From the LadyHelen Poleto the Countess ofEdgeandRoss.
From the LadyHelen Poleto the Countess ofEdgeandRoss.
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. Itisso 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 theseleaves, 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 motionlessagainst 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 isnotour 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 ofwild 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 evensarcastically. 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, butthere 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 giveone 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 andelevated; 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 witha 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, nopie. 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 alltheir obsolete ideas, they have more substance, moreinside, 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 nolaw 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 tellallthey 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 womengenerally 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 rolleddownthe mountain to thevalleys 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, powderedwith 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 thesefriendlymountains 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 firein 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 andevening 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 somuch 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 charmingthings 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 Ibelong, 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 theyallcome 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 oftalk. 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, purifiedof 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 withdetails. 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 theTimesto 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 besurethat 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 youset 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 withtitles 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 meanyou; 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’dhateto 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, althoughas 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 addedthat 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 perpetualsummer 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 themorning 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 otherslike 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 needfor 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 thereissomething 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 gettingin. 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 bemad. 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 youcan’tsee 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 aprayer 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.