Letter VII

_From the Lady_ HELEN POLE _to the Countess of_ EDGE _and_ ROSS.

_Chipmunk Lake_, July 27th

_Dear Polly_:

Mr. Nugent, the all conquering, arranged it, Polly dear, and here I am at a far more beautiful lake than Boulder--which seems tamely pretty in comparison. It is on top of another mountain surrounded by another dense forest which grows down into the very water; but there the resemblance ends. Although not large it is almost like four different lakes, so irregular and cut up is it. From the natural terrace on which the four camps are built you look over a small body of brown water fringed with reeds and water-lilies to two mountain peninsulas which jut so far into the lake as almost to close it. The opening is called The Narrows and just beyond and across the distance runs another high sloping mountain quite cutting off further view except of far pale peaks. It is only when you are in a boat beyond The Narrows that you see the lake’s three other parts, one end closed up with great rocks and floating logs, but with the avenue of the inlet showing beyond; everywhere else, the dense silent forest, the spruce crowding to the front, the water-lilies and their pads spreading almost to the middle of the lake. There are white lilies and yellow ones and a miniature variety with so sweet and intoxicating a fragrance that in the early morning you feel as if the boat were cutting a visible passage through it. And the mountains, mountains, everywhere.

The four cottages are made of logs, three with the bark on, the other peeled and polished. Mrs. Van Worden’s is the largest and also the most homelike. We arrived rather late. Mr. N. and I, tired of the “buckboard,” had left it and walked on ahead, arriving quite noiselessly. I never shall forget how comfy Mrs. Van Worden’s living-room looked as we peered a moment through the glass door before knocking. It is a long low room with heavy beams across the dark red paper of the ceiling, and a red brick fireplace from floor to roof--in which great logs were blazing. In one corner was a graceful staircase, and on the “sealed” gold-coloured walls were many prints and photographs of sporting life in the Adirondacks. In one corner was a divan piled with cushions and draped with silk, a lamp swinging from the canopy. Against another wall was a straight divan, on which a young man was lying, reading a book. Then there were mounted deer heads and rugs and tables and at least eight rocking-chairs--I am going to take back a “rocker” as a present for you.

Mrs. Van Worden, who was standing with her foot on the fender staring into the fire, seemed to feel our presence in a moment, for she turned about suddenly and came swiftly to the door. And then the warmth of her welcome quite dissipated the misgivings I had felt about descending in this summary fashion upon a complete stranger. I like her better than any woman I have met in the country and as we sat up talking half the night, I already know her quite well.

She is tall and thin, with no figure exquisitely dressed--though with much more simplicity than the fashion of Boulder Lake would dictate. But these women _have_ to dress so much oftener during other parts of the year that they are more disposed to a complete rest up here. Still, they can’t help dressing well. Her figure’s only “points” are the hands and feet, which are so small that I stare at them almost rudely. Nevertheless the hands look extremely determined. She is not pretty but has rather the beauty of individuality. Her complexion is dead white, almost transparent, and her nose irregular, but she has great glowing black eyes, a sensitive and beautiful mouth, and soft mahogany-brown hair charmingly arranged. She is about six-and-thirty, I should say, and when she hinted to me that she was nine-and-twenty I felt disposed to offer her my confidence without reserve. Never trust a woman who will not lie about her age after thirty. She is unwomanly and unhuman and there is no knowing what crimes she will commit.

The man on the divan--a long clean-limbed smooth faced delightful looking young fellow, with a humorous mouth, a frank eye and a fine high-bred _University_ air about him--stood up as soon as we entered and was presented as Mr. Latimer of New York. Mr. Van Worden is a banker, very business-like and absent minded, and years older than his wife.

We had the jolliest little supper in one corner of the living-room--at least four of us did, for Mr. Van Worden was on the lake, having dined--and were waited on by the lake-keeper’s wife, a woman of immense weight, but so light on her feet and so deft and swift in her movements that she might have been a fairy. More of her later. She interests me very much.

After supper, as it was blowing rather hard, we all sat about the blazing logs for two hours and Mrs. Van Worden and young Latimer rattled alternately. But they did not irritate me for a moment, they were so impersonal even when talking of themselves, so really clever without seeming to be in the least aware of it, so full of a humour that made no attempt at wit, and so interesting in what they had to say and in their manner of looking at things. I felt grateful enough to hug myself.

Mr. Latimer had recently been in the Philippines and he told some of his humorous adventures with a boyish abandon--I am told he is thirty but he seems much younger--that made me laugh heartily. Suddenly I caught Mr. Nugent’s eye and the expression of delight on his face made me blush to my hair. We were alone for a moment just before going to bed and he whispered to me eagerly:

“You like it here! I know that you do! I am so glad.”

“Oh, yes!” I exclaimed with the enthusiasm of sheer gratitude. “I do. Thank you for bringing me.” Here he looked as if nothing could prevent him from kissing me and I said hurriedly:

“What a difference! It reminds me of something the Prince is reported to have said once: ‘Bright people--yes; but no damned intellect.’” Not but what I fancy the intellect is really there, Polly, but it is reserved as a sub-stratum, from which little sparks are sent up to irradiate, not a constant conscientious blaze like an energetic thunder storm.

Mrs. Van Worden invited me into her bed-room and we muffled ourselves in warm wrappers and talked for hours while the wind howled. She really has seen the world, and is as interesting as--well, as you are. There is a woman who would sympathise with you from A to Z and never criticise. Fancy the attitude of Mrs. Laurence or Mrs. Hammond. What is Christianity, anyhow? A kind heart and a sophisticated mind?

The next morning I got up for a few moments at six and peered out of my high window. Some of the smaller trees have been cut down and I could see a little distance into the forest. It looked so quiet--so expectant. I have decided that that is the spirit of these mountain forests of the New World--expectancy, waiting. Civilisation is held in check at present by the laws of New York, which owns the greater portion of the Adirondack tract. But for how long? And they have had more than a glimpse of man, these forests, from the old dead trappers to the flowers of modern and greedy civilisation. What is it they expect? What disaster? What conquests? It seems to me sometimes as if they were holding their breath. And what are they like inside? I wish I had eyes to see? Besides the two thousand lakes there are springs, springs everywhere; there must be millions of them in the great range. From what vast subterranean flood do they burst forth? What silent potent _waiting_ tides are moving unceasingly beneath the brown lakes and the riches of the forest, have been moving since the great glaciers melted?

At eight the keeper’s wife, Mrs. Opp, came up with my breakfast--coffee, and “johnnie cake,” and fish, fresh from the lake, and I detained her for a few moments, for she interests me unaccountably. As I said, she is very fat--she must weigh not a pound less than seventeen stone--and cannot be under five feet nine. Her face is German, but the features are small and delicately cut, and her complexion is as fine of grain as an infant’s. She must be seven or eight and thirty, but her face has that virginal expression of the married woman who never has had children. Her manner is _gracious_--I cannot apply any other word to it; but even more noticeable, I think, are her teeth and nails. They are perfect and perfectly kept. And yet she is illiterate, and has, she let fall, worked all her life. When Mrs. Van Worden is here she is both cook and housekeeper. Her husband, the keeper, is a big lithe handsome man, with regular features and a white throat. In his rough costume he looks the ideal mountaineer.

“I am not going to be lazy every day,” I remarked apologetically. “But I walked nearly all the way yesterday and then sat up late.”

“No wonder yor’re tired,” she said in her crooning indulgent voice. “A mile of it jest kills me. I git het up so, and my poor legs are _that_ tired--Oh, my!” And she laughed a jolly laugh, as if, however, life were all sunshine.

“But surely you walk sometimes in these beautiful woods.”

“Not very much. I git about enough walkin’ round the house. When I go out of the woods in winter and visit hum fur a spell, well, then, I guess I do go about more. You see there’s somethin’ to go to, but up here--My! I worked in hotels mostly before I come here, so this seems kinder lonesome.”

“You don’t remain here in winter then? I don’t blame you.”

“Oh, I couldn’t. It’s that dismal! Frank, he comes in and out, but there ain’t no real need of me stayin’ here so I go home and have a real good time. I like it here. I like it here. It’s as good’s anywheres, only I’d have a hotel on the St. Lawrence if I could hev my choice. There’d be some life in that! Well, I must go down and not stand gassin’ here. Sure you got all you want? There’s lots more.”

I assured her that I had more than I could possibly eat, and she smiled graciously upon me and withdrew. She is like the policeman and Jemima and the sales-lady in her unconsciousness of caste, but with a difference. What that difference is puzzles me when I have time to think about it.

July 31st

I have been here four days, Poll, and not heard the words “aristocratic” or “refined” once. Oh, blessed relief! And--yet--they just lack unselfconsciousness. Is that the word, or is it a suggestion of reserve under all their animation and candour and naturalness, a reserve that is not so much mental and personal as racial and as--well, there is no help for it--aristocratic? I think that is the explanation, after all. They _feel_ themselves to be the true aristocrats of the country but are too well-bred to mention, or, perhaps, to think of it. There is just the faintest dearest little air of loftiness about them and it is so manifestly natural that I fancy it is as much the real thing as the “self-made” American. I have come to the conclusion that the modern interpretation of the Declaration of Independence is something like this: _I am as good as those that think themselves better and a long sight better than those who only think themselves as good._ When they are established on the top step like these people here, with no more flights to conquer, there is really nothing left to do but to slide down the banisters.

None of my Chipmunk Lake friends are of the “new-rich”; every fortune up here is at least three generations old, and Mr. Van W’s is six. Well, they are welcome to feel themselves anything they like, for I find them wholly delightful, and they have been charming to me. Mrs. Wilbur Garrison looks rather sad and tired but is always gay in manner and interested in what other people are talking about. Mrs. Reginald Grant has several pasts in the depths of her eyes which her long lashes always seem to be sweeping aside as if it were a matter of no consequence whatever. Mrs. Meredith Jones rather goes in for charities, and Mr. Nugent says she really is a hard worker as well as a devoted mother and an irresistible coquette. She has a Greek profile, a cloud of golden hair, a Juno bust and a rather cynical mouth.

I do not know what Mrs. Hammond meant by saying there were “no men.” I should say there was one apiece.

There is a young widow, a great belle, visiting Mrs. Grant--Mrs. Coward. She is very thin and not in the least beautiful, although her face lights up when she talks and has a sweet expression. But she holds herself with a calm expectancy that every man will fall at her feet, and she flatters more than any one I ever met. Then she delivers her opinions with such an air! They are usually platitudes, but you know how a manner blinds.

A Miss Page, a Southern girl, is visiting Mrs. Garrison. She has an ideal manner, is always impersonal in her conversation and seems as amiable and unselfish as possible.

The unmarried men live in the little Club House, which has a smoking-room but no dining-room. We all dine in our own camps when we are not entertaining each other, which is usually.

The children are established for the summer in other country houses, where all these people will go after their three weeks’ rest from every care. The two husbands up here are quite nice, and devoted to sport. When the fish won’t play in this lake they tramp off to others.

But enough of the people. I am going to tell you of the weirdest experience I ever had. Save it for me, Polly, for if ever I write a