From the LadyHelen Poleto the Countess ofEdgeandRoss.
From the LadyHelen Poleto the Countess ofEdgeandRoss.
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, beautywithout 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 sosoft. 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 inour 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 Ieverseen. I don’t mind her, butyou—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 Itook 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 hewasin a wax about something.
“Bertie,” I said, “here is a young person, nativeto 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!Hedon’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.