full of physic. And these _friendly_ mountains
make disaster and heartbreak seem impossible. That adjective is one
of their spirit’s keynotes. The post came very late last night and
I spent the earlier morning hours reading the newspapers to Bertie.
I do not know why Americans should be blamed for their extremes of
wealth and poverty, their proneness, indeed, to rush to extremes of all
sorts, when they have such an example in their climate. Imagine, Polly,
people dying in New York City of the heat, while up here, not three
hundred miles away, and in the same State, we were huddled in furs, a
roaring fire in every room. During the past nine days we have had the
thermometer at 34° and at 86°, we have had sultry thunder-storms on one
day and cold rains on the next. To-day it has been heavy and sullen,
but yesterday was full of splendour, with an exhilaration in the air
that filled Bertie with life and youth once more. His very cheeks
seemed to fill out, and his eyes sparkled as they used to do when his
legs would not carry him to the cricket-field fast enough.
By the way, dear, Mr. Rogers came up yesterday with several other men.
(The families follow in about a week.) They have been fishing since
early morn, regardless of the thunder-storm, but have caught little,
as the fish in these lakes have much to eat, and grow cleverer every
year. Hunter, the lake-keeper, told me of their ill-luck, but when I
expressed sympathy he shrugged his shoulders.
“They like it,” he said; “and them as does’d set and fish all day in a
wash-tub.”
But Mr. Rogers arrived quite early yesterday morning, and spent nearly
all of the day and evening with us. Bertie, who improves steadily in
spite of all climatic vagaries, was delighted to see him, and they
exchanged sporting experiences for several hours.
I have not described Mr. Rogers to you, I think. He is what they
call in this country a “great publisher,” by which I infer is meant
a rich and successful one whose prestige is vastly added to by the
fact that he inherited the “great” business, and is not self-made. A
young man, an author, who sat at our table on the Oceanic, told me
that Mr. Rogers’ firm, and three or four others, set the standard for
American literature, and that any book with his hallmark on it would
be accepted as literature whether the public bought it or not. He has
encouraged, helped to create, as it were, the latter-day distinctive
American literature, which Bertie and I have so rebelled against these
rainy days, and was one of the first to make fashionable the story of
locality and dialect. (I think he ought to be hanged for that.) If you
don’t publish with one of these houses, my informant told me, your
struggle will be a long one. But all that is not very interesting, not
nearly so much so as the man himself He is about fifty-two, I should
think, with that tall thin American figure, which when ill-carried is
so ungainly and provincial, but very distinguished, if a little stiff,
when a man has received the proper training. His face is the coldest
I have ever seen; the eyes are grey, the hair and slight moustache
nondescript, the features and general outlines finely cut, the whole
effect, as I said, cold, and--well, aristocratic. I don’t think I ever
used the word before I came to this country, but it is always popping
off my pen here. It exactly describes Mr. Rogers. He would put a prince
of the blood to the blush; refinement (another great American word),
fastidiousness, correctness, the just not self-conscious superiority
over ordinary mortals, fairly radiate from him in so many cold steady
beams. And his voice is admirably modulated. He is a walking protest
against American provincialism, from its various accents to that
glorious principle that all men are free and equal, which I once read
in the Declaration of Independence. (Dad thought so much of that, and
used to say it was the highest expression of the Ideal, put into the
purest English that ever had been contributed to the literature of
Politics.)
Nevertheless, wherever the source of it may lie, Mr. Rogers is
charming. Perhaps it is because while he looks as if mortal woman could
not fascinate him, he has an air of troubling himself to entertain
her. Occasionally he lets her see that her wiles shake his armour just
a trifle and that he does not tighten it up again, but permits her
glance to penetrate in search of a heart. You don’t find a heart--at
least I speak for myself--but you find all sorts of pleasant spots,
and actually experience a sense of flattery when he laughs heartily
at one of your sallies, or keeps his cold eyes fixed steadily on
yours as you talk, the reflection of a smile in them. I know that he
can be sarcastic and sneering, for I overheard a bout between him
and my author acquaintance of the Oceanic; therefore, we who are
favoured should find a deep satisfaction in basking in the smiles of
this austere and fortunate person. And he certainly can say the most
charming things and make you want to please him in return.
As he went through the University of Yale and has alluded to a
great-grandfather I should know, even if I had not been told, that he
is not a “self-made American”--a variety I am still waiting and wanting
to meet. It would be so much like the real thing.
When I thought Bertie had talked enough I took Mr. Rogers for a walk
in the forest--and, by the way, it was he who called my attention to
the ground pine. He was delightfully solicitous lest I get my feet wet,
or catch cold; and when you have been watching over some one else for
two years, who is, also, quite the centre of all that sort of thing,
you find such solicitude rather fascinating. Mr. Rogers is a widower,
by the way, and I have heard that American women train their husbands
excellently.
We talked about ferns and trees and birds for a time, and I had the
good fortune to see two beautiful birds, one a bright corn-flower
blue from tip to tail, the other a deep orange with black wings. But
neither they nor their comrades lifted their voices for a moment. I
suppose they have sore throats, poor things. But I did not notice the
silence particularly, as we talked all the time. I asked him to tell me
something of the people who were coming, and he replied that they were
his intimate friends for the most part; that, indeed, forming a club to
buy the lake, that they might all be together for six or eight weeks in
summer, had been his suggestion. He and a number of other men come for
a fortnight in the early spring to fish, and some of the families stay
on into September for the deer, but not many, and the lake has rather a
bachelor appearance after the last of August.
“I’d like you to define your set,” I said, rather bluntly. “I infer
you would not condescend to belong to the fashionable frivolous
world, and--well--you are not my idea of a Bohemian, nor yet exactly
middle-class--I mean what I imagine the American middle-class to be.”
“No,” he said, smiling, “we are not fashionable in the ‘400’ meaning
of the word, nor are we Bohemians, nor yet middle-class. The set to
which I belong, if you must have all the facts--and you have only to
command me for all the facts on any subject that I understand--embraces
what might vulgarly be called the successful brains of New York--and
those of other cities which have come to us to stay. Mind you, I mean
successful in the right way: editors, publishers and authors, who aim
only to give the world the most fastidious expression of the American
spirit, a few artists--although, as a rule, they herd together; but
there are several fine illustrators who class themselves with us;
also people who do not pretend to give to the public, but who love
literature, music, and art of all sorts and prefer meeting people of
brains and refinement to associating with a class which thinks of
nothing but spending money.”
“In short,” I exclaimed, “you are the true aristocracy of New York.”
“Yes,” he replied unsuspiciously. “I think we are. There was a time
when to be in the fashionable set of New York argued birth and
breeding; money was no passport in those days. But to-day there is
no other; the ‘400,’ as it is absurdly called, has so few family
trees that they could all be stored in one linen closet; it is money,
money--and--consequently--the sort of vulgarity one most wants to
avoid.”
“But many of your set must have money,” I said, determined to get to
the bottom of these puzzling distinctions; “all of these cottages must
have cost a great deal of money, particularly on top of a mountain with
corduroy roads; and the keeper has often let fall remarks from which I
have inferred that no economy is practised by your friends.”
“Oh, yes,” he replied with that flicker of humour in his eyes and voice
which makes him transiently human, “there are several respectable
millions among us, but the point is, we none of us are disgustingly
rich. We are not known by our wealth, it is not invariably mentioned
coincidently with our names, and, indeed, we stand on quite another
basis. And many of these delightful people you will meet in a few days
are only comfortably off--although they all have enough to entertain
with in their own individual fashion.”
“You don’t mean that some are eccentric?” I demanded. “Surely you would
not countenance eccentricity.”
“Certainly not!” he exclaimed, quite as emphatically as I had expected;
“no cultivated person ever was eccentric and ‘Bohemians’ are welcome
to the monopoly of it for their vulgar advertising. I mean that each
entertains according to his--or shall I say her?--means, and manages so
to stamp her affairs with her own individuality that one never thinks
of the amount expended.”
“It sounds very alluring, but a little alarming,” I said. “Do they
_all_ come up here?”
“Oh, no, and many more men than women. Our women have their delicious
frivolities, I assure you, and are always running over to Europe to
replenish their really splendid wardrobes, while others seem never to
tire of travel. But those who do come are very representative and I
want you to like them better than those whose highest ambition is to
get into your own set in England.”
“I have met some charming Americans,” I replied, “and they always
seemed bright and full of talk. It was only when they tried to be
English that I didn’t like them. Bertie adores American women, but
whether he will like this superior intellectual variety----”
“Oh, do not form an erroneous impression,” he said, hastily. “I assure
you they do not in any way resemble the poor Bostonians who have been
so severely caricatured. They have accomplished the happy combination
of intellectual activity and appreciation, with a light worldliness and
a love of the best that their money and opportunities can buy, which
makes them unique in their country.”
“I infer that your set is quite exclusive, difficult to get into.”
“It is--much more so than the fashionable set, for money is far more
plentiful in this country than that peculiar combination of brains,
culture, and pecuniary success which I may say is the hallmark of our
set. I have a theory that the right sort of gifts always is successful;
by that I mean those gifts which are distinctively American in the
highest sense--Americanism in all its wonderful distinctiveness, but
polished, refined, cultivated, purified of dross. The exponents of it
naturally are successful with the large increasing number throughout
the country who possess the instinct to rise higher and strive for the
best; therefore, when these exponents are gathered together anywhere,
they form a fastidious circle which excludes inharmonious spirits,
and constitutes what is now the real aristocracy of the country. But,
I can assure you, we are perfectly normal,” he added, with his rare
delightful smile. “We dine and wine each other, have many a game of
poker, love sport, have our boxes at the opera, and know the world
pretty thoroughly.”
“It sounds profoundly interesting,” I said, but when I repeated the
conversation to Bertie he growled that it was “jolly rot.”
“I shall like the men if they are like Rogers,” he added; “for he’s
a jolly good sort inside that chain-mail armour of his; but I feel
sure I shall hate the women. I’ll be bound they are rotters, every
one of them--the personification of their self-conscious provincial
literature. If they are I’ll make a public scandal by flirting with
Jemima.”
27th
Curiously enough I ended my last entry with Jemima’s name, and I have
just had another characteristic conversation with her. Last night I
awakened suddenly out of a sound sleep, my mind alert with the idea
that something had happened to Bertie. I sprang out of bed and opened
the door. At once I heard Parker moving about Bertie’s room--his own
adjoins it and he is devotion itself, the good soul. I was not one
minute, I can assure you, getting into a wrapper and crossing the
hall. Parker opened the door for me, and when I saw his anxious face I
pushed him aside and hastened to the bed. There lay Bertie white and
gasping; and Polly, when I saw that towel I thought for a moment I
should faint. He has not had a hemorrhage now for so long that I had
fallen indolently into the belief he never would have another. I had
put those dreadful towels--which for two years were spread all over my
imagination--quite out of my mind. What brought on this attack I cannot
imagine--but I am not going to horrify you with details. I put my arm
under his head and sat there all night. He was not able to get up until
this afternoon and I did not leave his room. When, however, he was in
his hammock on the veranda, with Agatha reading the _Times_ to him, I
slipped away to the woods, for I wanted to be alone.
I was too tired to walk far, but when I felt quite alone I sat down on
a rock in those friendly depths and cried bitterly. The future, after
this really radiant interval, seemed doubly dark and uncertain. How
again could I ever be _sure_ that Bertie would get well? The doctor
said that the Adirondacks were the last hope, and if Bertie wears them
out----
Suddenly I became conscious that some one was staring at me. I rose
hastily, dabbing my eyes, and confronted Jemima. Her mouth and eyes
were wide open.
“You ain’t cryin’?” she gasped. “You! Land o’ livin’!” and then she
recovered herself and added apologetically, “I guess you didn’t hear
me comin’, these wood trails is so soft. Won’t you set down again? I
wouldn’t go back with my eyes red if I was you, because there are two
or three gentlemen to your camp and they think you’re so beautiful I’d
hate to have them see you when you ain’t.”
I meekly resumed my seat and Jemima perched herself on a log opposite.
I was rather glad of the diversion, now that my grief had spent itself,
and Jemima always amuses me.
“You have not gone home?” I asked.
“No, ma’am. I’m not goin’. I’m goin’ to stay and help Mis’ Hunter.
There’s an awful lot of work here in summer, and her other hired girl’s
not very strong.”
“Well, I am glad you have found a place to suit you. I presume you eat
with Mrs. Hunter and her family?”
“Yes’m.” Then she added, with uncontrollable curiosity, “What were you
cryin’ for, anyway?”
“My brother was very ill again last night and I am terribly anxious
about him.”
“And do you high-toned English folks with titles love each other and
have troubles just like us plain folks?” she demanded.
I could not help laughing. “Why not?” I asked.
“Oh, ’cause you seem just like people in books, not like real live
folks. Seems as if you oughter just sail round with peeple waitin’ on
you and never have any every-day thoughts and feelin’s.”
“I assure you we are very human,” I said drily, “and perhaps we feel
both joy and sorrow more keenly than you do. There is every reason why
we should.”
“But I’ll bet you never called your parents mommer and popper.”
Of course I laughed again. “No, because those musical endearments do
not happen to be customary in my country. I do not remember calling my
mother anything, for she died when I was two years old. But we both
called my father Dad.”
She gasped, “Naw, you didn’t. You never called a dook Dad.”
“Oh, but we did,” I exclaimed, glowing as certain memories rose; “and
when he used to come home from long tiring sessions in the Upper House,
or Cabinet meetings--he was a very conscientious legislator, and had
held more than one position of great responsibility--he loved to lie
down on the floor, and let us run all over him. It was my brother’s
delight to polish Dad’s boots with his toothbrush, and I used to barber
him with my doll’s scissors. When we got too big for all that he gave
us even more of his time, every hour he could spare; he even helped
tutor us, and he never went to the continent without us. While we were
studying he never went at all, and during our holidays--which were
usually his own--he either took us travelling or lived in the country
with us. He adored us and we adored him.”
“My! Well, I don’t know as I ever seen any farmer make such a fuss over
his kids as that, but farmers are terrible busy.”
“So was my father, but he knew the exact value of everything in life,
and that is the reason he made so much of love.”
This was beyond her, and she merely remarked: “I suppose you took on
terrible when he died.”
“I didn’t ‘take on,’ but no words ever can express my misery.”
“And do you have other kinds of trouble too? Do your fellers ever go
back on you? I don’t mean _you_; I guess you ain’t in any danger of
havin’ your heart broke; but I mean other grand ladies with titles? Do
they ever get left like us common folks.”
“I have known a good many to ‘get left,’” I replied, smiling at
certain reminiscences, “Human nature is pretty much the same in all
spheres--more so, perhaps in ours, where people have so much flung at
their feet that fickleness is a natural consequence.”
“I guess men is fickle everywhere. I know several that has gone back on
real nice girls just because they seen another girl they liked better.
I’d _hate_ to get left! My!”
“You speak for your sex,” I said. “I have known many who looked
indifferent, but I never knew one who was.”
“I guess I’d try to look as if I didn’t care, but I guess the louder I
laughed the more people’d suspicion I was all water inside. You look
real nice now. Your nose ain’t red any more; but your eyes’s got rings
under them. I don’t see why you need to set up nights when the Dook’s
got that there gentleman, Mr. Parker, to wait on him.”
“Well, I am his sister, you know,” I said lightly, and then, as I was
tired, rather, of Jemima, I went back to the house. Bertie seems much
better to-night, and is now asleep. I have hung branches of balsam all
over his room. They look so brilliantly green against the light-brown
varnished wood which defines every spike. And their fragrance! It ought
to fill Bertie’s poor lungs with new life. I am going for a row with
Mr. Rogers to-morrow morning, and if he says anything characteristic
I’ll write it out for your benefit. He has promised already to spend
our first autumn in Yorkshire with us, so you will be the more
interested when you meet him.
28th.
Our conversation was political and I must relate it to you. But first
the morning row. It was so beautiful. It was like drifting through
crystal. My distant peak was a monstrous turquoise. The thick woods
about us showed every shade of green. The honeysuckle is gone, but the
moss is richer than ever, and now and again one glimpses a purple lily.
In little bays there are water-lilies, and on the miniature islands
a wildness, a tangle of fern and young trees, that is indescribable.
In some places there is a good deal of pollen on the water, but the
greater part of the lake’s surface is golden-brown and bright. The
only blot on the lovely picture is the too frequent dead spruce. A
blight attacked them a year or two ago, and they still look like church
spires, but crumbling and gray.
We did not talk politics on the lake--Heaven forbid!--we drifted from
nature to art, of which he has a delightful knowledge; but I won’t
repeat all that as he did not say anything particularly illuminating.
It was at luncheon that the subject of politics came up; I forget
exactly how, although as I discuss our own with Bertie and Agatha
daily, and have lived in a political atmosphere all my life, I suppose
they never are far from the surface of my mind. Daddy always took a
certain interest in American politics, so I knew something of them
before I came, and heaven knows their newspapers would not leave one
long in ignorance.
Oh, I remember how the conversation began. After expatiating upon the
beauty of the lake and the silence of these mountain-tops--positively
when we stopped talking there had not been a sound but the gurgle of
water against the boat--I repeated what I remember writing to you about
the climate of this country setting, a bad example to the people in the
matter of extremes. Mr. Rogers smiled quickly, and looked at me with
his steady, and--shall I write it?--_approving_--gaze.
“There is some food for reflection in that,” he said. “But--how much do
you know of this country?” he added gently--I mean his voice took all
sting out of the words.
I told him what I have just written. I added that I was anxious to
learn more, and that I had been saturating myself in its press and
literature. Here Bertie grunted, and I said something hastily about
the delicious speckled trout Mr. Rogers had sent us which we were then
eating.
“And you found the same extremes there,” said Mr. Rogers, quite
ignoring my diversion, which I am positive he understood.
“Nevertheless, we have a very large middle-class, and there
are certain sections of the country where the climate is very
temperate--California, for instance.”
“I thought that State had perpetual snow in the north and perpetual
summer in the south, and eight months of dry weather and four months
of rain. A cousin of mine has ranched there for ten years. Surely
that bears out the national predilection for violent or sharply drawn
contrasts.”
“Well, you rather have me there,” he admitted gracefully. “One gets so
in the habit of saying certain things about a country just as one goes
on commenting upon a man’s cleverness after one ought to appreciate the
fact that a little frank analysis would prick the bubble. Florida is
perpetual summer with an occasional blizzard; but even that bears out
your theory.”
“As to your middle-class,” I asked, “don’t they all intend to be
upper-class some day? Are any of them contented to be middle-class,
generation in and generation out?”
“I don’t know much about them,” he said carelessly, “but the American
instinct certainly is to progress. You might indeed call progress our
watch-word. That is the reason this Bryan hue and cry won’t wash. His
democracy is merely a fancy word for plebeianism. The sixteen to one
nonsense has not received any more attention from that faction of the
press that booms Bryan than his everlasting farmer poor man pose, and
his plain homely wife, who sweeps off the veranda as the newspaper
correspondents approach the unpretentious mansion. Do they suppose for
a moment that any typical American wants an unbarbered shirt-sleeved
episode in the White House, with a follower of Dolly Madison, Miss
Harriet Lane, or their own popular and irreproachable Mrs. Cleveland,
bustling about at six in the morning dusting the White House furniture
or making gingerbread in the kitchen? Not for a moment. It would
mean retrogression, and they know it. They have no desire to be the
laughing-stock of other countries, to have the President of the United
States ill at ease and vulgar in the presence of Ambassadors. Just as
every American is animated by the desire to better himself, to get
ahead of his neighbours, so is he equally ambitious for his country. I
should be willing to wager my last dollar that if Bryan did reach the
White House, with his malodorous tribe elbowing all decent people out
of it, every self-respecting man who had voted for him would read the
press reports with a snort of disgust. Backsliding will never work, for
we have not reached the summit of our civilisation yet.”
“I don’t think much of the man you’ve got in now,” said Bertie. “He
takes an imposing photograph, but I infer that he is a sort of human
mask for Mr. Hanna.”
“McKinley is, as yet, the great historical puzzle without a key,” said
Mr. Rogers, evasively; “but we do want, now and always, a gentleman
in the White House, and with the many men in the country of birth and
breeding, education and distinguished ability, it argues a terrible
disease in our body politic that we cannot put the right man in the
right place and keep him there.”
“Have you ever made the effort?” I asked pointedly, for I had heard
things. “You, and all those who think as you do?”
As I had expected, he shook his head. “No. I cannot face the filth of
American politics. I touched them once during a great reform spurt in
New York, several years ago, and I feel as if my hands are not clean
yet. I shall not offend your ears by a description of the people
by whom we were jostled at the polls, nor what we had to handle in
attempting to push any reform measure through.”
“Good gad!” exclaimed Bertie, “where would England be if we had funked
the business of reform fifty years ago? My father took off his coat and
waded into the filth--which was a long sight worse than yours--up to
his neck. He and others like him made the country what it is to-day.
Upon my word, Rogers, you make me sick.”
Mr. Rogers, who is used to Bertie’s plain speech, smiled and replied
politely.
“Would that we had a great force like your father, to push us into the
right path. But I am afraid the great majority of would-be reformers
feel as I do.”
“It’s your roast beef,” growled Bertie, scowling at his. “It’s only
about half the weight of ours and only gives a chap half the blood he
needs.”
“It is more delicate and easier to digest than yours.”
“For American stomachs--that’s the point.”
“Are there no gentlemen in politics?” I asked, hurriedly, for Bertie
can be rude in a way that Americans cannot understand.
“Unquestionably. There are quite a few in the Senate, but in them the
political passion is stronger than their fastidiousness. Even the
honours and the fame they may win cannot compensate for the dirt they
are obliged to come into contact with every week in the year.”
“Well, all I can say is, that you haven’t the true sporting instinct
in this country,” said Bertie. “Men of the same sort ought to stand by
each other. If a certain number of gentlemen are willing to hold their
noses and plunge in for the good of the country it’s your duty to close
up the ranks behind them and keep the stink as far in the background as
possible.”
Poor Mr. Rogers blushed and looked most distressed, for that word is
tabooed in this country, dear, and I doubt if the poor man ever heard
it before. He saw my eyes dance, and gave me a look of such pained
surprise that it was my turn to be distressed, for it is so cruel to
shatter a man’s ideals! Bertie pursued all unconsciously:
“Can’t you see it from my point of view, Rogers? Ain’t you in the habit
of standing by your friends in this country?”
“Certainly, Duke,” replied Mr. Rogers, suavely; he had quite recovered
himself. “I think you will find Americans as loyal as any men on earth.”
“Not unless they go the whole length and stand by their own class when
there is such a crying need for help as there is here. I suppose
there’s a respectable number of gentlemen in the country, ain’t there?”
“A very large number. A highly respectable proportion of the seventy
millions. I am constrained to make that admission, even though I hand
you another weapon.”
“It is a weapon, by gad. And I’d like jolly well to understand your
supineness. Perhaps you’ll wake up all in a moment and fling off your
coats and go to work.”
“I wish I could think so. What we lack most, I fancy, is a leader,
for unquestionably we have caste loyalty. But when all is said
the upper-class in this country is small--compared to the vast
sub-stratum--and the country is so huge that homogeneity is almost
impossible. So far, every man has made his fight alone; and there _is_
something pathetic in it--come to think of it.”
“I think those who have made the fight must be ripping fine men, and
I’d like to meet some of them. Will any of them come up here this
summer?”
Mr. Rogers shook his head. “I am sorry, but we do not happen to have
any politicians in the club. I thought it over carefully and concluded
that it was better not, for they cannot avoid knowing objectionable
people who might manage to get themselves invited here, too.”
Again, I interposed before Bertie could answer. “What becomes of your
law of progress? If it is as inborn and inevitable--unhinderable--as
you say, why does it not sweep your class in its current? Surely that
class is increased from year to year by ambitious recruits whose
offspring will be as cultivated as you are to-day--that is part of your
law of progress. It seems to me that a natural instinct should force
you and your sort to labour to keep yourselves high above the masses
and fill the great public offices of the country.”
As he turned to me the light in his eyes was almost warm and I felt as
if I had said something really clever. That is his little way.
“That was very well reasoned,” he said, “and your theory has certain
facts to substantiate it, inasmuch as public life does receive
recruits from the upper-class from year to year. Perhaps, some day,
under the stress of a great menace, the entire class will throw in its
weight. But just now--merely to give the country a stiffer man than
McKinley--I am afraid they will not. We are such optimists, our luck
has had such few facers, and just now we are so prosperous. It is only
a dream to imagine the best in both parties suddenly deserting and
uniting; for the best men seem to avoid leadership and notoriety; it is
only by doing so that they can find a comparatively clean path through
the political muck.”
Bertie shrugged his shoulders and pushed back his chair. “You look
well in that tweed outfit and those leggings, Rogers,” he said, “but
you’d look a jolly sight better in your shirt sleeves and with mud on
your boots. You and the rest of your dilettante class are living in a
Fool’s Paradise, and when you’re choking over your first nasty mess of
Bryanism you’ll wish you’d taken off your coat while you had a valet to
assist you. For my part I’m rather keen on Bryan getting in. I want
to see a real democracy. What you’ve got now is neither one thing nor
the other. Say what you like you have an enormously large aristocratic
class, a class which is always looking round for somebody to snub and
which holds itself immeasurably above the masses. You’ll be a monarchy
yet with every title that ever was heard of, and American inventions to
boot. The result of your Trust system will be two classes--the wealthy
and the helpless poor. The hour the wealthy class feels that it is
strong enough it will make for a court and a nobility. And a nice mess
you’ll make of it.”
“Well,” said Mr. Rogers, laughing, “it will be infinitely preferable to
Populism, and it certainly will be all in the law of progress. Every
American, even the Populist, wants to be rich, and as soon as he is
rich he wants to be cultivated beyond his original condition. After
that stage democracy is a retrogression and there is nothing to do but
go on and become an aristocrat. As you say, when there are enough of
them, monarchy is only a step further.”
And there the conversation ended.
I think this letter is thick enough to go--don’t you?
Ever yours,
HELEN.
P. S. The evening post came just after I had finished, and brought me
a welcome letter from you. I open this for a few lines of answer.
Freddy must be _mad_. I hope to God, V. R. will keep his head. Can’t
you persuade him to go to South Africa? As long as you have made up
your mind not to see him till all is over, I should think it would be
a positive relief to have him where you _can’t_ see him. And if there
is danger--do pack him off. Who do you suppose can be putting Freddy
up to such devilment?--that creature? She may see revenge in it. Do
be careful. If you came a cropper now--I read your letter to Bertie
and he says he wishes you would chuck the whole thing and come over
here to us, and wait patiently for Freddy’s several diseases to finish
him. But I told him he never had been deeply in love--and he said he
was jolly glad he hadn’t. Well, I’ll say a prayer for you, out in the
forest--although I don’t believe it does a bit of good to pray for
any one but yourself. My theory is that by the intense absorption,
concentration, and faith of prayer, you put yourself into magnetic
communication with the great Divine Force pervading the Universe and
draw some of its strength into yourself. Sometimes the strength is
physical, or rather is directed to physical ends, as when one prays
a pain out; and at others one draws strength enough to endure and
overcome anything--but not without that intense concentration. The mere
babbling of a petition does no good. There you have the result of my
inner observations. Try it for yourself.
Letter IV
_From the Lady_ HELEN POLE _to the Countess of_ EDGE _and_ ROSS.
_Boulder Lake_,
July 2d
The people have been here several days now, and the lake looks very
gay. When the men are not fishing the boats are filled with the
children, ducky little things in white pinnys and bright ribbons. I am
going to have them all over by themselves for luncheon some day, for,
so far, I like them better than their “mommers.” The men are a well
turned-out lot, but look tired, and--anæmic. So far, I have seen little
of them, as Mr. Rogers has delayed bringing them over to call--possibly
until the mountain air has made them feel a little more fit. New York
is said to be unbearably hot, and, you know, the rich men in this
country work as hard as the poor ones. Did I tell you that they all
dine at the Club House? This cottage would have been impracticable
for us did not Mr. Rogers have an invalid mother who could not leave
the house--which is quite apart from the others--for days at a time.
Therefore, we have here a complete kitchen, pantry, etc., and are
quite independent of what would be to us all a detestable arrangement,
even if Bertie were well. He is quite fit again, by the way, and has
several times been fishing with Mr. Rogers. He has met a number of the
men and says he likes most of them, but has taken a violent dislike to
an author that this admiring circle has made a fool of, and longs to be
well enough to kick him. He likes the women as little as I do.
They have all called on us. They came singly and in battalions. I
have a general impression of thin carefully modulated voices, fluffy
well-groomed hair, delicate features, light eyes, a discontented
expression--which is reflected in their voices--an unbounded
self-confidence, an annoying and persistent self-consciousness, and the
most perfect gowns imaginable. In the morning they wear the triggest
serge or tweed costumes, on hot days linen of various colours, in the
afternoon they flit about in pretty lawns, and in the evening they are
very smart indeed--several of them called after dinner.
As they will doubtless flit in and out of my letters very often I will
do my poor best to introduce several of them to you that you may see
some sort of object behind the names.
The four that have impressed me most so far are Mrs. Chenoweth, the
wife of a “great” editor; Mrs. Hammond, the wife of a “great” art
publisher; Mrs. Laurence, a “wonderfully successful” authoress, and
Miss Simpson, the editor of a “great” woman’s magazine; her name is
Margaret E. Simpson. She left a card!
Mrs. Chenoweth is the least objectionable of the four, because in
spite of her sleepy self-content and air of gentle superiority, there
is something sweet and domestic about her, and occasionally her eyes
seem to fill up with sympathy; and there is a placid note in her voice,
unique in her “set.” She talked about her husband most of the time, and
left me wondering how the universe had room for two magazines. But if
she did not show so plainly that she was used to flattery and adulation
I’d like her rather.
Mrs. Hammond sits forward on the edge of the chair and talks all the
time. Her small expensively dressed figure looks as if her eager soul
might burst through it at any moment, every nerve seems to be on the
jump at once; and as for her face I followed its play of expression
bewildered. She is what is vulgarly and aptly called a “gusher.” She
gushed steadily for three quarters of an hour about literature and
art. Art is her passion; she almost faints before a great painting,
and etching gives her thrills which she can express in French only, so
inadequate is our commonplace language. She told me with great pride
that foreigners always took her for a French woman, so perfect was her
mastery of the language; and when I told her it was a relief to meet
an American who was not proud of being one, she looked embarrassed and
said of course she wouldn’t really be anything else. She then leaped
into the midst of literature, but somewhat to my surprise had little
to say about American. I was given to understand how deeply read the
ambitious active little lady was in English, French, Russian, German,
Norwegian, Danish, Italian, and even Spanish classics, old and new, but
her only reference to those of her own country was at the end of the
homily, when she gushed out eulogies of Mrs. Laurence, and Mr. Henry
Walker Rolfs.
“Mrs. Laurence is quite the most brilliant woman in America,” she
assured me. “Of course you know her novels--they sell immensely--so
full of style and brilliant pictures and illusiveness and delicate
satire and purity of thought; but she is even more fascinating herself.
I don’t believe there is a woman living who can say so many clever
things in the course of an hour, and she is quite a beauty, and dresses
deliciously--superlatively--even for New York. And Mr. Rolfs! Of course
you love his work--he has the immense sales he deserves to have--such
style, such word-painting, such spiritual insight--real interpretation
of God. He is so great I involuntarily lower my voice to speak to him,
and I think the two most wonderful sights I ever have witnessed are
Henry Walker Rolfs _fishing_ and _eating_. It seems incredible that he
can do anything just like other men. But indeed he spends most of his
time in the woods alone--thinking, thinking, interpreting Nature and
God. Oh, I know, dear Lady Helen, you will be perfectly delighted with
all our friends, and find us _very_ different from those exaggerated
Americans who are constantly bombarding London Society with their
vulgar millions.”
“You _are_ different,” I thought. “I never dreamed of anything in
Heaven or on Earth like you.”
Now, as it happens, Mrs. Laurence’s and Mr. Rolfs’ books are Bertie’s
and my pet abominations. We think the former trivial, thin, and
insincere to a degree that her pretty manner in no way compensates
for, and Mr. Rolfs equally insincere and anæmic, and laboured and dull
in the bargain. His style certainly is polished to an unusual degree,
even for an American, and he _engraves_--never paints--quite wonderful
pictures. But his characters never come to life for a moment and there
is no atmosphere or perspective in his work--it is flat against the
canvas--like the paintings of the Chinese. Read ---- ---- ----[A] and
---- ----[A] and see if you do not agree with me. By the way, he is
the man Bertie wants to kick.
I will describe Miss Simpson next, for as Mrs. Laurence is always
the last to arrive or to call on a new-comer, I will reserve for
her the _éclat_ she covets. Miss Simpson is extremely handsome,
tall, massive, with brown strong-looking hair, grey eyes with an
expression of haughty surprise--as if lesser mortals were in the habit
of taking liberties with her--a goodish complexion, a rather thick
round profile, and a small hard mouth with a downward bend. Success
is emblazoned upon her, as well as gratified power and ambition. She
began life, I am informed by one of her enthusiastic admirers, as
a clerk in a bank “out West,” but soon--feeling that her education
and gifts fitted her for the higher life--“came East” and engaged in
journalism. I cannot express the pride with which--Mrs. Chenoweth, I
think it was--told me that Miss Simpson had never brushed her skirts
against yellow journalism; although she came here quite unknown
and from that hybrid region known as the “West,” it appears that
her instincts were aristocratic from the first. She made herself
invaluable on one of the “very best papers,” gradually wedged her
way--I fear that expression is my own--into conservative circles,
dropping such acquaintances as were detrimental, and finally graduated
as a full-fledged editor of a woman’s magazine, capitalised by an
eccentric but appreciative millionairess. It was only a year or so ago,
however, that she “arrived” in this upper and rarefied stratum, and
is here not as a member, but as the guest of Mrs. Chenoweth. It must
be a jolly sensation to have striven for something so high above your
reach and finally achieved it. What contempt for those left below,
what constant self-gratulation. Miss Simpson quite chilled me with the
silent hauteur of her manner, the level dissecting rays of her fine
eyes. She holds herself aloft, as it were, with the rigid spine of the
traditional queen; but let me confide to you, Polly dear, she looks
like a successful business woman, _tout même_, not at all like what I
fancy she wishes to resemble. And if she is a success as a business
person I will venture to say she is a failure as a woman. Her ambition
has been so positive, so undeviating, so remorseless (I have listened
to six biographies of her), that the human attributes have withered up
just as unused muscles do. I asked Bertie what he thought of her, and
he said he had more respect for a harlot, as women had been created for
two offices only--mothers and strumpets. “If a woman fills neither of
these offices she is a failure and had better be dead.” That is a nice
primitive view and I’d enjoy hearing it exploded in the midst of this
select camp. They exult in Miss Simpson’s virtue--it is monumental--and
has flourished like a green bay tree in spite of New York and its
mysterious temptations. Personally, I should say her virtue was purely
a negative quality due to absence of temptation, within and without. So
far, she is rather in this well-uniformed set than of it; she speaks
with a slight twang and expresses herself in rather shoppy language.
But she is ambitious and determined, and no doubt will adapt herself in
time.
Mrs. Laurence! She was of those who called after dinner. She was in
full evening dress--black--and came into the room with a rustling of
skirts I never have known equalled. I should say that her train had at
least six inner silk flounces and it switched about on the bare floor
like an angry tiger’s tail. I think she changed her seat seven times
and always with that portentous rustling. I noticed that this occurred
whenever some one else had spoken consecutively for five minutes. She
is a pretty woman, and the old word “elegant” exactly expresses her;
our grandmothers would have called her “most genteel.” She has a cloud
of cendré hair, softly curled, and the pretty contrast of baby blue
eyes, although they, as well as her red thin lips, are petulant in
expression. Her features are delicate to the vanishing point and her
figure very graceful. She is, undoubtedly, an old hand at aristocracy,
for her voice, in spite of its fretful note, is exquisitely trained,
her language polished in the extreme, with every comma and semicolon in
its proper place; and her manner quite that of the grande dame of the
American novel. She mentioned eighteen people of title she had met in
England--among them Milly Seton--and alluded, with a fretful sigh, to
her many visits in England’s “enchanting homes.”
“I wish I could marry an Englishman,” she said, with her little pout,
“I have had so many offers from my own countrymen but not one from an
Englishman--I think it is too bad! Of course I shall marry again, I’m
so feminine and I hate work--I always am so amused when the critics
rave over my quick brilliant style and verbal felicities; I grind out
every sentence and hate the very sight of the paper. I want to marry a
rich man who will pet me and leave me nothing to do but to be charming
and to dress exquisitely. That is all a woman ever was made for, not to
write tiresome books that other people think clever. Of course, I am
glad I am such a success; but I’m sure I’d a great deal rather be you.
You look the real thing, and we are all just creditable imitations. I
am sure I was English once--in a former state--I feel so _at home_ when
I am in one of your old castles, surrounded by people who are all that
I should like to be, and I am such a success with them; I could not be
more so if I were to the manor born; I am sure I cannot understand why
some flower of nobility has not fairly flung himself and his hereditary
acres at my feet.”
All this before Bertie, and it reads like the most engaging candour;
but as she fairly breathes insincerity and self-consciousness one does
not believe _anything_ she says, and I think she knows it. When she
left, I asked Bertie if she was feminine enough to suit him, and he
said that she was a cat, whose proper place was in a fancy basket in
the drawing-room; no English Tom, at least, would ever invite her on
to the roof. Bertie is coarse at times, but nobody can deny that he is
expressive.
Polly, are these people merely snobs? What do you make of them? You
write me, you dear thing, that my letters are profoundly interesting
to you and that I pop the people I meet right into your imagination.
I am so glad, for they certainly interest me. It is like living in a
novel--an American one, it is true, but fresh and new, and full of
unsolved problems to the mere outsider. They certainly are not snobs
in the old meaning of the word, not in the least like those of their
country who work so hard to be taken up by us, and imitate our manners
and pronunciation. No, they are either snobs and something more, or not
snobs at all, but a different manifestation of the struggle for the
Ideal. That sounds better, at all events; let them go at that.
Mr. Rogers told me that they all admired me very much, but found me
rather “cold and haughty.” I could not help laughing aloud, and of
course Mr. Rogers understands. You know how shy and frightened of
strangers I am, a failing I never shall get over. I suppose that makes
me sit cold and rigid when, in reality, I would give a good deal to
talk as fast as they do--and as I can when I know and like people well
enough. I did feel myself growing stiffer and stiffer as Mrs. Hammond
gushed, but that was quite natural, it seems to me. Agatha was rather
bewildered at first by their facile and unrestrained speech, but she
likes them all, dear soul. She takes them on their face value, and they
each gave her material to admire without looking for it.
July 4th.
Yesterday I went to the Club House to dinner; Mr. Rogers rowed me over
and back. The dining-room is rather pretty, with three long tables. Mr.
Rogers sits at the head of the middle table and I sat on his right.
Mrs. Laurence was very “brilliant.” Every time she began to speak,
and that was usually, everybody stopped talking and leaned forward.
“I would not miss a word,” whispered my neighbour. “Her wit _lives_
on the tip of her tongue and never sleeps.” I cannot transcribe her
brilliancy, Polly dear, because it is of the quality known as elusive,
not the old-fashioned kind that you repeat and hand down to your
grand-children. She delivered her witticisms, too, at the rate of one
every three minutes, and I should like to know _who_ could keep track
of them. I wondered if her fascinating, fretful, spoilt-darling voice
has not something to do with the belief that she is witty and unique.
For, Polly, I must admit it, she bored me to death, and at times I felt
like protesting. But I scarcely opened my mouth; and I don’t doubt
they think I am stupid and have a typical English lack of the sense
of humour. But I do not blame Mrs. Laurence, and do not dislike her as
much as I did, for she is merely a hot-house product, forced into an
abnormal artificial growth by these foolish people, who must have their
lion, or the times would be out of joint.
The great Mr. Rolfs sat opposite me, but he does not go in for
brilliancy; to amuse, he doubtless holds, is beneath the dignity of
a great mind. He ate his excellent dinner in a ponderous and solemn
manner, oblivious of the admiring eyes riveted upon him when Mrs.
Laurence was not speaking; his vision introspective, as if he still
pondered the last of the Almighty’s confidences, and, when spoken to,
responding with a sweet but absent graciousness. I wanted to throw my
ice-cream at him--only it was very good ice-cream, made of crushed
strawberries, and would have been wasted on such a muff.
In the fine large cosy living-room afterward they _played intellectual
games_. My dear, I thought I should die. I could not leave in common
decency before ten o’clock, and for a mortal hour I listened to
the brilliant Mrs. Laurence exhibit the most wonderful fertility,
ingenuity, and resource, switching her noisy tail round the polished
floor till it hissed like a harassed snake. She was in white
embroidered mousseline de soie and silk--Oh, much and noisy silk--and
she wore turquoises, and altogether looked like an advertisement for
the calling of letters. Her rival, Mr. Rolfs, had retreated from the
field--probably to the roof--and I don’t exaggerate when I say that the
others never took their eyes off her, with the exception of some of
the men, who went to sleep. Finally, I could stand it no longer, and I
went over and sat down by Miss Simpson, who seemed to be as much out of
it as I was, and who, since she had failed to catch the spirit of the
thing, was endeavouring to look superior to contemptible frivolities.
“A very brilliant woman,” I said, beginning with the obvious.
“I guess there’s not much use disputing that fact,” she answered with
an expression which conveyed to me that this remark was intended as
grim humour. “And if she were not, she’s clever enough to make people
think so.”
“Do you admire that particular form of brilliancy?” I asked, longing to
hear her say what I thought; but she answered emphatically:
“I admire success. When you strive for that and get it you’re entitled
to all the applause there is, whether it is the brand some one else
would strike out for or not. I have succeeded in my way and she
acknowledges it and me; therefore, I take off my hat to her. I have
aimed for something more solid; but because I prefer to spend my
money on oil paintings there is no law against my patting the dainty
water-colourist on the back. And I do--every time. So long as a person
does not get in my way he can have a whole road to himself and welcome.”
Here was genuine frankness, no doubt of that. She prided herself upon
it and was quite aware that she was impressing me, but it was the sort
of insolent frankness that compels belief. I asked her if she was
not the author of ----[A] which I had read recently, and she thawed
perceptibly and even gave me a very charming smile. To draw her on I
praised the novel highly--it was clever but sketchy and betrayed no
knowledge of the world whatever--and she thanked me very pleasantly and
admitted that she hoped to make an even greater success with her second
one.
“I have had some very fortunate experiences since I wrote that,” she
said. “I have watched a love affair progress right under my nose, and I
was visiting a friend of mine when her husband was accidentally killed.
She was a wonderful psychological study in her grief!” and she set her
mouth, as if overcome by the responsibility of her own brain.
“Good God!” I exclaimed.
She turned slowly and gave me a look of such haughty inquiry that I
almost wilted.
“I beg your pardon,” I said meekly, “but it seemed to me rather a
shocking advantage to take. Really--how _could_ you?”
“Of course, as you don’t write you don’t know that a true artist sees
copy in everything, that human nature was made to be studied, and that
when a palpitating leaf is torn out and flung into an author’s lap he
would be seven different kinds of fool if he didn’t read it.”
“I can understand now why your literature is heartless,” I retorted,
“for you kill your own heart before you write it. But, if you go in for
brain-picking to that extent, why do you so persistently ignore the
motive power of human life--sex?”
“Oh,” she said with an accent of contempt and disgust. “_We_ don’t want
any of that. We leave that to the decadent civilisations. It’s not the
fashion in this country. _We’re_ healthy.”
“I think you are decidedly unhealthy,” I made bold to retort--“and
if you don’t take care the water in your blood will prevent you from
attaining full growth. Well, at all events you will escape decadency,”
I added lightly. “Good night.”
I crossed the room toward Mr. Rogers, determined upon retreat, but was
intercepted by Mrs. Chenoweth. She gave me so sweet a smile that I was
obliged to pause.
“Do sit and talk to me a moment,” she said. “I have been longing to
see more of you. I am glad you were so kind to Miss Simpson. I think
she is a type that should be encouraged and I am doing all I can for
her. Of course she is what is called self-made, she has no family tree,
but, as Junot said, ‘Some of us must be ancestors’--you remember that
is quoted in the Rémusat Memoirs; delightful reading, whether they are
authentic or not. I thought I would tell you just how Miss Simpson
stands, lest you should wonder a little at her accent and stiffness;
but she is so estimable and capable and altogether superior--and bound
to go so far--I am sure you will think I am right to take her up.”
“I don’t see any reason in the world why you shouldn’t,” I replied,
“and it certainly has interested me very much to meet her. I really
must go, if you don’t mind. I am so very tired.”
On the way back I told Mr. Rogers of my conversation with Miss Simpson
and of my disgust. He smiled good naturedly.
“Oh, that is only the zeal of the amateur,” he said. “They get less
shoppy every year.”
“But don’t they lose a good deal meanwhile?” I asked.
“Well, perhaps,” he admitted.
The children are making such a racket with firecrackers I can scarcely
think, but I send you much love and sympathy.
HELEN.
Letter V
_From the Lady_ HELEN POLE _to the Countess of_ EDGE _and_ ROSS.
_Boulder Lake_,
July 10th
Do not imagine, Polly, that I have given up my solitary ramblings in
the forest. I enjoy them more than ever; and their _soundlessness_
after the eternal babble which pervades the lake--I am afraid I am not
grateful for all the kind attentions I receive--is simply delicious.
Leaves, green leaves everywhere, rioting to my knees and hanging in the
air. You never notice the slender branches, only the delicate fairy
curtain they hang between the dark stems of the trees. And the ferns,
and the ground pine, and the green stars of that moss that covers
ground and rock, and the rich velvet moss, shading from a dark green
to one that is almost white, that covers the fallen trees, and the
incomparable solitude. Best of all I have discovered a gorge, sloping
gently on one side, the other a huge boulder covered with moss; in
the bottom of the gorge a brook pushing its tortuous way over rocks;
and alders and ferns close to the banks. Overhead there is a rift of
sky, and the sunlight flickers about generously, and the woods I have
come through look so dark and impenetrable. There is a fine dry rock
with the alders meeting like an arbour above it, and I sit there by
the hour and wonder why the forest ever made me feel over-civilised.
Beside these people I feel a pure child of Nature. They have reached a
pitch of correctness I never can hope to attain. They never use slang,
they punctuate their sentences so beautifully, they would not drop a
final g in our careless fashion for worlds; they pronounce all their
syllables so distinctly! Oh, this is “culture,” Polly mine. If poor
dear Matthew Arnold could only come back and live among them! Perhaps
he does in spirit and that is his idea of Heaven. (It would be mine
of Hell). And we have so misjudged the Americans, believing them to
be crass and exaggerated. I assure you there is nothing exaggerated
about the true aristocrats except their virtues; those are superlative,
but in all other things they aim at simple perfection only, and from
their enunciation to their boots--they have the dearest little feet--I
can tell you, Polly, they have attained it. I feel so crude--and so
happy. I come out here to my brook--I am writing to you with its baby
roar and lap in my ears--and I say all sorts of dreadful things quite
loud. I forget that I ever have sizzled in London drawing-rooms, proud
and happy in my court and interested in nothing in life but gowns and
conquests. I forget the whole atmosphere of flirtation and intrigue
and gay recklessness and heartbreak. I can tell you, Polly, that when
you have stood as close to death as I have done during the last two
years, with your heart-strings on the rack and the tears never far from
your eyes, you are well prepared to retreat into the arms of Nature
and cower there. I have no desire left to return to the world, and if
Bertie can live comfortably here I should be glad and happy to remain
for an indefinite number of years. My prince can find me here as well
as anywhere. He is not Mr. Rogers, charming as he is. He never could
stir up my great emotions--and I have them! I wonder if these people
ever have suffered as I have, or if they ever have loved passionately?
I cannot imagine it. They are too well-regulated, and that discontent
which gently agitates them is merely the result of living in a country
where nothing is unattainable, and, consequently, where ambition never
sleeps, even when it takes no form.
I have met most of the men now and like some of them rather well.
At least they talk less than the women and do not seem to fancy
themselves so much. They are quite content to be just men and do the
sensible things every-day men usually do without bothering about it.
They say much prettier things to one than our men do, and I like it,
but how much they mean I am not prepared to say. They are not in the
least exaggerated or silly in their admiration, like a Frenchman or a
Spaniard--will you ever forget that experience in Madrid?--for their
common sense and their sense of humour never fail them. And they are
all clever--no doubt of that!--but somehow their cleverness does not
annoy one as the women’s does. Perhaps it is because they have not
had time for the excessive “culture” of the women. Mr. Hammond, for
instance, has not attempted to read everything in every language ever
written, but he can talk sensibly about most things, particularly the
affairs of the world. Mr. Chenoweth leaves Mrs. Chenoweth to blow his
horn, and never mentions “shop;” but he does look so dyspeptic, poor
man, and he has not Mr. Hammond’s pleasant air of repose. He likes to
play with his children, however, and I love him for that.
Then there is an “author” who writes the poorest short stories I ever
read--I have only a magazine knowledge of his work--but he belongs to
the “set.” Mr. Chenoweth is his intimate friend and his wealth enables
him to give his chosen circle such entertainment as quite reconciles
them to the poverty of his literary dower. Still, I cannot quite see
why the public should be inflicted with him. He is quite bright to
talk to, a very agreeable dinner companion, I fancy. I should like him
rather if he were more honest with himself--and did not make epigrams.
Take them all in all they are as distinguished-looking--or should I
have said “refined?”--as they feel it their duty to be, and quite as
agreeable as I would have them--which is more to the point.
There is a Mr. Nugent, a guest, at the Club House, of Mr. Rogers, who
rather interests me the most. I think on the whole I must tell you a
little experience. He is about forty and a “brilliantly successful”
lawyer. He has argued famous cases before the Supreme Court, amassed a
fortune, and his admirers--not this set--want him to go into politics.
He is very striking in appearance, tall, thin, nervous, with a lean,
clever, hard, mobile face, an eye that burns and penetrates, a mouth
that looks as if it had conquered everything but his passions, and a
quick nervous grip of the hand which suggests that what he does he does
quickly and wastes no time arguing about. Next to Mr. Rogers Bertie
likes him better than any one up here, and I must confess he rather
fascinates me. I am wicked enough to want to see a man like that go
off his head about me. But I fancy I’d have my hands full if he ever
did let go. Mr. Rogers--he is getting rather devoted, my dear--I
always could manage, because he would be so afraid of making himself
ridiculous that he hardly would allow his voice to tremble unless I
almost proposed to him. He burst out one day: “You white English
rose!” I fear I used my eyelashes rather wickedly, and my upper lip,
for he drew a step nearer and the colour came into his grey face. Then
I felt my eyes twinkle and he recovered himself in a manner that would
have done credit to a woman of the world in her fourteenth flirtation;
men are usually so clumsy about these things; he smiled quickly and
added in the light tone of any man complimenting any woman: “You are
really unique here, you know, Lady Helen. Perhaps lily is rather your
prototype in the floral world than rose. You make my countrywomen seem
like hot-house flowers--if there were a floral heaven they would all be
beautiful orchids in the next world.”
But to return to Mr. Nugent. One warm evening when he was calling on
us and we were sitting on the piazza I asked him if he intended to
go into politics. It is very difficult to make him talk of anything
consecutively, by the way, and that makes him resemble us in one
particular, at least. There are no semi-colons in _his_ conversation,
mostly dashes.
“I have not made up my mind, Lady Helen. It is an alluring prospect
in one way, but I should be obliged to give up--those are wonderful
clouds.”
They were, Polly. Above the mountain behind the Club House were two
enormous masses of cloud that looked like colossal blue dishes piled to
the heavens with whipped cream. They were almost alike and you cannot
imagine anything more perfect than that cream whipped into form by a
giant hand. I thought out loud and Mr. Nugent said hastily:
“Oh, call it sea foam, not cream.”
“But sea foam looks like yeast,” I objected. “I don’t think you are a
bit more poetical than I am.”
He laughed heartily (these Americans can flatter so with their laugh).
“I am quite discomfited,” he said, “and I can only add that I have far
more reason to be poetical than yourself.”
“Very neat,” said Bertie. I can imagine my beloved brother thinking it
worth while to say the charming things these men do.
“Now tell me some more of your politics,” I persisted. “Mr. Rogers
thinks politics are not respectable, but if the stables can be cleaned
in one country they can in another.”
“Exactly, but if I went in for cleaning, in other words for reform--I
should sacrifice a great deal. I am lawyer for one of the greatest
Trusts in the United States, and as I could not consistently as a
reformer--in the present exaggerated state of public opinion--remain in
such a position,--that would mean the sacrifice of a large slice of my
income.”
“I must say I admire your frankness, but _how_ can you be counsel for a
Trust?”
“Why not?--so long as I have not taken a stand.”
“How can an honest lawyer work for dishonest men?”
“The word dishonest, dear Lady Helen, is usually applied to Trusts
by men who are not in them. Trusts are an evolution, nothing more, a
combination effected that some may live rather than that all shall die.
I am not going into sordid details, but I will add that the question
never arose that did not have two sides, and that one side is as
entitled to able legal counsel as the other. There is no reason in the
world why this particular Trust, which is open and above board, should
not have the best it can pay for, and as it has done me the honour to
select me, I in return have given it the very best of my ability--which
should salve any conscience. I feel the same way when defending a man
against the combined prejudices of the community. He is entitled to the
best defence he can command, and being a human being, is as worthy of
it as his more approved opponent.”
This was the longest speech I had ever heard him make, and I understood
it as a defence of himself out of deference to me. So, I smiled at him
in appreciation of the compliment, but replied:
“Still, I don’t see why you value the money more than the public honour
you might win.”
“Money is a very good thing, Lady Helen, to a man with expensive
tastes and a passion for travelling. If I went into politics I should
not touch its money bags, for political money is invariably dirty;
moreover, I should be obliged to sacrifice more or less of my general
practice--and the result would be that I should be a comparatively poor
man once more.”
“Are you self-made?” I asked eagerly.
Once more he laughed heartily, and his remarkable eyes expressed that I
might say anything I chose.
“In a way, yes, in another, no. My father was a prominent lawyer, but
given to speculation in Wall Street.--He left little or nothing--I went
into his office as soon as I left college--and although I was helped
in the beginning I have made my own way--Ah! we are going to have a
thunder-storm. Not in our whipped cream. That has been eaten by the
gods. This cloud is full of energy and would interfere with the most
immortal digestion. May I sit it out, or must I run?”
“Stay,” said Bertie quickly, “I can’t sleep in that infernal racket.
Have some Scotch whiskey? Do you take it neat, or with soda? Nell, ring
the bell, that’s a good girl.”
They refreshed themselves, and then we concluded to watch the storm
till the rain came. The great cloud was a long time approaching and the
thunder only a distant angry rumble. But the lightning? It never seemed
to play on the surface, but leapt constantly from the deep caverns
of the purple cloud, flashing into relief tortuous convolutions that
looked heavy and flat when the fire played elsewhere. Sometimes it was
only that volcanic flame, at other times the cloud seemed torn asunder,
and down the rift ran the zig-zag thunder bolt. Now and again the
forked lightning assumed strange shapes, like the fiery skeleton of a
man’s hand or of a gigantic leaf. Sometimes it leaped from peak to peak
of that moving mountain, then suddenly darted hissing down a gorge as
if in search of prey. What nervous impatient terrible energy, and what
a tyrannical perversion of beauty!
I suddenly became aware that Mr. Nugent was watching me instead of the
storm, and as I felt embarrassed I told him hurriedly what I had been
thinking. Bertie had gone inside, as the lightning hurt his eyes.
“In a way that thunder cloud reminds me of you,” I added, rather
naughtily. “I don’t mean that you are beautiful, but you seem full
of that same nervous energy and you suggest that you might direct it
rather cruelly.”
“I don’t think I should strike at random,” he replied, still with his
eyes on my face. “And at present I am in far more danger of being hit
first.”
It seemed to me that I felt something vibrate. Perhaps it was only the
electricity in the air. At all events, I replied as placidly as if my
breath had not shortened. “One of the rules of prize-fighting is to
strike first, and the weaker should always keep that in mind, don’t you
think so?”
“Will you kindly tell me whom you consider the weaker?”
“Well--the woman--naturally.”
“I should sleep much easier if I thought you did not know your power.”
“Oh, sometimes my sex----”
“I am not talking of your sex but yourself.”
The lightning flashed just then and I saw more than his eyes. His
whole face was eager and set. I could not help going a little further.
“I used to fancy I had some power over men--at least a good many seemed
to love me--but during the last two years I have got out of practice
rather. Positively I have not had the tiniest flirtation.”
“No wonder you are so distractingly complete--I am afraid your
life has been a sad one these two years,” he added hurriedly, and,
actually, his nervous peremptory voice softened. “Tell me something
of it--But--pardon me--let me lift your shawl. The wind is coming and
it will be very strong.” He folded the shawl about me, and at the
same time I heard Agatha reading to Bertie so I felt off duty for the
present. And, Polly, I actually talked to him as I never talked to any
but the oldest and dearest friend before. But he drew it out of me. I
could no more resist that determined concentrated force beside me in
the dark than I could push the electric carnival over the mountain. The
man seemed magnetism incarnate, and every time the lightning flashed
across his face I could see that sympathy which comes not from a soft
heart but an intense personal interest. But perhaps that interest is
the most highly prized of all by women, and whatever the mainspring,
it was sweet to me, after all these months of terrible anxiety and
suffering. I never talk things over with Agatha; I have avoided
exchanging a glance of alarm with her; that would be too dreadful;
and until now I never have felt sufficiently free from care to become
interested enough in any one for confidences. But--and I am not the
least bit in love with him, Polly--I felt that I could talk to this man
all night. The thunder cloud moved down the lake, carrying its rain
with it, and I sat there for an hour and talked to him, while Bertie
slept on a sofa just beyond the open window and Agatha read on.
“I don’t think you like listening,” I said breaking off abruptly. “I
don’t believe you ever listened so long to any one before.”
“That is quite true. I am not a patient man and I am usually thinking
about several things at once--But--I am not going to pay you any idle
compliments. I will only say that I have great powers of realisation
and that I have absolutely understood all you have felt and suffered
during the last two years. I have felt it all so keenly that I wish I
could do something to help you. I _am_ going to be your friend,” he
added in his quick peremptory tones. “I will be your best friend in
this country which must be so strange to you. I don’t care a hang about
Rogers’ rights of priority. He isn’t capable of understanding you as I
do.”
He took my hand suddenly in his warm magnetic clasp, and I had an odd
feeling that he never intended to let it go. “This is only by way of
pledging friendship,” he said. “I am not going to disturb you by making
love to you--not yet. I make no promises for the future. You have
roused and bewildered and enthralled me. Whether it is love or not I
don’t know. Nor do I know what I can rouse in you. There is heaven and
madness for some man. I am sure of that--but I--well, let all that go
for the present. In the mean time I am your friend, remember that, and
Rogers is to take a back seat.”
I will admit, Polly, that I lay awake a long time that night thinking
of him and reliving that peculiar sense of being encircled with warm
magnetism. After all, I suppose that what we women want more than
anything else is sympathy and a feeling of belonging to some one
exclusively. And when a man has the passion to stir and warm and blind
us how easily we can persuade ourselves that we are in love. But the
_grande passion_--that is another thing. Of course you are in the
throes of that and I rather envy you. Good night.
HELEN.
Letter VI
_From the Lady_ HELEN POLE _to the Countess of_ EDGE _and_ ROSS.
_Boulder Lake_,
July 17th
_Dear Polly_:
This afternoon I went over to Mrs. Laurence’s “camp” for tea. She wrote
me the most graceful little note with two witticisms in it, and as I
had no excuse to offer, I went. Agatha and Bertie were also invited but
A. had a headache and B. went fishing, saying the most uncomplimentary
things about teas. Mr. Rogers and Mr. Nugent, who went with him,
attempted no defence.
Mrs. Laurence has quite the most attractive camp. It is exactly like
a doll’s house, tiny but perfect, with two verandas, and it is full
of dainty crétonnes and frills and bric-à-brac that no one could have
selected but herself. She writes every morning in a doll’s study,
fitted up much like a boudoir, in blue the exact shade of her eyes;
but in the afternoon she is always rustling about, and you hear her
petulant voice and swishing skirts, with only short intervals of relief
till bed-time.
She received us in a little clearing between the leafy maples on the
right of her camp, and wore the most fetching gown of grass green lawn
with a flopping white leghorn trimmed with green feathers. The others
were all in the most charming white and flowered muslins and I was
glad I had put on a soft white mull myself--Henriette has made me some
charming hot weather frocks since we came--and by chance I too have a
white leghorn, which I wore. It was trimmed with blue flowers, and my
frock with blue ribbons. I did not look as original as Mrs. Laurence
but--now I am going to say something nasty--I can stand a strong light
and she cannot. To tell you the truth most of these women look rather
passée in the sun. Their skins are so very thin and delicate that they
line quickly, and so many of them have grey in their hair. However,
they made a very charming picture under the trees and I must say for
them that they appear to get on together delightfully.
They all greeted me with the utmost cordiality, but Mrs. Laurence rose
from behind the tea table and offered me her cold hand with rather a
forced smile.
“Please forgive me, dear Lady Helen, if I am thoroughly unamiable for a
few moments,” she pouted. “But I have been _so_ annoyed.” She swept her
hand dramatically in the direction of a newspaper which evidently had
been flung into the bushes. I recognised the New York ----.[A]
“_That_ has a picture of me, a large libellous photograph, procured,
heaven knows how, certainly not from a friend! _Why_ should they use my
picture? _Why_ should they mention my name? What possible interest can
their readers--their million vulgar sensational readers--take in _me_?
I don’t suppose they ever heard my name before. It _is_ hard when you
have striven to belong to the aristocracy of letters to be flung into a
cowshed.”
I could not resist the temptation, although I trembled at my temerity:
“I read the ----[A] every morning,” I said. “Now, had I not met you, I
should have been quite keen on seeing your picture.”
“How sweet of you--but--Lady Helen--you don’t read the ----.[A] You
surely don’t take it?”
I nodded, perfectly delighted at the twelve expressions of shocked
amazement. “How is a stranger to master all your subtle distinctions at
once? It seems to me very jolly and interesting. My brother is quite
devoted to it.”
“Well, I don’t suppose it will do you any actual harm,” said Mrs.
Hammond, with an anxious expression, “but I assure you that if you were
an American you never would admit that you read it--would not, indeed,
have the least desire to read it--and I should really rejoice if you
would reprove them by writing and withdrawing your subscription.”
“Oh, I couldn’t think of doing that,” I said lightly. “My brother and I
are studying your country, and you have nothing more representative.”
“Representative?” Those carefully modulated voices were quite shrill.
I was in misery and my knees were shaking, but I determined to stand my
ground.
“Do not you call a newspaper that a million people read every day,
representative?” I answered. “What is it if not representative?”
“Of a certain class--yes,” said Mrs. Chenoweth disgustedly. “But what a
class!”
“A million people are not to be despised anywhere.” I longed to ask
Mrs. Laurence if she would prohibit--if she could--the ----’s[A]
million readers from buying her books, but I didn’t dare. I changed the
subject instead by asking for a cup of tea.
But that conversation was nothing to one I took part in later.
I have not told you of Miss Shephard, for she did not come up with
the others. She is the editor of a literary monthly magazine, issued
by Mr. Rogers’ publishing house. It is charmingly got up and quite a
smart readable affair, but, Bertie and I had agreed, rather light and
vague in criticism--although very pretentious--as compared with our
literary weeklies; in fact, not to be taken seriously as criticism
at all. The half dozen numbers Mr. Rogers sent us left no impression
on my mind whatever beyond a great many pages of clever writing by
people who fancied their own opinions mightily. But when Mrs. Hammond
told me that Miss Shephard was expected, she added that she was the
brilliant editor of The ----,[A] and that probably no one living had a
more exact knowledge of what constituted literature, including matter,
form, style and perfect English than Miss Shephard. I cannot say that I
was very keen to meet her, I am so tired of perfection, but when I saw
her I was rather interested, for she does not appear to be more than
one--or two-and-thirty. When I expressed some surprise at the position
accorded her, I was assured that she had “genius” for criticism, and
had, moreover, enjoyed the rare advantage of being the daughter of a
Harvard professor and scholar who had been intimate with all the great
literary lights of his time. She is a tall thin girl with dark hair,
mal coiffée, thoughtful grey eyes, a _very_ refined nose and a thin
ascetic mouth. Her skin looks worn, and there is an affected--so it
strikes me--severity about her dress. But she has a thin sweet voice,
and a very nice, if too serene, manner.
She did not sit near me during the tea, which was quite lively.
Mrs. Laurence was brilliant as usual and moved about a good deal,
particularly after Mr. Rolfs “dropped in” unexpectedly and some of his
admirers showed a disposition to hang upon the words which a large
piece of cake made even more weighty. Finally he did talk--to make
her more jealous, I think--and gave them quite a lecture on celestial
botany, as it were. Mrs. Laurence could only get the better of him by
capping his melodious paragraphs with scintillating epigrams, which
annoyed him excessively. I sincerely wish they would murder each other.
Finally I became so bored that I wandered down to the edge of the lake,
and in a moment Miss Shephard joined me.
“Like all great writers,” she said apologetically, “he puts his best
in his books, and sometimes lacks magnetism and fresh thought in
talking.”
For some reason Miss S. antagonises me. Perhaps it is a certain air of
omniscience, the result of being a factor in the destinies of so many
great and brilliant authors. So I answered with some pleasure:
“I think Mr. Rolfs’ books as dull as his speech. He has his points,
but he is not a _born_ author, therefore you see the little glittering
implements and smell the oil all the time, and of course his stories do
not _go_.”
“There is some truth in what you say,” she answered sweetly, “but then
don’t you think that a man with so great and beautiful a mind should be
above being a good story-teller?”
“Shakespeare was not.”
“True, dear Lady Helen, but I need not remind you that we are in
neither the times nor the country of Shakespeare. Have you observed
how non-imitative, how independent we are? There was a time, of
course, when American writers slavishly imitated, and in consequence
burlesqued, English literature; the only exceptions were Hawthorne and
Poe, and, later, Mark Twain and Bret Harte; but the literature of the
last twenty years, which includes so many illustrious names--surely
there never has been anything like it in the world.”
“There never has! I suppose I am old-fashioned but it wearies and
irritates me--I do not wish to be rude--but--really--I like to read
about men and women with human passions.”
“Oh, a discussion without frankness is a poor affair. I am sure that
yours is merely a first impression and that our literature will
fascinate you in time. Will you permit me a brief explanation? It is
our object to produce a literature which shall demonstrate in what
ways we are different from all other nations--those differences,
peculiarities and so forth which our new and in all things unique
country has evolved. Why should we demonstrate--and encourage--the worn
out passions that are common to all countries? The refined of ours
prefer to forget that such things exist. All well-brought up American
girls are taught to ignore this lamentable side of human nature, and
never voluntarily to think of it. Without boasting I think I can say
that this is the most _refined_ country the world has ever known, and
that our literature proves it.”
“But occasionally you develop an author of irrepressible virility who
gives the world to understand that a certain percentage at least of the
United States are very much like the old accepted idea of human nature.”
“They do not count,” she said emphatically, “because we will not admit
them to the ranks of literature, and they _must_ go to the wall in
time. The literary pages of the high-class newspapers, and the weekly
and monthly bulletins never paragraph them, never refer to them, except
in the reviews which advertising exigencies compel. Then we kill them
by sneers, not abuse--which always excites a lamentable current in
human nature. They are quietly brushed aside, and the real jewels of
American literature forced into even greater prominence.”
“Suppose one of these outsiders equals the elect in literary quality?”
“He cannot, because matter and manner are really one. They are too
_strong_, too bold and unpleasant, therefore they shatter and deface
that fine exquisite thing called style.”
“Your style. Cannot you conceive the possibility of any other standard
being as correct?”
“Certainly not. It is a subject to which we have given years of earnest
and analytical thought.”
“What of the very different standards of England, France, Germany,
Russia? The novels of all countries seem to be issued by your American
firms--and, presumably, read.”
“Oh, we are quite willing that each country should have its own
standard. Those old states, indeed, could not imitate us, for they
have not the same material. Therefore when a successful European
novel treats of things that no well-bred American will discuss, we
are generous enough not to be hyper-critical of a race which differs
from us in every particular. The older nations are naturally coarse,
and allowance should be made for them. But there is not one of our
elected authors who would dare or care to treat a subject in the same
way. And why _should_ he deal with nasty passion? He has the brilliant
kaleidoscopic surface of American life to treat.”
“And you cannot conceive of a day when the standard will change?”
“Certainly not.”
“The minority of one generation is usually the majority of the next,”
I said, now warmed to the theme. “Your people of the world--and I know
that you have that class--have chosen as their favourites the very
authors you have tabooed, and whose works do not reach, I am told, the
great public you instruct. As these few authors set their faces against
emasculation they offend your aristocratic middle-class, and as they
are not erotic your unspeakable sub-stratum will have none of them; but
they deal truthfully with that world which those of your country who
have enjoyed superior advantages can stand reading about.”
I had hit her at last. She coloured and drew herself up. “I do not
understand your term ‘aristocratic middle-class,’” she said icily.
“And I can only assert definitely that we who give our brains and time
and culture to the subject are setting and maintaining a standard that
always will prevail.”
I turned to go and say good-bye to Mrs. Laurence, but I could not
forbear a parting shot. I waved my hand at the company.
“I wonder they marry,” I said. “And I think it positively indecent of
them to have children.”
20th July
I am very much alone these days. Bertie is so much better that he
spends the entire day fishing or at the Club House, and frequently
dines and spends the evening there as well. Agatha has discovered
at least twenty neglected correspondents and writes as hard as Mrs.
Laurence or Mr. Rolfs, all the morning. I do not mind that, for it
keeps her in the house and I can receive any of the men who care to
call; but _every_ afternoon, Polly, she goes to Mrs. Chenoweth’s and
plays whist, and I either have to shut myself up like a nun or walk
in the wood alone. Of course I could defy the dear old soul, but that
would be the end of an ideal domestic harmony, and as for Bertie he
would be furious. Mr. Rogers is the only person privileged to walk
alone with me, and I do not know whether he is flattered or not. I
had heard a good deal about the liberty of American girls, but Mrs.
Chenoweth assures me that that is all a mistake as far as the upper
classes are concerned. Still, I have had a good many conversations
with Mr. Nugent, and some day perhaps I’ll relate them to you. He
calls in the evening and we wander off the veranda to the edge of the
lake and stand there for an hour or so admiring the sunset, and once
or twice we have met quite accidentally in the forest. After all, I
do not own the trail down the mountain even if it is my favourite
one. He certainly is interesting, Polly, although in so different a
way from all the men I have ever known or read about that I really do
not know whether I like him or not. He fascinates me, but that is his
magnetism, the concentration of his preternaturally clever mind upon
myself, the brilliant and unexpected things he says, and the truly
delightful little attentions he pays me, when I know that he is full
of restlessness and hardness, and ambition and nervous contempt of the
details of life. But the moment he comes near me I feel protected and
surrounded; I am possessed immediately to drop my shawl or handkerchief
or worry about the punkies--dreadful little beasts that he keeps off
very effectively with a fan or his hat. Once I made him go down on
his knees and tie my shoe, merely because I wanted him to see that my
foot was as small as any of his countrywomen’s, in spite of my five
ft. seven, and much better shod. On another day I had a headache, and
instead of remaining in bed I had Henriette arrange me luxuriously on
a divan in the living-room, and received him when he called. I had
an uncontrollable desire to see how he would act when I was ill. He
was charming, in an abrupt, sincere, and wholly tactless way. I think
if I had known others like him or had known him about five years I
should almost fall in love with him; but how we cling to our ideals!
Independence of thought! We are all creatures of traditions.
I may just as well tell you first as last, Polly, that I am sure
both Mr. Rogers and Mr. Nugent have made up their minds to marry me.
Agatha is blind and Bertie amused, for he cannot imagine me falling
in love with anything un-English and new. You see, I _look_ so--well,
traditional, few know or suspect that I am impetuous and full of
curiosity and love of novelty _inside_. Of course, as I said, I am in a
way as traditional as I look, but in another I’m not. I don’t know if I
have expressed myself clearly.
I am sure that Mr. Rogers and all of them think that he has the better
chance, because he is so cold and calm and correct. He really is
charming in his way and I think I might have had rather a jolly little
flirtation with him if Mr. Nugent had not happened to be a guest of
the Club. But _he_ talks to me about things that interest me so much
more, and he has made me talk to him about myself as I never talked
before--even to you. If I could remember all of the nonsense we have
talked I’d write it to you, but you know I never did have any memory.
The other day a year-old doe mysteriously appeared in our ice-house
with my name printed on a card lying on its chest. I _know_ that either
Mr. R. or Mr. N. shot it for me, but I do not dare thank one or the
other or even hint the subject: the game laws are so severe that it
would be like a breach of confidence. But it has made all other meat
insipid and we enjoyed it quite enough to compensate the offender for
the risk he ran. It was one evening when both were calling that I
regretted being obliged to wait till September for the game I like best.
Mr. N’s first name is Luke.
22nd July
Well, I will tell you of one conversation at least between Mr. Nugent
and myself. A very celebrated--you may be sure he is in the superlative
class--lung specialist came up the other day to visit the Chenoweths.
Although Bertie is apparently so much better, the moment this doctor
appeared I felt that I must have a verdict. At first I thought of
appealing to Mr. Rogers, but finally concluded that as I had talked
so much to Mr. Nugent it would be positively unkind to pass him
over; besides it is so much easier to speak to him about _anything_.
The _one_ thing that keeps me from feeling the _perfect_ freedom of
friendship when I am alone with him is the fear that he suddenly will
lose his head and take me in his arms and kiss me. He looks passion
incarnate and I know that if he ever did let go he would be like one of
these alarming electrical storms that visit us every two or three days.
However, I have managed him rather well, so far.
Well, I confided in him, and he engaged to persuade Dr. Soulé and
Bertie to meet for examination, and pledged himself to get the truth
out of the doctor and tell me every word of it. It was finally
agreed--Bertie was a long time being persuaded--that they were to meet
this morning in Mr. Nugent’s room and that at four this afternoon Mr.
N. and I would meet at a certain spot in the forest, where I should
hear the fateful truth--I thought the appointment was justifiable in
the circumstances.
By three I was so nervous that I could not stay in the house and
I plunged into the forest, praying that I would meet no one else.
Fortunately our camp is alone on our side of the lake and the others
prefer the trails behind the Club House and at the north end. I walked
far down the mountain to quiet my nerves a little, then returned to
the place where we had agreed to meet. It was the rocky brook I told
you of, but some distance below the boulder. The opposite bank sloped
up gently, its gloom hung with scattered leaves and sun-flecks. I
sat down on a rock among the alders, still nervous, my hand, indeed,
pressed against my heart, but--what strange tricks the mind plays
us--my terrible anxiety crossed by imaginings of what Mr. N. would do
and say should he bring me the worst. In a moment, too, my mind was
diverted by the dearest sight. A chipmunk--a tiny thing no longer than
my finger with a snow white breast and reddish brown back striped with
grey and ivory--sat on his hind legs on a stone opposite me eating a
nut which he held in his front paws. His black restless eyes never left
my face as he tore that nut apart with teeth and nail, and he seemed to
have made up his little mind that I was quite stationary--he did seem
to enjoy that nut so much. His bushy tail stood straight up behind and
curled back from his head. It was quite an inch longer than himself,
and not a bit of him moved but those tight little arms and those
crunching teeth. He ate the entire nut, and when he had finished and
dropped the shell, he still sat there on his hind legs, glancing about,
his eyes never wandering far from my face, and absorbing my attention
so completely that I quite forgot the apprehension that had torn me
for the past four hours. But our mutual interest was shattered by a
footstep. I sprang to my feet and he scampered into the ferns.
The moment I saw Mr. N.’s face I knew that I was not to hear the
worst, at all events; and then, for the life of me, I could not let
the subject be broached. I hurriedly commenced to tell him about the
chipmunk and he sat down on the stone it had deserted and listened as
if he never had heard of a chipmunk before.
“I’ll try and get you one,” he said. “I think one might be tamed.”
“Oh, I should love it!” I exclaimed. “It would be company for hours at
a time. I am sure it has intelligence.”
“I am afraid you have many lonely hours,” he said. “I think you do not
like our people here.”
“No,” I said, “they fidget me. I really admire them and I never in all
my life believed that so many clever people could be got together in
one place. But--that is it--they are not my own sort.”
“No, they are not, and I have a plan to propose to you, that I think
might be carried out now that your brother is so much better. I have a
number of friends at another lake about ten miles from here. They are
very different from these--far more like what you have been used to.
They belong to one of the worldly sets in New York, and, while they are
quite as clever as our friends here, cleverness is not their métier and
they are not so self-conscious about it. They bought Chipmunk Lake and
built cottages there that they might go into camp whenever they felt
that they needed rest more than Europe or Newport--Should you like to
visit there?”
“Yes, but how?”
“I should have said that my married sister is there and that I have
written to her about you. She would be delighted if you would pay her
a visit. Of course Lady Agatha will go with you, and the Duke can
transfer himself to the Club House for a time.”
“He is there always, anyhow,” I said, and I suspect I pouted. At all
events he smiled sympathetically and said,
“I am afraid you have learned already something of the selfishness and
ingratitude of man.”
“It is a good preparation for matrimony,” I remarked drily.
“Are you contemplating matrimony?” It is interesting rather to bring
some colour into the face of an American.
“I am always afraid I might marry some time when I am unusually bored.”
“It is not so great a risk to bore you, then?”
“Oh, I mean by Circumstances. I should expect the man to descend
suddenly into them with the wings of an archangel and bear me off.”
“Are you very much bored here? Have I come too soon?”
“I never have enjoyed myself so much.”
“Nevertheless you are not averse to a change.”
“Oh, as my time is short in the United States and as human nature is
the most interesting study in the world, I want to meet as many of your
interesting types as possible.”
“Your stay may be longer than you think. Soulé says that the Duke must
not think of leaving the Adirondacks for two years.”
He had me at last. “Two years!” I gasped. “Must we stay up here for two
years?” The place has lost some of its charm since these people came.
“Not here, for you would be snowed in in winter and uncomfortable in
every way. I have suggested to the Duke that he endeavour at once to
lease a house at Lake Placid. There you would be close to an express
train to New York--which you could visit frequently--and undoubtedly
could find a house with golf links, tennis court, etc., to say nothing
of good trails where you could have daily rides. I know you are longing
to be on a horse again.”
“Oh, I am! How did you guess it? That does not sound so hopeless. I
suppose our friends would visit us occasionally.”
“I can assert positively that some of them would come as often as they
were asked.”
“It would be charity, of course. How kind you and Mr. Rogers have been
to think of everything for us.”
Again I had managed to bring the colour into his face. “Rogers is
a kind fatherly soul,” he said, tartly. “I don’t pretend to be
philanthropic.”
Here I was afraid he would propose to me so I said hurriedly:
“We have forgotten all about Chipmunk Lake. I should like to see some
other lakes and some other people. But it is a great deal to ask of
your sister.”
“My sister is undoubtedly pining for a new acquaintance. There are
only four families at the lake and they soon get talked out. Will you
go? I may as well confess that I have already written to and heard from
her. Here is her note to you.”
It was such a jolly letter, so direct and natural and unwitty. I felt
at home with her at once--her name is Mrs. Van Worden, and I liked her
further because she spelt Van with a capital V. I am told that Van in
New York is quite an insignia of nobility and I met two of its proud
possessors in London who had it printed on their cards with a small v.
Considering that it is over every other shop in Holland and Belgium,
this certainly is an instance of American progressiveness.
But to return to Mr. Nugent--who is delightfully free of all nonsense,
bless him.
“Yes, I do want to go,” I said, “and I hope it can be arranged--if only
for the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Van Worden. I _feel_ I shall get on
with her.”
“Yes, you will get on, I am sure. She and her friends at the lake
belong to the great world without going in for _all_ its frivolities
and vulgarities. Let us go back and arrange it at once,” he said,
jumping up. “There is no reason why we should not go to-morrow.”
24th
But we did not go “to-morrow,” Polly, and I have not been really
hopeful of going until to-night. Agatha said quietly and impassively
that, better or not, nothing would induce her to leave Bertie, that she
would never sleep three yards away from him until he was quite well
again. That left me without a chaperon, for although Mrs. Van Worden
had written her a charming note too, she had not invited any one else
at the lake, and I believe she knows several of them. Whether this
omission rankled--she appears to be quite a personage--or whether they
are all determined I shall marry Mr. Rogers, I don’t know, but I was
invited to the Club House to luncheon next day and not less than four
women attempted to dissuade me from going. The road was “frightful,”
quite the worst in the Adirondacks. Life there was unbearably dull.
They were worked out society women who took a sort of rest cure in
the Adirondacks, eating and sleeping themselves into a condition of
recuperating stupidity. There were “no men,” as the fishing was not
good, and too many other drawbacks to mention. It was Mrs. Hammond
who was commissioned with the final dissuasions. She walked home with
me, and as we were crossing the pretty rustic bridge over the lake’s
outlet, she put her hand in my arm, and said with a slight blush:
“You must not mind what I am going to say to you, dear Lady Helen, I
take such an interest in you. Who could help it?--you are so beautiful
and a stranger here. And of course I am nearly ten years older than
yourself and a married woman. I _don’t_ want you to go to those people;
they are all rather fast. Mrs. Van Worden has had several stories in
circulation about her that have come very close to being scandals----.”
“What!” I cried, “am I really to meet an American woman who has
committed adultery? How much at home I shall feel! So many of my
friends have, you know.”
“Lady Helen!” Never shall I forget that gasping shriek nor that poor
scandalized little face. I almost relented.
“If she will only admit it,” I pursued gloomily, “but they scarcely
ever will. I do know one American woman who told me the second time
I met her that she had a lover, but she had lived in England fifteen
years and cut all her American acquaintances. I cannot understand your
reticence.”
“Lady Helen! Do you mean to insinuate that any of us----”
“Oh, dear me, no. You are all shockingly virtuous here.”
She stared at me for a moment longer, then curiosity got the better of
her horror. She did not replace her hand within my arm, but she resumed
her walk to my camp, evidently determined to understand me.
“Let us have this out, Lady Helen, I implore you?” she said. “Do I
understand that you countenance immorality?”
“I accept the inevitable. It does not appeal to me personally, but if
it does to other women and helps them to dissipate the ennui of life,
that is none of my affair.”
“Ah, that is the result of having every good thing in life flung at
your feet, of living an idle life of fashion that has no excitement
left in it but intrigue.”
“Our lowest class is much worse than our highest, and quite open and
unembarrassed about it.”
“I cannot account for it!” The poor little woman’s voice was tragic.
“Why try to account for everything? Facts are facts, that is enough.”
“I never have really believed one tenth of the scandals of fashionable
life I have heard--I have trained myself to wait for divorce-court
proof----”
“You have tried to dissuade me from visiting Mrs. Van Worden because
she is suspected of having loved more frequently than she has married.”
“Oh, but that does not mean that I _believe_ it. I simply do not want
you to be identified with a woman who has been talked about. She
certainly cannot contaminate you if you hold such extraordinary views.
But _do_ you, dear Lady Helen?”
“Yes,” I said impatiently. “Don’t you? Do you pretend to ignore the
fact that hundreds of thousands of women have lovers.”
“I _will_ not admit it.”
“But you know it if you know anything at all. Like your literature you
blink it, as you blink every other fact connected with real life.”
Again she stopped and stared at me. “You look the incarnation of maiden
purity,” she exclaimed, “a tall white royal English lily, as Mr. Rogers
calls you. It seems incredible that you can have such a perverted mind.
You remind me of that dreadful heroine of Mallock’s----”
“I have not a perverted mind,” I exclaimed angrily, for she really was
too silly, “and I have nothing in common with that filthy creature----”
“I beg your pardon,” she interrupted hurriedly, “no one on earth would
ever accuse _you_ of being less stainless--really--than you look--I
mean your mind--your knowledge----Oh,” she continued desperately, “I
can’t make you out. I have heard of the insolent frankness of the
English aristocracy--that you hold yourself above all laws--the Duke is
terrifyingly coarse at times--and I suppose if you had done anything
wrong you wouldn’t pay me the compliment to deny it--but--well--I give
it up.”
“My mind is not perverted,” I said, “because I see life as it is.
I have lived in the world now for eight years, and all my friends
happen to have married long since. I should have been a fool had I not
seen and heard what life meant to many people, even if I never had
had any confidences made me. But it has not stained my mind in the
least, because it is something I never think of when by myself--which
is the result of accepting life and human nature as they are not as
they ought to be. I will not pretend to say, however, that I do not
sympathize with women who are carried away by passion. I do not see how
a woman who has any passion----”
“Lady Helen! I cannot let you go any further. I am willing to admit
that there is sin in the world, but there are certain standards of
refinement in this country that I will not hear violated.”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“I mean that--well--that I cannot listen to a woman admit that she has
passions exactly like a man.”
“Do you mean that you never heard that before?” I asked curiously.
“Never! There are certain obligations--but--Oh, don’t let us talk of
it. There is one thing further I feel I must say--and I am hoping you
will pardon me, for we are all hoping and longing to keep you among
us--you and dear Lady Agatha, although of course we know that we must
lose the clever Duke when he is well enough to go home----”
She paused, and I gave her my most encouraging smile. We were on the
veranda now and she sat opposite me, leaning forward alertly.
“It is this,” she said with her anxious smile. “We all do so want
you to marry our dear brilliant accomplished Mr. Rogers, and not Mr.
Nugent. _He_ is not really one of us, and, I am afraid he is not too
high-principled and has not led an immaculate life--like Mr. Rogers.”
“How can you tell?”
“By their faces. Look at Mr. Rogers’. It is refinement itself, almost
ascetic. Mr. Nugent looks--well--of course he is a gentleman and
irreproachable in society, but I _know_ he has not led a regular life.”
“I am sure he has not, and it is really none of our business.”
“I believe that men should be as pure as women,” she said setting her
lips.
“Perhaps they should, but they are not; you see there are so many
women who make a business of tempting them from the time they begin to
take notice that it is quite unreasonable to expect them to attain the
feminine standard.”
“I am not talking of bad women.”
“Oh, but they count so, you know. They count because they are the
positive force. Virtue is too negative to influence any one but those
who are virtuous by nature or circumstance. But as I said before, dear
Mrs. Hammond, facts are facts. Why not accept them, and without so much
mental wear and tear? Every man has the privilege of leading his own
life, so long as he keeps within the law. And if he does not think he
is doing wrong, if he does not violate his conscience, then he does
himself no moral harm so long as he sins like a gentleman. Of course no
one wants the coarse sensualist near one; he is repulsive and should
herd with his own kind.”
“And you mean to say you extenuate--you would marry a man who had--who
had--made love to many women? I am interested in your views, but I must
reiterate that I think if social exigencies compel us to meet such men
we should at least discourage their kind by refusing to marry them.”
She looked pale and nervous but her eyes were bright with curiosity.
“I will tell you my theory,” I said, “and I can assure you that I did
not jump at it. As I told you, I have seen a good deal of the world,
the best of it as well as some of its worst. This is my idea--But
first: If God is incarnate in good men and the devil in bad why are bad
men invariably more fascinating to women--even to pure women--than good
men? I am talking of course of the devil which dwells in masculine and
able men, not in the silly and ingenuous sensualist. Now the men who
are wholly irresistible are those who combine both God and devil, who
stimulate and intensify the soul and the imagination as well as the
passions. This confounds orthodoxy, but does not to my mind deepen the
mystery. Is not this combination, perhaps, the perfect man? And as man
is--we believe--made in the divine image--may not God and the devil
be one rounded being? Why does the ‘perfect’ man and woman invariably
irritate and antagonize, even have a bad influence,--arousing the devil
of perversity--when the perfection is in the least self-conscious?
Is it not because we instinctively feel their failure to achieve the
standard we have accepted as divine, and resent the imposition? And can
such a one-sided being give happiness? Not any more than the lowest
brute. Therefore, I maintain that a man to reach full stature must have
room in his soul for God and the devil to jog along peacefully side by
side.”
She rose, white and aghast. “I never, never heard anything to
approximate that for audacity--and--and--terrible profanity. But I am
too nervous to argue with you. I see Mrs. Laurence coming. Please tell
her--_she_ is so brilliant, so gifted. I know she could refute----”
“Please tell her that I have not had a walk to-day! that I shall have a
violent headache if I miss it! _Please_ be an angel and don’t tell her
I saw her coming--” and I almost ran to the back veranda and plunged
into the woods. I had screwed up my courage to the highest pitch and I
knew I couldn’t do it a second time. I felt nervous, almost excited,
and I wanted a walk and the solitude of the woods.
I walked rapidly down the trail for ten or fifteen minutes, then felt
a sudden desire to see that precipitous magnificent avenue made by the
roadway. I entered it presently and walked down the logs as rapidly
as I could, for the exercise; pausing whenever I reached a ledge--in
these woods you cannot walk and admire at the same time unless you care
to run the risk of a broken ankle--to drink in that wild yet awesome
perspective of the forest. The trees are so high, and often their
branches leap across and clasp hands!--and crowding upon the heels
of the advance guard is the green, fragrant, ancient army, a million
strong. And every now and again the distant mountain beyond the high
wild valley.
I suddenly became possessed with a desire to get closer to that
mountain, to get away from my own for a little while. I knew that it
could not be more than four miles off, and I could easily make the
distance and return before dark. I almost felt as if I were running
away, and hurried on eagerly.
I passed Mr. Rolfs sitting cross-legged on a damp boulder,
communing--presumably--with God. There was a note-book beside him. He
looked like an omniscient owl. As I passed he bowed gravely but did not
speak. I am positive he cannot endure me.
I went down the mountain as rapidly as I could, but that is saying
little. What between picking my way over logs that slipped and stones
that cut and feeling for dry land through the grass by the roadside
I was fully an hour reaching the valley. It was just a few moments
before making the last precipitous descent, when I paused for a moment
on a ledge and fanned myself that I became aware how hot and sultry it
was. Almost at the same moment I heard the loud familiar rumble of the
approaching storm.
It would take me longer to reach home than it had done to pick my way
down that beastly road. There was nothing to do but make for the valley
and the nearest house, and the sudden brief copper of the sky made me
hasten on with all speed. I do not experience any sinking physical fear
during a thunder-storm but I have a mental appreciation of the danger
and I prefer to be within four walls with the doors and windows closed.
The storm was still far off, for the intervals between the flash and
the clap were quite long, and its rain was deluging some other mountain
miles away.
At last I was free of the woods and stood in the great valley with
its irregular masses of mountains on every side, its rivers, its wide
peaceful clearings, and alas! its cows. There was no building within a
mile except a dilapidated Catholic church, the most mournful object I
ever saw in a landscape. Half of the roof was gone, a thousand rains
had washed its last coat of paint away, the fence was but a few broken
sticks, and the grass and weeds grew high over three or four poor
forgotten graves. There was a French colony about here, long since.
It was not an attractive refuge, but the great thunder cloud was
pushing its way across the Eastern mountain, forked and torn with fire,
and roaring as if it were Hell moving up to Summer quarters.
I was therefore about to make for the ruin when I heard the sound of a
sob and of running feet behind me. I turned quickly and saw, running
toward me and wringing her hands, a slight pretty girl, with a mass of
fluffy hair surmounted by an immense hat covered with blue feathers.
“Oh, please, wait for me,” she cried. “I’m so skaret, and I’ve been
runnin’ roun’ like I was crazy. Its a mile to the nearest farm and
I dassent go in that spooky church by myself. Oh, my Gawd, ain’t it
awful.”
“Why, there are thunder-storms nearly every day,” I said soothingly.
“There is really nothing to be afraid of. Let us go into the church, by
all means.”
I was glad of her company, to tell you the truth, and led the way
rapidly to the ruin. The door was locked! but we picked our way to the
back, past those desolate graves, and entered where a wall had fallen
in. It was not an easy task to scramble over the mouldering remains of
roof and wall, but we accomplished it and ensconced ourselves in a pew
in that end of the structure which was still whole enough to afford
shelter, although how much of safety was doubtful.
We were none too soon. Almost immediately the rain came down with that
furious energy characteristic of storms in these mountains, the thunder
was really appalling, and the lightning seemed to have got beyond
control of itself--the forks cut its steady blaze. My companion had
possessed herself of my hand and cowered against me. Her vernacular as
exhibited in a disconnected monologue quite distracted my mind from the
storm.
“Oh, my Gawd,” she would mutter; then with a violent start: “Gee whizz!
Wat for did I ever come up to these mountains and I alwus so afraid
of lightnin’? O-w-w! Oh, Lordy I’ll never do it agin, I vow I won’t.
Oh, Joc _why_ ain’t you here? I’m skaret plum to death. I know I’ll be
struck clean to kingdom come, and I ain’t so bad. I really ain’t. Oh,
Joc you ain’t treaten’ me right to be safe down there in Noo York and
me goin’ to be kilt for ever up on these wicked mountins.”
Fortunately, the electricity had other havoc to accomplish before its
force was spent, and passed quickly, leaving only the rain behind it.
She recovered herself almost as quickly and sat up and smoothed her
hair, then took off her hat and regarded the feathers.
“They ain’t wet, thank heavings,” she said, then readjusted it
carefully; after which she turned and regarded me with suspicion. She
was a pretty dainty creature, not as common as you would expect, for
the national delicacy of feature and sensitiveness of expression seem
quite as impartial as democracy could demand.
“Who are you?” she asked. “I ain’t seen you before in these parts.”
“I am on the mountain, at Boulder Lake.”
A light flashed into her damp eyes. “Aw, now, you ain’t that there Lady
Helen somethin’, a dook’s sister, what everybody is talkin’ about?”
I bowed in as graceful acknowledgment as I could muster and she pursued
delightedly:
“You look like it and I’ve seen a lord as didn’t, but you look just
like you might be the hero_ine_ of a story in the ‘Family Herald’.”
“I have not the pleasure of the ‘Family Herald’s’ acquaintance,” I
said, smiling genially, for she interested me as another variety of
the genus American, “but tell me something of yourself. You are not a
mountain girl, I infer.”
“Cheese it!” she exclaimed scornfully. “Do I look like these here lumps
that is as broad as they is long and wear their hair as slick as a
rat’s tail? Naw, I’m a Noo Yorker born and bred, and I’m a sales-lady
in ----[A] See?”
“You mean--a--shop girl?”
“Naw. We don’t use that there kind of language in this country. This is
the United States of Ameriky and we’re all free and equal.”
“Ah,” I exclaimed eagerly. “Do _you_ really hold to that? How
refreshing. Then you don’t look down on these mountain girls that
usually have to work as servants?”
“Gee!” she exclaimed indignantly, “I guess I do. Servants is one thing
and sales-ladies is another. And I ain’t never goin’ to the mountins
agin for vacations--not while there’s cheap hotels at Asbury Park, and
Ocean Grove. I ain’t used to settin at table with servants, or ‘hired
help’ as they call themselves. But a lady frien’ of mine’s got an aunt
up here and she giv me no peace till I come, I was that near dead with
work and heat.”
If I were of an hysterical turn I probably should have succumbed. But I
maintained a becoming gravity and looked at her with that concentrated
interest which forces people to talk about themselves.
“But,” I said diffidently,--“as you have told me you work you won’t
mind my alluding to it--suppose you had been less clever than you are
or had had less influence than you did have--and had been forced to go
out as a servant----”
“I’d ’a been a fluff first--naw, I don’t mean that. But I just
wasn’t--that’s all. And I guess I ain’t goin’ to associate with those
beneath me when I don’t have to. Wouldn’t I be a fool if I did?”
“You certainly would not be a good American. But if you call yourself
‘sales-lady’ why should not the poor servant be permitted to ease her
self-respect by calling herself ‘hired help’?”
“She kin, for all of me, but it don’t make her nothin’ else. I hear
somebody comin’”--her voice fell to a terrified whisper. “Oh, lordy, I
hope it ain’t a tramp.”
It was Mr. Rogers. His anxious face appeared above the rubbish, and I
spoke immediately.
“What a relief!” he exclaimed, as he picked his way toward us. “I heard
voices and hoped you might be here.”
“It is good to see you,” I said. “How do you happen to be down in the
valley?”
“It was just after the first rumble that I met Rolfs coming out of
the forest. He told me you had passed him and I immediately got an
umbrella, told the Duke I was going in search of you, and started off.
I have been quite alarmed, and am more relieved than I can say.”
I smiled and gave him my hand, when my sales-lady remarked drily:
“Well, as three’s a crowd and it ain’t rainin’ any more I guess I’ll
waltz. Pleased to meet you, Lady Helen. I kin alwus see a real flesh
and blood Lady of the nobility now when I’m readin’ the ‘Herald’ or
---- ---- ----’s[A] lovely novels. Good-bye. Hope you’ll git up the
mountin O. K.” And she took herself and her feathers out of the ruin.
“I think we had better start for home,” said Mr. Rogers. “Your brother
and Lady Agatha will be so anxious.”
“But you must be tired----”
“Not in the least. Do you think no one can walk but the English?” This
with a smile and intonation that took all abruptness out of it.
We left the church and in a few moments were climbing the mountain,
a doubly difficult task now that the logs were slippery with rain.
But the forest was so green and dripping, the sun-flecks glittered in
the rain-drops, the depths looked so dark and wet, and full of sweet
fragrant mystery! The odour of the balsam came down to us with a
rush. Mr. Rogers is a pleasant companion at all times, but I like him
particularly in the forest. He seems to need it so, to be so grateful
for it. I fear I have only a dim inkling of what this brief dip into
the wilderness means to the tired nervous practical New Yorker.
“I hear you want to leave us,” he said presently.
“Only for a few days. I am curious to see other lakes and other parts
of the forest.”
“And other people? I am afraid you do not like my friends as well as I
had hoped.”
“Ah! you are wrong,” I exclaimed with the warmth of insincerity. “They
interest me tremendously. They are too clever for me, that is all. I
don’t feel up to them.”
“You are far cleverer than any of them,” he replied, turning upon me
that _approving_ expression of which I have written, and smiling a
trifle of warmth into his grave face. “Many of them are beginning to
admit it quite frankly. The American nature is very generous, I assure
you.”
“Mrs. Laurence and Mr. Rolfs never have admitted anything of the sort,
I’ll wager,” I cried gaily.
“Well--no; but you see they are rather spoiled.”
“Nor Mr. William Lee Randolph,” I said, alluding to an author who
arrived two days ago. “I dreamed all last night of cutting his conceit
into little bits and watching them fly together again and cohere as
snugly as if nothing had happened.”
“You are a severe critic, dear Lady Helen----”
“It _is_ horrid of me to criticise your friends. And after your
many-sided kindness! I feel a rude little beast.”
“If you were not frank with me about everything I should be greatly
disappointed. And--I am quite willing to admit it to you--your
frankness is very refreshing to me. I get very tired of all this posing
and hero-worship and these everlasting fads. But they are inevitable in
all circles where certain of its members have accomplished great things
and others feel that their rôle is to admire extravagantly if they
would keep their heads above water and feel in the swim.”
“Do _you_ think Mr. Rolfs and Mrs. Laurence and Mr. Randolph great?” I
asked pointedly. “Now, you be just as frank as I am for once.”
He hesitated a moment, then said: “I believe there is no admission I
would not make to you, if you only gave me sufficient encouragement. Be
careful of that mud hole--these stones are better. I do wish you would
wear rubbers. Frankly then I do not think that any of my authors are
great, but I think it best to convince the world that they are because
they are unquestionably on the right track and their success will
encourage the younger talent to follow in their footsteps, crowning
the achievement of to-day with the richer harvest of a more virile
generation. I am quite aware that we lack virility, but when a more
full-blooded generation does arrive think of the vast advantage it will
have in this skeleton example of flawless art and perfect taste.”
“It seems to me more likely that there will be a violent reaction,” I
said. “That they will smash your porcelain skeleton to smithereens and
build a big rude lusty giant in its place.”
“Oh, I hope not,” he said anxiously, “I hope not. That _would_ be a
life-time thrown away.”
It was the first time I had heard him sigh, and the momentary
unconscious appeal to my sympathy touched me sharply.
“You _have_ lived for something besides self!” I exclaimed. “I believe
you actually have given your best energies, and all your time and much
of your fortune to building up an Art in your country that future
generations may be benefited by and proud of. I do hope for your sake
that it will be a success.”
He turned to me with such a glow on his face that I realized I had
gone too far for once, and had a wild desire to pick up my skirts and
run headlong into the forest. I must say he looked handsome and most
attractive. It seemed to me that I felt something glow and leap beside
me, something that I never had admitted the existence of, but which
gave him a distinct fascination. I could not run, and heaven knows
what might have happened next. But at that moment a turn of the road
brought us face to face with Mr. Nugent.
“Oh!” he exclaimed, “Oh! _What_ a relief. I knew of course that Rogers
would find you--but what might have happened before--Were you in the
woods during the storm?”
“I was in the Catholic Church with a sales-lady from New York who
demanded so much solace that I had no time to be frightened, myself.” I
plunged at once into a description of the adventure, out of kindness to
Mr. Rogers as much as to disembarrass the situation. I knew the violent
reaction within him--and I hoped he was communing with his soul in good
healthy swear words.
When I did not talk, Mr. Nugent did, and Mr. Rogers’ silence was well
covered. Not that he did not recover himself almost immediately, and
occasionally put in an apt remark.
Finally Mr. Nugent dismissed the subject of sales-ladies with his usual
abruptness.
“I think I can say that I have persuaded your brother and sister to
let you go to-morrow,” he said. “I demonstrated the absurdity of such
slavish adherence to the conventions in this wilderness. Your maid is
chaperonage enough for a few hours’ trip, to say nothing of the fact
that Hunter and another man will carry your trunk behind us down the
mountain and that still another man with a buckboard will meet us in
the valley.”
My eyes danced. “What a lark!” I exclaimed. “To really go on a trip
without Bertie or Agatha. But _will_ they consent?”
“I am sure they will. I told them that if they insisted upon it my
sister would come for you, and although of course they would not hear
of such a thing I think that clinched them. So be prepared to start
to-morrow morning at eight.”
And, Polly, I really believe I am going! My love to you.
HELEN.
P. S. I almost apologize to Mr. Rolfs. This evening at the Club
House when Mrs. Hammond was sitting forward and monopolizing the
conversation, as she always does when Mrs. Laurence does not happen
to be present, and delivering her entirely commonplace opinions with a
vigour of enunciation and a raptness of expression which convince the
unanalytical that she is quite the reverse of the little goose she is,
Mr. Rolfs suddenly turned to me with such an expression of ferocious
disgust that involuntarily I moved closer to him.
“_That_ is what we have to write for!” he exclaimed. “There are
thousands, tens of thousands of these damned fool women that we have to
write down to and pose to if we want to make our bread and butter.”
I almost gasped. “What on earth do you mean?” I asked.
“Oh, I like you. You’ve got horse sense and see through the whole
blamed show. You think I’m an ass, and I am. I have to be. I nearly
starved trying to be a man, so I became an emasculated backboneless
poseur to please the passionless women and the timid publishers of
the United States. To please the sort of American woman who makes the
success of a novelist--the faddist and the gusher--you must tickle
her with the idea that she is a superior being because she has no
passion and that you are creating a literature which only she can
appreciate--she with a refinement and a bleached and laundried set of
tastes which have made her a tyrannical middle-class enthusiast for all
that is unreal and petty in art!”
“Oh!” I said, “Oh!”
“I wish I had been born an Englishman,” he pursued viciously. “To be
great in English literature you’ve only to be dull; but to be great in
American literature you’ve got to be a eunuch.”
Letter VII
_From the Lady_ HELEN POLE _to the Countess of_ EDGE _and_ ROSS.
_Chipmunk Lake_,
July 27th
_Dear Polly_:
Mr. Nugent, the all conquering, arranged it, Polly dear, and here I am
at a far more beautiful lake than Boulder--which seems tamely pretty
in comparison. It is on top of another mountain surrounded by another
dense forest which grows down into the very water; but there the
resemblance ends. Although not large it is almost like four different
lakes, so irregular and cut up is it. From the natural terrace on which
the four camps are built you look over a small body of brown water
fringed with reeds and water-lilies to two mountain peninsulas which
jut so far into the lake as almost to close it. The opening is called
The Narrows and just beyond and across the distance runs another high
sloping mountain quite cutting off further view except of far pale
peaks. It is only when you are in a boat beyond The Narrows that you
see the lake’s three other parts, one end closed up with great rocks
and floating logs, but with the avenue of the inlet showing beyond;
everywhere else, the dense silent forest, the spruce crowding to the
front, the water-lilies and their pads spreading almost to the middle
of the lake. There are white lilies and yellow ones and a miniature
variety with so sweet and intoxicating a fragrance that in the early
morning you feel as if the boat were cutting a visible passage through
it. And the mountains, mountains, everywhere.
The four cottages are made of logs, three with the bark on, the
other peeled and polished. Mrs. Van Worden’s is the largest and also
the most homelike. We arrived rather late. Mr. N. and I, tired of
the “buckboard,” had left it and walked on ahead, arriving quite
noiselessly. I never shall forget how comfy Mrs. Van Worden’s
living-room looked as we peered a moment through the glass door before
knocking. It is a long low room with heavy beams across the dark
red paper of the ceiling, and a red brick fireplace from floor to
roof--in which great logs were blazing. In one corner was a graceful
staircase, and on the “sealed” gold-coloured walls were many prints
and photographs of sporting life in the Adirondacks. In one corner was
a divan piled with cushions and draped with silk, a lamp swinging from
the canopy. Against another wall was a straight divan, on which a young
man was lying, reading a book. Then there were mounted deer heads and
rugs and tables and at least eight rocking-chairs--I am going to take
back a “rocker” as a present for you.
Mrs. Van Worden, who was standing with her foot on the fender staring
into the fire, seemed to feel our presence in a moment, for she turned
about suddenly and came swiftly to the door. And then the warmth of her
welcome quite dissipated the misgivings I had felt about descending in
this summary fashion upon a complete stranger. I like her better than
any woman I have met in the country and as we sat up talking half the
night, I already know her quite well.
She is tall and thin, with no figure exquisitely dressed--though with
much more simplicity than the fashion of Boulder Lake would dictate.
But these women _have_ to dress so much oftener during other parts of
the year that they are more disposed to a complete rest up here. Still,
they can’t help dressing well. Her figure’s only “points” are the
hands and feet, which are so small that I stare at them almost rudely.
Nevertheless the hands look extremely determined. She is not pretty but
has rather the beauty of individuality. Her complexion is dead white,
almost transparent, and her nose irregular, but she has great glowing
black eyes, a sensitive and beautiful mouth, and soft mahogany-brown
hair charmingly arranged. She is about six-and-thirty, I should say,
and when she hinted to me that she was nine-and-twenty I felt disposed
to offer her my confidence without reserve. Never trust a woman who
will not lie about her age after thirty. She is unwomanly and unhuman
and there is no knowing what crimes she will commit.
The man on the divan--a long clean-limbed smooth faced delightful
looking young fellow, with a humorous mouth, a frank eye and a fine
high-bred _University_ air about him--stood up as soon as we entered
and was presented as Mr. Latimer of New York. Mr. Van Worden is a
banker, very business-like and absent minded, and years older than his
wife.
We had the jolliest little supper in one corner of the living-room--at
least four of us did, for Mr. Van Worden was on the lake, having
dined--and were waited on by the lake-keeper’s wife, a woman of immense
weight, but so light on her feet and so deft and swift in her movements
that she might have been a fairy. More of her later. She interests me
very much.
After supper, as it was blowing rather hard, we all sat about the
blazing logs for two hours and Mrs. Van Worden and young Latimer
rattled alternately. But they did not irritate me for a moment, they
were so impersonal even when talking of themselves, so really clever
without seeming to be in the least aware of it, so full of a humour
that made no attempt at wit, and so interesting in what they had to say
and in their manner of looking at things. I felt grateful enough to hug
myself.
Mr. Latimer had recently been in the Philippines and he told some of
his humorous adventures with a boyish abandon--I am told he is thirty
but he seems much younger--that made me laugh heartily. Suddenly I
caught Mr. Nugent’s eye and the expression of delight on his face made
me blush to my hair. We were alone for a moment just before going to
bed and he whispered to me eagerly:
“You like it here! I know that you do! I am so glad.”
“Oh, yes!” I exclaimed with the enthusiasm of sheer gratitude. “I do.
Thank you for bringing me.” Here he looked as if nothing could prevent
him from kissing me and I said hurriedly:
“What a difference! It reminds me of something the Prince is reported
to have said once: ‘Bright people--yes; but no damned intellect.’”
Not but what I fancy the intellect is really there, Polly, but it is
reserved as a sub-stratum, from which little sparks are sent up to
irradiate, not a constant conscientious blaze like an energetic thunder
storm.
Mrs. Van Worden invited me into her bed-room and we muffled ourselves
in warm wrappers and talked for hours while the wind howled. She
really has seen the world, and is as interesting as--well, as you are.
There is a woman who would sympathise with you from A to Z and never
criticise. Fancy the attitude of Mrs. Laurence or Mrs. Hammond. What is
Christianity, anyhow? A kind heart and a sophisticated mind?
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
I have been here four days, Poll, and not heard the words
“aristocratic” or “refined” once. Oh, blessed relief! And--yet--they
just lack unselfconsciousness. Is that the word, or is it a suggestion
of reserve under all their animation and candour and naturalness, a
reserve that is not so much mental and personal as racial and as--well,
there is no help for it--aristocratic? I think that is the explanation,
after all. They _feel_ themselves to be the true aristocrats of the
country but are too well-bred to mention, or, perhaps, to think of
it. There is just the faintest dearest little air of loftiness about
them and it is so manifestly natural that I fancy it is as much the
real thing as the “self-made” American. I have come to the conclusion
that the modern interpretation of the Declaration of Independence is
something like this: _I am as good as those that think themselves
better and a long sight better than those who only think themselves
as good._ When they are established on the top step like these people
here, with no more flights to conquer, there is really nothing left to
do but to slide down the banisters.
None of my Chipmunk Lake friends are of the “new-rich”; every fortune
up here is at least three generations old, and Mr. Van W’s is six.
Well, they are welcome to feel themselves anything they like, for I
find them wholly delightful, and they have been charming to me. Mrs.
Wilbur Garrison looks rather sad and tired but is always gay in manner
and interested in what other people are talking about. Mrs. Reginald
Grant has several pasts in the depths of her eyes which her long
lashes always seem to be sweeping aside as if it were a matter of no
consequence whatever. Mrs. Meredith Jones rather goes in for charities,
and Mr. Nugent says she really is a hard worker as well as a devoted
mother and an irresistible coquette. She has a Greek profile, a cloud
of golden hair, a Juno bust and a rather cynical mouth.
I do not know what Mrs. Hammond meant by saying there were “no men.” I
should say there was one apiece.
There is a young widow, a great belle, visiting Mrs. Grant--Mrs.
Coward. She is very thin and not in the least beautiful, although her
face lights up when she talks and has a sweet expression. But she holds
herself with a calm expectancy that every man will fall at her feet,
and she flatters more than any one I ever met. Then she delivers her
opinions with such an air! They are usually platitudes, but you know
how a manner blinds.
A Miss Page, a Southern girl, is visiting Mrs. Garrison. She has an
ideal manner, is always impersonal in her conversation and seems as
amiable and unselfish as possible.
The unmarried men live in the little Club House, which has a
smoking-room but no dining-room. We all dine in our own camps when we
are not entertaining each other, which is usually.
The children are established for the summer in other country houses,
where all these people will go after their three weeks’ rest from every
care. The two husbands up here are quite nice, and devoted to sport.
When the fish won’t play in this lake they tramp off to others.
But enough of the people. I am going to tell you of the weirdest
experience I ever had. Save it for me, Polly, for if ever I write a
book I certainly shall put it in.
First--Last evening at sundown several of us--two in a boat--went out
on the lake in the hope of seeing the deer come down to drink. The
men paddled, making so little noise and movement that the boat seemed
gliding by itself through the silences of space. There was a yellow
glow in the West--the aftermath of the most magnificent amber sunset;
mountains and lakes of molten cloud--but the stars were not out and
there was only that light from nowhere through which the vision gropes
surely but always with surprise.
Mr. Nugent paddled our boat--he sat in the stern, I in the bow, with my
back to him--through the Narrows, then, after drifting about for a few
moments pointed toward the shore most distant. I had been warned not to
speak, and not a word had been uttered when a low suppressed voice from
behind gave me a start. “Look, look!” it said, “do you see? Straight
ahead.” I saw! A reddish brown something was walking along the bank
and in a moment I saw it toss its horns. But it was not of the deer I
thought just then but of the strange sense of intimacy that suppressed
voice on the darkening silent lake had aroused in me. In a moment
it came again, lower still, for we were nearing the shore. “There is
another.” And he steered through the water-lilies.
A mate had joined the buck and they cropped and drank for a few
moments, then walked along the shore and into an arbour-like opening
of the forest, exactly like people making a stately exit from the
back of a stage. Almost immediately two does came bounding out of the
forest and waded into the water until only their heads and red backs
were visible. We remained motionless, almost breathless, but in a few
moments they must have noticed us for they made hotly for the shore.
When they reached it they stood for at least five minutes with their
heads thrown back staring at us. Then, although we were, apparently, as
lifeless as the lily pads, their reasoning faculty must have satisfied
them that we were aliens and therefore to be feared, for they suddenly
turned their backs and made for the forest as hard as they could go,
leaping over one high bush after another, until nothing could be seen
but the white lining of their tails. Then the exhibition being over we
talked all the way home, and that strange sense of intimacy with a note
of mystery in it was dispelled.
It was to be renewed, however, for we had not done with the deer. That
night at eleven o’clock, when Mr. Van Worden was sound asleep--he
really is very dull--Mrs. Van W. and I, Mr. Nugent and Mr. Latimer
stole down to the boat house by the light of a lantern. We were muffled
up in the darkest things we possessed and I felt exactly as if we were
conspirators, or smugglers, or refugees from justice.
In the boat house the men lit a lamp they had brought and placed it
in a wooden case, open in front, which was on the end of a pole about
three feet high. (This light is called a Jack.) The pole was set into
a hole on the bow of the boat Mr. N. intended to paddle, and it was to
serve as a sort of search light, not only to see the deer by, but to
fascinate what moth-like instinct they possessed.
All prepared, we pushed silently out into the lake. Can you imagine
the scene? The mountains--there are so many of them!--were black.
The sky seemed dropping with its weight of stars. The clear glassy
lake reflected the largest of them and the black masses of the forest
that rose straight from its brink. And just ahead of me--shall I ever
forget it?--floated a white mist, rising and falling, writhing into a
different semblance every moment, the light making it the more ghostly
and terrifying. I could not see a living thing; the other boat was
behind us and I was in the bow as before, staring at that ghostly mist,
quite forgetting the deer. A line of Tennyson’s haunted me:
“The dead steered by the dumb went upward with the flood,”
and I longed to utter it aloud, but dared not. Once I turned my head
to see if Mr. N. were really there. He looked black and graven, as if
indeed he were the dumb servitor. The others I could not see at all.
And again there was that sense of gliding, unpropelled, through the
silences of the upper Universe, only a thousand times intensified. And,
surely, never were so many stars gathered together before. It seemed
to me that the big ones must drop into the lake, they looked so heavy,
and so close, and the little ones were like a million grains of golden
sand. I thought of Grimm’s Fairy Tales and the princess who carried a
robe of stars in a nut-shell.
But more often I watched that white mist, just in front of the prow and
me, and nowhere else. Where did it come from? I have no idea. They tell
me there was a mist everywhere, and that by the aid of our light we saw
it just ahead, but I saw none of it elsewhere, and I saw the stars and
the trees in the lake.
We must have floated for a half hour, searching almost every inch of
the banks without a glimpse of deer, when Mr. N.’s paddle stopped
suddenly. At the same moment I heard a slight trampling in the brush
close by, then a louder, as if a great buck had been brought to bay and
were pawing up the earth. Then there was a terrific snort--I had no
idea anything could snort so loud--then a long warning whistle, then
another snort, and another. By this time he had made up his mind to
flee the danger, for the snorts were accompanied by a crashing through
the brush in the opposite direction. The faster he went the louder he
snorted, until distance tempered the sound. It must have been five
minutes before the last faint note of his anger came back to us.
“I am afraid he has warned off all the others,” came that low hoarse
whisper from behind me, and it was the last touch needed to deepen the
mystery of that unreal midnight.
Mr. N. paddled for ten or fifteen minutes longer, then giving it up,
made for the boat house. We glided in noiselessly and he helped me
out at once and extinguished the light. Then we stood on the narrow
pier between the boat and the other slip of enclosed water waiting for
Latimer and Mrs. Van W. There was no sign of them on the dark lake
for several moments, and we were obliged to stand very close on that
strip of wood in the darker boat house. I can assure you it was very
weird; but with a man like Mr. N. beside one it was impossible to feel
frightened. In the boat he seemed so far away. Of course I imagined
that all sorts of things had happened to the others, but presently
they came gliding toward us and into the boat house. We all stole
home--without a word. It was long before I fell asleep.
HELEN.
Letter VIII
_From the Lady_ HELEN POLE _to the Countess of_ EDGE _and_ ROSS.
_Chipmunk Lake_,
August 4th
_Dear Polly?_
I have solved the mystery of Mrs. Opp, and it has been the cause of
much thought and speculation on my part. Her father was a German noble,
high in favour of his Kaiser some fifty years ago. For some reason he
fell from grace and was expatriated, his estates confiscated. He came
to this country with a large family, drifted to one of the Northern
counties of New York State and tried to make a living by farming. Of
course he was a failure, poor man, but he was highly respected in the
humble community, not only for his worthy character, but because he
could read and write in seven languages. It was also known that he
corresponded with Bismarck. Some twelve years after his arrival in the
New World his youngest child was born--she who now is Mrs. Opp, wife
of the keeper of Chipmunk Lake. By that time he was a common farmer
and woodsman, working fourteen hours a day with his sons for a bare
living, with neither the money nor the time to educate his superfluous
children. The little girl grew up in the woods, turning her hand to
everything, from milking to making syrup from the maple trees. When her
father died and the farm was divided she “hired out,” and supported
herself until she married, some ten years ago.
There you have the key to the mystery; the unconscious pride of
carriage, the gracious manner, the well-kept teeth and nails, the more
than suggestion of breeding in her face. But all this becomes strange
only when you realize her absolute unselfconsciousness. I have talked
with the woman over and over again and it is as plain as her descent
that she has not the slightest appreciation of what she is and has
been deprived of, much less cherishes any pride or vanity in it. It is
all unconscious, this persistence of inherited instincts through the
most unfavourable circumstances, with not an impulse in the brain to
guide it. And how short it stops, this heredity! It goes so far and no
farther; the brain, most important of all, is choked with the weeds of
a bitter fate. Still, she is happy--why should I pity her? She has her
handsome woodsman, her placid mountain life, that eternal _youngness_
in her face. Courts could give her nothing more; rather, would they
give her too much.
But how it sets one to thinking, Polly. I have tried to imagine myself
in similar circumstances: Dad exiled with a large brood, myself born
on a mountain farm, “hired out”----The respectable amount of brain I
had inherited from a long line of brilliant and useful men would be as
surely mine as now--but with nothing put into it, _could_ it have been
wholly ignorant and unambitious and unsuspecting? _Could_ I have cooked
without protest for Mrs. Van Worden while her distinguished brother
addressed me merely to demand more potatoes or the pepper? _Could_ I
have been content with finger nails and teeth, and a backbone with a
pride the brain had forgotten? Oh, no! I cannot imagine it. I should
have demanded schooling, read my father’s correspondence with Bismarck,
fed myself with his nightly tales of past splendour, and married an
American of the _haute noblesse_--in short, my heredity would have
worked itself out along the lines of the conventional novel, that is
always so pleasantly prone to give you life as it should be, not as it
is. Here I am face to face with a fact I never have met in fiction,
and I am grateful for it--even while I feel sad as I speculate upon a
fate I happily have escaped. The Fact is Mrs. Opp of noble blood and
low degree, jolly, hearty, happy, unwarped by what she knows not of
ungrammatical--and ambitious for a hotel on the St. Lawrence river.
Surely, there is a motif for a novel of advanced realism.
I have talked it over with Mr. Nugent. He is so interesting and
illuminating to talk anything over with. We take long walks and
rows every day. He is my constant cavalier, for it would be really
unprincipled of me to attempt to cut any of these women out, they have
been so sweet to me. A party of us always start off together, but there
are so many paths in the forest!
I cannot analyze for you, Polly, the stage at which I have arrived
with Mr. Nugent. He has not actually _said_ anything, so far--he is
too clever--but he has a faculty of embracing me with an invisible
presentment of himself, which is very disturbing. I don’t know what
to think--except that I think a great deal about him. It is very
sweet--but if only I could be sure. He is so different--everything over
here is so different from anything I have ever known. (I don’t idealize
him. I wonder if that is fatal?)
5th
We do not play intellectual games here, thank heaven, and there is
no idol on a pedestal, nor one person who is more the fashion than
another. We are frivolous usually, although I have occasionally heard
some solid and instructive conversation, and we all read a good deal.
Every house has several shelves of books, and the best literature of
all countries except the Great Republic is well represented. Although
I no longer take much interest in the subject--and indeed had observed
long ago that the Americans of this class cared little for their own
bookmakers--I asked Mrs. Van Worden the other day the cause of it. She
often answers in sentences so short they sound like epigrams; however,
brevity is the soul as well as the substance of most epigrams, as far
as I am able to distinguish between the short sentences of the witty
novelists and the paragraphs of those who think. For some reason the
staccato movement supplies a meaning of which the words reck not.
Mrs. Van W. shrugged her flexible little shoulders when I called her
attention to the fact that she had only three American novels in her
bookcase.
“Why should I waste my little time on the obvious? I read what I do not
know. I want knowledge. Not of a new dialect and pin point on a map,
but of life, of the eternal mysteries. I want the wisdom of those who
are not afraid to live and tell of what they have felt, thought, done.
I am not satiated, not blasée. I am still full of hopes and dreams, and
often I am quite happy; but _I_ have lived. Therefore I want to read
books by people who have lived more. How could the surface--painted in
water-colours by a cautious hand--interest _me_. And the love scenes!
Rotten. Conducted through a telephone. I want books written out of a
brain and heart and soul crowded and vital with Life, spelled with a
big L. I want poetry bursting with passion. I don’t care a hang for the
‘verbal felicities.’ They’ll do for the fringe, but I want the garment
to warm me first. Good God! how little true poetry there is in our
time; and I often feel the want of it so terribly. I know the old boys
by heart. Oh, for a new Voice! What is the matter with the men, anyway?
Women make asses of themselves when they try to be passionate and rhyme
at the same time, but I can see no reason why a man should become so
offensively ladylike the moment he becomes a poet.”
“These are busy times,” I suggested. “Perhaps the virile brains have
found something better to do. A poet always has seemed to me a pretty
poor apology for a man. Byron was masculine but he was the great
exception. And his genius of personality was far greater than his
poetical gift, great, creatively, as that was. I could stand a man
being a poet incidentally, if he had the power to make me forget he was
a poet, but not otherwise.”
And then we all went out on the lake in the dusk and Mr. Nugent quoted
Byron to me for an hour. Not to my back. He was rowing this time.
6th
About two miles from here is a lake entirely covered with water-lilies.
It is seldom that a boat cuts the surface or a fish line is cast, for
the water is too warm for trout, and our fishermen disdain bull heads
and sunfish. Consequently the green lily pads have spread over every
inch of it, and scattered upon them are the waxen cups with their
golden treasure. It is a scene of indescribable beauty and peace, and
the low hills above the shore, instead of the usual haughty mountains,
are almost as sweet and wildly still.
The keeper carried a boat there yesterday, and Mr. N. rowed me about
for an hour. I gathered an armful of the lilies and hung them all
over my hat and gown, linking the long soft stems in my belt until
they trailed to my knees. I felt so happy in catching at the beautiful
things as the boat grinded through their hidden part, and in adorning
myself, that I quite forgot Mr. N., who had fallen silent. The silence
of one of these Americans, by the way, is quite different from that of
our men. They are at so much pains usually to entertain and interest
a woman that their silences indicate either a pleasant intimacy, or
depression, never a lordly superiority to small matters. Therefore,
I suddenly paused with a cluster of lilies half raised and directed
my glance to my companion. He looked neither musing nor sad. His eyes
were fastened upon me with eager admiration, his whole face, that
lean powerful nervous face stamped by unconquerable emotions, was so
concentrated, that I felt myself blushing vividly, and I waved the
cluster of lilies at arm’s-length.
“Did you ever see anything so beautiful?” I exclaimed gaily. “Is there
any flower in the world so artistic as the water-lily?--from its pure
cold form to its aloofness from the leaves?--and always alone, never a
blossom and its buds, never a group, gathered as if in fragrant gossip.
It is the nun among flowers, sexless, childless, angelically pure and
cold, asking nothing of this life but to bloom white and unspotted in
some mountain convent like this, a convent of perpetual silence, with
its wall of hills, its roof of blue, embroidered with gold at night and
haunted by day with fleecy clouds that look like wandering angels--Oh,
dear! I forgot the thunder-storms and the cries of angry deer, but
doubtless the lilies merely close up at such unholy sounds and pray in
unruffled serenity.”
“Lady Helen, will you marry me?” asked Nugent.
Polly, I gave such a start that the boat rocked, and I felt like a
silly girl who never had been proposed to before. Moreover, I blushed
scarlet. But, although I had, over and over, imagined his proposal,
none of my conceptions had been anything like this. I had pictured him
losing his head suddenly when we were walking alone in the woods, or
keeping guard over the fire in the living-room at night. I had--well,
there is no use going into details of what did not happen. Suffice it
to say that the proposal was delivered in tersest English under a four
o’clock sun, while he had an oar in each hand. And as I could not run
away, and as he gave me not the slightest excuse to be angry there was
nothing to do but to give him some sort of reply.
“To be perfectly honest, I don’t know,” I said.
“You mean that you are not sure that you love me, but that I may hope,”
and his face turned as crimson as mine--no easy feat, for it is about
the colour and consistency of leather.
“It is the sort of thing you can put in a good many different ways.
And there is so much to be considered. You have the double magnetism
of mind and sex, you always interest and never bore me, and you are
entirely different from any one I have ever known. I am twenty-six, and
like all women, eager to be in love--that I never have been makes my
longing for that particular heritage the keener. Moreover, I am on the
rebound from two years of cruel anxiety, days and nights of tears and
waiting. For the first time I feel that I belong to myself once more,
that the world and all its delights are mine--and you happen to be the
only man. How it would be if I had met you in England in every-day
conditions--that is the problem I cannot solve. These wild mountains,
this life full of novelty, the novelty of everything--Oh, I don’t know.”
“Have you any prejudice against marrying an American?”
“No prejudice. That is not the word. It is--well, the very novelty
that draws me to you is what I am most afraid of. You see--as I
said--I never met any one in the least like you before. The men I have
known, whether Englishmen or Europeans, are all men born of the same
traditions as myself. Fundamentally they are the same, no matter what
their individualities. But you--you are just as different fundamentally
as every other way. How do I know but that your great attraction for me
is partly the spell of your fascination, more still the novelty which
appeals to my somewhat various mind?”
“You certainly have given the matter some thought,” he said, smiling
with a sort of joyous sarcasm, but in his usual harsh abrupt tones.
“I’ll debate the matter if you like. Your uncertainty of mind is due
to the fact that you have gone fancy-free to the age of twenty-six.
Unless a woman early acquires the habit of falling in love, it becomes
more difficult every year--the disassociating of the mind from the
emotions--the surrender of self--you struck me when I first saw you
as being so implacably proud in your absolute self-ownership--it was
delicious--I knew you never had kissed any man--when will you give me
your answer?”
“When? Oh! Well--before--” brightening--“when Bertie is quite well.”
“Your brother is as good as well now. Soulé says there isn’t a microbe
in him. The Adirondacks and common sense are all he wants. He has
acquired both. Can you assert that you know it would be utterly
impossible to love me?”
“Oh, no, I can’t say that.”
“Then take the plunge. I will answer for the rest. You won’t love me
before you marry me. I feel sure of that. I am equally sure that you
will love me after. And all the differences from your traditional
man--they will transpose themselves into commonplaces when they have
become the familiar details of daily life.”
“But English women never marry American men,” I exclaimed, grasping
wildly at a straw. “It always is the other way.”
“There lies your chance for fame,” he said more lightly than one would
expect from his face. “You are already the most delightfully original
of women. Don’t do anything so commonplace as to go home, after having
all your blood made over by the Adirondack air, and marry a great
landlord with a rent-roll and six titles. Fancy the stimulation of
watching a determined American throttling a fortune out of his chaotic
country, helping him in his ambitious career, rising with him step
by step until he is head and shoulders above the seventy struggling
millions of the United States of America. Does not the prospect please
you? You see I am practical. I hate self-control. I know very little
about it. But I dare not be lover-like, not the least bit, till you
give me permission.”
“Oh, please don’t! Yes, the life _would_ be interesting. But I adore
politics. Would you throw over that Trust and go in heart and soul for
reform, with the ultimate intention of being a distinguished statesman?”
“Yes--but it would mean a curtailed income.”
“I have quantities of money--it _would_ be rather an original
international match, wouldn’t it?”
“It certainly would. And while you could expend your entire income on
dress and jewels if you chose, you would have to make up your mind to
live according to _my_ income.”
“Oh!”
“I _should_ be a failure if I settled down to live on a woman’s money
at my age--forty-one--; moreover my divorce from the interests of
capitalism would be deprived of its point. It would be the sacrifice
that would tell most in the beginning. No native of the British Isles
would be accused of the disinterestedness of marrying an unwealthy
American when protected by a rent-roll. Nobody would suspect your
income.”
“That is a nice polite thing to say to me! How would you like the idea
of people saying I married you to be supported--with the inference that
no one in England would have me?”
“I do not care a red cent what any one says or thinks if I get you.
That is the only thing in life that interests me at present.”
“Bertie might oppose it so violently that he would have another
hemorrhage.”
“If he were convinced that you loved me and if you wept a few
judicious tears, common gratitude would force him to consent without a
hemorrhage--and if you postponed the announcement a month he couldn’t
have another if he tried. Besides, he loves you devotedly--you know his
opposition would soon be exhausted. I have seldom seen a brother and
sister so united. He would end by feeling with you and making vivid
mental pictures of your great desire for happiness--if I could only
create that desire in you.”
“Oh, dear!” I said. “You must give me time. I _can’t_ say anything
definite for days and days. _Please_ talk of something else.”
“I have no intention of worrying you. Let us land here. I have another
lake to show you. If this is a cloister, rapt and holy, that is a
refuge for lost souls, dank and sinister.”
Much interested, and delighted at his ready conformity to my wishes, I
stepped ashore and followed him along a “runway” (deer run), for about
a mile. It turned and twisted through the wood and sometimes we had to
climb over fallen trees, not having the lightsome feet of the deer--who
could leap a house, I should think. It was not a dense wood, and the
sunlight fairly tumbled in, but so divided that it seemed palpable
enough to catch by the apronful. Some of the leaves looked to be made
of light, and a sea-gull--they nest in these forests--seemed swimming
and drinking in an upper lake of sunshine. But, abruptly, this
charming impression was behind us. The wood grew dark and I noticed
that the ground was very springy and soft--as our moors are in places.
“We are on a swamp--made of the decay of trees for a hundred years--”
he said--“but you are quite safe. It is at least five feet deep.”
This was sufficiently creepy--only five feet of rotted bark and leaves
between ourselves and the lake--although I reflected that if it could
support trees, our additional weight would not sink it--but in a moment
we stood on the brink of the lake.
Polly, I never have seen so desolate a spot. Even the mountains had
deserted it. The forest about it grew on land as flat as a plain, and
the trees hid the peaks which were only a few miles distant. And so
many of the trees were dead. Lightning had blasted them and scarcely a
spruce had escaped the blight. All about the shore the lake was choked
with rotting trunks, their naked branches projecting starkly above the
water--which had no movement. Its tarnished surface, as ripless as a
marsh, did not even reflect that deserted wood--they held themselves
aloof from each other; and yet they seemed dying together. The lake has
no inlet, Mr. N. had told me as we came along; it is fed by springs
and the moisture of the forest. I could imagine it dropping lower and
lower, as the trees about it died, until--a century hence?--a dry
bed choked with rotting trees would be visited as the tomb of one of
Nature’s failures. In England such a spot would be the headquarters of
a dozen dark and terrible stories, and would have done threadbare duty
in fiction. But old as it is it is still too young for that complicated
thing called life to have centred about it. It is on one of the New
World’s peaks, and not in another generation will she have time to
discover it. It is like those unhappy mortals who die and rot before
they have guessed that there is aught in the world to live for. Poor
stranded ugly duckling. I felt more pity for it than terror and almost
resented the calm insolence of its beautiful fellows--two thousand of
them, I am told. I wondered if its hidden springs met and gossipped
with other springs, who in turn poured their cold freshness into
other lakes, and with it their tale of a comrade forgotten by Nature
and despised by man. Doubtless they would deepen their amber-brown in
scorn, those spoilt beauties of the mountains, worshipped of men and
darlings of Nature; not a ripple of pity would agitate them, I would
vow.
“Look,” said Mr. N.
He pushed his feet hard against the swamp, putting much spring into his
body--and for a hundred yards the shore trembled, the trees moved as if
on a seesaw. My nerves are strong, but that was too much. I grasped his
arm.
“Come!” I said, “Take me away--please. And do you go ahead. I want to
look at a living being till I get out of this wood.”
And we went back to the lake of the water-lilies, that looked pure, and
sweet, and happy enough to pray for their lost neighbour.
7th
This morning I sat watching the sunlight play on the wrinkles of the
lake where a light breeze blew. The glittering sun-flecks looked
exactly like a flock of tiny silver birds caught fast on the surface of
the lake and straining their wings even to run away. Everyday I find
something new in this lake to interest me, and early this morning,
being unable to sleep, I rose and looked out of my front window and saw
a great deer, with his antlers against the rosy dawn, standing on one
of the points of The Narrows. For a few moments he listened intently,
then waded out among the lily pads and had his morning repast.
Perhaps you can imagine why I slept so ill last night. Polly, I wish
I knew my own mind. I am afraid of making a mistake and afraid of
throwing away what may be my one supreme opportunity to love. If I
were only an American or he an Englishman. If only I had the intuitive
knowledge of him and all that he will mean. I am beginning to suspect
that I have something of the pioneer, of the discoverer in me. After
all, why should not one make great experiments in life? Obedience to
traditions, to habit, we see every day--and how much happiness?
But I think I’ll be glad to get away from the subject for a time.
I am rather keen for the autumn to come--“the fall of the year”--when
all these mountains are a blaze of red and gold and the lakes reflect
their glory; when the dew freezes on these forest flames and turns
them to jewels that outdazzle the stars; when the hunters with their
red caps are in them, not stalking the nimble deer, but sitting beside
the runways hour after hour, patiently waiting the passing of the only
lords left in these forests, when we have venison three times a day and
wonder why we pined for it. There! that was as malicious a drop as any
of Heine’s, and I am sorry.
I saw such a laughable sight two days ago. Mr. N. took me to the
cow-yard to see it. Know first that the deer flies are a pest in the
land and the terror of beasts. The solitary cow the colony boasts was
taking her afternoon nap, down on her folded legs. Close to her head
and perched along her back were a half dozen hens with their heads
alert, watching the circling flies. The moment one lit, the nearest
chicken pounced and the fly disappeared, never to torment cow or deer
again. I saw ten disposed of in this way, while the cow slumbered
peacefully, secure in her guard.
Have I told you that there is a deep ravine on one side of the house?
The veranda overhangs it and I often stand and stare down into that
wild tangle of fallen trees and rocks and ferns. The sides are broken
and steep and under the shade of many trees, straggling up into
complete darkness. The torrent is almost dry, but in winter and spring
it is broad and noisy and all the ferns are covered and show green and
lace-like under the water. It is the outlet of the lake and it goes
far down into the valley where it tumbles over a fall into another and
wider stream. Up this rocky steep mountain brook, over the cascade, the
trout climb in their thirst for the cold springs of the higher lakes.
No other fish can make that perilous journey, so Chipmunk is one of
the stars of the Adirondacks. The trout have no minnows or other small
fish to feed on, and rise to the fly with little coaxing. I am become
so learned in mountain lore! But I feel as if I had discovered this
wonderful country, and as happy as a poet in the nervous languor of
creation.
You remember I wrote you of Mrs. Coward--and, by the way she says she
met you at Homburg and in Scotland two years ago--I have concluded
that I do not like her quite as well as the others, not because she
is insatiable in her desire for admiration and has several times
flattered Mr. N. right out of the room and on to the lake--how can men
be so weak?--when he is palpably devoted to me and therefore in common
decency she should let him alone. Unless she mends her ways I shall
turn my batteries on Mr. Carlisle, a dashing young millionaire who
distinguished himself in the late war, is a master of hounds, drives
a Tally-ho, is a champion at golf, never misses the two deer a season
the government permits him to shoot, and is altogether very jolly and
charming. I could cut her out if I chose and without flattering the
animal either. That is a trick of the mind to cover up the defects of
nature.
But what I started to say was that the real reason I dislike her is
that I have discovered more of the snob in her than in most of these
Americans, aspiring as they are--with the possible exception of Mrs.
Laurence. Yesterday morning I “dropped” into Mrs. Grant’s lodge, and
while the servant went for Mrs. Coward--Mrs. Grant had a headache--I
picked up a framed photograph of a very good-looking young man in the
uniform of the United States. I still held it when Mrs. Coward came
stepping down the stairs like the duchess in the play, a red poppy in
her dark hair, a soft cream-white morning gown clinging to herself and
the floor--the morning was chilly. She had a bunch of poppies in her
belt and altogether looked rather well.
“Is this your brother?” I asked. “I fancy I see a resemblance.”
“Yes,” she replied, “it is my soldier-brother. He made a brilliant
charge at Santiago and I am very proud of him. Sit there, dear Lady
Helen, where the light falls full on you. You are so radiant, bathed
in sunlight--and you can stand it. I always feel in the presence of
poetry--a blue and gold edition of all the poets--when I can sit
and look at you like this. Poetry is really elevating, don’t you
think so?--I always maintain that, positively. It is like pure air
and the rural beauties of the country. But about my brave brother:
it is only fondness that makes me proud of him, for there never has
been a generation in our family where we have not given at least one
soldier to the country. Of course you will appreciate that. Very few
American families can say that for _seven generations_ its men have
distinguished themselves in the field and added to the honour of the
name.”
Her low silken shallow voice paused that I might comment, but I only
stared at the portrait--now restored to the table--trying in vain to
frame a phrase that would express my awe of the seven generations.
Finally, I said desperately:
“He looks--really--as if the entire Spanish army could not terrify him.”
This extravagance served the purpose of diversion. “Nothing could
terrify him,” she exclaimed. “He only needs another war to become
really famous. I am quite positive our unfortunate acquisitions will
let us in for another war before long--the Chinese question--don’t
you think so? I think it so delightful that American women are now
beginning to take as much interest in politics as English women do. You
really have been our superiors in that--as in many other--respects. I
heard you discussing the great questions of the day with Mr. Nugent and
Mr. Carlisle last night and I quite envied you--I am just beginning,
and you seem to have learned politics with your alphabet. I am _so_
glad you have such influence with Mr. Nugent, because I am convinced
that he has the making of a statesman in him and that it is his
duty to go into high politics. I have always maintained,” she added
weightily, “that it is a man’s duty to cultivate his gifts. If he feels
an irresistible impulse to write he should do so--or to paint--or
to model. Politics are of equal importance to the development of
civilisation--the right sort. Do not you agree with me, Lady Helen?”
“I have always maintained that white is white, and that the sun gives
light when there are not too many clouds,” I said, firmly. “How
wonderfully becoming those poppies are to you. I envy any one who can
wear red, it is a colour so full of life, but it does not suit me at
all.”
For a second she had looked puzzled, but she is too thorough a woman
of the world to hang out her emotions, and she replied with her usual
suavity:
“If I could wear pink and dead white, and brilliant blues as you can I
should resign red without a struggle. I have _never_ seen anything so
beautiful as you are with a pink rose in your hair and another at your
throat.”
But I had had as much of this as I could stand and I asked her abruptly
if she had visited many of the lakes.
“This is my first visit to the Adirondacks, I am ashamed to say. I was
taken abroad every summer when I was a girl and I have gone almost
every year since from force of habit and because I really have such a
delicious time. It is one’s duty to see all the beauties of the old
world, don’t you think so, Lady Helen?”
But I did not want to talk about Europe. “I hear that Spruce Lake is
so beautiful,” I said. “Could not we--a party of us--walk over there
some day? It is only seven miles, and Mr. Nugent says the trail is very
good.”
“Seven miles! _Dear_ Lady Helen. Twice seven are fourteen.
Remember--we--alas!--are not English.”
“They might put us up for the night----”
“Oh, quite impossible. We do not know any of them. They are business
people from Buffalo and Utica and all those provincial towns.”
“In trade, do you mean?”
“That is the way you would express it. It is the same class--people who
keep stores or make things.”
“And they have the same tastes as yourself?” I asked, puzzled at this
new American facer. “They are--sportsmen? They lead the same life up
here as you do?”
“I really don’t know anything about them. I suppose there are certain
national characteristics; several lakes in the Adirondacks are owned
by people of that sort. I am told that there was an encampment of
commercial travellers just off the borders of this property last year.”
“But I don’t understand. Your lines of caste are very marked, it has
seemed to me. Why should the leisure class and the commercial traveller
have the same tastes. It is very odd.”
But she refused to take the slightest interest in the subject, and that
afternoon as I was walking to the lake of the water-lilies with Mr. N.
I asked him for enlightenment.
“Oh, Eastern men are keen sportsmen,” he said. “That is to say,
most--wherever there are mountains and woods and lakes. It is an
instinct inherited from the old hunters and trappers--from the days
when the settlers shot game for food and were as familiar with the
wilderness as the farm. These settlers were the ancestors of men who
are in all classes of life to-day. And you must remember that there is
no ‘Continent’ to run over to for the yearly vacation. You can travel
an immense distance here and pay a good deal of money only to hear a
change of accent. But the forests of New York and Maine mean rest,
reinvigoration, and the complete happiness of the sportsman. These men
up here go in the woods every year as naturally as they keep their nose
to the grindstone for the remaining ten or eleven months.
“And they are first-class sportsmen.”
“As good as any in England.”
“Men that--that--sell hats?”
“Carlisle is neither keener nor better.”
“Certainly your country is wonderfully interesting and sometimes I feel
as if I were groping about in the neighbourhood of the true democracy.
Do they also play golf?”
“They do, indeed.”
“The tradesmen? People who keep retail shops.”
“In the small interior towns many of them have achieved sufficient
prosperity and leisure, and they are very keen about it. But in the
large towns it is usually the wealthier class that goes in for it; the
families of business and professional men, successful on a large scale.”
And then I saw the lilies.
I must tell you that Mrs. Van Worden often goes into the kitchen and
sits in a rocking chair by the window and talks to Mrs. Opp, and that
sometimes, when the men are out, she invites her into the living-room.
It appears that unless these people were treated with a certain amount
of consideration they would not remain. A city servant is a servant,
but in the country they appear to have studied the Declaration of
Independence, and doubtless they all know that Abraham Lincoln’s sister
“lived out.” Mrs. Opp is quite insensible of her noble blood but she is
as proud as Lucifer all the same, and because her untainted Americanism
teaches her that she is “as good as anybody.” She is willing to work
for hire and envies no one, but the slightest display of “airs,” an
unthinking snub, and she would pack her bundle and march over the
mountain with a majesty the self-conscious American of high degree
never will achieve. It is truly delightful and I love her. I often go
out and sit in the rocker and watch her great bulk move lightly about
the exquisite kitchen, and listen to her kindly drawl emphasised by
little gracious bends of the head. She tells me the gossip of the
mountains, and alluded the other day to the cook at Boulder Lake as “a
lovely woman.” I told her about Jemima, and she said:
“Poor child. I guess she was right, but she didn’t know how to take it.
Of course you folks nat’rally wants ter eat with yourselves, and the
hired help as is used to farms and little country towns don’t just see
how it is at first. Different people has different ways and all we ask
up here is to be treated right, we don’t expect the hull earth. I’ve
always knowed that, because I’ve lived so much to hotels, but Jemima, I
guess she’s pretty green yet.”
When I told her about Jemima wanting to see “a dook,” she laughed
heartily.
“Well, I guess I’d like to see one, myself,” she admitted, “not that
I’d expect them to be so different from other folks, but just because
I’ve read so much about ’em. That’s it. That’s it. I’m glad he’s
gittin’ on so nice. He had orter drink plenty of milk.”
Curiously enough, that evening I received a letter from Bertie saying
that another “eminent doctor” had put him on a milk diet and promised
him complete health in _one_ year if he would be faithful to it and the
Adirondacks for that period.
“Its beastly uninteresting diet, Nell, and required all the will I’ve
got to make up my mind to it,” he wrote; “but I want to get back to
England and be alive once more, so I’ve plunged in--literally enough.
I’ve leased an Inn on one of the big public lakes from October till
June, so we’ll have a big old-fashioned house, they tell me, and not a
care, for the proprietor will ‘run it.’ Rogers has promised to come up
twice a month and I have written to Nugent and asked him to come often
and bring all the friends he likes. I fancy from your letters that I
should like the men--and women--over there better than these--Rogers
excepted. I believe he is in love with you, Nell, and so is Nugent; but
you mustn’t marry an American. By the way Roddy Spencer is coming over
here--wrote me to expect him any day, and that he’d look me up at once.
He has just succeeded--old Landsburghe died last month, and left Roddy
all his personal property. That must amount to three or four hundred
thousand and with the estates will set up Roddy as well as he could
wish--and his debts must have been a pretty penny.”
I shall be rather glad to see Roddy. He was always with Bertie when
they were boys, but I have not seen much of him of late years. Didn’t
he go to South Africa in the hope that Rhodes would put him in the way
of making a fortune--after he had loaded himself too heavily with debts
to remain in London. I forget the details. The legacy must have been
a pleasant surprise, for the old Marquis was very eccentric and had
refused to pay his debts. Well, I shall be glad to see him and suppose
he is as good looking as ever.
HELEN.
Letter IX
_From the Lady_ HELEN POLE _to the Countess of_ EDGE _and_ ROSS.
_Chipmunk Lake_,
August 11th
_Dearest Polly_:
I am rather put out, and have been so irritable for two days that I
hardly know myself. Still, thank heaven, nobody suspects it. I never
have been more amiable.
The other night a half dozen of the party were playing Bridge in a
corner of Mrs. Van Worden’s living-room. I detest gambling and was
trying to interest myself in a book when I happened to glance out of
the window and saw--Mrs. Coward and Mr. N. on their way down to the
lake. Now, I don’t pretend to be in love with the man, Polly, but I
do feel that while he is pretending devotion to me it is little short
of an insult for him to sneak off with another woman--and an arrant
coquette--for a row at nine o’clock at night--it is scandalous and I
never have heard _any one_ utter so many virtuous platitudes as Mrs. C.
If I thought he was trying to make me jealous I should merely dismiss
him from my mind with the contempt he would deserve, but he really
is incapable of such pettiness, and I happen to know he was only too
frightened I’d find it out.
Polly, I cannot pretend to describe to you my sensations when I saw
those dark shapes steal through the spruce grove before the house--the
branches are cut so high that it is really a grove of slender trunks
and you see the lake plainly. For the moment I felt as if my heart
were sinking and I involuntarily pushed my hand underneath it, while
my breath shortened and my face burned and then went cold. I had an
impulse to rush out and see if it really were true and to prevent
it. And then I fell into a rage. How I wished Roddy Spencer were
here. He is such a splendid looking creature that he could be made to
set another man wild with jealousy. Suddenly I bethought myself of
Carlisle. He was playing, but the game was nearly over. I made up my
mind in an instant; I got up and moved about the room as if I were
getting bored and impatient, and in a few moments I caught his eye.
I sent him a glance of coquettish appeal, and it had the desired
effect. The moment the game was over he was at my side and we ensconced
ourselves on the three-cornered divan under the swinging rose-coloured
lamp and never moved till twelve o’clock. N. and Mrs. C. returned,
looking half-frozen and too silly, for they were obliged to get almost
inside the chimney. We never noticed them. I coquetted, Polly, as I
never coquetted before, and Mr. Carlisle is a flirt whose accomplished
depths it is interesting to explore. For fear he should think I was
animated by pique--although he knew nothing of the row--I contrived to
intimate that I was rather bored and on the verge of making an excuse
to return to Boulder Lake. At the same time I made him feel what a
triumph he would achieve if he renewed the fascinations of Chipmunk
Lake for me. Nothing would induce me to leave. I shall stay and prove
to this self-satisfied American flirt that I can make myself twice as
interesting as herself. I’ll employ her own weapon, flattery, and make
her platitudes apparent. When I have sufficiently punished N. I’ll take
him back and keep Carlisle besides. I am sure she wants to marry N.
She has too large a fortune of her own to be tempted by Carlisle’s, and
N.’s possibilities appeal to her inordinate ambition and vanity.
This morning, of course, N. tried to be as devoted as usual. But I
dismissed him with an absent smile, which became brilliantly personal
the moment C. appeared. We went off for a walk in the forest and I
never shall forget the expression of N.’s face. I almost relented. But
he deserves punishment. I will have all or nothing. In the afternoon
Mrs. Coward drifted about majestically for a half hour or so--her face
expressing nothing--while Carlisle and I read a novel together on the
divan in the corner. She tried to get N. into her pocket but he merely
glowered into the fire and took no notice of her. Presently she drifted
away, and in the afternoon I saw her fishing with _Mr. Van Worden_! If
I were in such desperate straits I would give out that I was writing a
book, and keep to my room. I fancy she wove a net of flattery for Mr.
Latimer, but he is a faithful soul. Mrs. Van W. often looks sad, by the
way, brilliant as her normal spirits are. It must be an unsatisfactory
roundabout way of trying to be happy. I am more than ever determined to
make no mistake when I do marry, and to consider one thing only. I am
convinced there is no other happiness.
13th
I have restored N. to favour but now give him only half my time, that
he never may be quite sure of me again. Mr. C. apparently is quite as
high in my good graces, and while he is merely stimulated and on the
verge of becoming serious, N. shows a curious mixture of alarm, anger
and energetic determination--and has taken no more rows or walks with
Mrs. C. I have managed to convey to him that I will accept no divided
homage, and he is now only too eager to give me the whole of it, and
keeps out of Mrs. C.’s way. I must say she is a thoroughbred. She has
never betrayed jealousy or pique by the flutter of an eyelash. Perhaps
I’ll restore Mr. Carlisle to her presently, for I am rather tired of
him. There is none of the quality of the unexpected about him. He is
a well-proportioned mass of good points and good fortune--all trained
outward; he never has had the necessity--I believe his family has had
wealth and position for four generations--nor the inclination to look
very far into himself, consequently the crust has deepened and the
personality diminished. Mr. N., on the other hand, while as well-born,
has had all his faculties sharpened by a struggle with the impinging
forces that array themselves against the young man seeking to conquer
them without money. But first of all he received a college education
and distinguished himself by his talents and hard study. Given the
illuminating education first and the struggle of the wits for mastery
afterward, and adding to both the advantages and the principles of a
gentleman--and the inner life, the soul, of such a clever man could not
fail to be developed, complex and interesting. I have had only glimpses
of it, but it has excited my curiosity so that I naturally could not
watch another woman carry him off with equanimity. But I don’t think
there is any danger of another lapse. He has renewed his efforts to
interest me, and--it certainly _is_ clever of him--has not so much as
addressed me with his eyes again. That is to say there is no appeal
in them. But there are other things, Polly, and there is something
about the man that fearfully suggests the impossibility of failure.
But the weather is so heavenly just now that I wish everybody in the
world could have everything he wanted. It is like living in a crystal
dome and being bathed by invisible waves of soft stimulating perfumed
air; with splendid masses of rich and tender greens, of amber-browns
and turquoise blue, and the golden glory of sunsets for the eye, and a
vast uplifting silence. It is a sort of voluptuous heaven, virtuously
seductive.
The other day several of us walked down the mountain to one of the
farms to see the haying. It was a grand valley among the mountain-tops.
From the farm we visited we looked over rolling wooded hills, dotted
with houses, cattle, and a solitary white church spire, to a great
irregular chain of green mountains, encircling the horizon; other
peaks, faint and blue and distant, showing beyond their depressions;
and the forest, the forest, everywhere beyond the clearings of the
farmers.
The hay had been cut and the mechanical rake was gathering it into
heaps when we arrived, while men pitched it into a wagon where another
man stood with a pitchfork pressing it down. The sweetness of that air!
I never shall forget it; I was doubly glad I never had used perfumes.
It was drenched with the sweetness of newly mown hay and it almost
intoxicated me. I fancy that if Mr. N. had seized the occasion to press
his suit--however, I do not know. He did not, and as there were some
ten people in the field it would not have been so romantic, in spite of
the fragrance. They gave me a hand-rake and I raked quite a good deal
of the pretty green stuff that it seems shocking the farm-yard cattle
should eat.
I was very much disappointed in the appearance of these mountain
farmers. How few things in life resemble the traditions of them--we
have been so victimized by poets and romanticists. I expected great
brawny muscular fellows, with enormous legs, brown skins, and deep
chests. But they are pale and thin and stooping, not one looks as if
he would see sixty or as if he got the least pleasure out of life. Mr.
N. explained that hard work while they were young and no cessation of
it thereafter had broken their constitutions. In winter they work on
the roads which they are under contract to keep open, and of course
it snows and freezes heavily and frequently. During these same severe
months they also go in the woods and help to “draw” the logs the
lumbermen have cut during the summer for the pulp mills. These logs
have to be piled on sleds and drawn to the creek, to be floated down
to the valley after the spring rains. The men rise at three in the
morning, working by torches till sunrise, and seldom get to bed before
eleven at night! No wonder they are old men at forty. And I don’t
pretend to say how many cords of wood they cut a year, or how many
stone fences they have built, or how many thousand stones they dug from
the ground before they could farm.
When all the hay had been removed the field looked like a great green
lawn--brilliantly green under the five o’clock sun. Beyond was a dip,
then the thick masses of the dark green woods, touched into richer
green by that blaze of sunshine, then the mountains, sombre and faintly
blue. It is a beautiful land, Polly, but it depresses me to think that
while it means new blood and new life and all cure for the outsider
of leisure, it sucks jealously back into its own store of vitality
the little store of its struggling children. It is an unnatural and
snobbish mother, after all.
Mr. N. calls me “Maud Muller,” since I raked the hay. Did you ever come
across that Quaker poet, Whittier? He lived here in America, but I am
told he is the poet of the English quakers as well. Mr. N. recited
“Maud Muller” to me, as we stood apart in the field--after I had tired
of raking. It really is a beautiful and musical poem, but I could not
see anything quakerish about it.
When I write “I am told,” Polly, you may assume that my authority
is Mr. N. As far as my limited comprehension can perceive he knows
everything.
16th
Mr. Carlisle was called suddenly to Newport last night by the illness
of his mother. A man rode thirty miles with the telegram, left his
horse at a farm house and walked the trail--which is so full of rocks
logs and mud-holes that no strange horse could cover it without
breaking a leg, and, likely as not, his neck. It was just after dinner
and we were all grouped in the little spruce grove before the camps
watching the sunset, when the man, looking so hot and tired, came
hurrying out of the woods. I am sure every one of us had a fright when
we saw the yellow envelope, a telegram is such a rare interloper in the
peace of these mountain camps; and when the man said “Mr. Carlisle,” I
am equally sure that every one of us wanted to hold Mr. C.’s hand. He
went rather pale, but said it was doubtless a false alarm as his mother
had been very nervous ever since the war--during which her nerves had
been on the rack between apprehension of Cervera’s fleet and his own
demise--and hastened away to get his things together. The keeper was
sent out to bring a buckboard in and Mr. C. left at three this morning.
I am sorry to say, Polly, that before he left I had rather a painful
interview with him. I tried to avoid it, but these American men are
very determined, my dear, and he managed to detain me on the veranda
after the others had gone in. How I hate men to be serious! It hurts
my conscience so that I don’t get over it for weeks. I had not the
slightest intention of making him love me, I only wanted to punish
that woman for her contemptible conduct in regard to Mr. N. Now I feel
quite as bad myself and wish that I had simply contented myself with
showing her that I had a string tied to Mr. N. Mr. C. is really a fine
manly fellow and I felt like petting him as I would Bertie and telling
him not to mind, but of course I couldn’t. He vows he’ll come back the
moment he is free, and gently insinuated contempt for a suitor who
was ten years too old to win me. How funny these men are! What I am
to do with them all I am sure I cannot imagine, but I would rather he
went away hoping, and accepted his fate by degrees; for heaven knows
I do not wish to add too heavily to his troubles. Not that I gave him
any encouragement. Heaven forbid. But they are so determined, these
Americans.
The buckboard awoke me at three o’clock, and I got up and peered out of
my high window. The woods looked so grey and ghostly, filled with mist
that was like a wet cobweb. The keeper was driving and Mr. C. sat on
the back seat muffled in a winter great coat. Mr. Latimer went out with
him to the end of the trail; and presently they disappeared into the
forest and the mist; and the silence was as if the world were dead.
But I have not told you of the new arrival. She has come to spend the
last of our camping days here with Mrs. Wilbur Garrison, and she is
quite the most imposing, nay, overwhelming person I have met in this
extraordinary jumble of democracy and caste, known--infelicitously, I
gather--as the United States. She is Mrs. Earle wife of ---- ---- ----
----,[A] and of course, a personage of vast importance in Washington.
But she is no mushroom; she has belonged for heaven knows how many
generations--eight, perhaps--to the haute noblesse of the country
and was born into an equally imposing number of dollars. But, Oh,
Polly! she is so cold, so haughty, so frozen! Her handsome little
head is set so far back on her mountainous body, her backbone is so
rigid and her upper lip so proudly curled, there is such a touch
of icy peremptoriness in her manner, as if it were her daily task
to dismiss pushing aspirants for social recognition--that I feel I
have looked upon the walking embodiment of the aristocratic idea as
it is interpreted by Americans. Heaven knows she has been sweet to
me, she has even invited me to spend a month with her in Washington
next winter; but I know that after a consecutive month of that chill
presence I should return to Bertie a sort of hysterical iceberg, my
marrow frozen and my humour on the verge of insanity. And, although
not in the least clever, she would be quite an agreeable woman were
it not for her tragic self-consciousness, for she must know the world
of Washington like a book; and it is a book I should like to read.
But she will not talk. All she has said of Washington is to intimate
her scorn of all “new-comers,” her boundless _ennui_ of the duties of
her official position, her sacrifice of her own inherited desire for
segregation from the common herd to the interests of her distinguished
husband. And yet she is not ill-natured. She is as placid as Chipmunk
Lake, and, I am told, an exemplary wife and mother, if _not_ a radiant
and fascinating hostess. Her only fault is--well--her aristocracy!
I tried to interest her in the vivid people of Boulder Lake, in the
farmers of the valley, in Jemima, in the various strange beings I have
met in this strange country. All by way of experiment, and in vain. Her
mind could not respond to the fact of their existence. They had not
been born in her original circle nor thrust upon her by the exigencies
of public life. She betrayed a flicker of interest in Mrs. Opp and
remarked vaguely that she should have imagined blood would count for
more than that, then curled her lip and relapsed into silence. Polly,
what are _we_? I am oppressed sometimes with the suspicion that those
countries which are not the United States are like diseases in the
creed of the Christian Scientists--they do not exist. We merely imagine
we are, they know we are not, but tolerate our whim. We have lost caste
because we have lost our consciousness of birth, and are therefore
degenerate. Upon my word, Polly, I begin to think that the snobs who
run after us in England are the truest Republicans, after all. However,
I have nothing to say against my other friends of Chipmunk Lake--always
excepting Mrs. Coward--for they are wholly charming, and unaffected,
and not afraid to let you see they know the world. Miss Page does not,
and thinks well of all the world--happy, happy girl.
There is another point on which these people greatly differ from those
of Boulder Lake--that is a certain homogeneity. Men and women, they
are like one large family and evidently have been brought up together;
and Mrs. Van Worden says that with most of her set it is quite the
same. They all call each other by their first names, and there is
that same utter absence of formality as with us when we are quite
among ourselves. In the set at Boulder Lake there is a formality that
never relaxes, they all seem to have an abnormal respect for each
other, and I vow I never heard the first name of one of them. They
have accumulated each and all with care, but their set is stamped with
the heterogeneity of a new incident in civilisation. And they have a
bourgeois timidity about expressing their real opinion--if they have
any--against the ruling opinion--or fad. Each thinks as the other
thinks--how often I have disconcerted them!
Mrs. Coward, by the way, preserves her unruffled demeanour and has
never so much as put out a little claw and scratched me. A woman of
twenty-seven with that amount of self-control should be capable of
great things. She never has overdone it, never for a moment. (I wonder
if she has anything up her sleeve.)
I did not tell you, she informed me the other day that she is a
“Colonial Dame,” and _has her family tree_--with two Presidents and
ten statesmen on collateral twigs--_framed and hung in her library at
Newport_. Polly, what _do_ you make of that. I ventured to speak to
Mrs. Van Worden about it, and she said:
“Rot. Fads. We all think that the Almighty made Heaven first and the
United States just after--pickling it till Europe and Asia were old
enough to appreciate--but some of us have the decency to do less
talking than thinking. Nettie Coward is fairly mum as a rule, but she
can’t help showing off to you--wants to impress you with the fact that
you’ve not got a monopoly on all the blood there is. She’s a clever
woman, but everybody makes an ass of himself one way or another. When
we’ve got twenty generations to the good we’ll be just as unconscious
about it as you are. But aristocracy will be a sort of itch with us
till then. Quantities of idiots have their family trees framed.”
I find her very refreshing, Polly.
I have not written much about Mr. N. lately. But I’ve talked with
him!--hours and hours and hours. It is no use trying to avoid him--and
he certainly is interesting. Well--heaven knows.
HELEN.
9. P. M.--Your letter has just come. It seems years since I last heard
from you. I know how you feel but I can’t help being glad that he has
gone. Nothing will happen to him. Don’t be foolish. He is your manifest
destiny and you will be married to him this time next year. If Freddy
really has hurt himself and is suffering I can’t help feeling sorry
for the wicked little beast--I have grown so soft about such things
in the last two years. But the circumstances were disgraceful and you
were wise to treat his summons to his bedside as a trick to compromise
you and hamper the proceedings. What an enigma even a miserable little
degenerate can be. Who can say whether he really is fascinated by you
still--he is incapable of love--and honestly desires a reconciliation,
or whether he wants to prevent your marriage with V. R.--or, who
knows?--perhaps he is afraid that woman will want to marry him. Well,
I do wish that the evidence could have been gathered more quickly and
that it were over.
Letter X
_From the Lady_ HELEN POLE _to the Countess of_ EDGE _and_ ROSS.
_Chipmunk Lake_,
August 19th
_Dearest Polly_:
It is eleven o’clock P. M., and I have been in bed and asleep since
half-after seven. I foresee myself wide-awake for two hours and giving
you an account of the last two days. How flat that sounds--but wait!
And otherwise you might never hear of them, for I return to Boulder
Lake to-morrow, and in this country events are so quickly crowded into
the past.
I wrote you--did I not?--that the subject of a camping expedition had
been mooted more than once, but put off from time to time on account
of threatening weather and various other causes. I longed to go;
“camping out” in the “Adirondack wilderness” being pitched upon a most
adventurous and romantic note; and finally I begged Mr. Nugent to
arrange it. He went “straight at it” in the energetic American way, and
in two hours it was all arranged: Opp drove out in the buckboard for
another guide, and Mrs. Opp was making so many good things at once
that all the other cooks had to come over to help her. Then Mr. Nugent
and Mr. Van Worden packed the big pack-baskets, and everybody was ready
to start at nine o’clock the day before yesterday.
The original plan was that all of us should go, but the actual party
were Mr. and Mrs. Meredith Jones, Miss Page, Myself, Mr. Nugent, Mr.
Latimer, and Mr. Van Worden. The others “backed out” on one excuse or
another, and happy it was for them and us that they did.
This colony is only two years old, and, as it happened, none of the men
ever had camped out in this part of the Adirondacks before, and as they
found their lake and surroundings quite sufficient there was not a tent
on the place. However--and the expedition was avowedly got up for my
benefit--I insisted that I wanted a genuine rough camping experience,
and we all took Opp’s word for it that he knew the very spot--where
there was fishing, a clearing, and an “open camp,” erected by other
wood-loving spirits. It is true he grinned as he assured me that I
would get a good taste of the “genuine article,” but I suspected
nothing. What imagination, indeed, would be equal to it!
Mrs. Coward kissed me good-bye quite affectionately, for she expected
to “go out” before I returned, and even Mrs. Earle stood on the shore
in the little spruce grove and waved her handkerchief with the others
as we rowed down the lake.
It was one of those crystal mornings when life seems the divine thing
of those imaginings of ours when we have lost for a little the links
that hold them to facts. I never felt happier, I was almost excited. It
seemed such a delightful thing to float off into the unknown like that,
to go in search of adventures, with the certainty that six strong men,
one of them your devoted slave, would take the best of care of you. It
was all so undiscovered--that rough mountain world beyond the lake--so
unimaginable--well, I know all about it now.
We were a very picturesque party, my dear. The men wore white sweaters,
corduroy breeches, and top boots. I wore hunter’s green, a short skirt
of covert cloth just above my boot tops, a linen blouse the same shade
and a little bolero to protect my back and arms from the mosquitoes.
Miss Page, who is very dark, wore a bright red skirt and cap and a
red and white striped “shirt waist” with a red tie. Mr. Nugent said
she looked exactly like a “stick of peppermint candy,” and I am sure
I shall recognise that indigestible the first time I enter a “candy
store.” Mrs. Meredith Jones, who has golden hair and blue eyes, wore
a dark blue skirt and cap and the inevitable “shirt waist”; but hers
was striped with blue; and the jauntiest little cape hung from her
shoulders. Of course we all wore canvas leggins as a further protection
from the mosquitoes, which are the least of Adirondack charms.
Well, the moment we stepped on shore our troubles began. We were landed
on to a big slippery stone, then handed across several others and a few
rotten logs into a swamp. Before us was an impenetrable thicket as high
as our heads and wet with dew. We stood staring at it until the guides
had shouldered their packs and picked their way over rocks and logs to
take the lead.
“That’s all right,” said Opp, “there ain’t bin any one in here for
two years and the road’s growed over, but it’ll be all right in about
a mile. Good trail then. We’ll go first and break the road. Wimmin
folks’d better bring up in the rear.”
So we started; crashing through the wet bushes over the wetter ground
until we came to a narrow rocky trail sidling along the inlet. This is
a gentle stream in a wild setting. Its rocks are so many and so big
that the wonder is the water can crawl over them, and the mountain
beside the path is as precipitous as a cliff. None of us paid much
attention to the beauties of Nature; we did not dare take our eyes
off the path, which had given way in places and was swampy in others.
Where it was safe it was rocky. Nor could the men help us much; the
trail was too narrow. Single file was a necessity, but Mr. Nugent was
just behind me and gave me occasional directions, besides surrounding
me, as usual, with an atmosphere of protection. So, slipping, and
bending and clutching at trees, we picked our way along until at last
the trail turned up hill, and if no less rough was free of the worst
element of danger. In another half hour we had passed a lumber camp
and were on a level trail along the crest of the mountain. The forest
was more open here, so much “lumbering” had been done, but only the
spruce were gone--not all of those--and high on one side and down in
a valley on the other was the beautiful leafy forest, full of the
resinous odor of spruce gum, the spaces rather a welcome change after
the forest densities of the last two months. And our procession was
very picturesque. The guides with their big pack-baskets strapped to
their shoulders were in the lead, almost trotting, that they might
outdistance us and have an occasional rest. All our men carried
small packs and strode along looking very supple and free, with the
exception of poor Mr. Van Worden who is rather stout and must have felt
the irksomeness of his pack. But he was enjoying himself, no doubt
of that; and indeed, so were we all. Mr. Latimer, who had looked a
little conscience-stricken as he said good-bye to Mrs. Van Worden,
whistled as gaily as a school-boy on a runaway lark. And it was so
cool and fresh in the woods, who wouldn’t be happy? Not that there was
one minute of easy walking--nor an opportunity for sentiment. When
we followed the narrow trail through the brush we had to stoop and
overlook every inch before we put a foot down. When we were on the long
stretches of corduroy, built by the lumbermen to haul their logs over,
Mr. Nugent held my hand, but he might have been his ghost for all the
impression he made on me, so many were the holes and so rotten some
of the logs. Conversation was impossible. We exchanged an occasional
remark, but we were all too intent on avoiding sprained ankles and
broken tendons--you cannot imagine the painfulness of walking too long
on log roads--to be interested in any one but ourselves.
There were four hours of this, and good a walker as I am I was
beginning to feel tired, when Opp, who had gone for ahead, came in
sight again, looking sheepish, rather.
“Be gosh!” he remarked to Mr. Van Worden as we met, “here’s a fine lay
out. One of the camps is burned. Them last campers done it, I reckon. I
seen ’em go round by way of Spruce Lake.”
I heard Mr. Van Worden swear softly under his breath, and saw an
expression of blank dismay on Mr. Nugent’s face. Mr. Latimer burst into
a peal of boyish laughter. But Mr. Meredith Jones said sharply,
“Well let’s go on and cook dinner. That is all that concerns us now. We
can decide what to do later.”
“Are we there?” I asked, hopefully, for I longed to give my poor
bruised feet a rest.
“Yes’m,” said Opp, “we’re there, all right.”
And in a moment, Polly, we “were there.”
Have you wasted any time, my dear, imagining what an “open camp” is
like? I hope not, for it were a waste of good mental energy. The
briefest description will fit it. Three sides and a sloping roof,
all of bark. The front “open” in the exactest interpretation of the
word. Inside--nothing. Twelve feet long and not quite the depth of Mr.
Meredith Jones, who is six feet two.
This mansion stood on the edge of a clearing, across which lay a big
felled tree. Against this we immediately all sat down in a row. Beyond
was a charred ruin and near the log a rude table. Does that sound
romantic? I wish you could have seen it. But we all laughed and were
happy, and we women, even then, did not realise the true inwardness of
the situation. The forest, the beautiful forest, rose on three sides
of us; beyond a stream, concealed by alders, was a high sharp ridge of
mountains; and we were hungry.
The guides immediately set about making a fire. There seemed to be
plenty of logs and they soon had a roaring blaze. Opp found a limb
with a forked top, which he drove into the ground just beyond the fire
and in the fork transfixed a long curving branch which held a pail of
water above the flames. Mr. Nugent and Mr. Van Worden unpacked the
baskets, Mr. Meredith Jones set the table, and Mr. Latimer fought off
the hornets which swarmed at the first breath of jam and ginger-nuts.
When we finally sat about that board, on logs or “any old thing,” we
eat that excellent luncheon of fried ham and hard boiled eggs, mutton
cutlets and fried potatoes, hot chocolate and cake, with a grateful
appetite, I can assure you. Mr. Van Worden fried the ham and potatoes
and made the chocolate, and we all coddled his culinary pride. All my
fatigue vanished, and Mrs. Meredith Jones looked equally fresh and
seemed prepared to take whatever might come, with the philosophy of
the other sex. But poor Miss Page looked rather knocked up. She has
never gone in for walking and her very cap had a dejected air; her fine
colour was almost gone, but she looked very pretty and pathetic and all
the men attempted to console her.
“I wouldn’t mind it,” she said with a sigh, “if we didn’t have to go
back.” Then, as if fearing to dampen our spirits with the prospect of
carrying her out, she added hopefully, “But it’ll be two days hence. I
reckon I’ll be all right by that time. I’ll just lie about and rest.”
When luncheon was over Mr. Latimer made her a comfortable couch of
shawls, with a small pack-basket for pillow, and she soon fell asleep.
The guides washed the dishes, then immediately felled two young
spruce-trees, and, with the help of Latimer and Mr. Meredith Jones,
shaved off the branches and covered the floor of the cabin. This was
our bed, my dear, and it was about a foot deep. When it was finished
they covered it with carriage robes, and all preparations for nightly
comforts were complete. By this time it had dawned on Mrs. Meredith
Jones and myself that we were _all_ going to sleep under that roof. Opp
had examined the sky and predicted rain before morning, and Miss Page
was not equal to a return journey--“doubling the road,” as they say
here--even if any of us had contemplated such a thing.
“Tom and I will sleep in the middle,” said Mrs. Meredith Jones
reassuringly to me, after an earnest conversation apart with her
husband, but I was immensely amused at the whole situation. We were
as helpless against certain circumstances as if we did not possess
sixpence between us; for it would have taken nearly a day to build
another camp and the guides were too tired to think of such a thing.
We were all stranded out in space, and there was nothing to do but make
the best of it.
About two hours after luncheon I felt as if I had had no exercise that
day and Opp suggested that I go up the mountain to see a gorge locally
famous. So, accompanied by Mr. N. and Latimer, I followed him up the
steepest and roughest mountain of my experience. There was no trail. He
trampled ahead through the brush and we followed. Mr. Nugent preceded
and literally pulled me up more than one perpendicular place, but Opp
insisted upon taking charge of me through the slippery intricacies
of a rocky stream. But we were rewarded by the most beautiful spot I
have yet seen. Imagine a forest glade with five or six _islands_ of
rock--boulders so huge that no other word will describe them. These
islands were covered on all sides with the richest moss and the most
delicate ferns, and on the top of each grew great trees, their long
roots gripping the sides of the rock like petrified pythons. Then a
water-course choked with smaller boulders, and rising out of it,
straight up for five hundred feet, a solid wall of rock crowned with a
pine forest. The wall was a half-mile long and so smooth that one could
well imagine some terrible convulsion of these Adirondacks during which
a mountain had been split in twain, one side grinding itself into these
boulder-islands of the forest. On high the tree-tops were so matted
that the glade was filled with a twilight almost green. One had the
impression of walking under the sea. Each of us selected a dry rock,
and we sat there for an hour telling mountain experiences. I had had
one or two in the Alps, extremely modest ones, but all the men looked
at me with intense admiration as I related them. American men seem
to have an almost passionate admiration for women of great physical
endurance and courage. Our men take it as a matter of course. Mr.
Nugent thought it the most charming thing in the world that I should
want “more exercise” after the heavy tramp of the morning. He said one
rather clever thing, by the way. The others, after a time, wandered
down to the foot of the palisade in search of the ice caves, and as
I rather feared that Mr. N., under the influence of the wild beauty
about us, might lose a self-control which is plainly manufactured and
maintained through a fear of losing everything, (I dread and almost
long for the time when it will give way altogether) I turned the
conversation to politics and asked him if he looked forward to the
possible Bryan administration with the great apprehension that other
Republicans seemed to feel.
“No; I can’t say I do,” he said. “Nothing is ever as bad in politics
as the anticipations; anticipations are the exaggerations of much
talk. Besides--it is quite on the cards that Bryan will be an arrant
snob before he has been a month in the White House. Likely as not,
his first taste of Society will induce conservatism. When he has sat
at table a few times with titled Ambassadors he will hasten to forget
the ridiculous little farm he bought to have his pictures taken in.
Then, the only thing left for us to do is to marry his daughter to a
gentleman and persuade him to send his son to Harvard. His reform will
be accomplished in less than a year. There is no snob so complete as
a democrat reformed by the right sort of visiting cards. Of course a
small nucleus, the old set of Washington, will not go near the White
House, and as soon as the Bryans discover that diplomats, senators,
cabinet officers and army people are not all the cream of high society
they will become downright aristocrats; and when the shirt-sleeved
voter from Lincoln, Nebraska, calls, will conceal their ennui and
irritation indifferently well. That means alienation of the sons of the
soil, and no second term for Bryan. If Washington is wise it will do
its best to make a fool of him.”
“You haven’t much faith in Mr. Bryan’s much vaunted sincerity,” I said
with a laugh.
“I haven’t a particle,” he said contemptuously. “He has his picture
taken too often.”
The others returned at this juncture and we set out upon the
difficulties of our homeward journey. But never mind, it was all very
delightful and I never shall forget the beauty of that rocky glade.
When we returned to the camp, we found Mrs. Meredith Jones asleep and
Miss Page keeping watch. The men had all gone fishing and Mr. Nugent
and Mr. Latimer hastened to join them. Miss Page looked refreshed but
turned to me a perturbed face.
“I cannot believe it is possible that we are all going to sleep in
there,” she said. “Why, it is shocking! I begged Mr. Van Worden to put
up a partition, but he says it is quite impossible, that there won’t be
room to turn over, as it is. I wish I hadn’t come. Suppose it should
get out? Why, people would be horrified.”
“Really,” I said, “I think you take an exaggerated view. We are all
going to bed with our clothes on, the camp is open, there are nine
of us, and our chaperons will sleep in the middle. We may not be
comfortable but I think the proprieties will take care of themselves.”
“I think it is shocking,” she said, “perfectly shocking. It seems so
coarse and horrid. I’ll remember it as long as I live.”
I felt like shaking her, but she looked so distressed that I said
soothingly: “Please don’t worry. I will sleep next to Mrs. Meredith
Jones and you can tuck away in the corner where no one can see you and
you will be quite forgotten.”
“Yes,” she replied quickly, “I insist upon having the corner--
particularly as you don’t mind,” she added apologetically. “You are
quite different from my idea of English girls. I should have thought
that you would be simply horrified.”
“Perhaps we are more matter-of-fact than you are,” I said drily. “Where
a thing can’t be helped it can’t, and we are sensible about it. Now, I
am surprised at you. I had always supposed that American girls----”
“Oh, don’t!” she exclaimed. “You are going to judge us all by those
horrid things you meet in Europe and in novels. I can assure you that
Southern girls--_gentlewomen_--are as particular as English girls--more
so, I reckon. Do you realise that we are going to sleep in the same
room with six men?”
“I don’t look at it in that way at all,” I said tartly. “And for
heaven’s sake make up your mind to the inevitable and think no more
about it.”
The men returned soon after with a basket full of trout and Mr. Van
Worden fried them for supper. I don’t think I ever eat anything quite
so good as those trout.
“He beats the cars, cookin’,” observed our chief guide, and Mr. Van
Worden looked as pleased as if he had made a million in Wall Street.
After supper the guides built a high fire of great logs, and we all sat
about and the men “spun yarns” of the days when the panther and the
bear roamed the woods, and finished with stories of the beautiful red
deer that alone claims the forest to-day. Of course the men smoked, and
we were all very happy and comfortable until we went to bed. Mr. N.
sat as close to me as he decently could, and--I will confess to you,
Polly--under the encouragement of the shadows which covered a part of
me and all of him he held my hand. I could not struggle--well----
About ten the men all marched up the hill in single file, singing, and
we had the camp to ourselves for a half hour. We took off our boots,
corsets and blouses, put on dressing sacks, tied our heads up in
silk handkerchiefs, and our night toilet was complete. Miss Page had
evidently made up her mind to accept the situation, but she was so
manifestly uncomfortable that I tied nearly all of her face up in her
handkerchief and tucked her away in the corner with the blanket up to
her nose. She turned her back upon us and regarded the chinks of the
bark wall in silent misery. Mr. Van Worden had brought three extra
pairs of socks and these he had directed us to pull over our stockings
as the night would grow very cold.
We had been in bed nearly twenty minutes and had already learned
something of its hardness when the men returned.
“Now,” said Opp, “you must all lie on the same side and when one of you
wants to turn over be sure to sing out and then we’ll all turn over
together.”
His was the only remark. The other men pulled off their boots and
crawled into bed without a word, looking rather sheepish, and
ostentatiously refraining from glancing in our direction. Men are
certainly more modest than women in certain conditions, and Mrs.
Meredith Jones and I almost laughed out loud, especially as the other
guide went to bed with his hat on!
For about a half hour we were as quiet as the sardines we must have
looked. Then my side--the one I was lying on--began to ache from my
neck to my heel, and from the numerous sighs and restless jerks I
inferred that we all were affected in the same way. At all events Opp
“sang out,” “Heave over, hey?” and we all turned like a well-regulated
machine. I whispered to Miss Page but she would not answer me.
It was just after that we became conscious that the temperature was
about ninety. The fire was not three feet in front of us and blazing
more violently every moment. I had been endeavouring to forget my
discomfort in watching the black masses of the tree-tops thrown by the
blaze into extraordinary relief against the dulled sky and tarnished
stars, when I heard Mr. Van Worden whisper fiercely,
“What in heaven’s name did you build that red hot fire for? It’s hot
enough for three camps and we won’t sleep a wink.”
Opp replied apologetically: “I thought it was goin’ to rain and it was
best to have things well het up, but I guess it haint. It’s hot and no
mistake.”
I saw Mr. Latimer fighting to get out of an extra sweater without
attracting attention, and I, by the same herculean efforts, managed to
reach down and get off my stockings and those socks. But still the heat
was insupportable and the bed grew harder every moment. Our pillows,
too, were logs under the spruce, and I am used to a baby pillow that I
double under my neck and face. How I longed for it!
Finally Latimer slipped out of bed and went over to the edge of the
clearing and lit his pipe. The guides followed immediately, then Mr.
Meredith Jones, and they sat along the log in dejected silence. Mrs.
Meredith Jones heaved a deep sigh. “I really can’t stand it, girls,”
she whispered; and followed her husband. Of course we went too, and Mr.
Van Worden was left alone.
For a half hour we sat about in an almost complete silence, waiting for
that wretched fire to burn down. Opp separated the logs, and finally,
as we were all too sleepy to hold our heads up, we crawled back to bed,
one by one, all except Mr. Latimer, who stretched out on the table, and
Mr. Nugent who made a bed for himself on the ground. That gave us a
trifle more room in the camp, and we could turn without “singing out.”
In a few minutes, hot as it still was, I fell asleep.
I suppose it was two hours later that I awoke. The fire had taken a
fresh start and was blazing more merrily than ever. I felt as if I
were in a Turkish bath, and as Miss Page was no longer in front of me
I inferred that she had been driven forth again. Then it occurred to
me that she would not have budged without Mrs. Meredith Jones, and I
turned about quite suddenly. Mrs. M. J. was not there! Nor Mr. M. J.
Nor the guides. Oh, Agatha! Agatha! I was alone in bed with Mr. Van
Worden.
The situation was humorous, but somewhat embarrassing. I hardly knew
whether to pretend sleep or not, for I did not feel like going out and
sitting on that log again. I could see the dark figures in various
dejected attitudes. Mrs. M. J. and Miss Page were sitting back to back
with their heads hanging, while Mr. M. J. stood with his hands in his
pockets glowering at the fire. Latimer was sitting on the table smoking
his pipe, and Mr. N. was digging his heels viciously into the earth. As
for the guides they lay flat in the distance, tired out, poor things.
Only Mr. Van Worden looked serene. He, too, lay on his back, his hands
clasped over the greater part of him. I supposed he was asleep, but he
remarked genially:
“Hot, isn’t it, Lady Helen? I’m afraid one camping experience will do
you for the rest of your natural life.”
I assured him that I never had been so much entertained, and we
conversed as naturally as if it had been noon-day until I was reminded
of the irregularities of the situation by a gasp from Miss Page. She
nudged Mrs. M. J., whispered hurriedly, and in another moment I was
chaperoned on either side.
It was at least another hour before the fire burned down and the
temperature cooled. Then the men crawled back to bed, one by one, and
in a few moments they were all sleeping--and as quietly as kittens. It
really was quite remarkable.
But one could not sleep long at a time on that bed, and once I was glad
to be awake. High up on the highest tree of the mountain a hoot owl
broke the petrified stillness of that lonely forest.
“Too wit, too wit, too wooo!” he called loudly, and then he added
with impatient emphasis, “Too wit, too wit, _too woo_,” as if to say,
“Do you understand that?” He was a bit of a scold, but he had all the
grey dome and all the forest depths to talk into. No comrade answered
him, and nothing ever gave me such an impression of the solitude of a
mountain forest.
By six o’clock we had endured all that the human frame is capable of
in the way of sleeping on hard and prickly spruce, and the men rose
as by one impulse and went down to the spring to wash. We dressed as
hurriedly as possible, and, I must say, looked surprisingly fresh. And
the morning was so deliciously cool, and Mr. Van Worden’s coffee so
fragrant and bracing, his trout so crisp and Mrs. Opp’s “johnnie cake,”
so excellent that we sat about Mr. Latimer’s bed in the highest spirits
and congratulated each other that we were “camping out.” Even Miss
Page, having weathered the worst of it, announced herself ready to stay
another night, and talked continually in her pretty Southern brogue.
She was looking like a beautiful gypsy, too, and I think our one small
mirror had consoled her for many things. She flashed her eyes about
with the impartiality of the kind-hearted coquette, and was quite the
life of the uncomfortable group about the table.
After breakfast Mrs. M. J., Latimer, Mr. Nugent and myself, led by Opp,
with an axe over his shoulder, started off to see some famous falls.
The rest went fishing. As the trail along the “still-water” had been
choked by lumbermen, Opp had to rely on his general knowledge of the
land, and every few minutes he “blazed” a tree, _i.e._, hacked off a
piece of the bark with his axe, that there should be no danger of going
astray when we returned. The ground was less broken up than usual and
we strode along in single file looking for all the world like a party
of pioneers penetrating the wilderness. It was a jolly experience and I
would not have missed it for anything.
The falls were about two miles from the camp and we were an hour
reaching them, for Opp got off the track several times. I can imagine
that they look very fine indeed when there is anything falling. But
all we saw was a sloping wall of solid rock, about four hundred and
fifty feet high and a fifth of a mile wide, crowned with spruce. There
is a deep wide pool below, and a mass of rocks on which we sat and
tried to picture the mighty cascade of other seasons. On one end--the
perpendicular end--of the wall there were soil and trees, and Opp asked
me if I would like to “climb the falls and see the sights.” I was half
way across the rocks in a moment with Mr. N. and Latimer after me,
while Opp remained with Mrs. M. J.
It was a straight climb, my dear, of four hundred and fifty feet. It
hardly sloped once and there was just one ledge of about six steps. We
had to pull ourselves up by trees and bushes, and more that once Mr.
N. dragged me up, while Mr. L. pushed me. But altogether I did rather
well, and was quite rewarded by their enthusiastic approval. But there
was a better reward than that. From an elevation above the falls we
saw five mountain ranges. They seemed to fill all space, and the blue
dome to press down its rim about them, holding such a flood of crystal
and gold! There were many beautiful pines about us, sage green with a
delicate fairy-like quality in spite of their greatness, and once more
the undesecrated forest, so dense that Mr. N. had noted every inch of
ground we traversed.
Of course it was worse going down than ascending and I was glad to have
two men to take care of me.
Well, we spent all of that day very pleasantly, and the night promised
to be rather more comfortable, for Mr. Nugent, Mr. Latimer, and the
guides all made beds for themselves under the stars and the fire was
left to go out after supper. But, alas! about midnight it began to
rain, they all came crawling under shelter, and there was little more
sleep that night.
The rain stopped long enough for us to breakfast comfortably, and
then we held a consultation. The plan had been to “stay out” three
nights, but we were all a little tired of it, and the skies looked very
forbidding.
“If you want my opinion,” remarked Opp, “I say go, and be quick about
it. It’s set in for all day, and if we git back to the Lake without a
soakin’ we’ll be luckier’n I think we will.”
That settled it. We had no desire to sit on our bed all day and then
sleep on it another night. The guides began to pack at once, and within
an hour we were on our way.
We had hardly started when it began to pour, and it has not stopped
yet. What a walk it was! However we reached home without pneumonia and
broken ankles heaven only knows, but not one of us has a cold; and
although my feet feel as if they had been pounded with a hammer they
are quite whole. When we were not picking our way over the narrow
trail through the brush--dripping and as high as our heads--we were
on those horrible corduroy roads, made so slippery by the rain that
every step was a danger. Once I fell, and I twisted my foot three times
and wrenched myself up to my waist. My feet were swimming in my boots
and it was an effort to lift them. I felt sorry for Miss Page, who is
a pampered creature, but she never uttered a complaint, although she
told me afterward that every time we came to one of those interminable
stretches of corduroy she wanted to sit down and cry. She certainly is
a fine creature, with all her little foibles.
When we got to the lumber camp we all sat down in the rain and rested
before climbing the corduroy hill beyond. Mr. N. explained to me the
use of the curious objects piled under a shed. They were huge boxes
on runners with four round holes in each end. When the snow is on the
ground, covering corduroy and rocks, these boxes are filled with water
and dragged by horses over the road to be used for drawing the lumber
to the streams. From the front holes the water spouts continuously,
and as it strikes the ground it freezes, making a solid smooth surface
over which the log sledges can travel with ease. But what a life! No
wonder these mountaineers look old; but Mr. N. told me that lumbermen
become so fascinated with the life that they cannot be tempted into the
valleys.
You can imagine the difficulties of that narrow sidling swampy trail by
the inlet. It was just twice as bad as in dry weather, and I almost was
discouraged once or twice. Perhaps I should have been, had it not been
for a very reassuring and helpful presence; but it was bad enough.
Latimer had hastened on to the lake to fire his revolver, the signal
that we were coming. When the rest of us arrived the boats were almost
there, but as we were all hot and wet, and a cold wind played upon us
as we stood on the stones again, it is a wonder we are not all wrecks.
As soon as I reached home Mrs. Van Worden made me drink hot whiskey,
while Mrs. Opp and Henriette undressed and rubbed me down. I am none
the worse for wear, but felt quite done up by half-after seven and went
to bed. Hence this great letter. Good night. I return to Boulder Lake
to-morrow.
HELEN.
_Boulder Lake_
August 20th
10 P. M.
I forgot to give this letter to the postman to-night so I will tell you
of two or three surprises which have made me wide-awake, rather.
Of course Mr. Nugent returned with me, (and as there is always a room
at the Club House at his disposal I suppose he will remain through the
deer and grouse seasons--unless--but I vow I don’t know!) I was glad
to see that beautiful avenue dividing the dark forest, once more, and
we walked slowly, the buckboard following. I can’t say the familiar
corduroy filled me with sentimental emotions and my insteps ached at
the first glimpse of it; but I have that buoyancy within that carries
my feet over many a weary mile, and my companion, as ever, was very
interesting. I forget just what we talked about.
We were half way up the last hard bit of corduroy and my eyes as usual
were intent upon the logs when Mr. N. said abruptly:
“Look!”
I stopped at once and followed the direction of his glance. Before I
had time to wonder if he had seen a bear I saw, standing on the ledge
above, Mr. Rogers--and Bertie! The light was full upon them and I saw
in a flash that Bertie was stouter and had lost his terrible pallor. He
was not ruddy, but he was brown, and there was colour in his cheeks.
Polly, did you ever have a wild whirl of emotions inside of you while
you forced your exterior to be as impassive as a shell? I wanted to
give one of the war-whoops with which they call to one another up here,
and I felt so much like bursting into a storm of tears that I dared not
even speak.
When Bertie and I met we merely shook hands, and he remarked that he
was glad to see me back, but I knew he wanted to hug me. Then I gave
my hand to Mr. Rogers--and was just in time to see the look with which
my two knights were measuring each other.
I walked ahead with Bertie and he said that between the air and the
milk he certainly was getting well, and I found my voice and told him
that I never had felt so happy in my life. But my absorption in Bertie
was divided for the moment by a new surprise.
We had left the level stretch and were walking down the incline to
the boat landing (I had been too interested to notice that we had not
turned off into the path leading to our camp), when I stopped short
with half a sentence forgotten. Waiting at the pier was a gondola--a
gondola with silken curtains and cushions and an Italian gondolier.
Bertie laughed gaily at my startled face, for in truth I was afraid for
the moment that something in my brain had gone wrong.
“Rogers sent for it--to Chicago, of all places!” he said. “It is a
remnant of the World’s Fair.”
And then I remembered I once had said to Mr. Rogers that I could not
understand why they did not have gondolas on these beautiful lakes
instead of commonplace boats.
All my coquetry was enchanted and I turned to Mr. Rogers with such
a radiant face that he must have felt a bit rewarded. While I was
thanking him--glad of that much outlet for my excitement--and he was
making one of his charming speeches and looking so dignified and not
the least bit of an ass, I stole a glance at Mr. N. His face wore a
cynical grin that was almost sardonic.
Well, I gondolaed home and fell into Agatha’s arms, then discovered
Bertie’s welcome. He had--himself, mind you--tacked that most beautiful
of shrubs, the ground pine, all over the walls of the living-room. They
looked a mass of soft green and gold and the antlered heads of the deer
seemed to be set in their native woods. On the table was a great bunch
of crimson sweet peas--incomparably more fragrant than ours--sent by
Jemima, and a bowl of water-lilies from Mrs. Laurence.
After I had answered all of Agatha’s questions and assured her
that I was as well as ever--she thinks I am thin, but how I have
tramped!--Bertie and I went out and gondolaed round the lake. It was
just five o’clock. The men were going home from the tennis court, and
waved their hats at me and gave the unearthly wood call.
Then, suddenly, all the doors opened, and the women in their bright
muslin gowns flitted out and waved their handkerchiefs to me. It was a
pretty sight and a graceful act. Of course, I landed and they said a
great many of their charming things.
When I went home another surprise awaited me--in my room. On the table
was a box of splendid roses and an elaborate basket of chocolates tied
with yards of my favourite bright blue ribbon. Mr. Nugent’s card was
attached. Of course he had sent to New York for them.
I don’t think I ever went to bed feeling so happy.
HELEN.
21st
I suppose we have all taken note of that malignant influence in the
unseen world which makes us unreasoningly and unguardedly happy just
before our stiffest blows. One would think these bitter contrasts were
purposely arranged to destroy our power of philosophy.
It was at breakfast that I was confounded, more nearly knocked over
than I ever was in my life.
“By the way, Nell,” Bertie remarked casually, “what a ripping fine
woman Mrs. Coward is.”
“Mrs. Coward?” I gasped.
“Yes. Don’t mean to say you didn’t know she was here?”
“I did not!” I could barely articulate. And a perturbed glance from
Agatha increased my consternation. “When did she come?”
“Three or four days ago--Oh, yes, she said you had left the same
morning for your camping tramp.”
“Whom is she visiting? I had no idea the aristocracies would mix.”
“Mrs. Laurence. Don’t you like Mrs. Coward?”
“I am glad she is visiting Mrs. Laurence. I should say they would
scratch each other’s eyes out immediately.”
“I’m disappointed you don’t like her. I hoped you’d have her in the
house a lot. She’s a long sight the most fascinating American I ever
met--a regular ripper, by gad!”
I don’t know how I controlled myself, but I knew that if I said too
much and suggested opposition Bertie would be on his hind legs at once.
This was what she had up her sleeve, Polly. What deceit, what
treachery, what sneakingness. Only a _widow_ would be capable of such
a thing. But I must say I respect her. She fooled me completely. I
could not have been capable of so clever a revenge, and I detest
her for it, because she has not the true sporting instinct, but she
is to be reckoned with all the same. In spite of her platitudes and
her ingenuous pride in the seven generations, she is both clever and
deep--when her pride is in arms, and revenge and ambition both spur her
on to capture a duke.
But _will_ she marry him? _Oh!_ Many moths have fluttered about that
flame. But she is so subtle. And in addition to her indisputable
magnetism she has developed fascination into a fine art. Of course she
has scented out all Bertie’s weak points and flattered them. I can hear
her discoursing about the solemn responsibilities of the hereditary
legislator, and that is what is haunting Bertie most at present. Of
course she knows all about Dad, and her dulcet enthusiasms on that
convenient weakness--Oh, _dear_! Agatha says they have been almost
inseparable since the afternoon she arrived. She did not lose a minute!
He actually asked me if he could take her out in _my gondola_. I felt
like telling him to take her out and drown her, but I gave my consent
as graciously as I could, and came into the house to think. I dare not
go to the forest, for I know that Mr. N. is lying in wait for me and
I feel certain that after this gondola declaration he will press his
suit; and when he _does_ plant himself on both feet in the middle of
the trail and I on the wrong side--Oh, heaven!
I induced Agatha to go over to the tennis court so that I could not
receive Mr. Rogers if he called. But for some time I could not even
write to you, I could only storm up and down the living-room and try to
think of some way to foil that woman and deliver Bertie. Fancy having
her for a sister-in-law! And she would radiate a subtle triumph till
the day of her death. But the real--underlying--point is that she is
not the wife for Bertie. He must marry an intelligent woman who will
give herself to him and his career, and this one would be entirely
wrapped in her own petty ambitions.
It suddenly occurred to me that Miss Page had promised to spend the
first two weeks of September with me. She is still at Chipmunk Lake,
for the other women do not leave for two days yet. The buckboard had
not gone. I wrote her a note, imploring her to come at once as I was
bored and lonely. Then I bribed the driver to take it to her to-day,
and he said he would wait and bring her back. She is far more beautiful
than Mrs. C., and younger. She may not be so subtle but she has all the
fascination of a buoyant and unaffected coquette. And she is worth six
of Mrs. C. as regards character and sincerity. Not, alas! that that
adds to one’s power over man. But I am hoping that Bertie will contrast
her real brightness with Mrs. C.’s platitudes, and discover that the
widow is boring, that he will succumb to Miss Page’s superior beauty,
and that propinquity will do its work. If only it doesn’t all happen
before she gets here! Mrs. C. has had him in her pocket for three
hours--_in my gondola_. She has on a white frock and a scarlet shawl
and a red poppy in her hair. There is no denying that she is hideously
attractive. Oh, Polly, how I wish you were here!
To add to my burdens Bertie gave me, this morning--he mercifully forgot
it last night--an impassioned epistle from Mr. Carlisle. His mother is
better and he is returning to Chipmunk Lake for the hunting season. He
says he shall devote three days a week to deer and the rest to me--that
if they won’t invite him to the Club House he’ll camp on the next lake,
which is only a mile away and on State lands. But of course they’ll
invite him to the Club House. Oh, Polly! Do you think any woman ever
was in such a tangle before!
On the whole I think I’ll go out into the forest and talk to Mr. N.
about it. I _must_ talk to somebody or I’ll have brain fever. And I’m
used to diverting his mind--“standing him off,” as they say here. And I
want sympathy.
This is really good-bye. I won’t write another line till I am in a
more cheerful state of mind--induced by Miss Page’s triumph over the
widow--for I do not want to add to your worries.
HELEN.
P.S.--Roddy Spencer will arrive on one of the Saturday steamers.
NOTE.--_The correspondence ends abruptly with the above letter; Lady
Helen Pole, on the following day having received a cablegram announcing
the sudden death of the Earl of Edge and Ross and the immediate
departure of her friend for the United States._
THE PUBLISHER.
THE END.
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