From the LadyHelen Poleto the Countess ofEdgeandRoss.
From the LadyHelen Poleto the Countess ofEdgeandRoss.
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 heardany oneutter 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 hewould 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 thedesired 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 sureshe 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 withMr. 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 hernormal 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. Heis 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 effortsto interest me, and—it certainlyisclever 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, showingbeyond 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. Butthey 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 greenunder 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 tobring 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 acceptedhis 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. Butshe 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; andit 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 boundlessennuiof 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, ifnota 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 arewe? I am oppressed sometimes with the suspicionthat 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 offormality 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,” andhas her family tree—with two Presidents and ten statesmen on collateral twigs—framed and hung in her library at Newport.Polly, whatdoyou 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.