The Aristocrats

Being the impressions of the Lady Helen Pole during her sojourn in The Great North Woods as spontaneously recorded in her letters to her friend in North Britain the Countess 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

[8]

[9]

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[10] 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[11] 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[12] 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[13] 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[14] 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[15] 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[16] 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[17] 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.

[18]

Letter II

[20]

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[22] 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.

[23]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,[24] 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.[25] 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[26] 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.

[27]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.”

[28]“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[29] 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[30] 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.