BY THE SAME AUTHOR

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

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.”